Universal Music To Cut CD Prices 835
phlack writes "CNN Money has an article about Universal Music Group's plans to slash their CD prices to $12.98 SRP, in an effort to combat piracy and bring consumers back into stores. It makes me hope the other giants will follow suit, and wonder if the music industry is finally listening to some of the consumer's complaints."
It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
But when a large segment of the public is going to be comparing $12.98 with the $0.00 filesharing price, I have to wonder if it will have any effect at all.
I wonder what the artists think of this? This price reduction has to impact their bottom line...
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking that the studios will absorb a lot of the difference and artists won't be too affected.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but their argument is that if you bankrupt the big 5, the artists will still exist, and can get a better deal with an "indy" label.
Not saying I agree with them, but that is how they managed to come up with "An artist is better off with $0 than with $1/cd"
Basically, what it comes down to is "I care enough about you to hurt you...but not enough to hurt me." If they REALLY cared, they would make a sacrifice themselves and NOT LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, rather than ONLY imposing a sacrifice on the artists.
Optimally, what you would want to do is download the songs, and then mail the artists a nice crisp $2 bill (Or coin, or whatever) along with a letter explaining WHY you are mailing them money. That way you get the music, the record company gets boycotted, AND the band makes money...more money than they would if you bought the CD.
Re:It's about time (Score:3)
Our how about this: CD with 12 tracks... .99$ per track, that's twelve dollars.... or you can get a physical CD, with art work and Cd and case, for 12.99 + tax. yeah. They might actually be getting competitive. Maybe.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
$13 is still a high price for a CD. I'll wait until they drop to the original cassette prices.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Funny)
Make sure you put your real return address on the envelope so the subpoena can find you that much easier.
Support the right to sell out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of us who are developers have no problem selling out our sense of code purity to make deadlines and cash a check, and I suspect that if we each thought that writing even the shareware version of the Office PaperClip could make us a buck, we would.
So let's at least cut the artist some slack and not be so critical of the music industry that we drive it out of existence. Support the right of the artist to sell out and cash in, and hopefully, they'll make music that recognizes our own god given right to do the same.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were the case, then no artist who had an independent label contract would try for a major label contract.
I know musicians on independent labels. They have to work day jobs to support their art. Musicians on major labels generally don't. Indie labels just can't generate the same kind of sales volume.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the "Good exposure is priceless" argument went out the window with the dot com crash. Even the great unknown musician who's trying to make a name for himself gets paid something by all those bars.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
See a pattern?
The pattern, fortunately, doesn't repeat ad infinitum from that point.
What you're describing is roughly analogous to the whole radio airplay concept. A record label (er, an artist) pays large amounts of money to stations to get a song played on the radio, then when the radio plays the song the artist (er, ASCAP) g
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me of the boss who, in declining to give an employee a raise, says "Well, most of it would have been taken up by taxes anyway."
Of course, that's a poor excuse for declining a raise -- the employee would have seen some increase, after all. By the same token, even if artists aren't making as much as the labels per-CD, they're still making some amount.
Better still, employees do it too (Score:5, Insightful)
Up here in the great cold north, higher tax brackets only apply to income ABOVE THAT BRACKET. It's not like the rest of your salary gets taxed higher because you got that $500 raise.
YMMV in other countries, of course
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW - I could be wrong; I haven't tested any of this.
PS - iTunes in Canada this fall? [macnn.com]
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of AOL users in Europe for instance, they will appear as ?.aol.com, and the whois entry will match a US address.
And I really don't see someone forging a connection to the iTunes music store, being that they have to work entirely blind (could you imagine sending your credit card number over the net a hundred times if you had to g
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I guess they don't give a shit to be blunt. I really don't think this reduction is going to hit them at all. The only people that will be affected by this reduction will be the guys working for the record company, the people that package the CD's, the guys in the record shop that will get less for each CD sold, etc etc. Not the artists themselves. They probably have a contract with the record company s
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but when a CD is hugely successful, who reaps most of the profits, the band, or everyone else? (Hint, it's not the band). Who ends up paying for producing the CDs, marketing, promotion, expensive videos that MTV never plays and everything else? It gets recouped from the band before they see their royalties.
