rethinking pricing strategies for mp3s - how much would you pay?

[dcb]

i just read an article (a musicological study) with some devastating facts for my believe in "the customer" :
only 35 % are willing to pay for their favorite songs as much as 10 (european) cents...
not a single cent more !

has anyone of you thought about selling your bands music for less than the typical 99Cents? wouldnt it be great, if people just bought our music ?

the idea behind this is : there is very few to no cost for a band/label/distributor for hosting their music.

wouldnt 10,000 songs sold for 10 cents (=100,000 Cents) be of more value to an artist, than 1000 sold for 1 $ ? (100,000 Cents) ?

im not saying that 10 cents per song is what I personally would charge,
but i think we all could use new strategies, to make more people buy music again.

so : what woul pay per song ? 10, 20,30,40,50 Cents ?

how do we make the customers become more interested in supporting artists financially ?

 

[jrt12]

maybe i'm just out of it, but i'm willing to pay $1/song (given that its 256 or above)

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

maybe i'm just out of it, but i'm willing to pay $1/song (given that its 256 or above)

+1

 

[Felix Neumann]

1$ is absolutely fair. There exists people who works more than 2 month for one song. But otherwise there exists people who work only 3 hours for a 2:30 dancefloor hit.

 

[egan.]

This thread is related in some ways.

You'll see from my numbers that only 15% of music acquired is paid (including CD. LP and D/L) for and only 5% of d/l music is paid for.
A 90% price drop on d/l would negate any gains in sales numbers. That gain in return isn't going to be 100% as some people will always steal b/c it's so easy. So you are basically trading shitty profits with lots of theft for the same shitty profits with mid-level theft. You may as well charge what something is actually worth.

It's also true that there are mechanical royalties to consider which are at least 6 cents per song in the US. So you would have the impossible task of trying to restructure that too.

$1 is fair, particularly if the encodes continue to improve.

 

[arv_foh]

I would like to see albums for $5-$6 for a high quality digital download(FLAC would be nice but 320 works for me). CDs seem to be going for $8-$10 in stores nowadays (at least for a first week new release) and you don't get any artwork with the download (except a low res image) and there is no distribution cost (hardly, bandwidth is cheap).

 

[roy22341]

The world of artwork in the album release industry is pretty much dead. At most anymore, you'll only get some pictures of a band standing around trying to look tough in an abandoned warehouse or something along with some redundant artwork that you seem to remember seeing on the last album you bought. The only band anymore that comes to mind that doesn't do this right now is Tool.

 

[Zack Uidl]

If I like the music, I am willing to pay a lot!

A year ago I paid $40 for one album.......totally worth it.

 

[egan.]

CDs seem to be going for $8-$10 in stores nowadays (at least for a first week new release)

Yeah this a bit misleading. The biggest titles are $8-10 the first week at the biggest stores. And the 500lb elephant is that often titles are sold in bulk to Best Buy and walmart at or near cost to create hype and impressive first week sales which will have a cascade effect in the number of articles, interviews, interest and sales (that's the plan anyway).

you don't get any artwork with the download (except a low res image) and there is no distribution cost (hardly, bandwidth is cheap).

Well you do get artwork and in fact itunes recently launched "itunes LP" with high res layout, lyrics, etc. Also, the distribution cost is reduced but there is tremendous cost in maintaining a giant database of music with a seemless pay and d/l infrastructure....not to imply that the profits aren't greater.
That said, I too think we are overdue for lossless d/l.

The issue is that regardless of the validity of your points, physical media loses significant ground every year to paid d/l so it is still important to discuss this market.

edit: just to be clear I am speaking from a stateside perspective, but I doubt CD costs have dropped that much in the euro markets.

 

[GarethSE]

The world of artwork in the album release industry is pretty much dead. At most anymore, you'll only get some pictures of a band standing around trying to look tough in an abandoned warehouse or something along with some redundant artwork that you seem to remember seeing on the last album you bought. The only band anymore that comes to mind that doesn't do this right now is Tool.

I can think of a LOT of bands that don't have shit artwork. You just listen to too much fucking metal.

Kayo Dot/Bloody Panda - 12" split has fucking amazing artwork for a start
as does all the Kayo Dot/maudlin of the well stuff.
Cynic - Traced In Air had awesome artwork, Painkiller (john zorn, bill laswell, mick harris) has awesome artwork too if you're a bit of a sicko.

I mean look, there's still a fucking plethora of cd's out there with amazing artwork. I mean for a start look outside metal and you'll find a lot of stuff that isn't just people posing in warehouses. Stuff starts becoming more like "art." You may not like the pretty pictures, but there's stuff I have that has artwork that would be shit to a lot of people, but to me, it's fucking gorgeous.
I mean my Doom Drone ep that I put out has artwork that I fell totally in love with, and to me looks like gorgeous, pure art, but to someone else it may look like shit. Once you move away from metal the definitions of "good" artwork become really fucking blurred.


