Would You Pay 5 Cents For a Song? 905
irikar writes "An academic at McGill University has a simple plan to stop the plague of unauthorized music downloads on the Internet. But it entails changing the entire music industry as we know it, and Apple Computers, which may have the power to make the change, is listening."
Death of the CD (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, right! (Score:3, Interesting)
Richard Pfohl, general council for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, refuted Pearlman on numerous points at the conference forum, arguing that the plan would violate every international intellectual property law that Canada has signed in the last 100 years. It would also obliterate musicians' choices on how their music could be sold by conscripting them into a 5-cents-a-song system.
Oh, right! Like they have a "choice" now with the labels? Have you seen the frikkin' contracts you've got to sign to get on with a major label? You sell your arm, leg, and any potential children's arms and legs. Give me a break!
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:2, Interesting)
if the recording industry is agin' it... (Score:5, Interesting)
When first reading the article, my instinct was to not go along with the notion charging for downloaded music, even only $.05 a song. Especially with DRM, etc., always on the sideline poised to come in and wrap you around the axle anytime to you try to play the song (in the proper spirit of fair use)... (I'm STILL upset about one of my recent CD's purchased not playing on my car CD player.... took it in, they would only exchange it... and, sure enough, the exchanged CD failed to play in exactly the same places in exactly the same way... had to demo this to the store personnel before they would agree to a refund.)
But, maybe they have something there... certainly when: "..., The recording industry is against Pearlman's plan. ..., ", I've got to think
it may be something that could work.
my $.05 (Score:3, Interesting)
hrmmm....what a shock! the music industry not willing to adopt change?? surely not!
seriously, this sounds like a decent proposal, although i highly doubt it will make a significant change (free is less than $.05), but let's face it, will probably never happen. apple can listen all they want, and that's great, but the recording industry will never go along with it. the best idea i found in that article is "why not have such computer companies as Apple and such major Internet companies as Yahoo simply buy up the world's four major record labels?" now *there's* the kind of change that needs to take place.
Record companies never, ever get it (Score:3, Interesting)
But the quotes at the end are hilarious!
"The recording industry is against Pearlman's plan. Richard Pfohl, general council for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, refuted Pearlman on numerous points at the conference forum, arguing that the plan would violate every international intellectual property law that Canada has signed in the last 100 years. [SO CHANGE THE LAWS!] It would also obliterate musicians' choices on how their music could be sold by conscripting them into a 5-cents-a-song system. [OR THEY COULD JUST OPT OUT AND DO THEIR OWN DISTRIBUTION AND CHARGE WHAT THEY WANT] And it would destroy record companies' incentive to invest in new acts, Pfohl said. [WHY, BECAUSE IT WOULD BRING IN HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN REVENUE?]
Pearlman said that Pfohl misunderstood the idea. [DUH!] Then again, another record-industry type, casually speaking to Pearlman after the talk, had perhaps the most succinct counter suggestion. Why not charge 10 cents, instead of 5, and double the revenue?"
ROFL! Don't you just know that will be the endless series of suggestions they will make. "Hey, look at how much money is coming in! Let's double again to 20 cents and get lots more moola!"
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd rather pay $0.99, please (Score:2, Interesting)
I've bought a total of 1(one) song through iTunes, because it was an import-only single that was going to cost me about ten times that for the physical version (DJ Shadow's Keane remix, fact fans). At even a 1% tax rate, I can tell you now I've bought a shitload more than $94 worth of hardware over the years.
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you so very much for proving my point."
it doesn't not prove your point, it mearly states that it is a counter point, to which I say the market would decide. The market will drive the price down, if that price is below cost, the business will cease. Unless it's a value add. I could see the portable music marketing heating up where you get a full music catalog when you buy a player. Much like the U2 edition iPod.
I think you should know, AShly simpson is an 'entertainer' not a musician. No, I don't personaly find her entertaining. PIF, most people don't. I used to think I was just out of touch with the music scene. I've been talking to be in the industry recently and it turns out a lot of these names everyone heres about don't sell many tickets. Most people in one of there concerts are people in the industry that are there to be seen.
wierd.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the managers in charge in the music business are ex-musicans, drop-outs and marketing/PR-people. And some of the worst MBA folks.