The risk costs is pushed onto the band, but the record co reaps most of the reward.
I'm not shedding any tears for artists. They signed the contracts of their own free will.
You could argue that, but unfortunately in most cases the recording contract is the ultimate prize, and it's an opportunity that doesn't come along everyday, so most of them will eagerly sign the contract. If they say no, they may never get another chance.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not shedding any tears for artists. They signed the contracts of their own free will. What Love fails to consider is how often a label advances a band $1 and presses cds for $500K, and doesn't get any of that money back because the band flopped.
She does not fail to consider this at all. The label absolutely gets their money no matter what happens, because the artist is liable for the production costs and must pay it back no matter what. They also cannot declare bankruptcy. So if they end up getti
It's really not "about time" yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
How many artists see much of anything in the form of royalties? The problem is that we have not just middlemen, but corporate middlemen, companies that have to pay staffs that are not particularly small, as well as satisfy shareholders, pay corporate executive bonuses, and maintain voluminous legal departments, all to distribute this small piece of plastic. How does this work?
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember they RIAA doesn't sell music, they sell little plastic things and they are tring to keep a 1950's distribution and production model they can understand and the fact that there are nearly a quart of a mi
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be *pissed* if I had to pay $26.20 ($18.98 USD) for a crummy CD.
Dropping the price to $12.98 is still ~$17.90 CAD, which is just brutal.
Now the question is, will they drop the prices in Canada as well? or have they just decided that they can afford to bring the prices down in the US to reflect the same prices in Canada and still gouge us at the register?
Re:It's about time (remember the bread wars?) (Score:5, Insightful)
In post-capitalist 17th century UK, people couldn't afford bread. Rather than storm the bakeries and steal the bread, they stormed the bakeries and demanded a fair price.
People are happy to pay a fair price. Thats the very definition of fair value. A value people will pay.
Between overpriced and free, people choose free. But when they sense that a fair price can be obtained, ie, when the bakers (ie, the RIAA) are actually willing to come to the table and discuss the price, people will choose fair price over free because we require our socialeconomic systems to exist in order to benifit from them.
If we can't benifit at all, we might as well get for free. When we can benifit, we're smart enough to support that system rather than torpedo it.
Its the survivalist instinct that makes us choose between not and all and illegally free, and the same instinct that makes us choose fair price over damaging suppliers by aquiring their goods in a way that will put them out of business.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
That's your opinion, which I share of course, but consider this:
They proved they could get the price point for CD's when they first came out, $15-20 in '82 that I can remember, before that there were too few titles on CD that I cared about, and I was still collecting vinyl in those days.
So it turned out the market could bear the price.
So you and I realize the price is exorbitant, but, the price was not out of line with the demand curve.
The consumer (the millions w
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the true human aspect of the music comes out, and I don't just mean errors - I mean improvisation, expansion, performance.
The true value is not the *music*, it's the *artist*. And you're never going to truly appreciate that if you only listen to one expression of the talent, that is, a single CD.
I recommend checking out smaller concerts first. a) they're cheaper, and
Why live performances? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me help you. You may want to see a concert if you think you'd enjoy:
- the feeling of 'never stepping in the same stream twice' -- go see artist X every year for 5 years, and each performance of any given song will 1) be different than the CD version, 2) be different than the previous year, 3) be different than the previous night!
- hearing unscripted improvisation between artists -- many musicians claim that the set they're most proud of playing was NOT the one recorded in the studio for the CD
- the little live mistakes and recoveries of talented artists -- you'll rarely get that on a CD
- experiencing the energy of dozens or hundreds or thousands of like-minded people simultaneously grooving or interpreting or dancing or just chilling to the same music you love
- to experience the artist -- 16 bit stereo samples @ 44.1kHz captures audio quite well -- but it doesn't capture dance, facial expressions, stage antics, synchronized light/lasers/visual effects, costumes, etc.
