adamslim;149945 Wrote: > I wholeheartedly agree. Music is not cheap to produce; much of the best > music is not commercial (e.g. BBC Radio 3) and may well not be able to > pay for itself. Starting a band costs a fortune in promotion, as well > as recording costs. > > How on earth can the $10 CD price not be justified? If you play it ten > times, that's a dollar for an hour's entertainment. I have CDs that I > have played hundreds of times; I can't think of anything that is better > value (DVDs I pay $20 for and play once? No thanks!) > > I agree that it may increase the record companies' bottom lines if they > reduced prices - their unit sales might increase dramatically. However, > such a strategy is very risky - once you do it, there's no going back. > > Blue paints the music industry as suited thugs; I've met a lot of > people in music, and none of them were thugs (some *were* suited!). > Most of them are great people who love music, and would love to find a > solution to the current problem. > > There may be a few very big players who are doing well, but must of the > guys I know are much smaller; they're struggling and get really upset > when they see their artists, on whom they have spent a huge amount both > financially and emotionally, getting pirated. They can't invest in new > music if they don't make profits from their existing ones. > > AdamTo be clear, I differentiate in my mind the media industry and musicians. I thought it was clear I was alluding to the media industry, those that own the music and sell it as the 'suits'.
With regards to the comment above "How on earth could a $10 CD not be justified?" The industry can charge what the wish, I ask for no 'justification'. However, I do suggest that the CD price seems to be artificially fixed at the current price of $12-$15 over the last 20 years without adding value (while computers remain at a $500 to $1500 cost, their computing power aka value, has dramatically increased). So how does one price a CD? If the price were indeed just a reflection of recouping the costs of production plus a fixed profit margin, then simple logic dictates that the cost to record/produce and manufacture/distribute an album 10 years ago versus today should be dramatically lower given technology advances (even including inflation costs, etc.). So, say the above is currect and the cost to produce an album has gone down in cost. Is the media industry obligated to pass the cost savings onto the consumer? No. They can price the CD however they want to. They do not have to justify any price. However, in a free market where price is not artificially fixed, since there is more margin in the CD price, logic again says that someone will try to undercut someone else's prices and start lowering their price. The price of CDs should naturally float to a lower stable price point until more technology advances occur. Has this happened? No. Something is gumming the works up artificially. On the other hand, lets say my reasoning above is not accurate. Lets leave the costs of CDs alone all-together. Lets now look at the online price of a song. I question the $1 per song online price. They have taken the entire physical production and logistics component out of the loop (and replaced it with a far less costly technology computer distribution method) and yet the price remains almost exactly the same as a CD per song? Either the media industry was losing money on the sales of CDs (surrre) or they have artificially set the online song price high. Why in the world would they do that? I don't know why, but I think it is because they want to stifle the online sales channel. Am I a socialist who thinks people "deserve" free things? No. I support real capitalism which needs free markets. The media industry is not that. True competition looks different than the media industry. I believe that as alternative methods that lower the net cost to the consumer have sprung up over the last 5 years (not just piracy) they have been ruthlessly and short sightedly cut down. There is a cost for this policy. -- blue ------------------------------------------------------------------------ blue's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=798 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28858 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
