Good article on justifying piracy

[Jevil]

You have 200,000 downloads cause you allow people to download it for free. If you charged a penny for every download you would have money in your pocket.

If I charge a penny for every download, people probably wouldn't download. Not because of the money, but because of the "big" effort of doing a bank transfer or a paypal payment.
Yes, people is lazy as fuck, they want all extremely easy.

 

[guitarguru777]

If I charge a penny for every download, people probably wouldn't download. Not because of the money, but because of the "big" effort of doing a bank transfer or a paypal payment.
Yes, people is lazy as fuck, they want all extremely easy.

So let me ask you this, would you rather have 200,000 downloads at $0 in your pocket or 50,000 downloads with $500 in your pocket?

 

[Jevil]

So let me ask you this, would you rather have 200,000 downloads at $0 in your pocket or 50,000 downloads with $500 in your pocket?

I did a voluntary donation button via paypal and I earned much more even than 500 $ in only 200 donations.

But I would have prefered only 1 € for each doenload!

Anyway that is not the matter of the thread... what i said is that SGAE (the company that manages copyrights in Spain), should not charge that tax or at least do a fair delivering.

 

[egan.]

People seem to be avoiding this... but surely paying the 16M to the artists and taking the hit on 391K would be them doing their job and "looking out for artists"....

I think a common misconception is that the folks in the anti-piracy crowd agree with RIAA tactics and that we think they're making smart moves. That's a pretty terrible assumption.
Now, that said, they didn't spend $16million to get $400k. They spent $16mil to scare people. I don't know how successful that was but that was clearly the real goal.... And I'd bet it was more successful than an ad campaign with a comparable budget would have been.

 

[EerieVon]

I think a common misconception is that the folks in the anti-piracy crowd agree with RIAA tactics and that we think they're making smart moves. That's a pretty terrible assumption.
Now, that said, they didn't spend $16million to get $400k. They spent $16mil to scare people. I don't know how successful that was but that was clearly the real goal.... And I'd bet it was more successful than an ad campaign with a comparable budget would have been.

I think the scare tactics actually make some people want to do it more--like telling a kid he can't have something makes him want it more.

And the argument that the band makes it up in merch and ticket sales is crap. I haven't been in a band in awhile but from what I have read some of the contracts that bands sign state that the label gets a portion of the tix/merch sales

 

[egan.]

The merch argument has always been wrong for multiple reasons. Firstly, no band I know has seen a rise in merch sales proportionate to the decline in CD sales. We all have thousands of records (bought, gifted or stolen) so the notion that there would be some corresponding number of t-shirts is hilarious.
Secondly, unless you are signing a 360, no label gives a shit how many t-shirts you sell. Album sales are still a HUGE factor in album budget, tour support, advertising, priority and of course whether you get dropped or not.
Thirdly, the conventional wisdom that bands "never see" album royalties ignores the fact that w/o label support all of that merchandise profit would go right back out the door to pay for production, duplication (if you do it), advertising and anything else you can think of.

 

[arv_foh]

I think a large part of the problem is that digital downloads are, for the most part, the same price as CDs. Albums on iTunes are $9.99-$14.99. You don't get any artwork, case, or any physical item and you're still expected to pay the same price? I think this is where the industry has it wrong. I mean honestly, what are the distribution costs for a digital only release? Next to nothing? Especially compared to pressing an album and getting it distributed in stores around the country/world.

I think Amazon has the right idea with their 100 monthly albums for $5. I have noticed a lot of bands have been releasing their albums at $5 for a limited time on Amazon the day of release. I think this is the right price point, in my opinion.

I'm perfectly willing to pay $5 for a high speed, high quality digital download, but I'm really not willing to pay the same price as a CD, when I could walk in to a store then take the album home with me, and have a higher quality rip than what iTunes offers for the same price.

 

[drew_drummer]

I'm on holiday. Buy my bands cd (click signature) so I can buy sushi.

 

[Erkan]

I'm perfectly willing to pay $5 for a high speed, high quality digital download, but I'm really not willing to pay the same price as a CD, when I could walk in to a store then take the album home with me, and have a higher quality rip than what iTunes offers for the same price.

That sounds pretty good.

