Is human nature - our only hope?

[Jules]

This was a response to another thread on piracy, but I copied it to its own thread and gave it a title.

In real simplistic terms, ultimately, will the financial future for musicians lie in good 'human nature'?

Human nature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I suppose the Radiohead experiment might be a good test of this...

Special guests, you thoughts?

[fadeproof]

If Radiohead can produce $6-10 million dollars in revenue over 2 weeks, all on there own, off of a "name your own price" model, than things are still alive. Obviously, Radiohead is on a world renowned scale, however I feel their honesty about the pricing of the album was one of the best marketing tools I've seen in the past decade for music and no artist big or small should feel that the industry isn't afloat. With the majority of revenues being focused in on live shows as well as licensing, and major labels turning more into "major management", it will be interesting to see everything pan out.

[Derek Sivers]

Originally Posted by frans

We have to deal with two kinds of people - the ones who don't care (A) and those with a deep love for music who will seek and pay (B). I think it will boil down to: Do we've got enough folks of "B", to keep the biz afloat in some way?

Always!

When Steve Jobs launched the iTunes Music Store in 2003, my favorite line from him was, "They say you can't compete with free. Well, we think we can."

He explained that there are millions of people who would be glad to pay $10 to download an album, but there is (was) no legal way for them to do it.

Those people were wasting their time on P2P Kazaa Limewire type services taking hours to get corrupted versions that might stop downloading halfway through, but if someone were to make it fast, easy, failsafe, definitive, and legal, and great quality, they'd be glad to pay for it.

You can convert people from (A) to (B) if your offer is enticing enough!

When people say, "Oh nobody wants to pay, it all sucks, blah blah blah." - that moaning does nobody any good.

Those who ask the question, "How can we make this more appealing or more valuable to people?" - will find the interesting answers.

Hell, they found a way to make millions of people happy to pay for bottled water, didn't they?

[minipoodle]

iTunes is awful quality- especially for the price compared to a cd. All Steve Jobs cares about is keeping the mp3 format popular so apple can sell iPods.

[soundslikejoe]

Originally Posted by minipoodle

iTunes is awful quality- especially for the price compared to a cd. All Steve Jobs cares about is keeping the mp3 format popular so apple can sell iPods.

agreed....

"The Future of Music" is an interesting book that people should at least check out. I don't agree with all it's concepts but find one very interesting.... "Music is less marketable as an individual product (this CD, this song) but more marketable as a service (water, cable, ISP)."

...........................................

The day's of old business models are dead; artist, record company, distributor, buyer. Granted iTunes is a fantastic concept (digital pipeline directly to the consumer) but in action is does often function to Apple's benefit instead of the consumers.

I would love to be able to get higher resolution versions of the media, versions in my format of choice (instead of Apple encrypted propietary compression), and most importantly an accompanying digital file that is akin to CD inserts with album art (or digital art) and other goodies (song lyrics, credits, bios, studio pics, whatever).

[lowswing]

Originally Posted by fadeproof

If Radiohead can produce $6-10 million dollars in revenue over 2 weeks, all on there own, off of a "name your own price" model, than things are still alive. Obviously, Radiohead is on a world renowned scale, however I feel their honesty about the pricing of the album was one of the best marketing tools I've seen in the past decade for music and no artist big or small should feel that the industry isn't afloat. With the majority of revenues being focused in on live shows as well as licensing, and major labels turning more into "major management", it will be interesting to see everything pan out.

only 38% of the people downloaded radiohead album payed for it... those who payed payed 6$ (average) for it.
in comparison to their past album sale figures,I'd say, they lost alot of money on this experiment...

for any other, less famous, band that would have done this test I wouldn't be surprise if only 5% of the people would pay anything for an album if they could and the average will not be more than 4$.
Internet made people to want everything fast and for free

[sam sanford]

i think its kinda ironic jobs prefers mp3's to higher quality music files.

the guy is always talking about art and stuff. but then he comes out with music files that are terrible quality.


but my band will end up putting a cd up on itunes anyways.

[PeterTuneCore]

There's no need to strive for an "altruistic" segment. Offer people a deal, a reasonable one, and they'll decide.

As for free, as they say, "You get what you pay for."

--Peter
peter@tunecore.com

[freestyle tromb]

Originally Posted by minipoodle

iTunes is awful quality- especially for the price compared to a cd. All Steve Jobs cares about is keeping the mp3 format popular so apple can sell iPods.

well, iPods can play any format that iTunes can, so that includes .wav, .aiff, and apple lossless. totally suitable formats! i don't think he honestly cares what format people keep their music in.
to add to that, he's trying to get labels to go in on the iTunes+ sales- higher bitrates and no DRM.

(oh yeah, and iTunes doesn't actually sell mp3s anyway! haha. it's AAC.)

anyway, if you don't like iTunes' format, sell some widely-playable yet high-quality files from your own site! or other digital download sites.

[Soulbrother]

to some extent by face to face interaction.

If a fan goes to a show and sees a great band sweating their guts out, he'll happily pay 20 dollars for their album, but it becomes less likely that he'll feel that affinity for them if he never sees them live.

So, Ironically, in these days in which high-quality recorded music is more available than ever before, live music is more important than it's been for a long time.

If you're just another of a gazillion bands on MySpace , that's one thing. If you're a fantastic entertaining dynamic live band that's another.

Quote: "iTunes is awful quality- especially for the price compared to a cd"

It's only awful quality to sound engineers. Most people think the sound of a 160 k mps is perfectly fine. I certainly dont find the "awful" quality of a 160 K Mp3 so bad it would affect my enjoyment of the music.