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

[ze kink]

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)

+1, though I've always released everything I do for free, and if there have been some cd versions of recordings that we have done with the bands I'm in, it's just been a small amount with the price set so that we can get the money back that we had to pay for printing them.

Myself, I won't pay for mp3's, but I'll gladly buy a nice looking cd with good artwork, and I'll also gladly pay more for a deluxe/limited edition with bonus stuff. I would however gladly pay for a service that had a monthly fee with which you could download good quality mp3's from it. I'll probably start paying for Spotify premium as soon as they get some more lesser known artists and albums, right now it's not quite worth it for me, so I'll rather listen to their ads.

Vinyl editions also interest me, and whenever I move and have more space, I'll probably start buying vinyl too.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

I'd buy a lot more records if everything new wasn't smashed to bits in the mastering process. Seriously, I'm not going to pay good money for something that sounds awful. ....just my 2 cents.

Then again, if they brought back vinyl, I'd probably be broke!

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

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,

I never said it was not utopic

But like newspapers and magazines, they can be sold at a very low price because of the adds.

It would be nice if musicians would be paid on page hits from the adds money. Even on myspace and things like that... utopist, I know. But the topic is "rethinking pricing strategies for mp3s"... I tried.

But I guess a good way to stop illegal downloading would be to strictly prohibit companies to put up adds on there? And those add peoples are surely easier to find because they sell stuff. But imho trying to stop all this downloading stuff is utopist as well.

 

[egan.]

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.

As an illustration of this I would point you all to the front page where there is a thread about the new katatonia record. Note that the label is giving a sample song away for free and people are still hosting it other places presumably b/c a simple email address verification is too much to ask.

One of the most continuously frustrating things about the problems in the music industry is all of the adamant opinions based on flawed logic and zero understanding of how the industry works or the functional realities of this business or business in general.

 

[James Murphy]

very well stated Egan.

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

If the industry worked perfectly there would be no such topics imho.

 

[egan.]

If the industry worked perfectly there would be no such topics imho.

I guess that is aimed at me? My point is that you are unlikely to offer valid solutions to problems when you don't actually understand them.

It's like when my friend got stoned in highschool and "solved" the car accident problem by declaring all vehicles should be made of nerf.

 

[James Murphy]

lol... or me. ha ha, egan nailed it again. yeah, no one said the industry was perfect. again, you should read more clearly.

 

[GarethSE]

I'd buy a lot more records if everything new wasn't smashed to bits in the mastering process. Seriously, I'm not going to pay good money for something that sounds awful. ....just my 2 cents.

Then again, if they brought back vinyl, I'd probably be broke!

There's also this.
Plus motherfucking 1.

 

[dcb]

i dont have internet access at the moment here in spain, would like
to write more :-(

but : how do we make music more attractive to the customers ?
how do we make them pay again for our "art"?

i feel most of you dont like the idea of lowering the prices for mp3s, right?

 

[GeertSamuel]

I would pay 30 euro's for an album as long as it's good music.