I recently digitally bought Arman Bohn's album "Bits" for 10$ and still felt like it was worth it. That dude produces some electro pop and does some amazing shit so the 10$ feel worth it. Most metal bands aren't even worth 1$ though... sadly

 

[findingthesound]

Just a question:
How many $ a musician/author/band win for the selling of one album?
And how much does it cost to the label to distribute a real album in a store?

Just want to think about what would be the "right" price for a digital download.
Cause for me, it shouldn't cost as much as a real cd.

 

[Jevil]

Just a question:
How many $ a musician/author/band win for the selling of one album?

I can only tell you numbers of about 7 years ago.
We earned 10% of the cost price (not final price). I think we earned about 1 € of each CD sold.
The more you sell the more percentage. Metallica will earn more than 10% for sure.

 

[Melb_shredder]

I can only tell you numbers of about 7 years ago.
We earned 10% of the cost price (not final price). I think we earned about 1 € of each CD sold.
The more you sell the more percentage. Metallica will earn more than 10% for sure.

We got pretty lucky with our label I guess!
50% from each album, the 50% being comprised of the price the label sells the cd to our distributors!

So looking at about $7 a cd

 

[findingthesound]

I can only tell you numbers of about 7 years ago.
We earned 10% of the cost price (not final price). I think we earned about 1 € of each CD sold.
The more you sell the more percentage. Metallica will earn more than 10% for sure.

That's what I thought.
So if you sell directly your album on the net, the "good" price would be 2€ for a download and 5€ + shipping for a real CD.

What do you think?

That suppose that you record/mix/produce/master/advertise the album alone, which is a lot of work added...

We got pretty lucky with our label I guess!
50% from each album, the 50% being comprised of the price the label sells the cd to our distributors!

So looking at about $7 a cd

Wow! lucky!

 

[James Murphy]

That suppose that you record/mix/produce/master/advertise the album alone, which is a lot of work added...

it's the record/mix/produce/master part that most bands cannot do on their own very well... quite a few think they can... but the actual "good" albums done this way are few and far between. not talking about good music here, talking about good tracking, mixing, mastering.

nor the advertising, marketing, administrating, distributing.... bands usually suck at all of those as well.... and they SHOULD suck at all those things, because frankly bands should be putting their FULL efforts on writing and performing their music... not getting bogged down in every other aspect of the business... most of which takes just as long to get good at, IF the talent for them is there at all, as it took to get good at playing and writing music in the first place.

bands that "do it all" are usually just diluting themselves... watering down what they could otherwise turn out. you need a team behind you to really get somewhere. case and point: 99.9% of all bands that have ever "made it" in the history of recorded music, ever.

 

[findingthesound]

Totally agree with you. Even with learning full time for a year don't make you a good mixing/mastering engineer, that's fucking difficult job with a long learning curve.
And having the other point of view of a producer is very important too. I learned all that cause I'm in the making of my first album, and I have the chance to have the help of a friend which work as mixer with really big bands and produce some other when he have free time (which is very rare for him!). He helps me a lot, and things take a good direction because of him; it's priceless and it helps a lot to really concentrate all my efforts into creating songs, and not being worried about mixing/mixing gear, etc, cause he will take care of this. And if I can avoid to have to advertise by myself, I know it'll be more time to create some new songs too... but that seems to be difficult today...

 

[egan.]

it's the record/mix/produce/master part that most bands cannot do on their own very well... quite a few think they can... but the actual "good" albums done this way are few and far between. not talking about good music here, talking about good tracking, mixing, mastering.

nor the advertising, marketing, administrating, distributing.... bands usually suck at all of those as well.... and they SHOULD suck at all those things, because frankly bands should be putting their FULL efforts on writing and performing their music... not getting bogged down in every other aspect of the business... most of which takes just as long to get good at, IF the talent for them is there at all, as it took to get good at playing and writing music in the first place.

bands that "do it all" are usually just diluting themselves... watering down what they could otherwise turn out. you need a team behind you to really get somewhere. case and point: 99.9% of all bands that have ever "made it" in the history of recorded music, ever.

That's just it. What I've said repeatedly is that the problem with most "new models" is that the chances of getting a record on the scale of Darkside or Thriller or the Black album is slim to none.

 

[findingthesound]

So what do you think of this:

http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com...s-google-for-linking-to-infringing-songs.html


I think that if it work, it may solve the problem, in making downloading way more difficult.