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| From | Steve Alter <shteevea@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | Re: The Great Debate (Round 2) |
| Date | Tue, 22 May 2007 11:13:01 -0700 (PDT) |
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You raise a REALLY good point, Bob. (And this comes from someone who has willing digitized his entire music collection. Audiophiles can stone me now.)
I was managing a record store when we got our very first CDs; had all six of them in a little crate on the counter. There was a premium on them, not just because of the added benefits, but because all new production facilities were required, they didn't have capacity to meet demand, etc. We were told repeatedly in the late 80s by company execs and distributors that the price point was going to come down once production was full bore to "just above LPs and cassettes today."
That obviously didn't happen, and they gouged and milked that sucker for all it was worth. the justification was exactly that value prop: better sound (for average folks), indestructible, greater capacity, etc.
Based on that logic, you are absolutely right: there is no justification whatsoever (OK, well, greed, as well as being stuck on a business model developed by a bunch of accountants in late 60s) for parity in pricing for a product that is almost a generic copy of the original.
Bob Hutton <bob_hutton@standardlife.com> wrote:
I just read that article in the Chicago Tribune blog that Bill Sherlock
posted.
I found it odd that some people (invariably from the music business)
argued that a dollar a song seemed like a fair price, given that there are
inherent overheads involved in selling music online as well (although at
least with onlinhe music, your stock never runs out!). What they didn't
seem to realise was the end-product does NOT have the same value at all.
Instead of a physical high-quality sounding CD with artwork, you get a
low-quality, compressed mp3 file - which is also shackled by DRM - dumped
on your hard drive. People who are content with that will probably be
happier to get the same song for free via file-sharing. I don't know
anyone who regularly purchases albums off iTunes/Napster/whatever. Only a
few friends have said they'll even buy the occasional song! I myself have
only used iTunes to for free promotional downloads, when I got a stack of
them a couple of years back.
I would argue that a dollar per song may be what the people in the biz
think they need to maintain a reasonable standard of living. But a dollar
doesn't seem to be a fair price to the consumer for what is currently
offered online.
On another point, I take back my comments on the IKE sponsorship debate -
I guess if fans are happy to cough up what the band asks, then that's fair
enough. I hope they end up with an great album, worthy of their aggregate
contributions. I still wouldn't be happy to pony up that amount myself,
but I shouldn't judge others' sincerity - my apologies all round.
Bob - 0131 24(51188)
Systems Developer
IS DG3
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