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:
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
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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 tend to look at things based on revenue vs. cost and supply/demand. So my question would be - does it cost the same to produce a digital album download as it does a CD? I know there are website dev costs, bandwidth costs, etc, but I still can't see that costing anywhere near the same amount as the materials, product, and delivery costs of traditional media (records, 8-tracks, tapes, or CDs). CDs and DVDs cost more than their tape/VHS counterparts - in fact significantly more when they first came out. I remember a tape being about $10-12 and CDs being $20+ (Canadian pricing). The claim at the time was the higher cost of producing on this media, but the fact is they charged more because they could - people wanted the newer, better sounding option. So we adapted to the idea that a CD album costs $20 and those prices came down slightly (depending on the CD of course) over time. But even though it costs them less to create a CD then to create a tape, they were still charging more than they used to. So now we're left with the idea that $0.99/song is supposed to be fair? I don't think so. I think people are willing to pay for it because it's the medium they want it in and it's convenient. Is the consumer saving money? Maybe just a little, but not as much as the record companies! In my opinion $0.25-0.35 is a much more reasonable price for a song (with fluctuations up or down based on the popularity of a song, which some music distributors are FINALLY starting to implement now). Given their cost savings I don't see why this is not achievable, but I'll admit I have not researched ALL of the numbers. The problem is that the music industry arrived VERY LATE to the party - so now they are left paying other parties (such as itunes) to be distributors when, if Sony had done it right, they would be running the sevice themselves. Unfortunately, the reality is if they only charged $0.01/song people will still pirate and other posters are right - the pirates will still use the $0.01 "overpriced" cost as their justification. I do believe confidently, however, that if the industry had adopted this new technology quicker and with a more reasonable price they'd have a lot fewer issues and a lot less pirating.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
why is piracy still rampant if acceptable pricing is the issue?
Because pricing is a canard offered up by crooks who want to justify their dishonest behavior. From a purely historical perspective, 99 cents is a very good price for a song; it's not even close to keeping up with inflation. Years ago, 99 cents could buy you a 45 RPM single record with two songs, one of them almost always being a stinker.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Some of the 'B' sides were better than the 'A' sides. Not only that but with a single you had a piece of plastic in your hands that you could play over and over again and on any record machine. So 99 cents for something tangible is much better value than 99 cents for a download!
Remember, nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humour!
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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
:) Theft will always exist, it is human nature. For those that are honest-at-heart all you have to do is remove the cognitive dissonance and they will no longer steal. (Anyone recall $30 rap CD's published by no name labels for the next fitty cent?) If you are that concerned; find a price and a means of delivery that appeals to enough honest people based on the current world view and apply it and you will make the maximum profit. As a side note: I doubt anyone is not guilty of piracy these days. If you really read some of the draconian user agreements you become a pirate the second you opened the label to read the agreement.
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States. A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane
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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
You've mixed questions. Is 99 cents too much?, is the choice you make every time you buy a song, depends on the song, depends on you. The piracy question is; which is a better price for a song, 99 cents or apparently free?. If it were actually free, I'd pick free over 99 cents. People who understand the choice they are making understand that piracy is not a sustainable model, there is a cost and their choice to pirate depends on someone else doing the right thing and paying those costs. To be truthful though, the costs are not what the record companies would have you believe. They are used to having an entry barrier to the market. In the past the general public couldn't press vinyl, or make high quality copies of tapes. The entry barrier gave them a lot of power, they could charge what the market would bear with restricted competition, they decided who was an artist and who wasn't. The entry barrier allowed them to charge in excess of the value they offered and allowed for a top heavy organization. The record companies haven't reacted well to the loss of their entry barrier, they'd much rather that things stayed the way they were. Instead of looking at what value they do offer and marketing that, they've decided to treat the public as an enemy. Truthfully, the record companies did add value, they developed and marketed artists, made them more broadly accessible. They could develop a profitable model based upon the value they do offer, instead they have saddled us with DRM and legal fees and bullshit. Sony went so far as to install rootkits on peoples computers. People who want to take the free choice look at the record companies pathetic behavior and use that as their excuse to steal from everybody. That is the way some people are, when they want to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior, they find someone else to blame for their behavior. Unfortunately the record companies have make it to easy for a lot of people.
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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 see the question as one of relative pricing of mp3s to CDs. If a 12 song CD sells for $15.99 in the store ($1.25 a song), is 99 cents a song really fair relatively? Consider that the CD is a physical object that has to be produced in a factory, boxed up, shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, sorted and stocked in a store by hand, and then sold at a cash register by a person and placed in a plastic bag. In the case of downloads everything is automated. True, the software has to be written and maintained. But, even given that programmers are a lot more expensive than cashiers and shelf-stockers the labor costs are still minimal. And, there is no transportation, no real estate being used in ten of thousands of locations, etc. My view is that a download should cost no more than half of what the same song would cost on a CD. So, I would say a maximum of 66 cents a song and preferably around 50 cents a song. DXer Guy
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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.”
I completely agree. I used to actually buy CD's all the time. I pretty much completely turned to piracy because I am always worried that the music I buy legally will not work when I do my "almost weekly" reshuffling of files, devices, etc. Just the other day I had a friend (he's not technically savvy) call me asking me how to load his iTunes-bought music into his wife's new workout mp3 player. There really is no "easy" answer. We used to not have this problem with CDs. Even though my music collection started out as almost 100% legit, I doubt there's 10% of my music that I actually paid for. I would love to pay for music, if I can actually have it afterward. I'm not paying 99 cents for something that I will not actually own. I am a software engineer, so I do believe that people should pay for IP, but the problem with the music industry is that their only means of "customer support" is to sue their customers. Not the best way to stay in business, if you ask me.
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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
Depends on where you live. For 1 USD (roughly Rs. 50) I can have a full lunch at a decent restaurant and still have money left over for tips.
Cheers, Vikram.
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