What's a song worth to you?

[phlogiston]

OK here's a questions that I've been thinking about for a while, and has come up again. As you may or may not know, Napster will soon be a "pay for" service, with their own file format (.nap instead of .mp3). My question is: what is a song worth to you? How much would you be prepared to pay to download a song?

For example, Band X release their next album on a download only basis and it contains 10 songs. How much are you willing to pay to get the songs? If you bought this on CD it would cost about $3.00 a song, but with that you get the booklet, the disk and all the rest. With the download, you get nothing, and even have to supply your own storage media.

And Tim, seeing as you're going through this sort of thing at the moment you may have a good idea about this one: What's a song worth to an artist? Cash wise I mean. I know it depends on the sucess and all that, but if you recorded a song and released it as download only, and knew you were going to get 5,000 downloads, what would you have to charge to get your money back?

Sorry to get all heavy and serious folks, but rest assured, I'm not asking for market research purposes, I'm genuinely interested. (A certain Mr. Mark may use it for his own nefarious, World (wide web) domination means (never trusted him), but I won't)

 

[Mark]

I would say $1US (so $2AU) -- if artists charged this much I believe it'd be a better return than the royalties they'd get from the record company...

And I'd happily pay $2 for a high-quality file... maybe

 

[Aces_High]

i dunno if i'd pay my hard earned for a mp3 / nap file

i'd probably be more willing if it was more than just a sound file...eg more like a shockwave pakage with interactive stuff like lyrics maybe a few pics/artwork etc...that would be cool , but also have a mp3 as a seperate file so as u could download it into your mp3 player or whatever

wadda ya reckon ?

 

[Mark]

How about a high-quality (ie, uncompressed) music format, that you could burn to a CD and retain CD quality? Would you pay for that?

 

[Sydo]

I don't think I'd pay at all.

I only ever download music to sample - If I like it, I go and buy it.
I'm not sitting and listening to music enough at my computer to bother.

How about a high-quality (ie, uncompressed) music format, that you could burn to a CD and retain CD quality? Would you pay for that?

As far as burning them to CD... I've got a few burnt CD's, but I never listen to them.
It's just not the same to have an ugly plain white or gold thing, in a crappy photocopied cover - compared to a cool looking picture disk, with full colour 30 page booklet with lyrics.

 

[phlogiston]

Originally posted by Mark
How about a high-quality (ie, uncompressed) music format, that you could burn to a CD and retain CD quality? Would you pay for that?

That would be something I would be more prepared to pay for. Like Mark, I think somewhere between $1 - 2 would be acceptable. However, to get an uncompressed music file (.wav for instance) would involve a 40-80 Mb download for an average 3-6 minute song, which would put it out of reach of most dialup users. Even for us on cable, a whole album (650 Mb) would take a couple of hours.

 

[Mark]

I'm sure someone (somewhere) will (someday!) develop an audio format offering smaller file sizes without compressing the audio, therefore retaining audio quality.

Downloading songs of course isn't as nice as buying it on CD, with the booklet, lyrics, artwork etc, BUT it is a viable option for unsigned bands who want people to hear their music AND make back something to cover their investment and pay for their efforts. The sooner something comes along which challenges the current record company way of doing things, the better (but that's an entirely different topic!!).

 

[Lord Tim]

Originally posted by phlogiston
And Tim, seeing as you're going through this sort of thing at the moment you may have a good idea about this one: What's a song worth to an artist? Cash wise I mean. I know it depends on the sucess and all that, but if you recorded a song and released it as download only, and knew you were going to get 5,000 downloads, what would you have to charge to get your money back?

This is a tough one...

Well, first of all let me say that posting entire albums up on a site or Napster or whatever is a bit lame. Sure, people do it all the time and there's not much you can do about it, but you really are getting ripped off a bit. However, there's a few things to consider before just leaving it at that...

The quality: It's not CD quality. It's close but not quite, even at extremely high bitrates.

Rarity: Some tracks just aren't available where you can get them so Napster is (was) great for grabbing things you'd have no hope of getting otherwise.

The whole package: A CDR of MP3s != a real CD of songs with all of the printing, etc.

So what I'm saying is although you are getting burnt a bit by having an entire album uploaded, I know a lot of people would still prefer the real thing because it's better, except for the stuff they just can't buy through normal channels. For people to diss Napster (and things like it) entirely, they don't realise how many people first find out about their bands through those channels first and then become huge fans, going on to buying all of their stuff legitimately! A couple of songs floating around the net will do more good than harm...

Back to the original question, upping an entire album to a pay-for-listen service would just suck, I think. My reasons?

1. If you can go to the shop and buy a CD quality (well, duh!) release with all of the bells and whistles, why would you pay to download something not as good for the same price?

2. If it's that popular, don't you think some asshole wouldn't have already upped it to his free MP3 site somewhere? Not to mention the #MP3 channels on IRC and places like that...

As far as what each song is worth, there's a lot of factors involved too...

1. Intellectual property - you work DAMN HARD to write your stuff, you want to get rewarded for all of that effort! Not only do you miss out on sales, you also miss out on royalties because illegal copies have no way of being counted. That's what stings most - the royalties are really the true payment for your work, I think.

