MP3.com 'Subscriber Service' 128
nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"
why? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:why? (Score:1)
On the http://www.mp3.com/adfree/ page it filtered out all 3 ads.
Long Live JunkBuster! (Score:1)
...which can be found at
http://www.junkbusters.com [junkbusters.com]
Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:1)
I think it's my RIGHT to be able to install whatever software I want on my computer to avoid having banner ad cruft clog up my browser.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:why? (Score:2)
The nicest thing about only enabling Javashit for my bank and brokerage, and surfing with it disabled everywhere else, is that one tends not to notice.
There is a special place in hell for the fuckwith that dreamed up the abortion called Javashit/ECMAscript/LiveScript/Whateverthefuckscri ptitscalledtoday.
And I, for one, hope the pigfucker roasts there for eternity.
Re:why? (Score:1)
Why not pay them using a method that benefits both of you? Buy the DAM (normal audio) CD's by the bands you like, or buy an MP3 CD with 10 alubums worth of stuff!
I wouldn't feel guilty for blocking a Sephora ad--I'm male, and wouldn't even buy their product.
P4p (Score:3, Informative)
WTF? I have to pay 20$ a month to get paid? Mp3.com takes their cut of the subscriber money and then redistributes the rest back to artists by popularity ... So alot of artists loosing money is paying for the few who are making alot of money :)
Re:P4p (Score:1, Interesting)
Oddly enough, that is exactly how the traditional record labels work...
Re:P4p (Score:1)
Re:P4p (Score:2)
Yeah? Where's your URL?
I don't mean that in the sense of, "Give me your URL," but in the sense of, "Why aren't you giving everyone and their dog your URL?"
You can't just expect to put your songs on MP3.com and for them to magically make money all by themselves. You've got to put the URL in places where people can click on it, such as, Oh I don't know...your slashdot
If you don't have people trotting over your page to click on the song links, you aren't going to make any money. You should pass out the URL at your gigs. Use MP3.com's DAM CD service to make CD's to sell at gigs. Post flyers with the express URL on it.
You have to get people to go to your page, first.
Re:P4p (Score:1)
For the most part, I try to put my
And I'm not blaming mp3.com, I think they're great. I'm just laughing at our meager band fund.
Re:P4p (Score:1)
Aaaaah... Well, you can always update your slashdot
Also, www.hornfans.com is a great place for page hits, too, seeing how you're at utexas.edu and all. (How 'bout that Cedric Benson?)
I could go into a long list of things you could also do but it's probably not on-topic; the short version is -- P4P comes from working to get people to your page, it doesn't just happen magically.
Well, it might happen magically if you put the phrase "anna kournikova nude!" all over it...
Re:P4p (Score:1)
No, No, and NO! (Score:2)
If you aren't signed up for P4P, you can still track how much P4P you would have made if you were signed up for it. This way, you can spend several months building up traffic to your MP3.com page, getting people to click on it and check it regularly, until you're sure you can make that much.
I signed up for the $20/month "Premium Artist Service" as soon as they started it, and I have yet to have a month where I didn't net a profit...
...and I've done nothing more than put my URL in my Slashdot
Imagine how much money I'd make if I actually marketed my music?
Clue me in (Score:2)
I haven't really been paying attention to popular music the last few years. Are their any "break out" bands that have come out through the ranks of MP3.com? In other words, is there any of this "good music" that has appealed to a wide audience?
Re:Clue me in (Score:1)
Musicians often have to make compromises to get signed by a record label. Internet artists do not, for the most part.
-John
Re:Clue me in (Score:1)
On the more mainstream genre, Flickerstick is one of the bands in VH1's "Bands on the Run" series, and their music is surprisingly good.
-j
Re:Clue me in (Score:1)
Did you hear? PPK recently got signed with Perfecto (Paul Oakenfold's record label). Regardless of one's opinion of Oakie, I'd call that a break-through.
Re:Clue me in (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Clue me in (Score:1)
You haven't missed anything.
