prescript: OK so some other people have shot off stuff saying some of
the same but bear with me.
Ok, lets just do the maths on that.
We'll do it first in US dollars, because the number is one that has been
quoted:
A song costs $US 0.99
A CD contains ~ 17 tracks, or $US 16.83
The current exchange rate is ~ 0.60
Thus a CD worth of songs costs: $AUD 28.05
well at face value (other factors ignored for now) I'd consider this
quite good value.... I think we can all put our hands up and say
we've all purchased CD's for, say $30, and found that there was only
one or two songs on it we liked.
As a music fanatic and ex DJ I have about 2000 CD's of which
probably only a 20 or so get the "all tracks are
great" rating.
Now in addition to this, you're also paying for bandwidth, because
unlike purchasing the CD in the shop where the distribution network is
paid for by the supplier, the electronic distribution is now paid for by
you.
like buying anything else over the internet.... Amazon V's Angus &
Robertson, E-Bay V's a garage sale..
It's all swings & roundabouts.
<snip>
To download your CD would cost you around $AUD 29.75.
You end up with a CD worth of music, which takes up around 60Mb of space
on your hard disk. A 20Gb HDD costs around $100,
or 120Gb Hd for $300 (which you could use the rest for other stuff -
like ripping your CD/vinyl collection or backing up your machines
internal HD)
Total: $AUD 30.09
For this $AUD 30.09 you get an electronic copy of a CD, with no media to
use in your car (additional cost $0.50 for a Blank CD), no case to store
it in (additional cost $1.00 for a case), no cover booklet (additional
cost of $0.20), all for the convenience of electronic shopping.
No jewel case - to me that's a plus, the jewel case has to be the one
of the worst pieces of design from the last century.
Plus most liner notes aren't worth the effort of taking them out to read.
To top it off, if you haven't burned a CD of your tracks, if your hard
disk crashes, or your files get accidentally deleted, you have nothing
and you can pay for your music again.
or we recover them from our backup.... don't we...
Contrast this with buying a CD in a store, which can cost you anywhere
between $19.95 and $29.95, plus $1.50 for the bus.
And finally, for the audio purists among us. We're not talking about CD
quality music here, we're talking compressed MPEG.
My co-workers think I'm a bit strange for encoding my MP3's at at
200+ bps as most of them are happy with 128bps so as we can see
"audio purists" aren't really the market they are aiming for... the
term "music purist" it's self is a bit misleading... Would a music
purist even buy a CD given that it cuts off the top and bottom end
you get on vinyl? Would a purist buy vinyl as it looses fidelity from
a live acoustic concert. Would a purist play something from a
computer or any thing with solid state components? Don't laugh - I've
seen $40,000+ HiFi setups consisting of only a turntable, amp and
speakers with out a single transistor or IC just purely vacuum
valves, gold cap capacitors and hand made <1% resistors.
<snip>
As an aside, the electronic CD shop consists of an Internet connection,
a server farm and software. The current method of distributing CDs
involves printing CDs, booklets, boxes, posters. Shipping them across
the globe, putting them into warehouses, shipping product to shops,
stocking shelves and returning faulty CDs.
Are the record companies excited - I would be if I could make money for
nothing!
????
"Money for nothing and your chicks for free" isn't that what the
music industry is all about?... seriously though is this any
different from the software industry? Or any other company that seeks
shorter distribution lines/less assembly like Ikea, Apple, GM etc ad
infinitum. The music industry has already pushed the "image as
product" side of marketing so far it has to find other ways to
increase sales/decrease cost.
So, perhaps it will go well. But at these prices I won't be a shopper.
Me... Probably a occasional shopper. I'd like to see the royalty
distribution ratio on this scheme.... given the music industries
justification for low royalty return partly hinges the costs of
production (and partly on the fact that for every 1 release that
makes a profit a dozen don't - this part is cool with me) one would
expect/hope that the artist would make the same or more total gross
royalty (rather than percentage) per sale.
Disclaimer:
All care has been taken to make these calculations accurate. One
Australian dollar is calculated to buy 0.60 US dollars. 1Gb is 1024Mb,
1Mb is 1024Kb. A 256K download link is 25Kb/s effective throughput. A
song size is guestimated at 3.5Mb. A CD is taken to have around 17
songs.
Disclamer.. no attempt has been made to make any of my calculations
accurate (except the 120Gb hard disk price - current price at Net
Plus $299) Every thing lse is just my opinions.
--
~
Mark Secker [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph#9380 1855 (ECEL)
ECEL Computer Support Officer, University of Western Australia.
CRICOS Provider No. 00126G
~
"... the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but
only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a
man, but kept a child."
Henry David Thoreau
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in one pretty and well preserved piece, but to skid across
the line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil,
shouting GERONIMO"
Hunter S Thompson(?)
