Vivendi Offering MP3 Song for Sale

pmorelli writes: "Maybe there's hope for the media dinosaurs yet: According to News.com, Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track, 'Earth,' for $0.99 online. No restrictions, just a plain old MP3. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of her stuff, I just may pony up a whole buck to economically encourage this sort of behavior."

Who?

[discstickers]

I have not heard of this artist and I'm assuming that most people haven't either.

But my question is, if this sells poorly will they point to it as proof that straight mp3 sales don't work?

Re:'bout time...

[jpmkm]

I'm sure quite a few people will buy this, even though they're not necessarily interested in the music. Yeah, this will show the big companies that people are willing to pay for their music. But how long will it last? They will always want it for cheaper than it is. I agree that CD prices are way to high, but people have been buying them for years. Then they started downloading songs because it's cheaper(read: free). 99 cents for a song isn't bad, but once that catches on people will want 5 songs for 99 cents. Then they will complain that 4 of the songs suck and they would only pay for one song if they could but they can't so they resort to getting it for free somewhere. It's going to happen. People are cheap.

This has got to be a symbolic gesture

[geoffsmith]

Anyone with some knowledge of online transactions knows that offering something for $1 is generally not profitable. First, you've got fees from the credit cards, and then you've got the the whole chargeback thing. One song gets charged back, and you've wiped out any profit from at least 100 sales. The only thing they've got on their side is that an mp3 is not a very good target for credit card fraud, and most people will not bother to chargeback $1.

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]

I'll encourage when I hear something I like

[s4ltyd0g]

I still wont pay for sh*ty music. There's more to it than just offering it online in mp3 format folks.
Heck most of what the recording industry puts out these days isn't even worth stealing.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive my ignorance, but would someone mind enlightening the stupid as to who she is? What genre, how good is her music, etc? I might just buy the song if it's any good.

It's not, unless you're into listening to a mindless drum machine beat. Is this the RIAA's grand scheme? Offer crappy music for sale as individual tracks and then when nobody downloads it they claim the idea is flawed? And as for this "we only have a small percentage of hit records compared to the failures we have to subsidize" argument... why not just play them on the radio like you already do to advertise them and sell the tracks that people like? Then you don't have to create thousands of CDs that no one will ever buy and claim you've lost money supporting a shitty artist.

Misassessment of the threat

[Jonny 290]

Record companies are assuming two things:

1: People want to hear mainstream music.
2: People will prefer mp3 format over CD.
3: People are paying money for the "art" on a CD, and thus they're willing to pay for the 'song' in any format.

What their assumptions should be:

1: People think mainstream is pretty much shit.
2: People will pay money for GOOD music.
3: People will rather have a lossless copy of a song on a tangible media format than a file that can be deleted with one bad keystroke.

The problem isn't mp3's. It's horrible bottom-feeding mainstream music that they use as their benchmark for performance and profit.

Go for it!

[sahrss]

$1?
Make a statement.
I'm DLing it right now, for $1 I don't even care *what* the song is. I just want to wave my dollar in the face of this company, to show them that I have dollars to spend on DLing songs! :)

Don't buy it if you wouldn't otherwise

[donutello]

I've seen a few posts encouraging everyone on here to buy the song even if we don't care for the artist or the actual song.

That will achieve nothing. Depending on the success of this pilot they will determine whether it is worth doing at all. Next, they will probably release a whole CD that way and see how that goes. That will be followed by release of another few - say 10%. Unless every Slashdotter is committing to buying every thing they ever release online, buying this song now is not going to serve any purpose.

At this point they are probably trying to assess the extent of piracy/online fraud they are exposing themselves to as well as trying to figure out the logistics of every step of their operation. That's what pilots are for. I doubt they are going to say "ooh, we sold a million copies of this, let's release everything this way!"

Re:Ick.

[ObviousGuy]

1. You're assuming that you would buy a 12-song CD. I think this is a mistaken assumption. You would purchase only those songs that you felt were worth the cost of purchase. Therefore instead of paying $13.98 for 3 good songs and 11 bad ones, you'd pay $2.97 for only those 3 good songs. Sure, you don't get the nice packaging, but that is another debate for another day.

2. You don't value music very highly. This is something that one has to determine on their own. If you feel that $.99 is too much to pay for 3.5 minutes of entertainment that can be repeated as many times as you like, then that is your opinion. There are certainly music sharing sites that you can download the media for free and avoid financing the musician at all.

I don't know how to respond except to say that I disagree with you.

Re:Don't buy it if you wouldn't otherwise

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

That will achieve nothing.

