Universal, Sony Cutting Prices on Downloaded Music 446
Don Symes writes "Sony Music and Universal appear to be getting ready to allow downloads of singles for $.99 and albums for $9.99 without crippleware or restrictions on personal copying/burning." Another semi-interesting piece submitted by several people is this propaganda from the recording industry. 2.8 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were seized in the U.S. last year (9 million world-wide); from that the IFPI extrapolates that 950 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were actually sold, world-wide. How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? Mostly hand-waving .
I'd download them! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'd download them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any reasonable cap shouldn't be a huge problem for downloading MP3's. MP3's are small compared to things that even "normal" users might download. I suppose it depenes on how many MP3's you plan to download, or upload to others. Or how many gnutella packets will pass through your system.
The bandwidth cap is more likely to prevent you from running:
Re:I'd download them! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd download them! (Score:3, Informative)
No really, I'm curious.
They are (apparently/somehow) protected against computer-to-computer copying, but
So wherein lies the problem exactly?
Re:I'd download them! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd download them! (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't play it using my favorite software and hardware (BeOS and SoundPlay, FWIW, although I'm sure you can think of any number of other hardware and software platforms that Liquid Audio is never going to support). I'm also not entirely comfortable with the thought of having audio files with my fingerprint in them.... would I be liable if someone hacked my machine and started distributing copies of my files?
Re:I'd download them! (Score:3, Interesting)
No need to 'get over it' -- I simply won't use it. There are plenty of free alternatives that do the things I want, on the software and hardware that I use.
I suspect there isn't any LA support for a number of (essentially) dead systems. Too bad. This is the way the world works.
And therefore LA won't get used by people who use those systems. Too bad. That is the way the world works.
If you want it that badly, write it yourself or run something that can handle it.
As I said, I don't want it that badly. It doesn't offer me anything that mp3 doesn't give me now, and it doesn't meet my needs. So I'll happily ignore it. And as a previous poster said, even if I did want it that badly, I probably couldn't write the software myself due to the technical and legal barriers thrown up by LA to keep their format "secure". (ha ha)
Kvetching about it not supporting your dead-as-a-doornail OS is about as good as horse buggy makers complaining about the Model T
I wasn't "kvetching", I was just pointing out what it was that would keep me from using it. And keep in mind that someday, every OS will be "dead-as-a-doornail" -- even your beloved 'mainstream' OS. At that point, your thousands of dollars invested in LA files will be lost, as you will no longer have any way to play them. (and if you are counting on LA to write a new version of their player for whatever OS you upgrade to... then you haven't been watching the software industry for very long. I give 50/50 odds LA won't even exist in 5 or 10 years)
Re:I'd download them! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a format created and supported by only one software development firm. How many software programs have you seen that play Liquid Audio format files? I'm betting none, other than the one produced by Liquid Audio themselves.
MP3, on the other hand (and even more and more, Microsoft's
Re:Perhaps you missed this part? (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, I'm against having to try to change the format into something I can play in my DVD, Rio, Car, etc in a compressed format. I hate jockeying a box of CD's in the car while driving, carying a box of CD's while out hiking, etc. I want the small portable format of MP3's. Liquid Audio is incompatible with my hardware and 8-10 songs per CD is too bulky to carry everywhere. Lugging enough batteries for a weekend hike is bad enough without also lugging along a case of CD's that have to spin 100% of the time to play (battery eater). I prefer a MP3 CD player for hikes as they start once or twice per song vastly extending battery life.
Re:I'd download them! (Score:3, Interesting)
Whereas Liquid Audio is a free, open format with no royalty payments required. Oh, wait....
About time (Score:2, Insightful)
Regarding that CD-R article, I'm sure the RIAA would just love to ban the things. How about they just ban all dual-deck tape recorders too. Write you representatives folks. Don't let them lobby to take away all that is left of Fair-Use.
Re:About time (Score:2, Interesting)
You walk in and either buy (per song) a cd compelation that you created (no shit songs on the album where evry other song is perfect) or upload them to your laptop/ipod from an arcade game style unit.
Cool that they are doing it online now, prolly better than the song idea anyway.
My bet is they'll secretly embed watermarks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My bet is they'll secretly embed watermarks (Score:5, Informative)
"The downloads contain watermarks that are designed to stay with any digital copies made of the song, enabling authorities to identify the original buyer."
Re:My bet is they'll secretly embed watermarks (Score:2)
Mark
Re:My bet is they'll secretly embed watermarks (Score:4, Informative)
Watermarking schemes are not foolproof, but it takes a much larger fool than changing formats to trick em.
$10 is just about right for an album... (Score:5, Insightful)
If my $.99 bought me the raw stereo PCM data to burn, MP3, ogg, or sample then I would consider this reasonable.
Of course the artists probably get less than $.05 of that sale. The other
Oddly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ten bucks is roughly what a record store pays the distributor for a CD. The music industry is just cutting out the middleman and keeping their profit the same. Not a bad thing to try.
Then... (Score:2)
Not bloody likely though...
Re:Then... (Score:2)
Yes I know you can use lossless compression, but the average consumer out there isn't going to know how to deal with that. They understand
Re:Then... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$10 is just about right for an album... (Score:2)
The PCM idea is unrealistic, though. A sufficiently good MP3, or preferably (though unlikely for now
These files need to be CD quality (Score:4, Insightful)
personally if im going to pay for something I want a solid object in my mitts, a physical CD, liner notes, pictures, etc....