Keep listening to the unpopular music....
Re:Clue me in (Score:1)
The music industry doesn't work that way. Music is a business, the musicians who are commercially successful are generally more businesspeople and less musicians. It's all about who the record labels promote, which certainly is not directly related to (maybe inversely, actually) the quality of the artists' works.
maru
www.mp3.com/pixal
Check out eMusic (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the reason you don't hear anything about them is that they were acquired by Vivendi-Universal, who is quietly sitting on them until they roll out whatever big new service they're developing.
I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s that can't be copied or that expire after some period of time, but for now, they've got plain ol' mp3s -- and they even make it easy to download a whole album with one click.
The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music. You can't download any CD ever recorded. But there is a lot of good music on there. For example, they seem to have the entire Fantasy Records catalogue online, which, if you're a jazz or blues fan, means a whole lot of really good albums. In the first week, I downloaded 62 albums.
I assume that one day eMusic will morph into something I no longer want to subscribe to, but until then I'm sucking down everything I can grab.
It's definitely worth checking out.
strcat(tin, cans) (Score:1)
What is bitrate? What bitrate are EMusic's MP3s encoded at?
Bitrate is the number of bits per second used in the encoding process. A higher encoding rate usually means a larger size file, but higher quality sound. EMusic currently encodes its MP3s at 128 Kbps.
Sounds like a good service, but I was hoping for something a bit better than that. I don't mind paying for music, but the quality has to be there.
How does EMusic protect against piracy? Very simple -- we trust our customers. We believe that if downloadable music is presented in an inexpensive and flexible way, most consumers will do the right thing.
It's a lot easier to trust your customers when you're offering 128K MP3s. Question is, space limitations or piracy worries anyway? I realize 180,000 songs takes up some room, but that's their problem, not mine. It would be nice to have different ranges too- maybe 64K to demo the song, and 320K if you actually want it. But I can't help but think that offering the songs in low quality is some kind of indication of fear of mass trading once the songs are released to the world.
LAME allows CD quality at 192 kbps (Score:1)
It would be nice to have different ranges too- maybe 64K to demo the song
Reminds me of MP3.com's 32 kbps lo-fi stream and 128 kbps download.
and 320K if you actually want it.
You don't really need 320 kbps for CD quality. Recent versions of LAME have a --r3mix switch that allows CD quality (i.e. transparent reproduction of 0-20 kHz stereo audio) at an average rate of 180 to 200 kbps; read the "quality" section of r3mix.net [r3mix.net] for details.
Re:strcat(tin, cans) (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, most of the MP3s in my collection are 128k. That seems to be the most popular format for trading, since it fits decent quality into a very reasonable file size (something slightly less than 1MB/min.). Yeah, I know you "purists" out there will mod me down, but I just don't have the hard drive space to store 320k MP3s of all my music, and 128k sounds fine to me on my system. Not as good as higher rates, of course...if I were burning to a CD or something, I'd want better quality, but for listening on my computer, I'd rather have twice as much music at 128k quality than what I could fit on my drive at 320k. And since my CD player's busted...
Also BTW, I've found many great artists through MP3.com...Blue Cyberia, Amethystium, 303Infinity, Egan, Higgins, and my favorite, GNOMUSY. All excellent music that probably won't ever see the light of day on a RIAA-produced medium. If you find an artist you like, buy one of their CDs for $10 or so.
DennyK
Re:strcat(tin, cans) (Score:1)
From an artist's perspective, for me, 128k is an irritation. We produce our music au gratis exclusively for our mp3.com audience. I mix something down and the vocals (our vocalist is extremely good) have a particular sound and level. After I make the mp3, the sound is just slightly different, just not as clear, just not as good. Very often the dynamics will change such that a particular "track" in the song that was mixed to sit at a particular volume level relative to other parts will end up just a tiny bit too loud or too soft in the mp3. I find myself encoding the mp3, then going back and adjusting the original mix, then reencoding the mp3, and repeating this process 4 or 5 times. The problem is always with the vocals. They just lose their "smoothness" at 128K.
