iTunes Vs. The Titans

On 08-09-2005 15:34:18, home444 wrote:

>In many ways I'd prefer to see variable pricing. Why not charge more for newer
>and more popular music?

That would make this music more expensive than on CD, which is ridiculous.

>This could allow older music that isn't popular
>anymore to be sold for much less, perhaps even allowing the oldies to sell more
>as people find good tunes.

The music cartel is saying they plan to do this, but I'm not holding my breath.

>New music with too high of a price would end up
>being distro'd for free via the file swapping systems, so there'd be some
>pressure to keep the prices reasonable.

What pressure? I don't see any evidence that the music cartel is letting piracy influence
its pricing strategy (e.g. online music being only marginally cheaper than CDs, CD prices
not falling but increasing over the past few years, fewer titles being available now than
5 years ago)

Harro de Jong

I could be really wrong on this issue but I do not think there is
anyway that they will lower prices on older songs. I just cannot see
that happening. I think what you would see is an increase in price
for the new releases and older songs would stay at $.99. I work with
bands for a living and everyone of them loves iTunes. They feel like
they are relaly being treated well. they do not get hit with
packaging fees, Charge backs, Broken disks and so on. I love this
structure and I hope Apple is not forced to up the price. The only
reason I could see uping the prices is if inflation rises and they
ride along with that rate.

On 08 Sep 2005, at 09:46, Chris Pepper wrote:
> Murphy & bitter experience with the RIAA says: obscure music
> would be priced at 89c, and lots of things would be $1.50/$2.00. A
> year later we'd hear that they couldn't afford to sell 89c tracks --
> not enough profit to be sustainable.

Oh, come on now. Let's be realistic. There's no way they'd price
oldies at 89¢.

99¢

"variable pricing" is RIpoffAA-speak for "price increase".

At 6:34 AM -0700 9/8/05, home444 wrote:
>In many ways I'd prefer to see variable pricing. Why not charge more
>for newer and more popular music?

Because that is a fallacy. The music industry loves to pretend that
current (popular) music is the big seller, but the fact is the
back-catalogue is where the real money is. Metallica sells more
albums in a year than <picksomeonecurrent> with their top-ten album
-- without advertising or marketing.

Catalog sales are the white elephant no one talks about. For some
reason the industry doesn't see it as an asset, perhaps because doing
so would be tacit admission that current offerings, well, suck.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

I am actually one person who feels quite sympathetic to the idea of
differential pricing based on market demand. After all, that's how
efficient markets are supposed to work. I think the single-price
model is a bit of a hold over from the days of distributing a
physical product. The cost of production, warehousing, distribution,
display, etc. of physical product probably determined the lower bound
of LP/Tape/CD prices, while the desire not to alienate the market
probably defined the upper bound. And the recording industry has
gotten used to this business model ($9.99 is fairly close to the
lower bound of CD prices), and is probably unlikely to change in the
short run.

While I think differential pricing---particularly if it means that
popular artists with presumably a better product get paid more as a
result---is eminently sensible. While I disagree with the other
responses that differential pricing is inherently a bad idea, I do
share their pessimism that the record companies would allow it to be
implemented in a sensible way.

In the days of physical media, we had differential pricing of sorts.
If an album was not particularly popular, chances were that it would
end up in the "left-over" discounts bin of the record store as they
cleared shelf space to make room for new or more popular titles. A
lot of "left-overs" might eventually find their way on to the shelves
of discount CD stores. More importantly, with used record stores and
recently eBay and various online music forums, there is a robust
secondary market for physical recordings. At these places, used
records or CDs can be had for $1-3 a pop. On the other hand, very
popular or famous old recordings no longer on the record companies'
catalog can fetch $50, sometimes even $100. What we effectively had
was a de facto system of differential pricing.

This de facto differential pricing happened precisely because the
record companies did not have control over the secondary market. One
real tragedy of online distribution of music is that through tight
control over DRM, the record companies have veto power over the
development of a secondary market in online music, and with it veto
over the evolution of a de facto system of differential pricing.