Re:These files need to be CD quality (Score:5, Interesting)
Then maybe the record company needs to take it one step further... offer the cd for $9.99 off of the website in 196kbs mp3's, and leave an option for the customer. If they decide that they like the CD enough to buy the actual disk, let them come back within say 2 weeks, pay an extra $3-4 (S&H) and have the CD itself mailed to them. They've already made the bulk of their profit (bandwidth for an entire CD is probably only a few cents out of the $9.99) and it would be a good way to get an extra $2 out of the customer. Shipping, labor, and the materials for the physical CD are probably only about a dollar or two, and the band/promoters/radio stations have been paid out of the profits from the downloaded version.
I see that as an option where everyone wins. Too bad it'll never happen (unless the physical CD would only be discounted from the regular price of $15 down to $10 if you've already paid for the full cd off the web site)
As usual, Michael doesn't think it through (Score:3, Informative)
2.8 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were seized in the U.S. last year (9 million world-wide); from that the IFPI extrapolates that 950 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were actually sold, world-wide. How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? Mostly hand-waving.
I can only assume that Michael doesn't actually understand what the numbers he's quoting mean. Hard to believe, I know. 9 million == number actually seized. 950 million == estimate of how many actually produced and illegally sold.
Obviously it's difficult to have hard numbers about what CDs were NOT seized, but who thinks that it's unreasonable to claim that only 1 out of every 100 illegally produced CDs sold are actually found and confiscated?
In fact, it surprises be that it's as high as 1/100.
Don't fall for it (Score:5, Interesting)
You should have stopped right there. The record companies are stating these numbers as fact instead of admitting that they are pulling numbers out of thin air. Their strategy is similar to the ONDCP's: design the numbers to fit the agenda. In the case of the ONDCP, they estimate higher drug usage when they want a higher budget, then they estimate lower drug usage to prove their efforts were successful. The record companies are giving an outrageous estimate to shock people into believing that there is a serious problem with piracy. Wait a few years, until the DMCA and other dragnets have imprisoned and fined a large number of people. Then the record companies will revise their estimate to prove that the legislation was effective in reducing piracy.
Re:As usual, Michael doesn't think it through (Score:3, Informative)
How can the number of pirated discs created somehow exceed production/sale for CDRs for that year?
Note this quote from the same article: "CD-Rs accounted for nearly one-quarter of pirated music sales last year, up from 9 percent the year earlier, the group said. "
In other words, only a fraction of piracy is done with CD-Rs. Most of it is done with more sophisticated duplication techniques.
The upside for the labels: (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, please... (Score:2, Interesting)
Look at the ridiculous deals they signed just before the economy slowed here in the United States... The Mariah Carey deal, which failed. The Michael Jackson "biggest album ever" which sold about ten copies.
It's easy for the CEOs of these companies to place blame somewhere else, besides themselves. And the Boards and shareholders have so far wagged their tails, nodded their heads, and watched their portfolios halve in value.
They'll wake up... Someday... Maybe...
jrbd
w00t! (Score:2)
Sony bets alot of other people will too. I'd wager they'll bet that I'd pay $5 extra to have them burn me a cd or two and ship them to me too or other "added features" (music videos anyone? tour footage anyone? live tracks anyone?)
Good Grief (Score:2, Insightful)
And ... isn't money laundering something that makes money on its own too? In fact, the only relationship between money laundering and CD IP theft seems to be that, if there were no copyright, there would be no need to launder the money made.
In fact, wouldn't the best way to cut off the legs of organized crime in this area be legalization, or, heaven forfend, reasonable prices from the recording industry?
If these are the best arguments against piracy, I think I'll go steal some music now.
Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Funny)
How many VH1 "Behind the Music" specials have driven _that_ point home?
This will prove it (Score:4, Insightful)
And do you know what? This will flop. Terribly. Why? Because the same people who have been shouting that they'll pay for music will, in the end, not pay for music.
Once, a few years ago, I pirated music using Napster. I got quite good at it, amassing more than 5 GB of songs. But eventually, I had to face the facts: I was stealing music. A few of my friends asked me to justify what I was doing, and I couldn't justify it. I was stealing music. I thought about "making up", by buying all the CDs that I wanted music from, but I didn't. And do you know why? Because it would cost money.
I know it's not hip to agree with the RIAA on Slashdot, but in this case I feel that it's correct to. The pirate community has been screaming that they want low-price music, and now they're offering it to them. But it will flop, because in the end, people don't want cheap music.
They want free music.
Re:This will prove it (Score:2)
Another thing is that people will never pay for all the music they want to listen to. There are two reasons for this: most people, given the chance, will listen to more music than they could buy, and they will also download songs and albums that they would never even consider buying - good enough to listen to isn't good enough to buy. In both cases, reducing the price would help.
I might use it (Score:2)
Re:This will prove it (Score:4, Interesting)
I justified it because everyone else was doing it, and you can't listen to the radio at work where the music was available. Pretty weak excuses, but the latter had some merit.
Now I have progressed to the stage where I still refuse to pay full price for albums, but once they are £10.99 in Tesco, or £9.99 then I will buy them. If they are really good, I will buy them as well. I have also realised that there is a bucketload of excellent old music out there, priced between £4.99 and £6.99 at places like 101cd.com and your local backstreet music store, and thus for a mere £110 I can buy 19 full albums of music that I like, even if it isn't the latest and "greatest" (ha!).