Recorded music is here to stay, obviously, but live performance is different. It's not necessarily better. If you like any given artist though, it's enriching. More times than not, if I've appreciated an artist before going to see them live, the live experience made me respect them even more.
Some (not all) artists are multidimensional. CD is great for the car or bus or office, but CD doesn't do many artists the justice that live performance can. And of course, some artists suck live. Explore.
Re:Why live performances? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why live performances? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just One Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you prevent one of your friends from bringing along one of the artist's CDs and playing it over and over again in the car? By the time you get to the concert, you're sick of hearing them.
Why do people do that?
And no, "get new friends" is not an option. It took way too long to get friends in the first place.
Re:Don't forget (Score:3, Funny)
Holy crap, these things cost $75? No way I'm paying that much for an event that only lasts a few hours. I could set up a FreeBSD server for the price of two of these!
I don't do drugs.
Okay, I'm never going to a live con
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
To play devil's advocate for a moment...maybe THAT'S why they seem so keen on pushing just a few big artists? The air of legitimacy.
Pricey (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pricey (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometime during the late 90's I purchased a copy of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album for around $20.
Over the weekend, I was in Best Buy hell (waiting with a friend while he attempted to buy a 50" DLP HDTV without being forced into buying a $400 power strip...) and wandered over to the CD racks, having since lost the copy of The Wall which I'd bought half a decade ago.
They wanted... $33.
Fuck that -- if it were $15, I'd have considered just caving and buying the damned thing again (it's a double album, and a bloody good one at that).
If CDs were $3-$5 apiece (especially older ones), I'd have a huge legal collection. As it is, I'd rather download the MP3s for songs I bought the right to listen to years ago than to spend $33 for physical media which was doubtlessly produced for less than $3 and which cost me $20 when I legally bought it before.
This is a start, but come on, folks -- tapes used to be cheaper than this, and they cost much more to produce. I'll cheer when they're under $5 per album, and there are talks of shortening the length of copyright protection.
Re:Pricey (Score:3, Informative)
They're not really a competitor to a record company, but I think the guy meant that Best Buy is selling music for $12 already and now stores in the mall will have to follow suit since the MSRP is $12.
However, Best Buy does in fact publish music through their 'Redline Entertainment' division. But I doubt that it's any serious competition to a real record company.
ohhh.... like $3.00 is a price cut? (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you god! (Score:2, Funny)
It's a step in the right direction... (Score:2, Interesting)
good bands (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason why they are Listening is because (Score:5, Informative)
We are fighting back. People are boycotting, people are buying used CDs, people are setting up sites like
http://www.downhillbattle.org/ [downhillbattle.org]
And http://www.boycott-riaa.com/ [boycott-riaa.com]
The fight is just beginning! Its not even close to being over. This should prove that fighting back works more than begging politicians with emails and letters.
Yeah Right (Score:4, Informative)
taking it in the shorts with a measly 65,000% profit.
Give me a break. Like $12.98 is going to make me get excited about driving my car to a Brick and Mortar to purchase $0.02 of plastic. This is like Microsoft's strategy of settling lawsuits by selling software at a discount to schools.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah Right (Score:3, Informative)
$12.98 / CD is actually a HUGE CUT (Score:5, Insightful)
Hypothetical: you purchase a popular mainstream CD at a store such as Best Buy.
You would pay about $12.99-$14.99 for this CD.
This CD almost certainly retails for either $17.98, $17.99, $18.98, $18.99, or $19.99.
Incidentally, Best Buy tends to make less that $0.75 per popular CD sold, and frequently less than $0.50 on the ones in their ad. They sell only items they believe they can make huge volume on, with the hopes of drawing you into their store so that they will buy their other products which have sane profit margins.
MSRP of $12.98 means a Best Buy price around $8.99 -$10.49
Additionally: cost is not $0.02/CD.