Tn

On Sep 9, 2005, at 10:32 AM, Andrew Laurence wrote:

> At 6:34 AM -0700 9/8/05, home444 wrote:
>
>> In many ways I'd prefer to see variable pricing. Why not charge more
>> for newer and more popular music?
>>
>
> Because that is a fallacy. The music industry loves to pretend that
> current (popular) music is the big seller, but the fact is the
> back-catalogue is where the real money is. Metallica sells more
> albums in a year than <picksomeonecurrent> with their top-ten album
> -- without advertising or marketing.
>
> Catalog sales are the white elephant no one talks about. For some
> reason the industry doesn't see it as an asset, perhaps because doing
> so would be tacit admission that current offerings, well, suck.

And if back catalogs weren't such profitable variables, the industry
wouldn't always be pressuring so hard for time extensions for
copyrights every time Mickey Mouse comes close to going up for grabs.

Marilyn

Interesting points. I share everyone's doubts about the RIAA. I find the point made by mrbompa (about bands loving iTunes) revealing. But I would like to see the facts about record distribution and sales, with numbers and all. Can anyone point me (and the rest of us plain jane consumers) to a source that provides music sales figures for all types of music, whether recent release or older?

I have one anecdotal experience to share on used CDs that parrots exactly what Tomoharu writes above. I've been to used CD shops and bought hundreds of CDs from them (with only a few partial failures in the bunch). Once I asked why I could never find Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, to name a couple of famous names that I wanted which were never in the racks. The attendant told me that those sell so well that they never sit. So they resort to selling new CDs for those really popular artists.

This would probably be another discussion category, but while on the subject--I would like to see iTunes provide the capability for us to search for music based on its popularity within its category (rock, pop, R&B, etc). For example, I would like to go through all 1960s, 1970s and 1980s music starting with the most popular songs of each year, month and week. This would allow me to find songs by groups whose albums never made it far and I have not found. I would like to rediscover many of those one hit wonders.

Ciao, Tedley

On Sep 9, 2005, at 5:58 PM, Tomoharu Nishino wrote:

> I am actually one person who feels quite sympathetic to the idea of
> differential pricing based on market demand. After all, that's how
> efficient markets are supposed to work.

iTunes is selling 85% of all online music at its current pricing -
this is a PHENOMENAL success, a ratio that has endured for some time
now, and one that is far greater than was ever predicted.

Keep in mind that the record companies have been whining about
declining CD sales for years, though they try to blame it all on file
sharing. Not long ago, some of the record companies lowered their
pricing (Universal is one that I remember, I know there were others
too) in an attempt to bolster sales.

> I think the single-price
> model is a bit of a hold over from the days of distributing a
> physical product.

Not for quite some time now - prices of albums and cds tend to vary.
It's been many years since vinyl singles were sold at one price for
whatever the single (and this was a very large % of record sales for
decades) - the record companies were only able to change this when
vinyl became just about obsolete and they were able to force album
sales.

> The cost of production, warehousing, distribution,
> display, etc. of physical product probably determined the lower bound
> of LP/Tape/CD prices, while the desire not to alienate the market
> probably defined the upper bound. And the recording industry has
> gotten used to this business model ($9.99 is fairly close to the
> lower bound of CD prices), and is probably unlikely to change in the
> short run.

The record industry has been alienating consumers and artists for
quite some time now, and I think that the industry has been using
copyright law as a means to control prices and and maintain a
stranglehold on artists that would not hold up in the market. If long
copyright terms did not exist, they could never have established or
maintained the current business model.

Brick and mortar record stores have been suffering terribly, with
Tower going into Chapter 11 and having to close a big % of its retail
outlets.

And why are the record companies or the record stores any more
qualified to sell music than Apple is, esp. when it comes to selling
singles? Apple was able to negotiate the 99 cent deal because the
record companies didn't think they'd be able to sell many singles and
the retailers didn't think single sales would be a threat.
>
> In the days of physical media, we had differential pricing of sorts.
> If an album was not particularly popular, chances were that it would
> end up in the "left-over" discounts bin of the record store as they
> cleared shelf space to make room for new or more popular titles.

Most retailers still have "cut-out" bins.

I don't frequent the retailers nearly as much as I did before the
iTunes store, but I was cutting down on CD sales before that as I
found I ended up regretting a bigger % of album purchases I made on
the basis of hearing one or two songs. In fact, the only full CDs I
bought this year were concept albums by Greenday and Radiohead, and
I've got the new Stones album on order, groups that I've liked for a
while and know I've got good odds with past albums.