Once modern albums contain more than 2 or 3 good songs and 5 trash songs, then my money might start going on new music again. Tempting though "Baile del gorila" by Melody is, it is the only good song on the CD so I will not buy it. I bought a best of Boney M for £4.99 instead.
So I bought Aphex Twin Classics today for £5.99, I will buy two deftones albums for £5.99ea this weekend after England beat Denmark, possibly Madonna Music and Madonna Erotica Tour as well at the same price (and thus cover those MP3 downloads a year or two ago). And 19 CDs in the post as well... the next couple of weeks will be fun.
I love CDs, the cases, the physical things. But I will only pay reasonable prices for them. If all new CD albums were £8.99 then I would probably have a CD collection in the many hundreds by now...
Remember, if you listen to a £15.99 CD 20 times, then you are paying around 80p a listen. Too high for my liking. Listen to a £5.99 CD 20 times for 30p a shot - much better for background music most of the time.
I *will* pay, but not for this... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're completely, 100% wrong. Yeah, it will flop, but not because people won't pay. It's silly to assume people don't pay for music. People pay for music all the time. How else do you think the recording industry stays in business? No, piracy is most certainly not why this will fail. It will fail because the suits misunderstand their thetarget audience for this service.
I have ~18GB of MP3 files. They are all, to the last file, arranged in complete albums, with proper ID3 tags for each file. Why? Because I bought the CDs and then ripped and encoded them myself. Napster was useless. You got iffy quality, screwy naming conventions, weird ID3 tags (if you got them at all), and the files sometimes (mostly) had defects. Even if I didn't want to pay, I'd still pay rather than listen to the crap you get off Napster (or Kaazaa -- same problems there).
I require two things for digital music: The complete album in high bit-rate MP3 format. I do not want single songs. I do not want proprietary (read: non-MP3 or non-OGG) formats with built-in "digital rights management". I do not want to "burn" anything. Why the heck would I burn a Liquid Audio (whatever the hell that is) on to a CD-R? I want the music on my fileserver where it belongs. Where my AudioTron downstairs and my workstation upstairs can get to them. Where I can stream them from work. I might even put them on a portable MP3 player, but last time I checked the portables didn't support "burning" or formats besides MP3.
I'd love the chance to pay $10 for a complete album. As long as it's in MP3 format at a decent bit-rate. But this "service" can't give me that and therefore is completely useless. It will fail because they are going about it all wrong -- not because people don't want cheap music.
-B
Re:I *will* pay, but not for this... (Score:3, Insightful)
- Use 320kbps mp3 (or ogg) files, NO RESTRICTED FORMATS
- Embed lyrics in the mp3 files, because why the hell not?
- Sell them to us at 99 cents a song or less, eight or nine bucks for a whole album
If people take the files and try to trade them on Gnutella or the like, DON'T sic the lawyers on them. A certain amount of copying is unavoidable, and there are ways [slashdot.org] of making that more trouble than it's worth if a guaranteed good copy of the song is readily, legally, and cheaply available. Most people will then choose to buy the song, those who don't probably don't have much money in the first place or they wouldn't waste their time.How to make it work (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to make this work they have to devote themselves to it. But for a label there's not much reason to do it. There's no way that selling over the internet isn't going to cut into their gross for a while. People wont pay $16 for an album's worth of MP3s.
But it's not a zero-sum game, because RIAA can't control their end-users. Their music is digitalized and distributed for them, at no cost to anyone. Actually, for RIAA they may just be stuck.
Music distribution is no longer tricky. Just stick mp3s on your website. Finding new talent can be done just as well by a bunch of independents as it can by a giant music conglomeration.
In the next decade, music may just go back to being an art instead of an industry.
Re:This will prove it (Score:3, Insightful)
When they release the songs using a format that's:
1) Easy to burn
2) Easy to copy
3) Easy to play (well-established players, like winamp)
Then, and only then, will they begin to open a new market.
Oh, and BTW, when I download songs, I download stuff that never gets any radio play (which, btw, is the record companies faults) and, if I like it, I buy the cd. I won't buy anything that I haven't listened to first. I've bought thousands of dollars worth of cds over the years and I'd probably have bought only 2 or 3 if it weren't for Napster and its kin.
Re:This will prove it (Score:4, Funny)
Wow - your friends staged a Napster intervention?
Re:Stealing? Nope. (Score:4, Insightful)
theft
\Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.] 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same ; larceny.
Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.
Re:Stealing? Nope. (Score:3, Informative)
Well first of all, its convenient that you left out definition a from www.m-w.com [m-w.com] which is exactly the same as the first one from dictionary.com. Secondly, from a legal standpoint, copyrighted materials aren't even property. They are works for which the government has granted someone an exclusive liscense to control the distribution of the work for a limited period of time. Insisting that copyright infringment is "theft" is just a convenient way to distract people from the real nature of the crime.
Re:Stealing? Nope. (Score:2)
In the same way that skipping commercials with you Tivo is also a kind of theft.
Re:Stealing? Nope. (Score:3, Informative)
So, if I, as a parent, stopped my child's allowace because they misbehave, I've stolen it?
Does a murderer steal lives?
Does someone who is greedy and buys all the CDRs in the city (this happened where I live) steal them?
