Don't mean to nit-pick, but you can get a co-hosting option or a decent, large scale (though perhaps not enterpise scale, which is maybe a little over the top for a label) remote server with 1000 gigs per month bandwidth for less than $30 per month - the prices for high bandwidth media sites is really dropping rapidly - I think the biggest cost for Warp here would be any legal issues (unless they have some sneaky contracts with their artists which allows for things like this), but assuming u know someone who can write a decent web code, I know for a fact you can set up and maintain a high traffic, high bandwidth site for a couple of grand, max. So about the price of two eps... Whether they get enough downloads to cover this I don't know, but seeing as it's Warp, I wouldn't be suprised...
I think there's a good future in this kind of medium, but for the smaller labels such as those people here are involved with, it would probably be best to look at creating some kind of grouped site where everyone could combine their labels material, rather than having the odd downloadable site here and there... ----- Original Message ----- From: Brendan Nelson To: 313@hyperreal.org Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 12:40 PM Subject: RE: (313) warprecords > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 15 January 2004 12:22 > > Hey - any heads on the list know if it really does cost alot? > Being a dullard, I can't see where extra costs would come > from if you're already running the site. It would definitely cost a fair bit. The first step would be jumping through all the legal hoops to make sure you're clear to sell the tracks in that format on the site (I know there are a few things Warp can't stock on there due to contractual/licensing problems that they're still trying to iron out). The second step is to digitise the music itself, which is a lengthy and time-consuming process (not the most expensive one though). Eventually you've got all the tracks on a huge hard drive, and having paid the person who's done that and the lawyers etc who've cleared everything, you've probably spent more cash already than you'd have spent on pressing up 5,000 CDs. But the most expensive bits have yet to be done... You need to buy an enterprise-level server, a really hardcore machine which will be able to cope with hundreds of thousands of hits per day and several hundred concurrent mp3 uploads, besides all the streaming that happens when people preview tracks. A machine that's up the job might cost you over ten grand. Then you need to pay an ISP for the bandwidth you mean to consume - because you want a lot of people to be buying mp3s off of you, that's a lot of previewing and a lot of downloading. Maybe several hundred Gb a month, which would cost at least several thousand pounds per year, every year. Finally you need to actually set up the site itself, buying any software you need (database and e-commerce packages can be bloody expensive), paying for the design and build of the website (that Warp site, I'd guess, would cost at least twenty or thirty grand at most web agencies I've worked with; Warp probably get a discount but it's still not cheap). Eventually the site goes live! You probably need to employ one person full time to look after it as well, though, so that's more cost on top of everything else. Oh, and you might need to spend some cash marketing/promoting the site so people know it's there. So all in all it does cost a lot of money to set up, if you're Warp and you expect your service to be quite heavily used. A smaller label would expect to spend less money setting it up - they wouldn't need as much bandwidth, or so big a server, etc - but OTOH they'd expect to get less customers, being a less well-known label, so it all evens out. If Warp make a success of it, though, then smaller labels will be able to deal with Warp themselves, having their tracks sold via Warp's infrastructure without paying for it all themselves - that'll be the point, I reckon, at which this whole selling-mp3s deal will come into its own... Brendan