Cost works something like this:
Production: $0.03
Royalties to Musicians: $0.05
Royalties to Songwriter: $0.08
Retained by retail store (covers costs like distribution, plus profits) $3.00 - $4.00
And this does not include the cost of producing the very first CD, generally on the order of $10,000 - $100,000 (varies greatly depending on artist and what all is going on) Amortizing this across all copies sold (lets assume 500,000 -- a pretty good amount for one disc) means that cost is between $0.02 and $0.20
Note that the numbers for royalty per album sold were real numbers I got from folks inside the music industry, but that they are about a decade old. IIRC, they have increased slightly lately, so it might be $0.10 / $0.16 instead of $0.05 / $0.08.
Anyhow, the total minimum cost per disc is on the order of
$3.36 / disc.
I have left out many of the costs involved in the production, distribution, and marketing of music because I don't have any decent numbers, so I'd just be guessing.
Even if the other costs are forgotten, $3.36 / disc cost vs. $12.98 MSRP means a profit of:
286%
instead of:
435% for a $17.98 CD
In short, yes the music industry can afford this cut, and it was a good idea, but IT IS SIGNIFICANT
Like I said, expect to spend on the order of $8.99 - $10.49 per new CD you buy at the discount stores (from Universal anyway)
Expect others to follow suit.
In my opinion the "Best Price for an Album" -- as in, the price the CDs should retail for to maximize record label profits is $9.99.
This is because this allows price ranges in discount stores to be on the order of $7.00 - $7.99 and I think that this is the highest price that most people will be willing to spend and still buy every CD from most of the artists they like.
That's just my opinion though. I want to know, really, what do you all think the "Best Price for an Album is" remember, the idea for this number is to maximize RECORD LABEL profit (NOT sell the most music or decrease piracy the most, just make the label the most money)
Re:Yeah Right (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd look at it a different way:
The fact that they can imperiously cut their prices by 30% pretty much proves that they've using onopoly pricing to begin with.
To little to late (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:To little to late (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure what the right price is for physical media. I have to spend time to get the CD. Once I get it home, I still have to rip it, then get rid of it at the used CD store. (I don't want to waste space storing digitized information.) That takes more time, all of which is a cost. It's a lot easier (and cost effective) for me sit at the PC and listen to the latest tracks from the legit sites, then download the free ones I like.
Time is worth far more to me than the cost of the CD. It almost doesn't matte
Re:To little to late (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, ripping and then reselling the CD is a copyright violation.
Which we do care about, don't we?
Re:To little to late (Score:4, Interesting)
They've rolled prices back to 1988 which they could afford to do anyway since as a cartel, they can name their price. CDs are still overpriced at $12.98. They originally justified the higher prices by pointing to their new, expensive CD pressing plants, but long ago CDs became cheaper to make than LPs or tapes.
Re:To little to late (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's just ignore the $5,000 to $10,000 investment in a home music recording studio, the $400 mastering fees, and just look at the actual CD manufacture. It costs $2.50 a CD to have Discmakers (http://www.discmakers.com) print up 1000 CDs in shiny plastic cases with professional full color 6 panel insert graphics and on CD printing. (And if you want quality CDs in any reasonable amount of time, you don't go with Joes Bargain CD Duplication.) I mail out 100 to radio stations around the country, with press kits, at an additional cost of about $2 per kit. I give away 25 to local DJs in clubs and my indie label gives away another 25 to a distro house, all for promotion. Now I'm down to 850 CDs that can actually be sold, and I'm out $2700.
Now assuming that I sell all of these myself and get 100% of the profit (I don't, but we'll keep this simple), I now need to sell 540 CDs at your ideal price of $5 each just to break even. This leaves 310 CDs which I can sell for a net profit of $1550.
$1550 for a years work writing 12 songs, performing them, recording them, mixing them down, and making them available to people on the widely available CD format, which most non-geeks use and enjoy. Can you see why no sane person who wants to eat or pay rent would ever charge so little for a CD?