I would like to be able to have 192K content available on mp3.com . I believe this would make the sound of the mp3 significantly closer to my wave mixdown without adding too much additional size to the files.
maru
www.mp3.com/pixal
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:2, Informative)
It's definitely worth checking out.
I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s...
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:1)
128 is quite adequate in conveying the qualities of a musician's performing and composition skills, which are what I think most people enjoy about music.
I've heard many people claim that such low bitrates are offensive to their ears, I just don't see it myself. It's way better than cassette tapes or FM radio, for instance -- but it isn't fidelity issues that have killed or wounded those media.
Now that broadband is here, perhaps it's justified to expect an "upgrade" to higher bitrate mp3, but I'm not throwing several thousand 128 kbps mp3s.
And, though I download a lot less than I did when I first subscribed to Emusic, I'm still one of their happy campers, and I expect I will remain so unless Vivendi changes the service.
Frankly, I doubt that they will change the service. I suspect they view Emusic as a useful, low-profile hedge, in case it turns out that consumers will reject all the proprietary-format copy-protected services.
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:1)
The only difference I see between 128 and 160 is a slightly "crisper" sound [...] 128 is quite adequate in conveying the qualities of a musician's performing and composition skills, which are what I think most people enjoy about music.
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:1)
It depends on your tastes; I'm happily finding a lot of electic music on there, makes me quite happy. Soundtracks and Humour Soundtracks are cool as well.
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:2)
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:1)
And it's not like Tower has the greatest selection either...
Costs of downloading... (Score:1)
Re:Check out eMusic (Score:1)
mp3.com is too much like mtv noawdays (Score:1, Interesting)
An idea for a truly new music distribution system (Score:2)
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:1)
And for a commerical webcast radio that points you to the CD, the one I use does. http://www.tuneto.com/ [tuneto.com]
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:2)
That only applies to CD's really: it costs the same amount of money to produce/distribute/carry a CD Single as a CD Album (and the single isn't significantly less expensive than a double album). The record industry spent decades on a single-based business model and prospered. The compact disc is the reason for the change in approach.
I would be reasonably sure that the record label that introduces affordable single file downloads will be successful. Most people I know only buy an album if they like two or more of the songs on it. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that there are a fair number of people who would buy one song but not the album, in which case, the record label is ahead on the deal.
And the Euro scene is still single dominated.
WRT changing music industry business models, take a look back some 60 years:
In 1942, Capitol Records was formed. Within ten years, they were the dominant record label worldwide (with Sinatra and many other luminaries on their roster). One way they achieved this: they realized that radio wasn't the enemy. Until Capitol, record execs refused to license their records for radio play and routinely sued disc jockeys. Capitol realized that DJ's were free publicity, not a threat to album sales. So they negotiated extremely fair terms with disc jockeys and the rest is history.
Replace radio/DJ's with modern counterparts, and it makes you think, doesn't it?
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:1)
Except that back then it wasn't possible to take the song you just heard off of the radio and convert it into a well mastered vinyle.
CD burners are cheap. A well encoded MP3 is equal to the cd version, or at least good enough to make the cheapskates not mind the difference.
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:2)
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:2, Interesting)
Micropayments (Score:2)
Well, advertising doesn't generate enough revenue. Subscriptions only work for very specific audiences. (Porn and financial data, mostly. I make no inferences.) Now we hear nonsense about squeezing more money out of ISPs -- a totally destructive proposal which is (fortunately) unimplementable.
So what does it take for content providers to give micropayment a try?
Re:Micropayments (Score:1)
Why?
No money ^_^
Of course I do not listen to RIAA shit either. That is one reason that I like MP3.com so much, it has a good variety of celtic and medieval bands
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:1)
The technical issue you describe isn't really the limitation (the payment mechanism needn't be built into the player). What is the limitation is the lack of digital rights management in the current media players. That will be resolved in the next couple of months, when Real starts rolling out en-masse the new version of Real player. The player supports digital rights management, where a content provider can provide exactly the service you describe. The player keeps track of the purchased licenses. There's obviously more to it but I can't really talk about it.
maru
www.mp3.com/pixal
Re:An idea for a truly new music distribution syst (Score:1)
Have you looked at RealPlayer recently?