I think it's impossible to find any other semi-legal industry with lower skill level. For the last 25+ years the music/media business has cultivated bad management. Why would any sane MBA or other graduate join the music business when they could get a much better job in ANY other industry?
The curious searchers' pricing model (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard many, many different variations. And most of them were sung in the style of Doris Day's version (giddy and happy and making me want to slap the singer). There were some versions that came close, but I couldn't decide whether that was what I wanted or not. Ultimately at the $1 price per song I didn't download any of my "candidates" since I didn't hear enough to convince me before the sale that that was the type I was looking for. Had the price been $0.05 per song I probably would have downloaded most of the candidates and not given the price much thought.
While this wouldn't help sell the big name artists at all, it would get the casual music listener like me. Whether there are enough of my type around is a completely different question and one that I can't begin to answer.
(As an aside, I never found the right version of Que Sera, Sera and in general that isn't the type of music I listen to. Just something that struck a nerve at that particular moment.)
The artists make very little money from music sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the greedy record companies want a piece of artists touring money as well. The folks killing music right now are the record labels not the downloaders.
This is a great idea, a band could pay thier own studio costs, put the music directly up for download and then who needs the record companies??
I don't mind right now paying $.88 a song, I do have a problem that very little of that actully goes to the musicans.
People need to face the facts record labels are as relevent in the digital age as say manufacturers of long bows, chain maille armour and broadswords.
The people I'm referring to are of course the folks working at the record label. In this age of oursourceing, downsizing and cost cutting there is no room left for record labels that suck up 90% of the cash from music sales and then complain that they don't get enough.
Apple's Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
If it works, then they could probably corner the music market. If not, well then it'd only be the death of a few RIAA members - no big loss...
Re:Clearly doesn't understand IT costs (Score:4, Interesting)
" 'artists' like Lipsychson making millions. Record company execs making...millions. IT pros making...a lot less than that. Now ask yourself who can 'suck it up' the most of those groups."
Bad analogy. The executives at Apple (or whomever is paying the IT guys) make millions -- the executives in any large industry make quite a bit of money. The vast majorify of people who work in the record industry (including the "executives" at some indie labels I've met), just as the vast majority of people who work in the IT field, work paycheck-to-paycheck.
Likewise, the vast majority of artists do not earn a handsome living from their craft. "Let's help ourselves to music for free" goes down a lot smoother if you believe that everybody who contributed to the music is a millionaire, but it's simply not true.
I hope this wasn't a surprise to you.
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, in Econ 301 they learned that running a cartel to fix prices is the best system of all, so that's what they did. Supply and demand have nothing to do with the record industry's prices.
TWW
Re:Death of the CD (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, why would you want to buy 25 year old technology for more than it cost 20 years ago?
As a small indy label owner, I would love to see the price of CD's dropped. The crazy thing is that *we* have to raise our prices to something that we don't feel comfortable with because if we don't, people think our product is high quality. The impression is If an industry monopolist CD cost $20, and you want to sell yours for under $10, then yours must have been made cheaply ergo not of high quality which is absurd. I would proudly compare any of our CDs to any RIAA recording any day.
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free doesn't always win - Re:No matter what ... (Score:1, Interesting)
You've obviously never used P2P have you? Sure, if you are looking for something specific then it can be time consuming but I just make it a habbit to check the torrents from time to time and download what I like. Downloading takes place in the background.
Last time I was looking for a cd I did a quick search for a torrent and found it in about 5 minutes. Downloaded the cd in the background and before I knew it it was done. Sure it took a while to download but I was doing other things on the computer so it didn't matter to me. Free is free, $0.99 is $0.99 no matter how you look at it. I have 10,561 songs which would have cost me $10,455.39 at $0.99/song. At $0.05/song it's only $528.05.
