Album price 'should drop to £1' ($1.60 U.S.)

[Richland123]

Album price 'should drop to £1' ($1.60 U.S.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11547279

[DylanB]

Interesting reaction from Steve Lawson: http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/10/music-is-worthless/

[Richland123]

A British pound would be about $1.60 U.S.; so, according to the article, if we could get an entire album for less than $2, the economies of scale would increase profits based on exponentially more purchases and also drive concert and merchandise sales and profits for the artists as well. In the perfect world, that would be great and I can see how it can work to an extent and people would be more likely to buy an entire album than donwload songs for $1 each. However, recording piracy is another topic that the article hopes to see decline if this approach was in place but piracy seems to be here for a long time.

[jp58]

I don't know if I agree with that.

They tried that with some computer games a while back. They gave people the option to pay what they felt the software was worth. Most people still didn't pay, and even more surprising was the fact that the game was torrented and pirated even though it was available for free.

I can't find a link for that right now, but I'm still gonna dig for it for a bit.

[NateS]

Originally Posted by jp58

I don't know if I agree with that.

They tried that with some computer games a while back. They gave people the option to pay what they felt the software was worth. Most people still didn't pay, and even more surprising was the fact that the game was torrented and pirated even though it was available for free.

I can't find a link for that right now, but I'm still gonna dig for it for a bit.

if it was available for free, then how it is pirated?

torrents are an alternate method of downloading that has many benefits over FTP and HTTP downloads. It is a more secure download, with built in protection against corrupt segments. So, some people prefer to download over a torrent because they can let the client download all night, and if there's a corrupted piece, then the client simply redownloads that piece. if you let a FTP or HTTP download run overnight and there's a corrupted piece on the last chunk, the file download is aborted and you dont find out until the morning.

it isn't fair to blame torrents on "pirating" already free material.

back on topic, sorry - i think that $2 cds would work. I know i'd be able to buy music readily again, and would. in the first article, i thought it was funny how the exec said "water is a pound. music is art. art should be expensive". yea, well, currently people get your "art" for less than water, so you should do something about it.

[bassbrad]

But the reality for the recording artist, whether it's an individual or a company, is that there is no way to recoup recording costs if you are selling units at "cost". Making a recording is costly, even if done in a home studio there may still be other expenses, mastering and reproduction costs. Certainly the prices can come down but let's not give away our noses to spite our faces.

[Deluge Of Sound]

It depends how much music is worth to you. I buy two to three albums a month. Because of that, I eat a lot of spaghetti. I'm ok with that, because the music is worth it.

If I could buy an album (a real, physical CD) for $1.60, I'd still only buy two or three albums a month.

[NineSpine]

Originally Posted by bassbrad

But the reality for the recording artist, whether it's an individual or a company, is that there is no way to recoup recording costs if you are selling units at "cost". Making a recording is costly, even if done in a home studio there may still be other expenses, mastering and reproduction costs. Certainly the prices can come down but let's not give away our noses to spite our faces.

I think that you are distorting the issue by talking about selling a download at "cost". The distribution costs of a download are a couple of cents at MOST, and even that is likely a gross overestimate. Therefore, the only cost is the cost of creating the actual product.

Based on this, there isn't really a way to sell something at "cost", because each unit (download) has no material value. "Cost" would be your investment divided by the number of downloads. That's not a feasible way to price things, obviously, because it requires you to accurately predict the number of downloads you will get beforehand.

The reality of the situation is that a VERY large amount of the decline in music revenues is simply due to the fact that record companies purposefully started cutting down on production of music singles in the 90s, forcing people to buy entire albums for one or two songs. With the advent of iTunes, singles came back in a big way. This is a factor almost nobody talks about.

The guy in this article has the right idea, even if his estimate may be a little bit low. The only way to stop piracy is to be more convenient than piracy, and this is the way to do it. The fact is that content is no longer a vehicle for revenues, and we can wax poetic about the various reasons for that, but that won't change the situation. Action will change the situation.

[vladchrome]

This doesn't seem realistic when you think of all the artist involved in creating an album. cover art, engineering, producing, the musicians.