And I've never once been contacted about being paid directly for MP3 or other downloadable copies of my songs. No one has ever offered some fair price for a non-CD version of my music. But plenty of people have told me that they downloaded my music off Kazaa or WinMX and thought it was pretty cool, thanks for writing it, but no I won't buy a CD, hey, why are you getting mad at me?
The RIAA, sure, they scam the artists who sign with them. But the little guys get screwed too.
Re:To little to late (Score:3, Interesting)
It shouldn't be if you're tech savvy. Since you're posting on Slashdot, I would have expected you to be tech savvy? It doesn't sound like you are. 100 Mitsui CD-R Bulk $50. That's only
You give away 150 CD's? You could easily burn that many CD's with a cheap ($700 range) CD Duplication tower that cranks out about 60 CD-R per hour. Who needs all th
Re:To little to late (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't take this the wrong way, but the reward was the opportunity to make music and have a chance that it would be listened to. Some people seem to have this opportunity handed to them, along with a mansion and a jag
GE/NBC already affecting Vivendi's choices (Score:3, Interesting)
I figure it's one of two things:
* Vivendi is looking to spoil the deal with a profit-killing "poison pill". This would be the strategy of former Vivendi chairman Jean-Marie Messier [hinduonnet.com] -- but it's also part of why he's the former chairman.
* GE has already given Universal marching orders -- this was planned months ago. According to this morning's NPR report [npr.org], Vivendi has been shopping for a buyer for its entertainment units for months, but all previous deals have fallen through. They're likely to do whatever GE says at this point (unless we're back to the first option).
General Electric isn't in the business of filing baseless lawsuits -- they're in the business of making money. Maybe they'll be the ones to blow the lid off the CD price scam once and for all.
Re:GE/NBC already affecting Vivendi's choices (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I did read the article... just not carefully enough. I guess that explains why my comment didn't get modded up to +5 right away.
On the other hand, the two events may still be related. The music unit isn't going to want to scotch the deal by making the price announcement before the deal announcement -- too many people would make the conn
Turn-about price cutting (Score:5, Insightful)
Would be an interesting situation where one could get an artist's release from two different labels, so there would be real competition between them.
Labels' contracts ban this (Score:3, Informative)
Would be an interesting situation where one could get an artist's release from two different labels
None of the major labels' artist contracts would allow this. Most labels either take the copyright on the recording outright as a "work for hire" or (for the most established recording artists) demand an exclusive license for a long term.
Simple economics (Score:3, Insightful)
Quality = bad, price = high, result = far fewer people willing to pay.
Quality = bad, price = low, result = Some people willing to pay.
Quality = good, price = low, result = maximum number of people willing to pay.
Simple economics. Price of normal goods go up, demand for inferrior goods goes up. Substitute CD's for "normal goods" and MP3's for "inferrior goods".
I hope this is amazing because they're willing to actually do it, not because they think it's a revolutionary idea.
~Will
Too Little Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)
I left and am not coming back.
Quality (Score:2)
Rus
Explain Cassette vs CD price. (Score:5, Interesting)
Explain why Cassette is still going to be cheaper. No, really. I want to hear it.
Could it possibly be that CDs are way, way overpriced, even at $13?
Re:Explain Cassette vs CD price. (Score:4, Interesting)
Four explanations (Score:3, Interesting)
Explain why Cassette is still going to be cheaper.
Less demand among consumers for cassettes.
Some CDs have bonus tracks not available on cassette, and the songwriter and recording artist get paid only for the CDs.
A CD case typically has more space for liner notes than a cassette case does, and the graphic artist gets paid only for the copies included with CDs.
Some newer CDs come with promotional items such as DVDs containing music videos and glimpses into production.
Re:Four explanations (Score:4, Insightful)
How can this be?
The limit on a CD is there and abouts of 74min.