What began as some neat streaming technology has been turned into one of the ugliest, most bloated pieces of 'adware'/'spamware' around
Even after opting out of several screenfuls of shite, it still goes and installs its and plasters it's shortcut icon all over your system...
And it has a nasty load-on-startup launcher thing - it's all the crap like this that helps maintain the slowness of an average Windows install...
Yes, mp3.com isnt dumb yet so lets make it so (Score:1)
Anything that works on a crippled download method will die a horrible death (unless they can get a really powerful law in to stop people hacking the software and then use scare tactics and make examples to make sure no-one tries to bring down their money making machine, but then who would do that?)
So, if they're to unknown to sell cds, then what makes them think people will want to pay for their compressed mp3s?
-tfga
I'd pay if it gave me 196KBp/s feeds (Score:1)
A: Stops raising the damn prices of CDs!!!! They have been slowly yet steadily raising the price, ugh! It now costs the same to download a CD as it used to buy one, grrrr.
B: GIVE ME SOME HIGHER BANDWIDTH FEEDS! 196KBp/s would be nice, 256KBp/s would be better. Crud, if I like the artists I pay for the CD anyways, well, I would be paying MORE, but they keep on RAISING THE DAMN PRICES! (See above comment).
It is now cheaper to go to independent labels, ugh. MP3.com of course used to be one, but then they FUCKED UP and let people store their RIAA crap on the MP3.com servers, ick!
MP3.com doesn't set the CD prices. (Score:2, Informative)
Are you sure that's all MP3.com's fault? According to their Help section for musicians [mp3.com], the artists are setting prices on their own CDs. MP3.com just sets the limits on the minimum/maximum price (currently $3.99 and $30.00, respectively) for the downloaded CDs, then adds $3.99 to determine the price of the physical CD.
Maybe too many artists bought into the hype they can get rich off the Internet? Or (more likely), they raised their CD prices to compensate for not being in the "Pay for Play" system?
Musicians don't always make sensible business choices when it comes to pricing CDs. (After all, if they knew everything about selling music, they'd probably run a record company.) For example, I've found one singer [mp3.com] who charges $6.99 and $10.98 for the netCD and DAM versions of her CD, when the real thing only costs $6.49 through her label's web site. I like her music, but I have to wonder what she's thinking there....
Re:MP3.com doesn't set the CD prices. (Score:1)
If you listen to mp3 radio stations its worth it, (Score:1)
Myself I'm used to radio ads, so streaming mp3 ads dont bother me. I save 3 bux. lol
Re:If you listen to mp3 radio stations its worth i (Score:1)
MP3.com and Freedom of Speech (Score:1, Insightful)
-Scott
Re: Is there a business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
stick and another guy on Elm Street had the exact same popsicles for free,
where would you go? The simple fact of the matter is that consumers will
always make the most logical choice when acquiring what they want. In the
field of digital music, it is readily available for free via many
different routes on the internet. Hence, in setting up membership fees for
service, MP3.com will be nailing it's own coffin shut. Undoubtedly,
millions will abandon the service for something else out there that is
equally as resourceful and above all free (Morpheus come immedialty to mind).
For these companies, MP3.com ludicrous decision is a golden opportunity.
If MP3.com wants money, then fuck MP3.com. As a company, all they are is
a popular conduit for digital music tansfer - big deal. They've done
nothing to achieve loyalty in me as a consumer. If they are banking on the
fact that the majority of MP3.com users are capatilistic moral crusaders
who believe that paying for thier service is the noble thing to do - then
they are banking on bullshit. Furthermore, even if I did feel that way,
why should MP3.com be making any money? Nobody at MP3.com wrote the music.