Also on the subject of pricing? I will of course try not to pay too much for music when I buy CD's, because I can't afford it even though finances have been far more plentiful recently (i moved from packs of cigarettes to hand rolled again) so yeah, there's that, but if I had the money I'd still gladly pay at least £6 for a more standard album, but for those really special pieces of work I'll gladly pay ridiculous amounts for. Hell, I'm gonna be getting all the Kayo Dot stuff I can find on Vinyl soon and that's all pretty expensive (by my very poor standards keep in mind haha,) at 22$ for the 2XLP of "Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue" for a start. Then there's another couple of albums, a 12" split and a 7" single.

If a band releases amazing music they're entitled to all the money in the world as far as I'm concerned but if a band writes an album full of chugs and has "artwork" of them standing around in warehouses looking tough then covered in grunge brushes then they fucking DESERVE to have their albums downloaded. If there's anyone on this forum in a band that's released an album like that, you can say what you like, but you're a bunch of artistically retarded douches for it.

And as far as my own music goes, I'm going to be releasing everything I do from now on for FREE, and a few releases may get small cd or vinyl runs (such as me and my bud's upcoming split ep which we're considering getting a small vinyl run done of, but to do that we need to know people will buy it, so if anyone heard my doom drone project when I posted it up, please let me know whether you'd actually be interested in buying a cd or a vinyl of similar material! and those who havent heard it check www.myspace.com/thecelestialspeech)

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I'm fine with the 99 cent model as long as the mp.3 doesn't sound like shit. For some reason every once and a while I get a retarded band uploading shit mp.3 files onto their "for sale" widget and it sounds like complete shit.

Honestly I always encoded mp.3 for any band working with me because I know that they will very likely not care about the technical of the whole deal.

 

[dcb]

but all these labels sitting on their already paid albums from 2007, 2006, 2005 and further back. : why dont they lower prices considerably, as these productions are already paid?

its wasted money because there is no cost for reproducing / duplicating
the material... i dont get it.

if we know, people are not willing to pay more than XXcents per song and
if we look at the illegal donwloads statistsics, we see that people are still interested in music :

why not move into people's directions ?

all other industries try to maximize profits by moving into the consumers direcction "pricewise". but not the music industry.

 

[arv_foh]

Yeah this a bit misleading. The biggest titles are $8-10 the first week at the biggest stores. And the 500lb elephant is that often titles are sold in bulk to Best Buy and walmart at or near cost to create hype and impressive first week sales which will have a cascade effect in the number of articles, interviews, interest and sales (that's the plan anyway).


Well you do get artwork and in fact itunes recently launched "itunes LP" with high res layout, lyrics, etc. Also, the distribution cost is reduced but there is tremendous cost in maintaining a giant database of music with a seemless pay and d/l infrastructure....not to imply that the profits aren't greater.
That said, I too think we are overdue for lossless d/l.

The issue is that regardless of the validity of your points, physical media loses significant ground every year to paid d/l so it is still important to discuss this market.

edit: just to be clear I am speaking from a stateside perspective, but I doubt CD costs have dropped that much in the euro markets.

Ok then. If the download includes high res artwork (like a high res pdf or something) and was FLAC, I would pay $10. Otherwise I stand by my previous price point.

 

[James Murphy]

but all these labels sitting on their already paid albums from 2007, 2006, 2005 and further back. : why dont they lower prices considerably, as these productions are already paid?

its wasted money because there is no cost for reproducing / duplicating
the material... i dont get it.

if we know, people are not willing to pay more than XXcents per song and
if we look at the illegal donwloads statistsics, we see that people are still interested in music :

why not move into people's directions ?

all other industries try to maximize profits by moving into the consumers direcction "pricewise". but not the music industry.

you perhaps need to re-read egan's posts more carefully... there are reasons why you can't just drop the price of one song down so low as 10¢ or so... it has to do with mechanical royalties... one of the ways which artists get paid, and those mechanicals are paid for years, for each copy sold, be it physical or digital download.

also you missed his very clearly written point that that most illegal downloaders will continue downloading for free regardless of how low the prices are dropped, it's human nature.

the music industry is very different than others that drop prices... you cannot download electronics, or food, or clothes, or cars... only music, movies, books, and software can be illegally downloaded... so using the model of other industries to suggest a course of action for the music industry is invalid, sorry.

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

I dont know much about royalties but why not pay them on the number of illegal downloads also?