There is a limit on cassettes, store bought ones are sold sizes of 60min / 90 min / 120min with a few odd sizes inbetween. It's generally agreed that 120min cassettes are too thin to be reliable, 90 are common place. It's more practical to offer bonus tracks on cassette cause you can fit more stuff on them. I remember that "kiss me kiss me kiss me" from the cure for example included a bonus track that was not included on the cd because there just wasn't room on the CD. I think it was "hot hot hot" as I don't happen to have it handy at the moment.
The only reason to include bonus tracks on CDs and not cassettes is to encourage you to buy the CD rather then the cassette.
Artwork and notes CAN be included in a cassette with ease, though there usually is a reduction in size.
---
In computer world, legacy media *ususaly* costs MORE then modern media. While most people still have floppy drives, the release media of choice is still CD, even for data that would fit on a floppy. The demand is less there for less is produced. It would make more sence if cassettes cost more, acording to many they are after all more costly to reproduce. Cassettes are still popular with people who haven't bothered to upgrade their car decks, runners who find the cassettes don't skip, and a few others who haven't bothered to get a CD player. The market I believe to be small, so it makes little sence for them to flood the market with cassettes resulting in a need to lower their price in order to actually sell them.
Re:Explain Cassette vs CD price. (Score:3, Insightful)
It could be - or it could be that consumers are willing to spend more money for the convenience of random access to music vs. sequential access. When was the last time you saw a cassette player with a "random" feature?
Who enrolled the RIAA execs in ECON 101? (Score:3, Funny)
------------
[sarcasm]
*GASP!* No? Really? Supply and demand works?
[/sarcasm]
Too bad some of your audience have decided to kill off a portion of your demand... okay, maybe not too bad.
Wonder what they'll learn in ECON 201 next year?
-Jellisky
Popular Music, Feh! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's very rare I pay more than $12 a CD. Even two disc albums rarely cost more than $20.
When I do pick up a popular CD I haven't paid more than $14 that I can remember. (Can't wait for the new Seal [seal.com] album!)
I don't know where people are buying their popular music. In brick 'n' mortar stores? In the year 2003?
I mean, look at Amazon's top sellers list. Most albums are between $12 and $13 already. Shipping is free if you buy $25 worth of stuff. You only pay taxes if you live in Washington or North Dakota. Why would you not buy your music there?
If you do go to a physical store, Target has many chart topping albums for $10. Last time I browsed the racks there I didn't see anything over $14. No shipping charges, obviously, but state and local sales taxes apply.
If you have a job I don't know how you can seriously complain about the price of CDs. I really don't get what the story is here.
[Note: Say what you will, Amazon does everything right when it comes to buying stuff on the web.]
heh. (Score:5, Funny)
okay I am a cheap bastard, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:okay I am a cheap bastard, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's not more profitable. I don't mean to be insulting, but any time I hear (or read) somebody complain about the high price of CDs, I wonder if they have considered what makes up the price of a product. The cost to produce said product certainly plays a role. With regards to the big music labels, they're paying for the costs of the unsuccessful investments with profits from the successful ones, not to mention advertising. This has been rehashed many times, s
*slashed* to $13? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless (Score:5, Interesting)
Not the cost mind you, but MSRP.
Now the dealers were force to take a paycut while Subaru kept the same profit margin.
I would not be suprised to find out that the cut in list price on the cds was much greater than the cost the stores pay.
Not too little too late! (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been buying CDs for the past 15 years or so. And before that I bought a whole bunch of LPs.
And there was always the $18 and the $12. I can say, with confidence, that I've never bought an $18 CD.
I'd always retract from the $18 CDs. Why does album XYZ deserve $6 a pop? It certainly isn't quality.
In contrast, I've never had a problem buying a $12 CD. Sometimes I buy a $12 CD on a whim. But $18? Never. No freakin' way. I'll just wait for radio airplay.
The only exception to my rule would be a multi-CD set. I can see paying $18 for a couple quality CDs.
And there we have it. From my sample of one person, $18 CDs simply don't sell. On the other hand, people readily buy $12 CDs, and they'll even buy them even if they're not 100% sure if it's something they'd like.
