How many people actually buy digital download music whether from more
mainstream portals like I-tunes or more specialist ones like
Bleep.com?? I've spoken to quite a few label owners (all of them from
smaller independant labels) but nobody seems to be making much income
from it- any thoughts on the the current, and future, state of the format?
What chall think?
Well, I had a free trial on eMusic recently which allowed me access to
100 free tunes (thanks for Mr. Dust for the tip off). That's pretty much
all my experience of downloading. It has to be said though if I was
paying I'd have to have full fat wavs (lossless will do too and maybe at
a stretch 320K mp3) simply because you can definitely spot encoding
artifacts in lower bitrates.
That said I'm also of the generation that still values the physical
object when I buy music (as Martin points out it's a generational thing,
under 25s have no prob with files). I mostly DJ digitally too but I much
prefer to buy vinyl and record my own wavs. Now I might not be
representative of the target market for downloads of techno/house etc
that you might be aiming at but I suspect I might be.
There's also the issue of DRM or not. I was talking to a mate who
releases his labels stuff digitally as well as on vinyl and he thinks
that it's good to have no DRM and people spread the music around as, if
they like it enough, they're a lot more likely to buy subsequent
releases (so writes off any 'losses' as marketing).
Ken's point is interesting though, if you're going to put something out
and just break even and you can do that with either route (digital or
vinyl) I think I'd much rather go the vinyl route still.
robin...
