Is 99 cents per song a fair price for music?
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Personally I think it is rampant because it can be done. Piracy goes back to the first 'thing' that someone wanted a copy of. Is making a photocopy of a book piracy? Yes, but why do you not hear screams over that? Why do publishers not go after Xerox for creating devices that clearly allow, and one might say 'promote', the act? Copier companies get to tout that their copies are a clear as the original. I know that people that write songs and perform for a living work hard and put a ton of effort (most of them :) ) into their work and should be able to expect to get paid for it, I have no argument for that. My problem comes in how the music industry attempts to write law that impinges on my right to use. heck, I honestly think if they had their way it would be against the law to listen to music in a public place without headphones. I don't have an answer really. People are always going to want what they want and figure out a way to get it. Piracy is really a legal problem that I do not see an end to. Copyright holders are legally bound to enforce their copyright or risk loosing it just like patent holders can risk loosing a patent to the public domain if they knowingly allow infringers to use patented materials without permission. I think that piracy has gotten out of hand, kind of like the war on drugs. It continues to escalate until no one can possibly win. In the end the consumer looses due to high prices, crappy technology that gets int eh way of a good user experience, and people that stop seeing a specific industry and being a viable business direction.
Ray Cassick wrote:
Why do publishers not go after Xerox for creating devices that clearly allow
Actually, they did. There were many lawsuits about this, especially concerning reference material. One huge difference is that even with the cheapest copier prices, copying a book is pretty damn expensive. Another difference is the simple logistics--lugging around paper is not only expensive, but makes it far easier to get caught. (Catching some guy with stacks of copied books in his garage is pretty damning evidence.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Personally, I think that CD's are quite fairly priced when you put it into context of how many hours you listen to them. When I buy a new CD, I'll listen to it over and over again. I'll put it on my iPod and play it in the car, at work, at the gym and get hours of listening entertainment out of it. On the other hand, paying $20 for a DVD is a total rip-off. I'll watch it once, maybe twice if it's really good, and then I'm done. And if you think that 2/3 of CD content sucks, you're listening to the wrong bands. The last "CD" I bought was Hrs:Min:Sec by XP8[^], and there really isn't a bad song on there. Sure, some are better than others, but nothing that I would purposefully skip through. Having said all that, I will never buy any music with any form of DRM attached to it. I'll either get it from the Amazon[^] store, AmieStreet[^] or buy the CD.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
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Fantastic songs, by known artists can attract a pretty penny because they're good and they're known. 99c seems reasonable in this case, $14.85 is reasonable for an album with 15 fantastic tracks. Most albums, or for that matter music, is not fantastic. On average over the years I've found 2/3 of an album to be dross. I'll pay, and do pay, 99c for the few tracks worth buying. The album exists only because the cost of manufacture from recording to pressing made it economical in the past. In a world where the price of distribution is effectively 0 the economics become warped. I can see albums surviving as a collection of a lifetimes best works, a thematic musical piece of art or for niche collectors. In other words the exception rather then the rule. Is 99c worth spending on a track? That depends on the track and artist. New upcoming talent should be discounting, or distributing free. Established talent can shift for as much as they can get. It wouldn't truely be merit over marketing, as teenagers are a bunch of moronic sheep. But I believe it would provide a better experience for a diverse public.
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable.
$.99 is a good price simply because it falls into the category of an "impulse buy". Same reason that cheap hamburgers are sold for $.99, and whole chains of retail stores operate under the mandate that every individual item sold must be $.99... It's why i rent movies, on those rare occasions when i do rent movies, at the little kiosk in the neighborhood grocery for $.99/each rather than paying $4 a pop for PPV movies from my satellite TV provider. While neither price is going to make a noticeable difference in my expenses given how few movies i rent, the former is low enough that i don't even bother thinking about it - movie catches my eye, movie gets rented. As i'm sure you know, this doesn't mean that some individual tracks couldn't sell just as many copies at a higher price point, or that others wouldn't sell more at a lower price. A collector might easily pay much more for a nice box set, some kid who just wants a top-40 tune on his cell phone might pay $2 for it... or just get his friend to transfer his copy via Bluetooth and pay nothing. But iTunes has fought hard to maintain a single price for all songs, because that's part of its branding: you know what you're gonna pay for a track before you even open the application, just as you know what that bean burrito will cost before you pull into the drive-through at Taco Bell. The consistency helps to reinforce the "impulse buy" attitude. I'm nowhere near qualified to speculate on whether the ideal price-point for individual songs is greater or less than $.99. If merchants were free to set whatever price they wanted, they would almost certainly play around with the pricing a bit, collect and analyze the data, and come up with something that hit a sweet spot between volume and profit. But if i was running a record company, i'd be looking intently at the data from those quasi-legal Russian music shops that sell tracks at wholesale rates of $.10 to $.20 per song...
