[I put an OT in the subject line, as this is definitely off-topic] On 14 Oct 2002 at 8:02, Phil Daley wrote, quoting John Dvorak:
> September 24, 2002 > By John C. Dvorak - Opinion from PC Magazine > > It's rampant. The new P2P systems, such as KaZaA and Morpheus, have picked > up where Napster left off, and blank CDs now outsell prerecorded discs. The > trend is clear: concern not for the law but for economics. . . . While everyone knows that people are downloading MP3s with Kazaa and Morpheus, the sales of blank CDs do not necessarily show acquisition of MP3s without paying, as the rest of the article assumes. It only shows that people really like being able to burn their own CDs with custom mixes of tracks to take with them. I'm sure that blank cassette tape sales have long outsold sales of pre-recorded cassette tapes, but everyone understands that most of those tapes get/got used to add a format option for recordings the user already owned (taping an LP for use in the car, for instance, or a CD for use in the Walkman). [] > When Edison first released his prerecorded cylinders, they sold for $4 > each. With mass production, he eventually brought the price down to 35 > cents, nearly a 90 percent reduction. If the same ratio held true with $16 > CDs, the cost of which has been perpetually propped up by price fixing, > they would cost $1.40. Since it costs less than 25 cents to mass-produce a > CD, $1.40 is reasonable and profitable. This is a completely bogus comparison. It does not take account of two factors: 1. cost of the item compared to a day's wages. 2. whether or not the initial price already included a calculation on balancing customer demand/pricing. I don't know the exact date that Edison released his first cylinders, but let's say the average wage was $4/day (it was probably less). That means a cylinder cost a day's wages. If today the national average gross income is something like $35,000, and there are 250 paid working days in a year, that's $140/day. In terms of the my estimated daily wage, the cylinder eventually came down to 42 minutes of work to pay for the cylinder. With the yearly gross of $35K, that would come to a cost of $12.25. Now, I'm probably grossly overestimating the average daily wage in Edison's time, and I'm not accounting for the differences in taxation (so that the modern gross does not as closely represent take-home as the Edison-era gross), but the rough estimate shows that the cost of CDs today is not so far off, after all. When CDs came out, they cost $25 apiece. Today, you can get plenty of CDs from low-cost labels for $7-8 (and some of these budget labels such as Naxos sell recordings that as good as the major labels, and in some cases superior, and in others, of repertory unavailable on any other label). In other words, Dvorak's numbers really aren't very accurate. This is not to dispute the basic point that the cost of CDs is grossly overinflated over the production costs (even accounting for music production and distribution costs). It is just to how that the estimated cost Dvorak uses is off by half an order of magnitude, in my opinion. Personally, I think CDs should cost $5-10. And I think CDs at that price would be able to compete with the bootlegs on these grounds: 1. better quality. 2. additional materials (printed material, packaging). 3. no time spent hunting for and downloading the songs. Of course, the real problem, I think, is that people are getting away from the idea of buying a pre-packaged selection of tracks -- people really like to mix and match their selections of tracks and tailor the selection to the mood of the moment. You can't do that with commercially produced CDs. So, I think that the record companies and most commentators are missing the whole point. It's about *selection* and *availability*, not about the downloads being free. Napster was the first "music on demand" service. And it's the "on demand" part that made it successful, that drove all those people to violate copyrights. The free part was nice, but it was the selection and the choice that made it compelling, that made it worth all the time and effort. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
