Study shows Digital Music is too expensive

[payne104]

yeah i feel like a dollar for an mp3 is too much...

thats how you make a bunch of money... is you offer the same product as the competition for half the price...

anyone know a place online where you can sell mp3s for cheaper than a dollar???

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by payne104

yeah i feel like a dollar for an mp3 is too much...

thats how you make a bunch of money... is you offer the same product as the competition for half the price...

anyone know a place online where you can sell mp3s for cheaper than a dollar???

Only if you sell over twice as much. Otherwise, you make less than the competition.

[Multi-Monitors]

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there writing good songs...but the masses have no idea what "good" or "well crafted" or "genuine" music is and they never have...They just want a trend that they can latch onto to look cool in front of their peers...hopefully all the record companies will completely crash and burn and it will force people to actually appreciate "music" again...people are just shallow...sorry...Im just disgusted...I truly fell in love with music only to find out how taken for granted it is...and I'm bitter...

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by ukFaith

The cost of making an album today is the lowest its ever been by a massive degree and you dont have to record it at abbey roads.

So I am not convinced your perspective is accurate. Sorry.

It depends on what you call "making a record".

If you don't care what your "record" sounds like, yeah, you're right.

If you DO care, well, just for starters Tape costs $300 for a roll that lasts 15 minutes.

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by payne104

yeah i feel like a dollar for an mp3 is too much...

thats how you make a bunch of money... is you offer the same product as the competition for half the price...

anyone know a place online where you can sell mp3s for cheaper than a dollar???

No, that's how you don't make back your production costs. A buck is pretty minimal for one song. The problem comes in when you use brain damaged delivery formats like MP3. I agree that MP3s are virtually wortless - but that doesn't mean that the MUSIC is worthless. It is not the fault of the musicians, songwriters, or production team if YOU THE CUSTOMER choose to support a shitty format.

Oh, sorry, your production costs are ZERO because your "studio" is your bedroom in your mama's house. Weill, then you go right ahead and "sell" your "music" for what it's worth.

Originally Posted by 100th Monkey

Warp have started doing that. The next Autechre album comes with both a free 320kbps MP3 version and your choice of either 16 or 24 bit wav versions when you buy either the CD or vinyl.

What surprises me is that Warp Records started Bleep.com, their digital distribution service, a few years ago with the idea of selling high quality DRM free music. Logic would dictate that sinister moustache twirling pirates would rip off all that DRM-free music and leave them destitute but the opposite seems to have happened. They've gone from selling only Warp releases to carrying the releases of hundreds of labels in all kinds of genres, all of it DRM free, some of it FLAC.

Uh yeah. Try going on soulseek and typing in autechre.
The ratio of illegal pirating to actual purchase is pretty horribly low for warp.

Originally Posted by adpz

Also agree. In this day and age there's no real reason to not be at least offering wav files.

Wav files no, flac or another lossless format that supports tagging yes.
No point doubling your internet usage for no extra quality...

[John Willett]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

Why, when I was a boy.........(sound of grumpy old man bitching.......)

Just to make you sick - when I started driving, petrol in the UK was 3 shillings and sixpence a gallon (that's 17.5 pence) - that's less than 4p a Litre!

[adpz]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

Only if you sell over twice as much. Otherwise, you make less than the competition.

Ahem, . . .LOL!


Yes, you got to do your math son (OP).

[adpz]

Originally Posted by soulstudios

Wav files no, flac or another lossless format that supports tagging yes.
No point doubling your internet usage for no extra quality...

Yes, that is a better solution.

[rectifier]

Originally Posted by soulstudios

Wav files no, flac or another lossless format that supports tagging yes.
No point doubling your internet usage for no extra quality...

That's why I was so let down by this whole musicdna thing, same mp3 format with tags. We need better quality (imho) - flac/ogg. I would buy that, but I will not pay for mp3. Actually I'd like wav really. Can we get wav with tags? Why wasn't that looked into for musicdna, they missed the ball - I was asked why I thought it was thumbs down in another thread.