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
I think that 99cents/$10 album would be a reasonable price if, and only if, you could have it in any format and could move it between any of your own devices. This would of course increase the possibility of piracy, but since the current systems are well and truly broken, what the hell. My 99 cents. :)
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Any price is fair if 99% of it goes directly to the artist and thus you can decide artist by artist what is fair. If 50% of that 99 cents is going to Apple for nothing more than providing the website and crappy player software then no, that's not just.
"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
I don't trust the itunes software on my computer. True, I've never tried that particular one, but I've had too many bad experiences with various media players (realplayer, quicktime and others) that I just stick with WMP and Winamp now and avoid anything else.
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Personally I think it is rampant because it can be done. Piracy goes back to the first 'thing' that someone wanted a copy of. Is making a photocopy of a book piracy? Yes, but why do you not hear screams over that? Why do publishers not go after Xerox for creating devices that clearly allow, and one might say 'promote', the act? Copier companies get to tout that their copies are a clear as the original. I know that people that write songs and perform for a living work hard and put a ton of effort (most of them :) ) into their work and should be able to expect to get paid for it, I have no argument for that. My problem comes in how the music industry attempts to write law that impinges on my right to use. heck, I honestly think if they had their way it would be against the law to listen to music in a public place without headphones. I don't have an answer really. People are always going to want what they want and figure out a way to get it. Piracy is really a legal problem that I do not see an end to. Copyright holders are legally bound to enforce their copyright or risk loosing it just like patent holders can risk loosing a patent to the public domain if they knowingly allow infringers to use patented materials without permission. I think that piracy has gotten out of hand, kind of like the war on drugs. It continues to escalate until no one can possibly win. In the end the consumer looses due to high prices, crappy technology that gets int eh way of a good user experience, and people that stop seeing a specific industry and being a viable business direction.
Ray Cassick wrote:
In the end the consumer looses due to high prices, crappy technology that gets int eh way of a good user experience, and people that stop seeing a specific industry and being a viable business direction.
That's exactly like the war on drugs. :)
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
I legally pay nothing. I use spotify[^]. If you don't like listening to an advert every few songs then you can pay a monthly subscription. It works for me. I'm happy with it. I know the artists are getting paid. I get what I want. And people can sell me stuff. It is radio on-demand - but with the exact mix of musix I like.
Man who stand on hill with mouth open wait long time for roast duck to drop in
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Sorry - I strayed from your original question. I pay 79p per song (in the UK) on iTunes. For a single song I think it is a fair price.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
I read recently that Bill Gates was concerned about the 90% piracy rate for Altair Basic way back in the mid-70s. There will always be people who want something for nothing. Certain group of people probably pirate more than others. For example students tend to be time-rich and money-poor. They therefore have the time to track down priated versions of the things they want. I'm time-poor and have no time to track down pirated versions of things. Also, I've always had a very ethical streak - I was the only person in my class at uni' to actually buy the student edition of Borland's Turbo C++. You might also like to look at the scandal that has been happing in the UK parliament the last few weeks as it has been revealed what our elected representatives have been claiming for in expenses. Moat cleaning, duck houses, payments for a mortgage on a second home that they no longer possessed, and so on.
Man who stand on hill with mouth open wait long time for roast duck to drop in
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Any price is fair if 99% of it goes directly to the artist and thus you can decide artist by artist what is fair. If 50% of that 99 cents is going to Apple for nothing more than providing the website and crappy player software then no, that's not just.
"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg
I have a feeling it's more like this: 60¢ - Record company 20¢ - Distributor (Apple, for example) 13¢ - Taxes for various entities 5¢ - Artist's agent 1¢ - Artist
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
Sorry - I strayed from your original question. I pay 79p per song (in the UK) on iTunes. For a single song I think it is a fair price.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
I read recently that Bill Gates was concerned about the 90% piracy rate for Altair Basic way back in the mid-70s. There will always be people who want something for nothing. Certain group of people probably pirate more than others. For example students tend to be time-rich and money-poor. They therefore have the time to track down priated versions of the things they want. I'm time-poor and have no time to track down pirated versions of things. Also, I've always had a very ethical streak - I was the only person in my class at uni' to actually buy the student edition of Borland's Turbo C++. You might also like to look at the scandal that has been happing in the UK parliament the last few weeks as it has been revealed what our elected representatives have been claiming for in expenses. Moat cleaning, duck houses, payments for a mortgage on a second home that they no longer possessed, and so on.
