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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Wouldn't it be nice if record companies could distro music affordably but still pay the artists. I think it's atrocious that arstists only get paid based on how much their record sells, and yet they in most cases have little control on who or how it gets sold. I have written pieces of software for companies some of which didn't sell.
Ok.. so the "college" crowd is a lost cause and lost renevue.. If record companies had half a brain they would develop a system to deliver the music to the colleges and get the colleges (or maybe students) to pay some token amount. Hey we can assume from this thread (and news in general) that college students listen to the most music and they in genreal haven't paid for it in 20+ years...
Some interesting links..
The History of Napster
ok.. one interesting link... I got distracted.. will post more later (I know ya can't wait :) |
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Location: Scotland | "Wouldn't it be nice if record companies could distro music affordably but still pay the artists"
They can, they just choose not to. The artist's cut is minimal, the retailer's cut is pathetic. Take out recording costs, manufacturing, distribution & taxes, which is a relatively small percentage, yet bigger than the artist's cut, and the rest goes to the label. They are basically greedy & it is this greed that is mostly fuelling the download frenzy (that & the fact that it is possible in the first place & virtualy un-controllable) Just look at the re-packaged back catalog like the last Beatles stuff. This could be put out at at a budget price, it has recouped it's money over & over again, yet they release it at full price. Must be one of the most downloaded bootlegged albums ever.
Ultimately the problems in the industry are self-inflicted.
There is however a breed of consumer, who, if the albums were free with a gallon of gas, would figure out a way to steal the gas.
Paul
[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | You hit in on the head.. the "could" just "dont." More and more companies like CMC International are going to pop up. They are a label of sorts, but mostly distro. BOC couldn't get SONY to get behind any of their new albums, as they can still make money off repackageing old ones... so their last three albums (including the current DVD I think) are going out via CMC. They got recorded and such, and basically brought them the finished product. They manufacture, sell and distro the disks into the stores. No advertising or anything, but then again.. nothing taken from the band either(except of course the cost to repro and distro) which in reality is a pretty sweet deal. |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | There is an interesting parallel here. Some of you may recall the tons of shareware in computings early daze and the, to this day, unresolved questions of piracy. Today, shareware arrives in your mail on CD's that are trying to sell you something from the same companies that were sure they would be ruined. Like Stonebobo's college kids, us "pioneers" downloaded megabytes of utter junk in the to have the most free stuff and the hope of finding that software gem that would change our life again like Lotus and "ugh" WordPerfect. After numerous crashes, unmet promises, 30 day trials that die before you have even gotten through the world shaking menu with no escape back to the operating system, we went back to commercial programs. The good was that the commercial companies were forced to drop their prices to somewhere near the shareware registry costs and computers started arriving with most of what you needed installed ready to go (and some shareware relics on the discs). When I had a computer training business I paid $3000 a copy for AutoCad, $300 a copy for WordPerfect, $400 for Lotus 1-2-3, etc. R-Base was $500 and it strained any computer to run it, $400 for Dbase, an ancient atrocity that took over your computer and drove data entry clerks to tears as they found they could destroy tons of data with a keystroke. Improved versions of all these useful programs arrive on the $699 computer with a Windows interface (or Apple Mac) at no extra cost.
The Napster share system has elements of these things and may shake out to everybody's advantage as the junk disappears and users find that they are willing to pay a REASONABLE price for good music because if they don't pay they don't get good music. REASONABLE is the word and it seems to be in every post on this subject in one way or another. Systems evolve into what works for all sides of the question. Musicians need to be paid, customers need a decent price and those who try to profit without contributing (record executives who have no connection to the music) will be bypassed to every ones benefit.
Juke boxes played songs for years at a quarter a pop, and made money for everyone involved, they were the marketing arm of the labels, why can't the net do the same?
Bailey (adding ancient confusion to the mix) |
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Location: Scotland | "Juke boxes played songs for years at a quarter a pop, and made money for everyone involved..., why can't the net do the same"
Possibly an over-simplification, but a very good analogy nevertheless. |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | "juke boxes" that really is the parallel for the "internet download" thing. It's not really a parallel for Napster as the songs were not being downloaded from a place, but rather shared from one persons computer to another. It really was a "sharing" tool. I used it for work to get huge macromedia director and authorware files from one location to another because it could handle moving 400 mb files withtout errors reguardless of the compatability of the connections. A service and protocol unmatched on the Interenet by anyone to this day. It took awhile, but it worked. This is why I am mad at the courts for killing Napster. With this same logic, I guess we should lockup fine all the people who build highways in the DC area and close ALL the roads to anyone, because the Sniper is using them as his getaway.
I totally believe that if downloads were 5 cents a pop... they would be making money hand-over-fist. Sure a few people would buck the system and get around it... but then they would be committing a felony (internet crimes are usually considered felonys becasue of the scope)so it probably would not be worth it to them. I think even the college kids could afford a nickel, and if it gets shared afterward... a least SOMETHING will go to the artists instead of the NOTHING they get now. |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Miles
You are praising the technology of Napster and that is absolutely a correct position because that advance in technology should not be lost. I think we are also addressing the economic implications of that technology, and I think it will result in a new method of distributing music or already has. Every advance in technology benefits some part of society, todays computers are the equavalant of the early mainframes but the people who operate them did not go through the early days of 8K memory and DOS, today's computer owners are used to power and control that we never had. Isn't what we are discussing now is how we use this power of the computer attached to the web to advance new ways for the distribution of music that will satisfy the artist and the customer?
Bailey
[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Bailey ] |
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Billy Ray Cyrus playing sinister Ovation