> A
> lot of "left-overs" might eventually find their way on to the shelves
> of discount CD stores. More importantly, with used record stores and
> recently eBay and various online music forums, there is a robust
> secondary market for physical recordings. At these places, used
> records or CDs can be had for $1-3 a pop. On the other hand, very
> popular or famous old recordings no longer on the record companies'
> catalog can fetch $50, sometimes even $100. What we effectively had
> was a de facto system of differential pricing.
>
> This de facto differential pricing happened precisely because the
> record companies did not have control over the secondary market.

This isn't true as the albums were initially available at full price.
They become cut-outs after they've either failed (usually) or lost
steam in the marketplace, and the retailers need to get rid of them.
It's more like the shelves you see at the supermarket for goods that
have exceeded their expiration dates.

Marilyn

On 9/9/05 23:10, "home444" <homesatoshaw.com> wrote:

> This would probably be another discussion category, but while on the
> subject--I would like to see iTunes provide the capability for us to search
> for music based on its popularity within its category (rock, pop, R&B, etc).
> For example, I would like to go through all 1960s, 1970s and 1980s music
> starting with the most popular songs of each year, month and week. This would
> allow me to find songs by groups whose albums never made it far and I have not
> found. I would like to rediscover many of those one hit wonders.

iTunes has the top 100 or so songs from every year between 1946 and 2004

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Sep 10, 2005, at 12:10 AM, home444 wrote:

> Interesting points. I share everyone's doubts about the RIAA. I
> find the point made by mrbompa (about bands loving iTunes)
> revealing. But I would like to see the facts about record
> distribution and sales, with numbers and all. Can anyone point me
> (and the rest of us plain jane consumers) to a source that provides
> music sales figures for all types of music, whether recent release
> or older?

You need to be a subscriber to access just about all of the
information on the Billboard and Variety sites, but they do make
some news available on the site every day, and some of the archives
are free. They're still the best industry news sources:

http://www.billboard.com/bb/index.jsp

http://www.variety.com/

The IFPI just released its annual statistics for global music sales;
there's a little topline data; the full report is available for sale.
If you nose around the news and business sites, some more data will
probably be picked up here and there:

http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/publications/rin_order.html

The RIAA has a research data area on its site (keep in mind that the
RIAA definitely has a tendency to interpret any kind of negative data
as being the result of piracy):

http://www.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/default.asp

While they are not geared to regularly compiling statistical
information, the Recording Artists' Coalition has a lot of
information about the relationship between artists and labels from
their perspective:

http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/

Industry trends are also regularly covered in the business press -
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, etc.

> This would probably be another discussion category, but while on
> the subject--I would like to see iTunes provide the capability for
> us to search for music based on its popularity within its category
> (rock, pop, R&B, etc). For example, I would like to go through all
> 1960s, 1970s and 1980s music starting with the most popular songs
> of each year, month and week. This would allow me to find songs by
> groups whose albums never made it far and I have not found. I would
> like to rediscover many of those one hit wonders.
>

This would be fun. There are quite a few very good special interest,
fan and blog sites I've run across that cover stuff like this.

Marilyn

On 10/9/2005 9:58 AM, "Tomoharu Nishino" <cheshirenekomac.com> spake thus:

> I am actually one person who feels quite sympathetic to the idea of
> differential pricing based on market demand. After all, that's how
> efficient markets are supposed to work.

Well, yes, except that standard supply and demand models are predicated on
the idea that there is a limited quantity available of the resource in
question. That's clearly not true in this case --- the supply of digital
music tracks is effectively infinite, unless the music industry decides to
apply some kind of arbitrary "throttle" to the number of copies available
(which they could theoretically do with DRM). The only other practical limit
I can see on the supply side is the sheer ability to download the tracks
(i.e., hitting bandwidth limits for really popular stuff). Based on that, I
don't see that there's much of an argument for differential pricing in this
market, apart from sheer greed :)

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

On 12/9/05 23:39, "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> wrote:

>
> iTunes has the top 100 or so songs from every year between 1946 and 2004
>

They do? Funny. I could have sworn that the Beatles had a hit or two in that
era...