They don't give a fuck about the artists, they just want money, like any
other company under the sun. Morpheus here I come, so long MP3.com.
Re: Is there a business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
What if the guy down the street giving away the popsicles had STOLEN THEM from the guy selling them for 25 cents!?! Still interested? I would hope not.
MP3.com gets their music with *consent*, and still gives it away for free. You don't have to buy their premium service to get the free tunes, you just have to put up with ads. MP3.com is entitled to whatever they make in this business, as they aren't STEALING anything from artists *cough*Morpheus*cough*, and they're providing a valuable service, ie: storage space, organization, search utilities, and how about that giant monthly bandwidth bill?
On the other hand, if Free-Uber-Alles is really your mantra, expect to see me at your house tonight with a flashlight and a few garbage bags. I figure, why should I BUY anything, when I can just raid your house for it? I mean, it's the *obvious* decision, right?
Re: Is there a business model? (Score:1)
- phranck@nycap.rr.com
Re: Is there a business model? (Score:1)
Waiting for RMS/Linux... (Score:1)
Sign me up! (Score:1, Interesting)
If they can pull these off, I'll sign up immediately for a more expensive monthly service. Also, contrast this with Napster's plan of having their own retarded proprietary format, where you pay monthly, and don't get to keep ANYTHING you downloaded after you quit the service.
Re:Sign me up! (Score:1)
Sure, 128Kbps MP3's aren't great, but if the songs you are getting sound that bad, I doubt that a higher bitrate is going to make much difference. A lot of MP3.com artists lack the equipment and/or technical knowledge to produce songs that sound as good as those produced by professionals. I wonder if they could justify a 50-100% increase in bandwidth consumption when a lot of artists don't know what they are doing in the first place.
Artists UPLOAD songs in 128 kbps CBR (Score:2)
For people that pay the extra $$$, make available 160-256 VBR Ogg files
Pointless. Decoding the 128 kbps MP3 songs that artists upload and re-encoding them as 160-256 kbps OGG will only further degrade the sound quality.
Re:I think $20 is fair (Score:1)
MP3.com is just another label (Score:1, Insightful)
don't know what the answer is (Score:2)
sometimes i think the federal government should just take it over and say "fuck it, it's a free national infrastructure for everyone -- register here, put your content here, the hell with it".
for example, the large city libraries could become information nodes, a server farm on one end, access at the other, and high bandwidth to the local cable or telco infrastructure.
i hate to put it this way, but the riaa and mpaa are abberations that steal our freedoms. we, as primates, are natually inquisitive and expressive, in both an auditory and visual sense. for industries to claim they have an inherent right to profit from either side is simply a localized abberation in time against human rights.
visual and auditory products are so easily replicated, and it's such a fine line between parody and duplication, that individual rights (or perhaps individual activites) will, at some point, destroy the visual and auditory monopolies. i firmly beleive stardom, famous actors, and guitar gods will become a thing of the past at some point.
if you have a tangible, physical product, you make money on markup. if you have audio or visual entertainment, you make money on advertising. the powers-that-be may not like it, but they are so screwed, i don't see how they can win in the long run.
simply put, i buy three or four magazine subscriptions. they cost me about $120 a year. i'm not going to "subscribe" to web sites. not gonna happen...at least not yet. the closest thing i've seen to something i'd pay for is yahoo. they have pretty good news, quality personals, lots of informative links. if they had audio and visual, and said they need subscribers to stay alive, i'd pay for them.
same for google. i'd be pretty adamant about a "one-stop" portal, maybe $36 a year, with access to a wide variety of services.
after 25 years of modems you have to question whether the private sector is (in any way) up to the task. federal control of bandwidth and storage could go a long way toward moving the web forward.
my favorite area of mp3.com is :
comedy and satire [mp3.com]
...some of the music areas are cool, but a lot of it is real crap.