I'm still a cd buyer though, that won't change, I'm old fashioned. What I would like to see and others have suggested it, is access to wav/flac/ogg online when I buy a cd. Others will say cd is dead and maybe they are right, I realise I am perhaps in the minority with that, but cd + access to online files for me sounds good.

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by rectifier

That's why I was so let down by this whole musicdna thing, same mp3 format with tags. We need better quality (imho) - flac/ogg. I would buy that, but I will not pay for mp3. Actually I'd like wav really. Can we get wav with tags? Why wasn't that looked into for musicdna, they missed the ball - I was asked why I thought it was thumbs down in another thread.

WAV files are very simple and have no means to support tagging. And it would be completely useless to use them as a consumer format, because they have no benefits over a lossless compressed format such as lossess WMA or FLAC.

[rectifier]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

WAV files are very simple and have no means to support tagging. And it would be completely useless to use them as a consumer format, because they have no benefits over a lossless compressed format such as lossess WMA or FLAC.

Thanks Dean. So where lies the Flac fear? I know it's more bandwidth but it's 2010, over here some isps are switching to fiber connection this summer with no limit on data traffic and 100MBit lines. I ( somewhat illegally) watch all my football games on my pc/mac when they are playing on my tv (service paid for) in my living room, but I choose to rather not sit in my living room and I'm watching streamed HD sometimes, the tech is there. I don't see the excuse other than some people are still on slow connections.

Then again, the below is pretty mindblowing and most of my peers buy albums on itunes every day and don't care so much that it doesn't sound as *amazing* as cd, I think I'm just fussier:

Apple - iTunes celebrates 10 billion songs downloaded.

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

WAV files are very simple and have no means to support tagging. And it would be completely useless to use them as a consumer format, because they have no benefits over a lossless compressed format such as lossess WMA or FLAC.

WMA is a useless format because it is not universally supported. OGG is lossy.

That leaves FLAC.

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by rectifier

Then again, the below is pretty mindblowing and most of my peers buy albums on itunes every day and don't care so much that it doesn't sound as *amazing* as cd, I think I'm just fussier:

Apple - iTunes celebrates 10 billion songs downloaded.

It's not that mindblowing actually. That would have been less than two years worth of sales during the lates 90s, but it's been spread out over, what 8 years or something like that? So it's actually a fairly small number of songs relative to before.

[rectifier]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

It's not that mindblowing actually. That would have been less than two years worth of sales during the lates 90s, but it's been spread out over, what 8 years or something like that? So it's actually a fairly small number of songs relative to before.

Agreed but it's not the only point of sale. I was talking about my peers previously, well a lot of them still buy cds as do I - they also go for downloads but it's not the only format they buy in.

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by rectifier

Agreed but it's not the only point of sale. I was talking about my peers previously, well a lot of them still buy cds as do I - they also go for downloads but it's not the only format they buy in.

iTunes is far and away the biggest seller of legal digital downloads, AFAIK. If so, then it's performance is pretty much the measure of the performance of the legal digital download market in general. Streaming wouldn't count since that's a completely different model, and from the looks of things it may be doomed, because it can't make enough money to support itself, of it does support itself to pay anyone for the content it survives on.

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

iTunes is far and away the biggest seller of legal digital downloads, AFAIK. If so, then it's performance is pretty much the measure of the performance of the legal digital download market in general. Streaming wouldn't count since that's a completely different model, and from the looks of things it may be doomed, because it can't make enough money to support itself, of it does support itself to pay anyone for the content it survives on.

If streaming is doomed we're all in even bigger trouble than we already think - what else is there to take the place of local broadcast radio as a medium for the exposure of new artists?

Killing streaming is playing right into the hands of the pirates.

[John Eppstein]

study shows that food is too expensive!

[robertshaw]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

study shows that food is too expensive!

cereal is like $5.50 a box yet battlecreek michigan is one of the poorest
cities in the country other than Detroit. Something is not right.

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

If streaming is doomed we're all in even bigger trouble than we already think - what else is there to take the place of local broadcast radio as a medium for the exposure of new artists?