Does someone who makes a profit steal it? I mean, there is no law saying you are entitled to make a profit on anything whatsoever.
Does someone who decides not to give a dollar to the bum on the street in fact steal the dollar from the bum?
No. You are confused on the issue and I reccomend you consult the dictionary [dictionary.com] on this matter. Perhaps a synonym [dictionary.com] might help.
This is the definition of piracy [dictionary.com]. Notice no mention of theft, or its synonyms, unless your name is BlackBeard or Bin Laden.
Dictionaries were very careful to clear this up in the past because people were beginning the confuse the issues. I am happy they've done so. Notice how dictionary.com went out of their way to use the verbose sentence "The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material" rather than "Stealing Intellectual Property". That's because they saw the difference.
If you read the Berne Convention [cerebalaw.com], the international foundation of modern copyright law, you'll never see the words steal or theft. The world's lawyers were careful to separate the meanings even though they have the most to gain. If english teachers, lawyers, judges, and many other respected people around the world firmly agree on this issue, why don't you?
I think you'll be very interested to know that in my country we are allowed to buy CDRs from America (bypassing a special media tax) and burn a copy of any album we like at a friends house and take it home. This is a law agreed to by the people, the lawyers, the artists, and the media companies, even when this loophole was explicitly pointed out once (we've all agreed to the law a second time, even after the rush on the border for CDRs). If any of these people considered that stealing (which, by your definition, it is) they would have most certainly not have agreed to allow this to happen.
Put simply, piracy is (for example) copying a song when you shouldn't, plain and simple. Stealing is when you take a car for a joyride. The difference is remarkable.
Re: Numbers (Score:2)
You multiply by roughly 100. :)
This excites me... (Score:2)
Particularly because Sony is onboard, which owns Sony Classical. One thing that is REALLY weak on P2P networks is a good classical selection, and what's there is often badly converted and missing the ending sections.
I will definitely be using the service.
Re:This excites me... (Score:2)
Amen. And if that $0.99 per track means I can download (say) CSO/Solti Beethoven's 9th for $3.96, then I'll gladly pay. :) On a more serious note, it will be tons easier to get all the works from my favorite composers / conductors / performers this way, than by going through online services looking for the recordings I want.
Another thing that I'm really, really hoping for, is that smaller labels like Alternative Tentacles and Wrong Records will get in on the act. That'll scare the living unholy crap out of Tipper Gore and her gang.
I'm still pissed at RIAA for using DMCA instead of copyright laws to pursue music pirates, but this might win back my patronage.
Record Company Board Meeting: (Score:3, Funny)
"Wow...you think so? Well, let's give it a shot. Can't be any worse than that MiniDisc fiasco."
singles? (Score:2)
99 cents is easily worth the price of a song, as long as the quality is decent.
and hey! i can feel good about having a 'legal' collection of mp3's!
i can't wait until cable television takes this approach. i would love to pay per channel rather than having a whole slew of junk that seems to grab my attention.. let's see, discovery, comedy central, learning channel....
950 Million?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
That might however work if this is corrcet
The IFPI said this means that almost 40 percent of all CDs and cassettes sold around the globe are pirated copies--the highest proportion ever recorded by the organization.
However I suspect that the vast majority of those were from Russia, China, and other countries who generally arn't too respectful of US copyright law and arn't directly effected by the DMCA.
However, declining prices kept the total value of the unauthorized CD market nearly flat, at an estimated $4.3 billion worldwide in 2001 compared with $4.2 billion the previous year. Because those numbers use the prices for pirated discs and not legal prices, they do not measure the full economic loss to recording industry, the IFPI said
I'm I the only one who see the contradiction. If you sell something at a lower price you often sell enough units to make up the difference, your profit is what might be lower. Iraq learned a varient of this lesson the hard way when they flooded the oil market (although I'm not sure if they have lower revenues total or just lower profits). If people never got pirated music and only bought the inflated distributor prices I suspect the difference in their total revenues would be a lot less than 4.3 billion, not greater.
Re:950 Million?!? (Score:2)
What's important for the general public to realise here is that this is not file-sharing piracy, it's commercial sale of counterfeit CDs. RIAA etc will try to use this report in their war against consumer rights online and it has exactly zero relevance.
Another article [smh.com.au] on the cheaper downloads has this classic quote from the head of Australian music industry's anti-piracy unit, Michael Speck: "It is morally repugnant to allow criminals to determine the price of a legitimate product."
This is classic stuff - the recording industry is one of the bastions of capitalism but they whine long and loud when market forces hurt their profits.Re:950 Million?!? (Score:2)
C'mon! If the RIAA doesn't set the prices who will, how does he expect the industry to sell anything if the execs can't set their own prices...
Ohhh... He meant the file sharing "criminal"!!
I might buy them... (Score:2)
Where's the Cover Art, CD Case and CD cost? (Score:2, Troll)
I think it's great these companies are starting to get a clue, but for $9.99 for an album I can go to my local used CD store and get the actual CD with cover art and a jewel case. Heck sometimes if you time it right with online storefronts or heading to your local music megastore you can get the CD brand new for $10.
Sure I can go out on the net, download the cover art, print it out, and put it in my own jewel case. By the time I do that I'm over $10 for that CD which is more than I'd have paid for it in the store anyways, not to mention the work I did.