Dude... (Score:2)
If it took over the web things would be so much worse, you
Cool (Score:1)
For those of you who might have done this, your password has been changed to "asshole", your email address has been changed to "postmaster@mp3.com", and your preferences have been set to remove you from all mailings. Have a nice day.
No thanks (Score:2)
Re:No thanks (Score:1)
I'm kinda suprised they give anything...
Re:No thanks (Score:2)
Price.. (Score:2)
When I was younger ( about 7 months ago) I would spool 20 gig of MP3's a day from the nntp.
I know that wasn't cheep for the ISP to offer and I can only emagin how much its going to cost them. Can some one explain how they can do this that cheep and still pay any form of royalties?
12 for the price of 10 (Score:1)
will the artists see any of this? (Score:2)
However, I only will pay this fee if:
The bands get a cut of the action. They're the ones making the music and giving it away. If MP3.com recieves a penny more than operating expenses + a little for a rainy day, then screw them. If MP3.com charges, the bulk of that money better go the the artists that spent their hard earned dough to write and record it.
They respect my privacy. I should need no more than authentication and authorization to get in. I am more than willing to put up a pot o' gold on paypal for pay sites to deduct from, so I don't have to give that pay site my personal info. Anybody interested in making such a "pot o gold" payment protocol with me should email me. I will GPL it if interested.
Re:will the artists see any of this? (Score:1)
them. If MP3.com charges, the bulk of that money better go the the artists that spent their hard earned dough to write and record it.
=====
I suspect that is as likely to occur at mp3.com as it is at the traditional labels owned by Vivendi.
maru
www.mp3.com/pixal
Adserving and mp3.com (Score:1)
A bit of background first. I'm CSO/CTO of AdAce, Inc. (please dont
Anyway, to the points:
** Advertising revenue and blocking proxies
Advertising is sold three ways: by impressions (showing the ad), by clicks (someone clicking on an ad banner), and by "acquisition" (someone registering or making a purchase on the advertiser's website, after having clicked on the banner). If you use an ad-filtering proxy, then you definately reduce the revenues from clicks and from acquisitions (obviously). But you might not be reducing the revenues from impressions; it all depends on whether the proxy blocks the ad banner request or the response. If the proxy blocks the initial request, then there is no impression, and no revenue. If it blocks the response, then as far as the ad serving software can tell, an impression was delivered -- the fact that no one actually saw the ad can't be detected by the server.
The overwhelming majority of ad sales online are CPM (impression based). CPC (click based) is common, but not huge. And CPA (acquisition based) is highly disliked by the ad networks, because it means that either the ad network has to duplicate the advertiser's entire website, or the advertiser has a financial incentive to lie to us about their true number of acquisitions.
That aside, we at AdAce really don't mind if you choose to use an ad blocking proxy. And that's true for the advertisers and ad hosts as well: most sites, mp3.com included, have more inventory (read: browser requests for webpages that have one or more slots for ads) than they actually manage to sell. So those ad impressions that are lost by your use of a proxy don't affect our profits at all; we'll still have many more opportunities to deliver the ad before the end of the ad campaign.
Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit.
So by using an ad blocking proxy, you actually let mp3.com earn more money. Ad hosts charge based on an average CTR (click through ratio). The more often their ads generate clicks, the more money they can charge the next advertiser. If you're unlikely to click on an ad, and you use an ad blocking proxy, then you're effectively raising their CTR by removing yourself from the pool of impressions. And a higher CTR means that they can charge their advertisers more.
Even if it weren't for all these practical and financial reasons, we still wouldn't mind about your use of an ad blocking proxy. It's your machine, and you're choosing to browse the way that you want to. We have no political, philosophical, or legal right to force you to view our ads. If you don't want to see them, then by all means, use an ad blocking proxy. Advertising is all about public response, and if your response is to get pissed at our ads, then we don't want to show them to you: the last thing that we want is a pissed off viewer. It's your browsing experience that matters to you, and we don't (nor should we) have any say in that.