Killing streaming is playing right into the hands of the pirates.

I think streaming will mature and be viable - there are growing pains now because of the wrong promises and expectations.

Streaming is a radio model, not a retail one.

If streaming is treated like radio with appropriate PROs and tasteful polluting of the content so it doesn't actually cannibalize "premium" sales - then it will work.

Certainly there must be a technology that can automatically front and back announce on the music so the song is not "clean" much like radio. If streaming, even if on demand can build in the same types of limitations that traditional radio has had such as audio advertising and voice over - it has a chance.

the true streaming model will customizable radio stations, something like pandora but it the technology allows for targeted ads - I guess pandora meets google ad words, and sounds like terrestrial radio but without bad DJs and horrible morning shows...

this will lower the expectations for the revenue models, and truly serve it's purpose of promotion.

in my opinion, it's either that or moving to some kind micropayment of "rent to own" model where each play is 10 cents and you can download the song or deposit it on your cloud account after 10 plays

right now both the economics and expectations are out of sync

[Doc Vigilanti]

$.99 cents too much for a song, what ever give me a break y'all should be grateful that you can even pursue music as a viable career option. Not even a hundred years ago you had to be a musical genius to even think about becoming a professional musician and then you would be lucky if you even had money to feed yourself. Quit taking shit for granted and be grateful for the opportunities that we even have.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by redvelvetstudios

...Streaming is a radio model, not a retail one. ...

Streaming IS radio.

The whole interactive concept is B.S. because what makes radio (and virtually all other entertainment) compelling is the unexpected. The way you do that is original programming rather than spinning records. Yes, it costs money to do.

[rufus13]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

Streaming IS radio.

The whole interactive concept is B.S. because what makes radio (and virtually all other entertainment) compelling is the unexpected. The way you do that is original programming rather than spinning records. Yes, it costs money to do.

This original content can be call-in talk shows, interesting topic rambling talk with sound effects, interesting guest shows, etc. It's LIVE or almost-live, considers news of the day, and will be different tomorrow. The cheapest shows that are almost-interesting like this are the weekend morning financial shows where an experienced financial broker/agent/salesman goes on about the events of the week in relation to his customers (with over $500K to invest). An infomercial would be recorded, while this kind of show is not, even though it's almost an infomercial.

In Portland Oregon, a local team has produced "The Rick Emerson Show" on and off on various am and fm station for over 10 years. It's a show about the ongoing self-amusement, unemployment, pets, 4Runner theft(s) from the low-rent apt. parking lot, bicycling, drinking, and ADHD adventures of the namesake and his late-Gen-X cohort. It's 98% non-political with an ongoing theme of how to get by for pretty cheap, so there's no audience competition with Glen Beck or Rush. A minor theme was the ongoing possibility of instant radio unemployment (best of shows until mariachi or yelling LaRaza Talk takes over). I sold Rick and his wife (real job: RN) a few LP records at a local swap meet (JFK speeches/Apollo11broadcasts) so there are turntables in use.

I would dispute that it costs a lot of money to do a real show (local radio personalities get paid almost nothing). It only seems like a significant amount compared to spinning hard-drive platters of MP3 in full-automation mode (listening people hate that). Paying for a nationally syndicated show is not anywhere near free. The carrier must be filled with something or the FCC will take it away. The fixed cost of the studio and station hardware is already spent. A couple of local appliance/furniture stores or halogen lamp stores as sponsors and you are off to the races.

Radio stations were/are too expensive. Just like rent income sets reasonable investment building prices, ad revenue must eventually set the price of radio stations. No one pays $40M for an asset that brings in $1.2M gross and nets $300K, with lots of regulatory and competition risk, unless there is a whole bunch of "free money" (gov't money) to do it with. Bankruptcy should be encouraged to clear out the dead wood and reduce station prices to a sustainable level. I won't tell folks what their junk is worth, but I expect to pay less than a certain (low) ratio of cashflow and profitability for a business or rental to give me a reasonable chance of success.

Cheers.