Most likely I'd rip the actual CD to MP3 anyways so I can play it on my home computer network (computer in every room with decent speakers), but I still like to look at all the cover art, read the lyrics, and enjoy the little extra effort that some bands put into the making of their CD inserts.
I still just don't see how $.99 per single or $9.99 is cost effective for Joe Consumer. It needs to drop down further to perhaps $.50 per single and around $5 for a full album download before I'd bother with it.
Re:Where's the Cover Art, CD Case and CD cost? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually nowhere in my comment did I say, "Albums cost too much, and I really only want one or two songs off of it. That's why I use Napster." Mr AC. Nor did I even say I've ever used Napster, because I haven't. I've used gnuetella in the past, but only for the purpose of downloading live tracks that are unavailable for release on CD. Nowhere on any of my numerous computers do I have a single song that I downloaded illegaly that is available on a legitimate album release.
In fact I do want the entire album, because I don't listen to teen-pop crap where there only is perhaps one moderatly decent song on the entire album. I listen to Classical, Progressive Rock/Metal, and Classic Rock. These genres tend to actually have good, quality content throughout the course of the entire album. The only reason I'd ever purchase a single is to get remixes or previously unreleased tracks that weren't available to me before.
I would consider $.99 to be cost effective if I knew for sure that the vast majority of that cost was going to the artist who actually created that song. But we all know that the vast majority of that money will be going to record executives, producers, and all sorts of other people that feed like parasites off the fruits of other people's creativity. And as such I can honestly say that I think $.99 is too much to pay any member of the RIAA.
I think I am being quite honest with myself, and with the artists that I support when I can say that I own well over 400 CDs, all of which I paid for with money I earned by using my talents in the computer industry. To call me a lowlife scum thief is an insult to my integrety and character and therefore I can honestly say fuck you Mr AC. I've spent well over $5,000 of my money to enjoy the songs and albums of artists that I like. In return I'd like to get that music and art in a format that I can hang on to and even enjoy visually in addition to audibly. If I'm not going to get that visual enjoyment, have an actual physical medium in my mitts, and probably get the music at a degraded sound quality to boot then it would stand to reason that I pay less for the lesser product.
A good start... (Score:2, Interesting)
My biggest pet peeve with downloading MP3s now (and yes, I do) is that too much is left up to an unknown source: who ripped the original CD? Did they tag it accurately?
It sounds like this is a good start for the record companies and music lovers to find a little common ground... as long as the cable companies don't cap us to death...
I didn't see it in the article, but... does the actual artist get a royalty on the download?
lossless compression (Score:2, Interesting)
This only leads to questions (Score:2)
First, what bitrate will the songs come in? Ostensibly they'll come in mp3 format, if they're not going to be protected in some way. If it's 128kbps, forget it; I don't typically even warez music at 128kbps any more, and I certainly won't pay for that (lack of) quality.
Second; If, as the article asserts, the discounting of downloadable music is a recognization that a downloaded track somehow has less value than a physical CD, I have to ask what the prices are based on. As we all know, the price of audio CDs is based on what the market will bear; it is cheaper to make a CD and put it in a store than it is to make a casette tape and put it in a store, yet they still cost more. Obviously this is based on recognition of the fact that the online market won't bear as much profit and the music industry is only going in this direction because they know that the artificially-inflated prices of CDs won't last forever when more and more people are getting CD-R drives.
So where's the question in all this? It is thus: Whence comes the artificial valuation of music? And what is its future? Sony would seem to be its own enemy, in that it sells relatively inexpensive CD-R(W) drives (and overly expensive CDR media) and also sells music on CD which carries a seemingly arbitrary price tag which the music industry nontheless has been known to defend with financial violence, IE, they don't give new releases to stores which have dropped prices below their mandated floor. What effect do they really think selling albums for $9.99 which you are allowed to burn to a $0.40 CD? (again, more if it's sony; This is a price on memorex 100 spindles at fry's.)
How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? (Score:2)
Second, you take the number of people in the US who listen to that genre of music, and assume that every single one of them bought that music illegally.
Third, you assume that everybody is a crook.
Fourth, you realize that you really like your job in the FBI, because that makes you "they" and them "those" and you can make "them" do whatever "we" want.
Simple administrative math. If you have problems understanding it, go talk to your System Admin... they all have the same basic course requirements.
Still expensive... (Score:3)
Re:Still expensive... (Score:2)
You built your own house from wood that grew on your mountain! You mined your own iron ore and smelted it in the back yard to make your dishwasher? You hand-masked your own chips onto silicon you collected in australia and built your own computer.
Bah! Pan
$.99 is still too much (Score:5, Interesting)
The music industry is still trying to cover their own ass. They know they are going to lose this fight, so if they push everyone else out of the business first they can take it over like they have every other avenue.
Supporting them now is like caving to the first offer to a street vendor in Thailand.
I am bias and not afraid to admit it, we offer MP3s for $.10 - $.20 that are encoded at 128bit to 192bit. That's good enough to burn.
CD Cost: ~$1.50USD
MusicRebellion [musicrebellion.com]
Re:$.99 is still too much (Score:3, Funny)
Supporting them now is like caving to the first offer from a street vendor in Thailand.
So true (Score:2)
Wish I had a mod point to throw at that statement...
This is, at the end of the day, a negotiation. A very unfair, one sided, bullshit negotiation that any worthwhile negotiator would walk away from- but it's what we have. So, the answer is not to cave at all. Continue to do what we do until the other side matches us. Very simple...