2. The actual recording price of the material is a very small part of the big picture. Resurrection cost us about $6000 including mastering (a good chunk of that was mastering, in fact), we're envisioning the new one to be around the same price (MUCH more if we did everything somewhere other than my studio here). You could divvy that up per-song and say that's what each one is worth, but then you have to factor in the manufacturing costs, the artwork, the printing, the distro, the publicity (which is LOTS!!!)... That adds up to a pretty hefty figure!

3. How do you account for the time you spent out of your life writing this stuff?

I know this is all irrelevant (well, not irrelevant, but not really... apparent) to the average guy buying CDs and that's a risk the artist has to take. That's why I really don't go for getting your stuff ripped off via the net, but keeping the points I made earlier in mind too...

It's a tough question to answer, that's for sure!

 

[Sydo]

Originally posted by Mark

BUT it is a viable option for unsigned bands who want people to hear their music AND make back something to cover their investment and pay for their efforts. The sooner something comes along which challenges the current record company way of doing things, the better (but that's an entirely different topic!!).

Absolutely!

 

[Lord Tim]

Just had a good read of this thread again and it occured to me that I was purely looking at this from the point of view of a signed artist which had a lot of label support and a commercially released album already...

Mark makes some good points - for an unsigned artist without any of that, it's a great alternative to basically giving their stuff away for nothing online...

But then there's the question again - would you download this stuff if you had to pay for it, essentially putting the artist back to square 1? I think there'd have to be some kind of incentive to make people pay to download the songs...

Perhaps like a shareware concept where you can download the songs and they're crippled in some way (low bitrate, constant beeps or shortened or something) until you paid the registration fee...? That way you get to listen for nothing and if you really like it, then you can go pay for it...

 

[Lord Tim]

Originally posted by Mark
I'm sure someone (somewhere) will (someday!) develop an audio format offering smaller file sizes without compressing the audio, therefore retaining audio quality.

Actually, they kind of have now... Have a look here:

http://www.codingtechnologies.com/mp3PROzone/index.htm

 

[phlogiston]

Originally posted by Lord Tim


Actually, they kind of have now... Have a look here:

http://www.codingtechnologies.com/mp3PROzone/index.htm

Don't want to be a nit picker (well, actually I s'pose I do, otherwise I wouldn't reply) MP3Pro still compresses the signal.
But granted it supposedly is still a great deal better than MP3 with twice the quality but the same file size (I haven't heard any yet though)

 

[Lord Tim]

That's why I said "kind of"!

Yeah, I've downloaded the player / encoder to try it out... Not bad! The encoded files sound like crap on an ordinary MP3 player, though...

It's a good idea, but AFAIK they're the only people using the format so unless it takes off, that's all it'll be - a good idea...!

 

[Wrathchild]

Just thought I'd contribute my two cents here, as I've been a bit quiet lately .

I only ever use MP3 search engines to get B-sides (singles just aren't worth the money IMHO), import bonus tracks or rare, officially released live stuff, and I wouldn't even do that if record companies would release the whole lot either as part of the album itself or on a bonus disc. It's not fair to the band to download an entire album's worth of music that they have worked hard to record, but if it means having to buy the same product twice at a ridiculous import price, or search high and low for a single or EP just for the sake of one song you don't already have, then you're better off downloading it.

Case in point is Black Sabbath's "Headless Cross." Not many people know that there was a promo CD single released of "Black Moon", with a non-album track called "Cloak and Dagger" on the B-side. HC is only about 40 minutes long, so there would have been plenty of room to include this song on the album. But no, the record company decided to put it on a single just to give the collectors something else to chase after. This sort of thing isn't fair to the fans, and I wouldn't mind betting that the band had nothing to do with that decision.

W

 

[Ralphe]

i don't think i would pay to download songs.In fact,i haven't ever downloaded any songs(not having a computer probably plays some part in that,).If i want to listen to something i will usually buy a CD.

 

[PIV Bassman]

As a punter I would rather buy a CD than pay for a download. I like checking out the artwork and lyric notes that come with a CD. If you could also download printable artwork and liner notes with the mp3 file it would make ir more appealing.
As a musician I think that it would be nice one day for artists to be able to cut out the middle man so to speak and be paid directly as record companies pay bugger all in royalties, especially when you consider the various 'hidden' deductions factored in and so forth. Unfortunately without the backing and marketing clout of a major record label it takes years to be able to showcase your music to a really decent number of people even if you do have mp3 files and a decent presence on the Internet. Any artistic endeavour is an uphill battle when it comes to making a living from it. If enough people would download and pay for original music I would much rather do that as an artist than pursue a recording deal.

 

[dreamwatch]

I have never downloaded MP3's. I don't have a great deal of use for them - listening to an inferior quality product on my dodgy computer speakers is pointless when I have a state of the art hi-fi in the same room. I have downloaded song snippets in really poor quality formats from Amazon and band sites to hear clips from tracks before I decide if I want to buy a CD though, and I find those invaluable.

In answer to the question, I wouldn't pay for an MP3 - not now, not ever. If I had to put a figure on how much I thought they should be, maybe 50p each (I think thats about $1.50 for you guys), that would end up giving you a whole album for about £5 or so. Ofcourse, CD's retail much cheaper in Australia, so $1.50 might be too much here.

Erm, that was just my opinion . . . I'll go away now.