Universal has learned this. Maybe some others in the industry will learn this too. And do you know what? If the others don't go along, that's fine with me - I just won't be their customer.
At $18, I won't buy.
I don't pirate music.
So I won't listen.
The only real loss is to the aritst and the label.
Is there anything wrong with that?
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure glad I don't have any interest in the crack they're pushing.
Fixed Price?? (Score:3, Insightful)
-Ansel.
Wow! You can buy taped backups? (Score:5, Funny)
The company, whose artists range from U2 to Reba McIntyre, will also cut wholesale prices on cassettes so its MSRP for top-line releases will be $8.98
Wow! You mean, you can BUY tape archives of CDs in the stores? Here I've been ripping my cds and backing them up to tape like a jerk.
This should save me LOADS of time.
Good start... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardcore file traders don't do much to the "content" producers' bottom lines. Some would never spend the money. Others may still buy some CD's from some new bands they found. Basically harcore file traders are zero sum since they provide some advertising (and therefore, new sales), while satisfying some people (loss of sales). Basically balances out.
So, we have the homogenization of the "free" classic media, an economic downturn, and a lack of major label backed new, innovative, interesting content. File trading is just a scape goat.
I don't download music as the quality is too low for me. I might buy more if there was a better way to sample music (like http://www.apple.com/music/store).
I would only buy from iTMS if there were less than 2 tracks on an album that I wanted because AAC quality is too low for me. I would buy if there weren't any CD-singles available. I rip my CD's into FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/)
I don't download movies as the quality is too low for me. I have, however, sent trailers that I could download to people. At least the movie peole have their heads on straight by allowing people to download their trailers.
I download anime that is fansubbed and not available in the states, or to demo a series. I have bought entire series ($$$$ of dollars) because I was able to download and watch enough to get into it. I buy them because I want the higher quality video and audio. The fansubbers' subs destroy what can be done by the CC subbing built into set-top DVD players.
The music, movie, and software industries are idiots for funding the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA, respectively. These *A's are just trying to keep themselves relevant. They are cartels. They should be illegal as they form oligopolies (price fixing, collusion). They are hurting their respective industries by not allowing it to slowly evolve. M/G/S studios can do their own advertising directly to the people and save some $$$$$$$$. All they need is to allow downloading of samples from their catalogs and people will spend their own bandwidth advertising stuff they like.
Anthony
Re:Good start... (Score:3, Informative)
You'll get a lot of songs with real good openings and after 32-33 secs the songw ill become complete crap.
What ever happened to $9.99 ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And why is it that back in the 80's I could buy an album on cassette for around $7.99, but today I have to pay $18 for the same ammount of content on a CD? CDs are cheeper to manufacture than cassettes!
I'm sorry, but Universal is going to have to do better than $12.98 to get my hard earned money.
some hard data (Score:5, Interesting)
It is ironic that the top echelon of recording artists could not exist without an industry to support them. Strip away the managers and agents, stylists and coaches, from someone like Justin Timberlake and ask is it possible that he could still make a living from music? Probably not. Ani di Franco, on the other hand, has been making a comfortable income for years without the support of the business she's supposed to be in.
As Douglas Adams pointed out, many companies aren't in the business you think they're in. Fox News is, despite a million conspiracy theories to the contrary, simply in the business of delivering an audience to its advertisers. The ethics and actions of the "Big 5" corporations who control 90% of record sales make rather more sense if they are viewed, not as separate companies, but as one distributed bank.
As anyone with any experience of dealing with banks will know, they are monolithically slow to react to changes in the environment, and are populated with highly intelligent, but narrow-minded, solipsists. They're doing now what every one of us was warning them that they should be doing the instant MP3 was rolled out.
By way of related tangent, here [arancidamoeba.com] is an article by Steve Albini about his experiences with one of the majors, and his advice to anyone thinking of getting involved. At the bottom of the page is a detailed breakdown of a typical deal in which the "industry" made $973,000 and each of the four band members made $4,031.25.