 

[AudioPhile777]

I dont know much about royalties but why not pay them on the number of illegal downloads also?

really?

easy answer is because there is no money changing hands when downloading illegally...

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Well, im sleepy and ignorant... but when a song is being played on the radio, where is the money? Its all speculation? Are downloaded albums more eager to be sold then non-downloaded albums? Or maybe musicians should pay to upload their albums on torrent sites? hehe maybe not. But it would be similar to having a song played on the radio in a way, maybe a bit?

In addition to the mechanical royalties, however, our songwriter and publisher are also paid performance royalties, which means they make money based on how often the song is played on the radio, in restaurants or bars, or in other types of broadcasts. These royalties are monitored, collected, and paid out by a performing rights organization like ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC; our artist is paid by the organization with which he registered the song. For subscription digital "performances," the recording artist now gets paid royalties as well.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties5.htm

I dont know if when a musician gets registered on a performing rights organization they have to pay. Surely they do.

But, there are a lot of publicity on illegal download websites. And they surely pay a good amount of money to have their adds up there. And logically, Britney sells more then Band X, so Britney is more downloaded then Band X, so the adds are more seen on the Britney download page, so the royalties could come from there? With no "illegal downloading success stories", there would be no adds. Without adds there would be no money. Without money there would be no humans. Without humans there would be no illegal downloading websites??? Similar thing with radio???

 

[roy22341]

I can think of a LOT of bands that don't have shit artwork. You just listen to too much fucking metal.

Kayo Dot/Bloody Panda - 12" split has fucking amazing artwork for a start
as does all the Kayo Dot/maudlin of the well stuff.
Cynic - Traced In Air had awesome artwork, Painkiller (john zorn, bill laswell, mick harris) has awesome artwork too if you're a bit of a sicko.

I mean look, there's still a fucking plethora of cd's out there with amazing artwork. I mean for a start look outside metal and you'll find a lot of stuff that isn't just people posing in warehouses. Stuff starts becoming more like "art." You may not like the pretty pictures, but there's stuff I have that has artwork that would be shit to a lot of people, but to me, it's fucking gorgeous.
I mean my Doom Drone ep that I put out has artwork that I fell totally in love with, and to me looks like gorgeous, pure art, but to someone else it may look like shit. Once you move away from metal the definitions of "good" artwork become really fucking blurred.

Okay I may have exaggerated with what I said, but I still think the amount of quality album art now versus 15-20 years ago is striking. When I think of iconic album artwork that stick out in my mind as much as the music I think of Pink Floyd albums, The Clash, The Beatles, King Krimson, Prince and to a lesser extent I suppose (even though I can't stand Nirvana) Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten were fairly iconic.

Granted I'm sure part of this has to do with the fact that we don't sell records anymore, so now all our artwork has to be jammed into a four inch square, but I just don't see that same caliber of artwork anymore. When I think of my favorite albums from the past ten years, I could barely describe to you the album covers. But when I think of my favorite albums from the 70s and 80s, I can vividly see the album artwork.

All just opinion though, sorry to hijack the thread. I'd gladly pay a buck a song for high quality downloads.

 

[James Murphy]

Well, im sleepy and ignorant... but when a song is being played on the radio, where is the money? Its all speculation? Are downloaded albums more eager to be sold then non-downloaded albums? Or maybe musicians should pay to upload their albums on torrent sites? hehe maybe not. But it would be similar to having a song played on the radio in a way, maybe a bit?



http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties5.htm

I dont know if when a musician gets registered on a performing rights organization they have to pay. Surely they do.

But, there are a lot of publicity on illegal download websites. And they surely pay a good amount of money to have their adds up there. And logically, Britney sells more then Band X, so Britney is more downloaded then Band X, so the adds are more seen on the Britney download page, so the royalties could come from there? With no "illegal downloading success stories", there would be no adds. Without adds there would be no money. Without money there would be no humans. Without humans there would be no illegal downloading websites??? Similar thing with radio???

you should have stopped after the first few words of this post, lol.

no, there is no money available from illegal downloads for the band and label to be paid from. not hard to understand. any ads you see on the pages with the illegal downloads are not paying for the artist's mechanicals, and there's no way to make that happen. this is pie-in-the-sky daydreaming that will never work. it won't even work for a legit ad-driven model (these models just FAIL), and it certainly won't work for illegal downloads.

your suggestion is like expecting burglars who rob your neighbor's home to stop by your house and give you back the electric drill your neighbor had borrowed from you before they make their escape.

wake up, have some coffee,

 

[Joematthews]

your suggestion is like expecting burglars who rob your neighbor's home to stop by your house and give you back the electric drill your neighbor had borrowed from you before they make their escape.

well put

Joe