Slashdot / MP3 Comment Generator (Score:5, Funny)
"This is a great start, but I'm not paying [current price] for a song/album. Maybe I'd consider [current price / 2], but it would have to be available in [some other format] and at [current sampling rate * 2]. And even then, I wouldn't pay without getting [a CD / liner notes / etc]."
99 cents a song is a steal. Let's figure there are 3 good songs on a CD nowadays (generous assumption). That's 3 bucks for a CD's worth of good songs. As opposed to 15+ dollars in the store.
But I'm sure people can justify not using this service anyway. Hell, I will admit that if I want some song, I'll probably get it off of KaZaA (I don't really listen to much music nowadays). But I'm not gonna criticize the system, I think it is perfect, they are biting the bullet and offering us a great alternative to stealing music. If this fails, it's not the record company's fault.
Mark
Furthermore, (Score:2)
When it inevitably fails, it will provide just the documentation they need to lobby their congressmen for whatever infringement of rights legislation is in the hopper. I can't wait for the Draconian restrictions to come flowing out of Washington like spring rain.
Disregard my comment (Score:2)
Mark
They just don't get it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Liquid Audio files are scrambled so they can't be freely copied from computer to computer. But Universal has decided to let buyers burn the files onto conventional CDs in unscrambled formats, meaning they could be copied or moved freely from that point."
People wants MP3s. We have MP3 walkmans, players, car stereos, stereo components. We don't want a crippled version of song no matter the price.
Universal- will allow buring to CDs with you can then rip into MP3 format.
Sony- will not be allowing any burning
Re:They just don't get it.... (Score:3, Informative)
Reasons (Score:2)
They don't want to invest more money in signing new bands and creating new music. So naturally they'll try to appease the masses and get the semi-legit folks that have downloaded illegally, to pay for their music at the rate most people have been saying they'd pay for music.
If that doesn't catch enough fish in the net, then they'll lower the price further, or have discounts, or anything that will get a majority of people to actually pay something for the music they probably already have gotten for free.
Then they'll switch to the standard tactics of screwing over everybody once they've gotten us back in the mindset that we need to pay for this stuff.
It's the format, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It's regrettable, because this is a step in the right direction, but this won't fly.
The article mentions that the tracks discussed by Universal are to be in Liquid Audio format.
(More about them is available here [liquidaudio.com])
Closed-format music that I can't play in non-Windows operating systems or in a dvd or car cd deck that can decode mp3 CD's doesn't interest me in the slightest. MP3 succeeds because it's portable and small. Liquid audio files may not be very large, but they're not portable at all (except to Rio players).
By the time I've converted to CD and then ripped to mp3 again, I've spent way more than $1 worth of time, and I'm inclined to just go get an mp3 rip of the song and have done with it.
Sorry guys, try again. They're halfway there, but it's got to be MP3, or bust. The really depressing part of all this is that when this fails, it will fail because the dirty thieves on the internet want something for nothing, not because they tied themselves to a wrongheaded proprietary format that nobody asked for and nobody needs.
Re:It's the format, stupid (Score:2)
No, when this fails, it will be because they tied themselves to a wrongheaded proprietary format that nobody asked for and nobody needs. There will always be dirty pirates that want something for nothing, and there's nothing that will change that. The exact customers that would really make this a success are the going to be the ones that reject it, simply because they are using a wrongheaded proprietary format.
Re:It's the format, stupid (Score:2)
One one CD I bought online... (Score:2)
Why?
I couldn't find it online. Not on Napster, not on IRC, not on the web. Anywhere. Only place I could get it was some obscure online CD store. So I did.
What use is cheap music downloads if it's just the latest crap out of boy-band-du-jour? You can download that from anywhere free. Sell the bands that weren't quite as heavily advertised. Bandwidth is (well, marginally these days) cheaper for bands who won't sell high volume of CDs.
Re:One one CD I bought online... (Score:2)
Why or why not?
Incredible Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
The source of the data is missing from the Yahoo story, does anyone know who's ass this data was pulled from?
Is Liquid Audio... (Score:3, Informative)
Artists can't make a living (Score:2)
I have seen pirate copies of my album sold in the street and it hurts to see the fruits of your hard work stolen on every corner. Since Ukrainian artists cannot make money selling their albums, they are forced to give endless concerts to survive.
Maybe he should come here to the USA, where the vast majority of artists can't make any money from their albums either, once all of the expenses are deducted from their meager royalties.
The question on my mind about the MP3 download is if the labels still deduct 10% from the artists royalty to cover "breakage" of the albums in transit, stores, etc?
Damn Britney Spears! Damn her to hell! (Score:2)
Naturally, this means that the people who produce the content for those pirate CD's are to blame.
It's time to stamp out the source of this evil money pit. The artists!
I'll do it (Score:2)
OK, what's the catch? (Score:2)
I don't like it. The other shoe must be ready to drop and it'll be mind-bogglingly stupid of them - it has to be, or I just might have to start changing my mind about the labels and giving them my business again!
Seriously - if the major labels will release music in a high-quality digital format, sell it to me for a reasonable price, and then let me burn it to my heart's content, I will be more than willing to buy it. Most of the music I've grabbed off Gnutella is the occasional single of something that's catchy, but just not worth buying a whole album for, or stuff I have already on LP. If you charge me a reasonable price, I'm actually happy to pay for it instead. No problem.