When the entire system is that fucked, the price of a CD is moot.
I like cassettes (Score:3, Funny)
I still believe that older, somewhat obsolete, formats are a great deal for those on a budget. In fact, I purchased my last copy of Windows on 5.25" floppies. 300 of them. Sure, it took over 3 months to install, but at least I feel I got my dollars worth out of Microsoft. I don't like paying for intangible things like software, but 300 floppies.... thats something you can impress your girlfriend wi...
--please insert disk 27 for rest of comment--
despertately trying to establish credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, half of those bands are dead and the other half aren't representative of Universal's [universalrecords.com] normally dismal and talentless array of crap music by artists with names like: Boo & Gotti (with their hit single "Ain't In Man"), Big Tymers, Baby Bash "The Smokin' Nephew", Lil' Wayne, Playa, Thug City, Ric-a-che, and Mac 10.
I think it might be a better PR move if Universal announced they were going to start selling Courvoisier or enrolling their artists in a few English classes.
Buy Used CDs - send $2 to artist(s) (Score:5, Interesting)
As usual, Canada leads (Score:4, Informative)
Universal Music cuts CD Prices [globeandmail.com]
What's most interesting here is not the price of CD's, (which at $14.95CAD is about $11 US), but that they plan to offer Canadian downloads in October for 99 cents (Canadian) a song!
It's too early to say whether any of the other labels will participate, and what kind of restrictions are going to be put on the media. Still, it looks like the Canadian industry has taken a much more concilaitory approach to the problem of filesharing, by giving up on the price, and offering additional share of downloaded fees to artists as well - so at least they're trying to adress some of the complaints on this and other forums.
Here is way they get people to buy . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see any of this with today's CDs. Of course I do understand the spatial problems with packaging, but the media companies need to give people an incentive to buy the CD rather than a monetary one. Entice the people into buying the CD so they can get a T-shirt, poster, or something else from the artist. Folks are going to choose free over any price if they can get the same thing.
Economics 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the price of gas. Remember when you thought to yourself that if it went over a buck a gallon you'd stop driving and take a bus? People get upset, the price goes down, and then starts creeping up again.
If you have a capital market, ie not a monopoly, then the price stays down. There are what 7 major lables, and they cooperate on the price. It's a monopoly.
You can claim your tiny victories, but as soon as you buy one CD you've given the victory away. I buy maybe one cd a year (if that). (I don't fileshare either). Basically the whole system has turned me off, I now just play my own music, or listen to the radio.
Yes! Now I'll run out and buy cd's! (Score:3, Funny)
Note to self:
Price was the insult added to injury.
Re:wtf (Score:5, Insightful)
The MSRP values are based on various fudges and calculations, with a good bit of over-the-thumb thrown in for good measure. In this age of Internet comparison shopping, I can't remember the last time I paid MSRP for any consumer goods (except software like PS2 games, where Sony has a very tight rein on the supply chain).
Re:never bought a CD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:never bought a CD (Score:3, Funny)
I've heard stories of people like you, but I thought they were urban legends.
Welcome to the 21st century.. this is a lighter... look, I can make fire with a flick of my finger.
The problem is that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about you, (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, most pop stuff is like this; but you've not looked -nearly- hard enough if you believe that. And, with a name containing "punk", you'd think you'd know about some of those indie bands (Or indie-bands-gone-mainstream) that are damn good. AFI, Stutterfly, System of a Down, or Millencolin anyone? How about Dashboard Confessional? Or how about The Offspring? Bright Eyes? Thursday? Glassjaw?
Not paying for -good- musician's music is a crime, both morally and legally. No matter how little of the money goes to that musician, they've worked hard for it. And they deserve to be paid it if you listen to it.
If it's cheap and mass produced, don't listen to it. If it's good, and you like it, then pay for it, enjoy it, and support the artists.
Complaining that it's cheap mass-produced advertising, and then listening to it is pure hypocritical bullshit. Why, may I ask, are you listening to it if it's so bad?