Sure, I've bought a few songs from iTunes but I'm still gonna download the ones that are easy to find. I think at 5 cents a song it would have an effect like you are talking about where there are fewer songs available illegally.
Re:Speaking as a musician (Score:5, Interesting)
But, then you also have to take into consideration musicians who only produce studio work and never play live. There are quite a few people, especially in electronica, who only record music and never set foot on a stage.
I say a mixture is in order. Release all your songs online in a lossy format, with a slightly sub par bitrate, and allow them to be distributed freely (96k mp3 or even better, a Q0(~64k) Ogg [vorbis.com]). Then charge people for the "full quality" CDs or Lossless (FLAC,etc) files. I wouldn't mind paying $1 for each song if I got to download a "decent", full length version of it for free and try it out for a while first. And of course, no DRM encumbered formats would be used
Re:No, no and no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Up here, lobbyists pressured the gov't to tax blank CD media which would then be handed over to the music industry. Their reason: people will steal music no matter what, so let's just obfuscate the the music industry's perceived profits by making people pay for it one way or another.
A few years back ontario deregulated the hydro and within the first year, some people were paying 50 cents per kilowatthour (average is about 6 cents) and their hydro bills were astronomical at the peak of the summer. Later, the ontario gov't put a cap of 4.7 cents but the balance was paid for by our taxes. It was a kick in the balls and a pat on the head move and is not going to be the last.
Whatever happened to the days where companies stood or fell on their own terms, and not propped up by the handouts of some third party such as the gov't?
As a democracy, I say we all rise up and quell any further stupid shit that spews forth from our parliament/congress/whatever. I say we bring back the gillotine.
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I have been talking about this quite a bit recently. We've been watching "American Idol". Anwar Robinson is clearly the most musically talented person to ever be on that show, but the stuff he does is not what the record companies want to market. This past Monday he got up and sang Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World". He started out singing like Louis Armstrong, then series of runs as he moved the style into something more reminicent of Sammy Davis Jr., and finally ended the song in a soul style. His talent should win, but he won't fit into the marketing machine of the record companies.
Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
It's an interesting idea, maybe even applicable to other areas as well.
I know I'm going to get a lot of "hippie commie shitheat" comments, but it would be a wonderful thing if we could get this money thing behind us. It's a great way to barter, it's so universal one could almost believe it's pre-wired like language, it beats having to kick your neighbour out of the tree to keep your bananas (like our close cousins do...) but after so many thousands of years of social and technical evolution it would be great to find a meaningful way to feed the tribe without all this money and poverty stuff.
WHAT guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got a much better solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Artists would simply say "I want to be paid X dollars for my new work. Please donate to this paypal account. Each one of you can donate freely, or not donate at all. When, and if, the overall donation reaches X, I will release my work for free".
The author of Mute (a file sharing application) is doing this.
Re:Piracy by any other name... (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple, because you thought for yourself, instead of relying on the state's definition of right and wrong. Next thing you know, you'll decide that you don't need the government telling you what substances you can put into your body or what constitutes obscenity. What happens when everybody starts thinking for himself or herself, substituting their own judgment for that of career politicians?
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a saying that goes something like this:
I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things.
Even though cheap goods are made for cheap people, it's a false sense of cheap, because the cheap good will inevitably break, forcing you to buy another one and another one, when for the same amout of money as 2 or 3 cheap goods, you could have bought a more expensive high quality good that would last you a lot longer than 3x lifetime of cheap good.
I've seen it time and time again, especially with electronics, umbrellas, and of course, digital watches, which, for some reason, seem like a good idea.
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:5, Interesting)
The hair on the back of my neck stands up whenever I hear someone claim that "CDs cost too much." CDs are the cheapest form of entertainment, on a dollar-per-hour-enjoyed basis of anything I can think of. For the price of $12 or $15, you can buy an hour's worth of high-quality (fidelity, if not artistic merit) music and enjoy it over and over, for thousands of hours, as many times as you want. And when you finally get bored with it, you can sell it and recoup some of your money.
