RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg 817
Bruha writes "It appears the RIAA is being very low key about the fact that the five major labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song. I was a huge fan of the 99c per song, but if they think that they can raise the price on me just because I don't buy full CDs anymore, they've got another thing coming. Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing."
Interesting, yes; but... (Score:2, Informative)
Deja Vu? (Score:3, Informative)
I solved this problem by (Score:1, Informative)
Music like liquor tastes good after it has matured.
Piracy (Score:5, Informative)
These labels just don't "get it". Maybe people will abandon pirated downloads if they can get the legitimate version for a reasonable price, but not if the price is just stupid ($2.49 for a 3-minute song?).
The RIAA obviously has a severely inflated view of its own importance. Reality is going to catch up with them, whether they like it or not.
K
the easy solution (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit (Score:2, Informative)
I believe what you're talking about is Napster Premium [napster.com]. For $10 a month (your small subscription fee for access), you can:
Re:Artists: This is your cue: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Surprised? (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mixing the good and the bad. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gonna Outsource Those Assholes to India (Score:2, Informative)
Spectrum monopoly (Score:2, Informative)
ooooh also boycott clear channel
Who, other than the major commercial radio providers, has the right to stream audio into moving motor vehicles in geographic areas where the major commercial radio providers have already snapped up a few dozen FM stations, to the point where the FCC can't find any spectrum available to open a college radio station other than the local Bible school's existing station [wbcl.org]? This is the situation in Fort Wayne, Indiana. No, XM Satellite Radio [xmradio.com] is not an option; Clear Channel owns the biggest chunk of XM that car makers don't own.
If you want to promote such a "social movement," then advertise this site [boycott-clearchannel.com] heavily.
Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work. (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. (Score:4, Informative)
Why?
Because they owned the rights to it.
Re:Artists: This is your cue: sell on CD Baby! (Score:3, Informative)
Or leave out the last step and sell them directly to fans via CD Baby [cdbaby.com]. Check out their "about" page. They only sell music that comes directly from musicians. Artists set the prices on the albums (most are around $10, which hits the $1/song price point), and they get a much higher percentage of the sale without all the RIAA middlemen to pay. Plus, CD Baby has all sorts of recommendations -- music for a certain mood, style, "sounds like", etc. -- making it easy to find music to match your tastes.
So check out the site, listen to samples of the music, and throw some cash at whoever is making music you enjoy. And stick it to the Man in the process! :-)
Re:Artists: This is your cue: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit (Score:1, Informative)
Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work. (Score:3, Informative)
When? (Score:3, Informative)
Remember you can't spell CRAP without rap!
Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.allofmp3.com/ [allofmp3.com] charges by bandwidth, and offers some losslessly encoded CD's, as well as encoding to a large veriety of lossy formats. I've bought 5 albums from them so far, and I've been very impressed
http://www.magnatune.com/ [magnatune.com] also offers losslessly encoded files, and charges on a sliding scale letting you pay between about $5 and $15 per album iirc.
This is what I was waiting for. iTunes and co can go jump in a lake with their silly lossily-encoded DRM-encumbered overpriced music.
Time to get real (Score:3, Informative)
* Most consumers have an terrible experience when they buy a song on the desktop in the livign room and then can't listen to that song on their laptop on the road. DRM is sucking the life out of selling music online
* Paying a monthly fee on top of $.99 per track is not the same as paying $.99 per track. Bait and switch turns people off. Drop the ads that claim $.99 or drop the membership charge!
* There aren't enough buyers online to sell the kind of volume in music that the online shops have projected!
Interesting observation:
Why can I buy a DVD of a movie from the value pile at wally world for less than the soundtrack to the movie sells for in the music department? The movie cost millions to make. The soundtrack possibly a few hundred thousand... What gives?