I hate to be contrary, but you're wrong. Imagine 10,000 slashdotters download the song and buy it legitimately. What if some noticeable fraction discover that -- saints preserve us! -- they like her music. So now they might go buy more. And we might have some numerical data to demonstrate that filesharing might, in principle, actually serve to increase sales. At least it's a chance to show how a post-dinosaur world might work.

On the other hand, the record companies are probably doing this so that they can point to how quickly the sales fall off as the MP3 is fileshared and people stop shelling out the $1. Then they can point to the experiment and say, "See? Everyone is a thief. Pass the CBDTPA!"

So don't do that! Don't rip or copy the song; don't hunt it down on Kazaa or what have you. Resist the urge to "stick it to them", at least on this one.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh God, the hypocrisy is KILLING me!

[saarbruck]

You people!

Over the last year I have read post after post where you all say "If only they'd offer unencrypted music downloads in a standard format for a reasonable price, where I could pick your songs one at a time instead of having to buy the a mostly bad album. I'd do that in a minute!"

Well, ladies and gentlement, Maverick and Vivendi appear, at least, to be offering an olive branch, and is giving us exactly what we've been clamoring for.

A few of you, like me, are going to go download this song and pony up a buck no matter who the hell the singer is, just to add credence to our point of view, but as I look through the responses to this story, what are the most prominent responses I've seen? (I am quoting you here:)

"MP3 is a good start but I won't pay for lossy music."

"I still won't pay for shitty music."

"Great idea, but at 1 buck per song, a whole album would cost plus than 10 dollars, I think it is a little expensive." (NOTE: $10 per album is still half fucking price!)

"Can you hop on gnutella and drop me an email with your IP?"

Jiminy Christmas, people! Here's your chance to make a difference. Put your damn money where your mouths have been for the last year. After this, I can almost see things from the RIAA's point of view. Thanks a lot.

(I apologise for generalising and lumping all Slashdot readers into a collective "you." I'm just really annoyed at some.)

Re:Go for it!

[elmegil]

Sorry, but $1 is NOT a reasonable price for a single song. I refuse to reward the majors for only getting it halfway.

Re:Misassessment of the threat

[MillionthMonkey]

3: People will rather have a lossless copy of a song on a tangible media format than a file that can be deleted with one bad keystroke.

Oh please. A CD can be destroyed with one bad scratch. And I can make backup copies of an MP3. In fact the first thing I do when I buy a CD is rip it to MP3, then I put the CD away in a rack and never touch it unless I want to play it in the car. (Yeah, bad quality, whatever.) I keep my MP3s at work synchronized with the ones at home, because I don't want to lug CDs back and forth.

My reluctance to pay for the digital media files offered by the cartels so far is really based on the fact that
1. They're designed to expire
2. They're designed to be nonportable
3. You can only play them so many times before they "run out"
4. They require goofy playback software that runs on Windows only and insists on showing me ads
5. I can't reformat my drive without losing everything I've paid for
6. I can't listen to them at work unless I lug my computer back and forth

These aren't considerations at all with an MP3. I might delete it by mistake but I'm not going to reject the idea just because I think I'm too stupid to be trusted with my own files.

Quoth the Record Exec:

[dfenstrate]

"Sure, there is always a concern of piracy; there's always the concern of people illegally transferring things. But we feel the best way to combat that is by giving people a legitimate alternative, and this is a test to make that alternative available to them," Grady said.


He says it right there. They want to try what we've been bitching for. Let's all drop a buck and support this kind of behavior. (She's not half bad, btw)

My grandma always told me you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If this is what we want, then we should support it. end of story. Time to vote with your wallet, even if for the purposes of this experiment, you've never heard of the lady.

I'm buying my copy. Are you?

Re:for not liking this chick that much....

[loudici]

do not be so proud of your ignorance.

she is one of the best living musician touring these days. the irony is that her website used to give away mp3s....

L

Prove Him Wrong

[Bob9113]

But "I think you'll be able to count the number of sales on one hand," he added. "As soon as one person gets it, it's all over the (peer-to-peer) networks for free."

OK - let's prove him wrong. I need five more people to go buy it. I just did, and if you like dance music, it's worth a buck.

Re:This could be a good thing

[kasparov]

Hey guys/gals! If I post a song on the Internet will you all pay me $1.00 to show support for the concept? Wow, that'd be really cool!

Before you all go out and send your hard-earned dollars to large music labels, why don't you stop and think what they're going to use those dollars for... paying their lawyers to strip you of your fair use and reverse engineering rights. Just because you support one tiny thing that a company does, don't give them the knife to stab you in the back.