[jp58]

Originally Posted by bassk81976

if it was available for free, then how it is pirated?

torrents are an alternate method of downloading that has many benefits over FTP and HTTP downloads. It is a more secure download, with built in protection against corrupt segments. So, some people prefer to download over a torrent because they can let the client download all night, and if there's a corrupted piece, then the client simply redownloads that piece. if you let a FTP or HTTP download run overnight and there's a corrupted piece on the last chunk, the file download is aborted and you dont find out until the morning.

it isn't fair to blame torrents on "pirating" already free material.

back on topic, sorry - i think that $2 cds would work. I know i'd be able to buy music readily again, and would. in the first article, i thought it was funny how the exec said "water is a pound. music is art. art should be expensive". yea, well, currently people get your "art" for less than water, so you should do something about it.

It has nothing to do with torrents specifically. I just thought that it was sad that people were more willing to download the game bundle from "pirate" associated websites, when it was already readily available for free if you clicked "I don't want to give you any money."

[NineSpine]

Originally Posted by jp58

It has nothing to do with torrents specifically. I just thought that it was sad that people were more willing to download the game bundle from "pirate" associated websites, when it was already readily available for free if you clicked "I don't want to give you any money."

As he said, torrents are safer and faster than clicking that button. If you are getting it for free, you are getting it for free. I download every patch for World of Warcraft from a torrent because the built in process is like being on dial up, for example.

[NineSpine]

Originally Posted by vladchrome

This doesn't seem realistic when you think of all the artist involved in creating an album. cover art, engineering, producing, the musicians.

It doesn't seem realistic to make more money because it's expensive to produce the music? The whole point of his argument is that reducing the cost dramatically will actually increase revenues, because of how dramatically the number of sales will increase.

[Richland123]

Originally Posted by NineSpine

I think that you are distorting the issue by talking about selling a download at "cost". The distribution costs of a download are a couple of cents at MOST, and even that is likely a gross overestimate. Therefore, the only cost is the cost of creating the actual product.

Based on this, there isn't really a way to sell something at "cost", because each unit (download) has no material value. "Cost" would be your investment divided by the number of downloads. That's not a feasible way to price things, obviously, because it requires you to accurately predict the number of downloads you will get beforehand.

The reality of the situation is that a VERY large amount of the decline in music revenues is simply due to the fact that record companies purposefully started cutting down on production of music singles in the 90s, forcing people to buy entire albums for one or two songs. With the advent of iTunes, singles came back in a big way. This is a factor almost nobody talks about.

The guy in this article has the right idea, even if his estimate may be a little bit low. The only way to stop piracy is to be more convenient than piracy, and this is the way to do it. The fact is that content is no longer a vehicle for revenues, and we can wax poetic about the various reasons for that, but that won't change the situation. Action will change the situation.

I just had this discussion with a friend of mine who used to be a radio station general manager and a DJ. Back in the 50s through 80s, a person could buy a 45 record or cassette single of a song. If they only liked 1 or 2 songs by an artist, they could just buy those songs and not an entire album. Music downloads brought that concept back but most people won't pay to download a whole album unless they like the artist or all the songs. Also, music downloads reduce the costs associated with producing an actual product such as a CD, packaging, marketing, distribution, etc. I, personally, miss the albums of long ago with the artwork, lyrics, etc. but the cost of CDs got to be very high and made it difficult to buy as many as I used to years ago.

[NineSpine]

I buy the vast majority of my music digitally, but I also buy a vinyl for albums I REALLY love, so I get the best of both the convenient and the tactile worlds. CDs are lame middle ground.

[champbassist]

Massive support for the cheap CD's idea. I was thinking of mentioning the same thing on the recently closed 'Gene Simmons: "Sue All Filesharers"' thread, but there were just way too many smartypants elitists there for me to bother mentioning this

FWIW, I'd like to mention that dirt cheap DVD's are working really well at fighting movie piracy in India.

[JimmyM]

check out this idiot:

"Jonathan Shalit, who discovered Charlotte Church and manages N Dubz and Russell Watson, described it as a "totally ridiculous suggestion".

""Right now if you buy a bottle of water it's £1," he said. "A piece of music is a valuable form of art. If you want the person to respect it and value it, it's got to cost them not a huge sum of money but a significant sum of money.""

that's it, dude. keep fiddling while rome burns.