Re:Artists: This is your cue: (Score:3, Informative)
Guitar: $600-900 (not everyone plays PRS or Gibson)
Amp: $900 (head and 4x12 cabinet, used)
Mixing board: Unneccesary (venues provide them)
Mics: $60 each (Shure SM57's are cheap and plentiful)
Monitors: Unneccesary (provided by venue)
Keyboard: Unneccesary unless you have a keyboardist (that sounds like a stupid statement, but it isn't)
Lights: Unneccesary (provided by venue, and many venues won't allow outside light rigs)
Controller: Unneccesary (see above)
You're still forgetting that putting a band together isn't something you just decide to do overnight. I've been amassing gear for nine years. I have a TON of shit (several heads and cabinets, a good amount of recording gear), but I didn't buy it all at once. Fuck, for six years all I used was a shitty 2x12 Peavey combo.
You're on the right track, but your assumptions versus reality are a bit out of whack.
Re:Let's throw money down a hole... (Score:3, Informative)
iTMS gets people to buy iPod's.
It's the same way that M$ makes money out of the xBox. M$ get nothing for the hardware, but they get money form the software.
For Apple iTMS and the iPOD are the other way. They sell the songs at cost and make their money on the iPod, Also it helps them get a market segment.
Re:It's NOT capitalism. (Score:3, Informative)
Your comments are mostly the same as servoled so I won't repeat myself, but I will quickly comment on this bit. I'm totally in agreement that the total package is unique and it's OK for a single vendor to supply that particular package. The problem as I see it is that there are no other packages. Where is the vinyl recording of Britney? Where is the CD-R version with no coverart? Where is the version sung by Metallica (or whatever the latest boy band is)?
If capitalism was actually working here then an enterprising online music store would have been able to sell Britney's music *legally* before now. The recording is the product. The recording on a CD is the package. The recording as a downloadable MP3 is another package. The RIAA prevents the sale of packages that they don't fully control by using the legal force of copyright. Copyright is by its very nature a government granted monopoly. It is not possible to have capitalism if the state is interfering in the market!
Well, almost true . . . (Score:2, Informative)
A monopoly or cartel that comes together under natural market forces is still under market constraints in Austrian theory because of the ability for new entrants to enter the field and the ability of consumers to make good substitutions and use reductions (if only on the margins).
Excellant demonstraion of lack of insight there. (Score:4, Informative)
Since your mental prowess seems to be a bit hindered I'll try to spell some things out slowly for you.
Remember cassette tapes? I know it was a long time ago, but think hard. They used to be "the thing", than this wonderful new technology came out called "Compact Discs" which could be produced at half the cost with near perfect sound. Did the cost of an album go down? No, almost overnight it rose by almost 50% (cost of product transition we were told...only temprorary). Now here we are with a distribution method that virtually eliminates all costs of shipping AND manufacturing. Allows for mass copying (not illgal, think cost of burning 1,000,000 cd's as opposed to copying 1,000,000 mp3's) and they're jacking the price up AGAIN.
Since mathematics seems to be a bit of challenge for you let me break it down: 16 song album at Amazon-->approx. 13.49 = 0.84 per song. .99 per song on iTunes = 18.81 for the same album.
Are you scratching your head yet idiot? Also when we take into account that the artist is only getting on average $1.00 per album the absurdity becomes more apparent.
If the RIAA were anything but a bunch of exploitation hungry vampires living off the talents of others, they'd drop the price half and raise the artist's cut by double. Then I'd say "Hey, those are some upright fella's!!"
I've said it a dozen times already, download everything you can and send the artist $.25 per song, (look out here comes some more math). That works out to $4.00 per 16 song album. 4x as much as they're currently getting. Maybe that way it'll put the RIAA out of business and "artists" will have to make it on their own merrits and not succeed by virtue of how well their agent is at convincing 10 year olds they're"Awsome!"
30 second sample of a 4 second interlude (Score:4, Informative)
For works under 30 seconds, you can listen to the whole thing; however, you can't save what you hear. (There's about 20 of Shel Silverstein's poems from "A Light in the Attic" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" that fall in this category.)