Man who stand on hill with mouth open wait long time for roast duck to drop in
How about the conversion factor?? I did a little Math Somebody said an entire album costs $14.85, let's say 15. Assuming a family's gross earning to be @48k/year, the ration of album v/s income is 15:4000 = 3:800 Consider India, where cds retail at approximately $12. A graduate earns approx $600/month. Ratio 1:50 Of course, given how sad the "broadband" in India is, we probably arent pirating as much. But really, conversion really hurts us. A lot more than we want it to.
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
99 cents per song / $10 per album is WAYYY too little to pay for good songs. Led Zep albums are priceless (to me, at least). The whole piracy thing is a cop out. It's always existed and always will exist. You hope that the dumb kids will grow old, grow some gonads and finally pay for the stuff they stole now that they're old with money. Personally, my problem is FINDING good songs. I've got a Rhapsody subscription and I've found a bunch. But how many of them are from before the 80s versus after? A LOT! My biggest beef with record companies is not how much they charge. It's that they're not doing their job: Finding a LOT of GOOD music and putting it on the radio where I can hear it and consequently want to buy it. In the 80s (yeah yeah yeah, I'm old) I would go down to Tower Records EVERY week and there was SOME album I'd heard that I wanted to buy. Now adays, it's MAYBE once every 2 months (at best). And that's not just cuz I'm old :) The record companies have taken to limiting the new songs to a handful of crap. If I have to pick from THAT handful, I'll take nothing, thank you very much. That's why their profits suck. They're not finding any decent songs. Only offering me a choice between crappy song A and crappy song B. Maybe SOME people will actually pick from that pile, but I won't. Find me another Led Zep, record companies!! I know there are some great artists out there. I also know that record companies used to HELP artists create good pop songs. They sure as heck don't seem to be doin' that no more!! Let's see what the top of the pop list has for me today... Eminem, Green Day, Cold Play, Jack Johnson, Beyonce ??? Ok, well, Cold Play doesn't suck and Jack Johnson only sucks a little. But, umm, barf out... gag me with a spoon... X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| ...SteveH http://pianocheater.com[^]
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No it is not a fair price. Consider that the new 120Gig IPOD now hold 30,000 songs. Who has 30K to spend on music? Seriously... I think some sort of subscription model might work, like MS wants to do with the Zune...
I didn't get any requirements for the signature
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
like MS wants to do with the Zune...
you mean like Spotify and others are already doing, as usual M$ is so far behind the eight ball it can't even be snookered ;P 99c for a 4min (0.42c/sec) ephemeral pop song written last week seems a bit steep to me. In six months time I'll probably have forgotten it or even grown to hate it. In contrast I can get a 45min Beethoven Symphony written more than 200 years ago for $7.00 (0.26c/sec), which I (or my descendants) will still want to listen to in another 200 years. The $7 is then an investment, which I doubt could be said for Britney Spears latest hit song - If U Seek Amy. I think something closer to 25c might be a more equitable price for a pop-song. You'd only need 2,667 symphonies to fill up a 150G IPOD, might wait for the 500G model :laugh:
Multi famam, conscientiam pauci verentur.(Pliny)
modified on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 2:33 AM
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
I'm surprised this hasn't been said already, but any price that people are willing to pay is a fair price. That is the beauty of a free economy. You provide value to people and they vote for your product or service over another's by voting with their dollars. Whoever provides the best product (value) gets the most votes (dollars). When people perceive that value is no longer their (i.e. the price is too high for what you get) then they stop voting for you (paying you money) and then you either lower prices or go out of business. It is self regulating (when left alone to do so). So as long as people pay $xx for DRM music then DRM music will continue to proliferate the market. When people stop paying for it then that is when you see alternative services popup that are DRM free or a lower priced DRM service. In the end, as long as it is a win-win situation where the customer receives enough value to warrant the purchase and the company receives enough profit to warrant the production of the product then the market will continue. On a side note, this is the same with artists. As long as they continue to receive enough value (compensation) to warrant their continued work and production in that field, they will continue to do so. If they felt they were truly being ripped off then they would create their own marketing companies and such that they own themselves and take control. If they don't do this then they must be ok with the arrangement, and so I have no pity for them since I have no business interfering with a 3rd party contract, especially when both parties are seemingly happy.
