You're absolutely right, we don't have national votes for anything at all. Here we are (well, those of us in the US, anyway) citizens of what all the politicians love to call "The Most Powerful Country on Earth", and we have no direct say in how it's run.
Recording costs have therefore gone up a great deal in the CD age, and this is reflected in their price. If the CD playing-time limit was the same as that of an LP then it seems likely that they would cost appreciably less in the shops. As it is, the cost of a modern recording of a large choral/orchestral single CD can easily run up to GBP 50,000, especially if soloists are involved. Clearly it is necessary to sell a large quantity to recoup such a sum.
This is considerably less than half a million USD. Maybe other sites quote different amounts, although the RIAA page on The cost of a CD is pretty light on figures, aside from the dubious claim that the price of a CD fell 40% between 1983 and 1996, even before inflation is taken into account (is this right? I don't recall paying over $20 for a CD, even back around 1985 or so.)
Anyway, the RIAA site does give that 90% non-profitable figure, but what does that mean? How much does the average "non-profitable" recording actually lose? $1? $1,000? $100,000? How does that balance against the huge amounts that something like a Brittney Spears CD rakes in?
Proof please? The average cost of producing a classical CD is $500,000 (this is "insignificant"?), and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Do the math. There is no profit for 90% of CD's produced. The only CD's which profit is stuff like Britney Spears, but most of that profit goes to pay for the unprofitable music (90% of titles). That is where the money is going; contrary to the myth on slashdot, it is not lining record exec's pockets.
OK, this may be a bit recursive, but do you have any kind of proof for those statistics you just quoted?
Pity there wasn't anything in the DOJs proposal to require MS to completely document all of their past and future proprietary document formats. It may not eliminate their "monopoly", but it'd go a long way towards making it irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
You're absolutely right, we don't have national votes for anything at all. Here we are (well, those of us in the US, anyway) citizens of what all the politicians love to call "The Most Powerful Country on Earth", and we have no direct say in how it's run.
Should we think about changing that?
AJ
Well, it appears this can now be amemded to "Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Politics, and Political Statistics"
AJ
Anyway, the RIAA site does give that 90% non-profitable figure, but what does that mean? How much does the average "non-profitable" recording actually lose? $1? $1,000? $100,000? How does that balance against the huge amounts that something like a Brittney Spears CD rakes in?
Proof please? The average cost of producing a classical CD is $500,000 (this is "insignificant"?), and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Do the math. There is no profit for 90% of CD's produced. The only CD's which profit is stuff like Britney Spears, but most of that profit goes to pay for the unprofitable music (90% of titles). That is where the money is going; contrary to the myth on slashdot, it is not lining record exec's pockets.
OK, this may be a bit recursive, but do you have any kind of proof for those statistics you just quoted?
Pity there wasn't anything in the DOJs proposal to require MS to completely document all of their past and future proprietary document formats. It may not eliminate their "monopoly", but it'd go a long way towards making it irrelevant.