Right now the ridiculous economic and distribution model the RIAA member companies rely on encourages piracy. Make it cheap and easy to buy music and do what you want with it, and most consumers will be honest. The only danger I see is that these companies fought unrestricted music so long and so hard that consumers have started to see P2P networks of music as a resonable response. It'll be interesting to see if folks change their habits.
My favorite quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Since Ukranian artists cannot make money selling their albums, they are forced to give endless concerts to survive.
I guess I should feel bad... except that this is the situation for all musicians everywhere, regardless of piracy. Musicians don't make money selling albums. Period. Especially musicians who have signed a recording contract.
Having been a musician myself, I have only one response to Katya Cilly: If you hate playing music so much, go get a real job.
I don't support piracy, but honestly, I never cared about it with regard to my own stuff. The point of recording music is so that other people can hear it and enjoy it when I can't be there to play it live. If somebody bought my CD and made copies for all their friends, great! Maybe all their friends would come to my next show. Nothing compares to playing a live show. That's what being a musician (or any kind of performance artist) is all about. If you don't like doing it, then being an artist is not the profession for you, and you should look for something else.
Use the Rhino Problem to extrapolate (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is how to count the number of Rhinos in the wilderness when you know you can't find them all and count them.
The solution is to capture 100 Rhinos. Tag all of the Rhinos and then release them. After a period, you go back out and capture another 100 Rhinos.
Let's say that out of the one's you've captured, 10 have your tags on them and 90 don't. From this you can extrapolate that you have 10 times the number of Rhinos in the wild than you originally tagged, or 1,000 Rhinos.
Don't know if they used the method or not, but its normally accepted as good research methodology.
Re:Use the Rhino Problem to extrapolate (Score:3, Funny)
Here's how a physicist measures (for example) the area of a circle:
Take the circle who's area you want to measure (diameter D, for example) and draw a square around it (side length D). Now shoot bullets at the whole bloomin' mess so that they are evenly (randomly) distributed over the figures. The ratio of the number of bullets that landed inside the square to those that landed inside the circle and that should proportional to the ratio of the areas of the square (easy: A=D*D=D^2) and the unknown circle. In other words,
Acircle = D^2 * [# in circle]/[# in square]
From this, we can conclude that the RIAA shot bullets at their customers, proving that anyone who isn't a pirate is now dead.
Q.E.D.
IFPI is counting legal copies as pirate (Score:2, Informative)
However, it was recently made legal to make digital copies of CDs and it has been so for the entire year 2001. You can even borrow CDs at the library and copy them at home legally.
It is still illegal to sell such copies, so it is possible IFPI is right and danes are too stupid to just borrow from the library and friends, and instead buy copies of real pirates. But it doesn't seem likely.
Too little, too late? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, they've left it so late that I fear (like others who have posted here) that it will fail.
Why?
Simply because music theft has become an "acceptable" activity in the eyes of too many Net users.
Pirates have learned to justify their activities by citing figures that indicate the recording artist sees only a tiny percentage of the sticker price for CDs.
If the recording companies had moved in while there were still pangs of guilt associated with the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted music then they could have pulled it off.
I predict that some people will opt to buy legal downloads (just like some have signed up to the subscription-based online services offered by record labels) - but the vast majority will continue to get their music for free.
This is unfortunate for all concerned because it means that we'll all end up paying more for our music.
Just watch the demise of the audio CD within the next two years.
The recording companies will force everyone to move to a new format with built-in DRM. Okay, so it won't affect hardened pirate (nothing ever will) but the recording industry will go ahead and do it anyway -- and we'll all end up having to buy new players just to gain (legal) access to the latest releases and paying the premium required to offset those development costs.
The solution?
The recording companies should give the damned music away for free!
No, I'm not kidding.
Let's face it -- they're effectively doing that every time a music vid screens on TV or when an FM station plays a track. Sure, there's a fee paid for each public performance -- but there's nothing to stop people from recording those broadcasts and burning them to disk or CD. Hell, I've got a great (and growing) collection of MPEGs containing all my favourite music videos. When it comes to "pop" music, I just capture what I want from free-to-air broadcasts and burn it to VCD or SVCD. I don't have to download MP3s -- I just record the audio and video track.
Artists and recording companies should put all the music on the Net for free and switch to other revenue streams.
What other streams?
1. Product endorsement (how much does Britney Spears make from her Pepsi commercials??)
2. Live concerts. Let's face it -- how does any recording artist justify earning millions of dollars for a few weeks in the studio cutting a new album?? Perhaps they could do some *real* work for their money -- just like the rest of us have to.
And there are an armful of other revenue streams that could be generated by giving away free music.
Perhaps it's time that the recording industry realized (just as the manufacturers of carbon-paper, horse-shoes and vacuum tubes had to) that the market has changed and old products and business models may no longer be valid.
The MPAA will have to take the same long look at itself -- and perhaps actors will have to realize that a couple of months work simply isn't worth tens of millions of dollars.
About the "handwaving"... (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect that the 20th century will be viewed as an aberation as we move to a "Star Trek" economy of art, where no one watches TV anymore (or listens to the radio, etc). Instead, people will prefer to attend live performances, usually by firends or family, occasionally by a recognized star. Like the Grateful Dead always did, recordings will be used primarily to introduce someone to a performer; the "true experience" will be the live concert.