NOTHING else is as cheap. No pro sports, concerts, operas, plays, ballets, movies, dinners, truck shows, car races, or comedy clubs give you anywhere near that many hours of entertainment, for anywhere close that such a low price. Nor can you get any of your money back when you're finished "enjoying" anything I just listed, except for CDs.
Quit complaining. CDs are cheap.
Re:P2P (Score:1, Interesting)
The word "hypocrite" leads to easy mod points, and requires little thought.
The reason the GPL is supported is because the terms are reasonable. The are aligned with the dynamics of the medium. I want to copy software and give it to my friends. I don't usually want to claim I wrote it, because that's dishonest.
The reason the RIAA "license" is not supported, is because it isn't reasonable. I also want to give my friends copies of music. But the RIAA doesn't let me do that.
On the continuum of "licenses", there's a point where the terms stop being reasonable. A lot of us think that the GPL is worth supporting.
Why are the RIAA's terms violated almost every day, yet the GPL isn't? Could it be that the GPL is.. different?
Try thinking a little deeper, okay?
I'll support copyright licenses that are reasonable. I won't support ones that are UNreasonable.
I support a speed limit on highways of 65. But I won't support one of 15, it doesn't make sense. Am I hypocrite?
I support a few years of jail time for stealing a candy bar. But I won't support the death penalty? Hypocrite?
I like drinking Pepsi. But I don't want to drink 5 gallons of it per day. Am I a hypocrite?
Just stop and think
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:3, Interesting)
good idea (Score:2, Interesting)
No idea if 5 cents is a real answer, but I would think exactly doubling actual distribution cost would leave plenty of profit to go around and it would be cheap as all get out compared to what it is now. Say it costs a few pennies to distribute it on the net, double that, whatever it actually is as a price there. If tech improves so that transmitting it gets cheaper, then they can actually drop the price again, but keep the same margins.
Really,and I'm glad this professor was swinging the clue stick hard at that conference, I hope he cracked some heads with it, because a market works best when both parties are very very happy with the exchange. If only one party is very happy and the other one is merely reluctantly content or actually annoyed, that particular market is not efficient enough yet.
It's obvious there's a huge entertainment market, the demand is there, it just needs to be cheap enough to keep the demand side happy so they are content to actually make the exchange for their money. That leaves it on the producers and distributors side, what could make them happy? So far it looks like they are being beyond unreasonable in pricing and in transfer modality, hence, so called "piracy" took off. Instead of making their customers happy, they pissed them off, year after year, now they wonder why they have problems. A nickle a song and a dollar a movie (whatever) would go a long ways to alleviate that.
CDs are cheap? No they're not! (Score:2, Interesting)
A friend of mine goes to west africa and lives in a desperately impoverished village for three months every year. The people there can't afford schools or medical/dental care, and getting a bad tooth can kill a person, when getting it pulled for $20 is far beyond the means of anyone in the village. But those people are constantly surrounded by beautiful music, for free, and they're loved and cherished by each other. None of them ever is dissatisfied with their life either.
How many people in our society can even sign a song worth a shit? Or play a musical instrument? Songs people hear now are written by and for professionals with professional range and training. People used to sit around in groups drinking, socializing, and singing normal songs with accoustic instruments. Folk music, the music of the folks, regular people, is no longer seen as acceptable, so people have worked their way into a corner. The death of the music/entertainment industry would be a huge boon for society at large. I'd personally like to see a ban on electronic entertainment of any kind for two or three hours one night a week. No TV, close the movie theaters. Couldn't really stop people from watching their own movies in their houses, but if enough neighborhoods had obvious social gatherings, people would turn off their own movie players and go outside. Maybe even start dancing!
Oh, and BTW, books are cheaper than CDs.
Of COURSE it would! (Score:2, Interesting)
What market on earth wouldn't increase _exponentially_ if there wasn't a 94% price drop? I know I'd be on that nickel-a-song bandwagon in no time. There are literally TONS of people who currently don't buy online music because
Re:No matter what free will always win... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a good friend who's been pumping out tracks like he's Tupac for years, in his freakin boxer shorts.
Take a listen: www.spinonehalf.com