** Popup ads
I, too, am highly annoyed with popup ads. They piss me off just as much as spam does. In fact, I run a popup blocker on my personal computer to prevent them. It's got problems, admittedly, but it succeeds in blocking all the popups that come to me (it just blocks a little more than I want).
Unfortunately, turning off javascript really doesn't prevent all popups. Most browsers support HTML variants that allow a link to open a new browser window (target="_new" in an <A> or <IMG> link). It'd be nice to see more web browsers that ignored these tag options, or allowed filtering on a site by site basis.
** MP3.com's advertising and ad free services
We've been doing business with MP3.com for some time now, and we've ridden out their hard weather with them. I've developed a bunch of contacts within MP3.com, and all these guys are quite cool. Even their evil marketroids are cool (as far as marketroids go).
I like these guys a lot, and I'd love to see them get out of their tough times. They've been hit by a lot of hardship over the years from outside sources and from bad internal decisions. But the greatest thing about MP3.com is that they listen to their users. If you've got a problem with something they're doing, or if you have suggestions for ways that they can improve their service, then don't hesitate to email them. Don't flame them incoherently, but if you can rationally express your outrage, then they're likely to pay attention. You don't even have to use formal English: these guys are mostly musicians, and tend to be pretty relaxed.
There are a lot of ways to avoid advertisements on MP3.com's service. The news post mentioned one way. Ad blocking proxies are another. Apparently they also allow artists to pay a small monthly fee (something like $5/month, I'm not too clear on it), so that those artists can have ad-free areas on MP3.com's service. So
However, not all ads on MP3.com are obnoxious or irrelevant. Sure, they've got those omnipresent Heineken ads this month, and for some reason they're running a Janet Jackson in Paris ad (as if someone coming to a website will choose to fly off to Paris just because of an ad banner). But they also have advertisements from other artists on MP3.com.
We've been running a service for MP3.com that allows artists to advertise for themselves right there, at very low rates. All throughout the music browsing sections of MP3.com, you can find these artist ads mingled in with the normal advertisements. In a month where there are more artist ad purchases, you'll naturally see more of those ads. It's all a question of what portion of the inventory is going to artist purchases from one week to another.
Re:Adserving and mp3.com (Score:2)
Whoa, an ad exec who actually has a brain in his head and understands. Will wonders never cease? You should teach a course dude
Re:Adserving and mp3.com (Score:1)
AdAce used to be one of my clients, and they needed a CSO. I saw a chance to help convert an evil, reprehensible industry into something approximating a sane one, and took the opportunity.
My degree is in full custom CMOS VLSI design.
And I'm working on a seminar for an upcoming ad conference, but it's hard to phrase things so that ad people understand. They're pretty thick. The
Re:Adserving and mp3.com (Score:1)
wtf is this increasing CTR bullshit - yeh it works on paper but at the end of the day how does this benefit the advertiser?
There is no way that any kind of advertising can actually make a sale. This is true for banner ads, magazine ads, billboards, newspaper ads, TV ads, and every other type of advertising in existance. The only thing that advertising can do is attract attention.
I can get people into the merchant's store, but I can't convince them to buy stuff. It's up to the advertiser to convert traffic into sales. The only way that I could influence the turnover rate would be to personally go in and redesign the advertiser's website.
My job is to present the advertisement in such a way that it is more likely to increase the number of people who knock on the advertiser's door. The advertiser is responsible for designing the advertisement (sometimes they do it themselves, sometimes they hire someone else), and for operating a business that doesn't turn off customers.
I can change the time of day that the ad is shown. I can change the type of people who see the ad. I can change the sites that carry the ad. There's a whole lot that I can do, but at the end of the day, the only way to measure my contribution to an advertising campaign's success is to look at the CTR.
and saying you dont care about ad blocker software because often the impression still counts?
Please be so kind as to say where I said that. I said three things in that section of my post:
I said that you might not be reducing mp3.com's revenue by using an ad blocking proxy, because if the proxy blocks on the response, an impression is still counted.
I said that I don't mind if you use an ad blocking proxy because I don't want to show ads to people who don't want to see ads.