What I want. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no reason that they couldn't charge me $0.05 per song or less. Hell, it's resonable to expect that it's $0.99 for the first ten MP3s, $0.50 ea for up to 100, $0.05 for up to 1000, and a penny thereafter. No cost to them, no loss, it's basically free money. Now, if/when I ever get audited for my music I come up green and not red on their Good Boy/Bad Boy list. Everybody wins, except probably the artist, but then again, they're the ones who sold their rights to the music. It's a fucked up system, but this would at least appease two of the three parties in the tight spot.
Regardless, until then, CDs are too overpriced and inconvenient for me. Call me a bastard, I'll deal.
Hand waving? I'd call it fraud. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, take another look, this time at the cute pie graphs. You'll notice that while CD-R piracy increased from 165 million copies in 2000 to 450 million copies in 2001, cassette piracy dropped from 1.2 billion to 900 billion.
Out with the trusty HP calculator: 450 - 165 = 285, and then 1200 - 900 = 300. Oooh, look at that: 285 < 300. Cassette piracy dropped more than CD-R piracy increased.
Lets add in the pressed CDs: 500 million in 2001, 475 million in 2000. That would mean an increase of 25 million. So, takin all formats into account, we have an increase of 10 million. A whopping 0.5% increase from 2000!
Gee, wonder why they didn't include cassette piracy in that bar graph, huh? Would have spoiled their party.
Now, if my sources are correct, the annual growth of the population of the world is somewhere around 1.3% annually, which is more than 0.5%. I guess this means that piracy per person, at least where physical copies are involved, dropped.
But of course, the goal is to levy tax on CD-Rs as "compensation" to the music publishers, so why look at the facts?
Re:HA! (Score:3, Insightful)
IRC (Score:2)
Re:HA! (Score:2, Informative)
I've been a happy EMusic subscriber for months now and I can't see getting rid of it.
Re:HA! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:HA! (Score:2, Insightful)
That sure competes well with "free" to me.
Re:HA! (Score:2)
That said, 99 cents is too much. Back around 1987 that is what I used to pay for a 45rpm single. Now all they're giving me is access to bytes and want to charge the same amount? I don't think so.
Plus even if it's not too expensive, I'm not going to hassle with paying 99 cents for a track which requires that I register, give up a credit card, personal information, etc. when I can just pick it up in minutes free, no hassle, no personal information, done.
As I've also said before, the natural price of music is now zero. The free market has decided that. This is is showing that the free market is forcing the RIAA to move towards that price. They're not going to give away music because that'll be the end of their business--but going from a $20 CD to a $9.99 downloadable album or a $0.99 track is the RIAA realizing that the natural price is lower than what they've been charging.
Of course, they still haven't realized that the natural price is zero. But it's a matter of time.
Re:no copy restrictions? (Score:2)
Weren't we just discussing this yesterday?
How about this: the article said that Liquid Audio usually produces encrypted, watermarked files, but that their format won't be used in the end. If their server alters each download by just one bit somewhere in the body of the file, something that no audiophile would notice, that would completely change the MD5 sum. If they let us download WAVs or 320k MP3s, a split second of dead audio at the end of the track would provide for millions of unique MD5 sums usable as serial #'s.
Store the MD5 sum with the paying customer, and look for it to appear in the wild. Voila, a non-copy protected MP3 that can be uniquely traced to the person or persons who purchase and redistribute music. Would you use some kind of editor to tweak bits in an MP3 file before you redistributed it just to make sure that the MD5 sum has changed?
a nit (Score:2)
There are hash functions that are much harder (though probably not impossible) to alter without mangling the sound.
Re:no copy restrictions? (Score:2, Interesting)
So you could download, convert to MP3, and give to your friends. Then one of your friends posts it to Kazaa. Well the company is monitoring the file sharing networks and comes across your song. They trace it back to you using the watermark, send in the lawyers, and cut off your service.
I'd tell my friends to get their own damn account. I don't need the hassle and it's only a buck for crying out loud.
Music is free (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, but that was years ago. RIAA should have reduced their prices long ago. At the very least when Napster hit the scene. Instead they sued Napster into oblivion, increased their prices, and watched more P2Ps pop up. Now they want to drop prices and hope people will come back? No, it doesn't work that way.
If you could have sold 486 technology to IBM in 1980 you could have made billions of dollars. Now, you can't sell 486 technology to anyone, period. In 1980 you were in a good bargaining position, today that bargaining position is gone.
Likewise, the RIAA was in a monopoly position for decades. They were in a good bargaining position, still, in 1990 and could have reduced prices to fend off the "need" for users to go to P2P to get their music. Now, P2P is everywhere and they can't control it--and now they want to make a counter-offer? It doesn't work that way... They are no longer in a position to negotiate.
I will no longer pay for music, period. Only if I happen to be at the mall and happen to remember a CD I want and happen to know that there are at LEAST 3 tracks that I want. That last criteria (minimum 3 good tracks) is usually the deal-breaker.
Fact is, many people (including me) have been exposed to free music. Not only is it free, it can be obtained in a heartbeat and without having to identify yourself or give up personal information or a credit card number.
Even if the price is 1 penny per song I am not going to leave P2P to go to some corporate website to give them my name, address, phone number, credit card number, and email address to get my music. P2P is safer, more convenient, and faster.
Sorry, game over.