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
The best comment I've heard on this was from a British rock player, when asked for his opinion on music "piracy": "I'm stinking rich anyway, so why should I care?"
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I have a feeling it's more like this: 60¢ - Record company 20¢ - Distributor (Apple, for example) 13¢ - Taxes for various entities 5¢ - Artist's agent 1¢ - Artist
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^]How many great musicians do you know that either, dont make it or end up playing cover songs in crappy restaurants? I know quite a few decent to great artist that are not backed by a record company that will likely never become big. If you ever want to have a platinum album you need a record company. Sure it's a really fun and cool business to be in, and you can become famous, but at the end of the day its just a business. You may think its unfair that the guys at the top make all the money and the artist takes home the least but in any other field thats exactly what happens. Where theres 1,000 people ready to take your place, it's gonna deflate the wages.
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Personally I think it is rampant because it can be done. Piracy goes back to the first 'thing' that someone wanted a copy of. Is making a photocopy of a book piracy? Yes, but why do you not hear screams over that? Why do publishers not go after Xerox for creating devices that clearly allow, and one might say 'promote', the act? Copier companies get to tout that their copies are a clear as the original. I know that people that write songs and perform for a living work hard and put a ton of effort (most of them :) ) into their work and should be able to expect to get paid for it, I have no argument for that. My problem comes in how the music industry attempts to write law that impinges on my right to use. heck, I honestly think if they had their way it would be against the law to listen to music in a public place without headphones. I don't have an answer really. People are always going to want what they want and figure out a way to get it. Piracy is really a legal problem that I do not see an end to. Copyright holders are legally bound to enforce their copyright or risk loosing it just like patent holders can risk loosing a patent to the public domain if they knowingly allow infringers to use patented materials without permission. I think that piracy has gotten out of hand, kind of like the war on drugs. It continues to escalate until no one can possibly win. In the end the consumer looses due to high prices, crappy technology that gets int eh way of a good user experience, and people that stop seeing a specific industry and being a viable business direction.
Interestingly enough, here in Germany copier manufacturers pay a fee for each machine they sell (increasing price of course) which then gets tranfered to collecting societies (I hope that's the correct word). The same happens with recording media of (almost) any kind, from tapes to CD-Rs. As far as I understand that's because we're basically allowed to make copies for private use and if we do not break or circumvent any efficient copy protection to do this (yes, I know the question: Is a copy protection that can be broken or circumvented efficient? Has been debatted here since then. I don't know if there's any court ruling yet.).
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
hi, Simple thing. If you have a heart for the one who made that songs. think that he deserves that money because he hard worked for it. You would not want to steal the food from his plate, you would not support piracy. 99cents is costly in India. Very costly, we could get three regional movies for that price. The songs(iTunes once) are available in US, tough to get in other countries and US does not give any value for other part of the world. The rebates, the 99 cents, all of it is only in US. Try rapsody, it only available in US. Pardosa or somthing another music online, they say it is only available in US. Try amazon, only available in US. For some lucky thing Ebay has come to India. You people should be in the heart of the fruit, getting all the best, the world has been offering(my guess).
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From the previous thread and countless other conversations, one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that record companies charge too much for CDs. If they were more reasonably priced, so the reasoning goes, there wouldn't be such massive piracy. They're being greedy and unfair, and consequently it's justice of some sort to take their music for free. I'm also often reminded that the old music business model is now dead, and people point to the success of iTunes and the 99 cent song / $10 album to highlight the fact that this is a better way of doing business and one that the public finds acceptable. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (apologies for the pun), let's limit our question to the titles available on iTunes, which of course are also heavily pirated nonetheless. With that in mind, is 99 cents per song a fair price for music? If so, as iTunes' success would seem to demonstrate, why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
I think so (79p UK anyway, and now without DRM on iTunes). I however won't pay for downloads, I want the physical media. However, something has to be said for the ability to torrent. I torrented an album yesterday, and I believe I had the right to do so, here's why: I bought a used album from FYE while on holiday last week, I got home last night and when I went to rip it it wouldn't play, on further inspection, it would appear there's a tiny, but major scratch. So now I can't listen to it, but I've paid for the right to legally do so, and I'm hardly going to fly back to exchange it. So I went to a torrent site, searched, downloaded, imported to iTunes, and copied to my iPhone. I felt no guilt in doing this.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man