And I said that using an ad blocking proxy might actually
you represent everything that was wrong with the online ad industry last year & the reason cpm rates dropped to a few cents if they could be sold at all
The current industry average CPM is $8. There are a few maverick brokers in the ad industry who are trying to negotiate CPM deals at $.50 and $.40, but while they're having no problem finding advertisers to buy at those rates, they're having a huge problem finding ad networks to carry the ad.
parties over dipshit - u dont get into the ad bizness because u wanna help surfers with privacy or any of that shit
Perhas I did make a mistake in my motivation. But the fact is that that is precisely why I entered the ad business, and I'm having some small success with my efforts to promote privacy protections in the industry. Only time will tell if it actually was a mistake.
u get in because u know how to get traffic and sales for your advertisers.
Thank you. This is an important point.
The internet advertising business is in a horrible place right now because starting 5 years ago, ad sales people started overselling. It's like that IBM commercial where the lawyer is standing over the salesman's shoulder to make sure he doesn't oversell. Ad sales people made all sorts of insane promises over the years.
They'd claim things like 70% CTRs. No campaign in the entire history of online ads has had a CTR higher than 8%. The average CTR across the industry is
They'd claim things like that every click is an almost guaranteed sale. Good click conversion rates are 30%. But those rates are entirely up to the merchant, not the advertisement.
They'd claim things like "we can drive sales for you". That's patently untrue: no advertising network can drive sales. They can influence them, but they can't drive them.
The fact is, that many merchants became advertisers based on these promises. And the promises didn't hold up. When that happened, most merchants turned around and said "Internet advertising is shit. It's got no value. I'll never advertise on the internet again." And here we are now.
because of idiots like you the whole internet is becoming a mass of popup windows, misleading links, theres no barriers between content and ads, punch the monkey is the only banner that pays anymore
I expect you're making that statement out of pure ignorance. AdAce doesn't run popup ads. We don't like them. We put a whole lot of effort into trying to convince our customers not to run popup ads. If their minds cant be changed, then we'll direct them to some of our partners who are willing to run popups, but we won't carry those ads ourselves. Idiots like me are having a direct influence on the
I'm not sure what you mean by "misleading links". Even though you're a painful pinhead and an obnoxious moron, I'll work to fix that problem if you can explain it to me.
The problem with content based advertising is that we, the ad networks, can offer that to our advertisers. But we can't make our advertisers purchase that. And we can't make them purchase the right categories. Sometimes it'll happen that a tech magazine wants to advertise in a sports category. We can warn them that they'll have a small response. We can suggest better categories to them. But if they're committed to that track, the only thing that we can do is to turn down the campaign. And in particularly heinous mismatches, we have done precisely that.
Yes, punch the monkey does pay. They don't pay all that well (it's a CPA campaign). But they do pay. Casino On-net pays a lot better than punch the monkey (which is also a CPA campaign). But claiming that these campaigns are the only ones that pay is just ridiculous.
Given all your comments, your vocabulary, and your attitudes, I'd wager a guess at your identity. We at AdAce have encountered your type before, and we have turned down your campaigns. I'm guessing that you're one of those maverick ad brokers that I complained about earlier in this post. If my guess is right, then you came to AdAce two weeks ago and offered us a CPA deal at $2, and claimed, "you'll never find a higher CPA rate for any other ad". I'm somewhat surprised to see you here. Perhaps I'm 1wrong about your identity. C'est la vie.
They got MY money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, guys! This is one of the largeest available archives of international, cultural music... anywhere.
They want less per month than a beer at the local pub. Give it to 'em! I urge my friends to do the same...
-Ben
Re: (Score:1)
Re:a LOT of good music on MP3.com (Score:1)
Girl bands? Try MadelynIris [mp3.com] If you like experimental stuff, 2NU [mp3.com]. Punk? The Real McKenzies [mp3.com]. I could go on, but let us know what style of music you like!
Re:They'll never get my money (Score:1)