--
Barry

On 9/12/05 23:43, "Barry Wainwright" <barrywmac.com> wrote:

>> iTunes has the top 100 or so songs from every year between 1946 and 2004
>>
>
> They do? Funny. I could have sworn that the Beatles had a hit or two in that
> era...

Not so much on Billboard. There was a LOT going on in the 60s musically.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

--On 9/13/05 9:58 AM -0700 John C. Welch wrote:

> On 9/12/05 23:43, "Barry Wainwright" <barrywmac.com> wrote:
>
>>> iTunes has the top 100 or so songs from every year between 1946 and 2004
>>>
>>
>> They do? Funny. I could have sworn that the Beatles had a hit or two in
>> that era...
>
> Not so much on Billboard. There was a LOT going on in the 60s musically.

To be exact, iTunes has lists of which Billboard top 100 songs from each
year are available on iTunes. Songs not on iTunes are skipped in the
numbering and not available.

For example, if you click on "Charts", "Billboard Hot 100", and "1964", you
get a list of 31 songs in the iTunes music store, ranging from #3 for the
year (Louis Armstrong's "Hello Dolly") to #100 (The Searchers' "Needles and
Pins") but with a whole bunch of gaps in the numbering (including #s 1 and
2 for the year).

One assumes the Beatles are among the 69 songs in the 1964 "Hot 100" that
are _not_ available in the iTunes store and hence not listed.

By comparing the number of songs the store shows to the number in the
actual Top ### list, you can see the gaps in the iTunes store's coverage.
Including the Beatles.

Dave

On 9/14/05 08:08, "Dave Scocca" <davescocca.org> wrote:

> By comparing the number of songs the store shows to the number in the
> actual Top ### list, you can see the gaps in the iTunes store's coverage.
> Including the Beatles.

That would also be due to Apple Records not allowing the Beatles' music on
any download service.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 15/9/05 06:25, "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> wrote:

> On 9/14/05 08:08, "Dave Scocca" <davescocca.org> wrote:
>
>> By comparing the number of songs the store shows to the number in the
>> actual Top ### list, you can see the gaps in the iTunes store's coverage.
>> Including the Beatles.
>
> That would also be due to Apple Records not allowing the Beatles' music on
> any download service.

Agreed, which means we have come full circle. My original example of the
Beatles came in response to your assertion:

> iTunes has the top 100 or so songs from every year between 1946 and 2004

And the exemptions apply to far more songs/groups/labels than Apple & the Beatles.

(and, incidentally, all Beatles records, and a lot more 'stuff', can be
obtained from the 'legal' download site of www.allofmp3.com)


[Curious, I checked out that site. I suspect the RIAA would take a dim view of it, not that they don't take a dim view of almost everything. Here's the bit from its Legal Info page: "All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3?-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting. Users are responsible for any usage and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility depends on the local legislation of each user's country of residence. AllOFMP3.com's Administration does not keep up with the laws of different countries and is not responsible the actions of non-Russian users." -Adam]


--
Barry

On 15/9/05 14:38, "Barry Wainwright" <barrywmac.com> wrote:

> (and, incidentally, all Beatles records, and a lot more 'stuff', can be
> obtained from the 'legal' download site of www.allofmp3.com)
>
>
> [Curious, I checked out that site. I suspect the RIAA would take a dim view of
> it,... - Adam]

I'm sure they would. I came across AllOfMp3.com about three months ago
through a blog entry somewhere (there must be an article to be written on
the transient nature of information in the blogosphere). While it has been
investigated and passed as 'Legal' by the Russian authorities, in response
to complaints by the RIAA and other bodies, this appears to be only due to
the fact that the state in which allofmp3 is hosted and administered carries
no recognition of international copyright agreements.

A more detailed discussion of the legality can be found here:

<http://www.fadmine.com/allofmp3-legal-cheap-mp3s.html>

Where the author summarises in this way:

> It is a complicated question with an equally complicated answer. But the short
> answer is: YES. It is legal both for ALLOFMP3 to sell mp3s and for American
> and International consumers to purchase those songs without any fear of
> repercussions.
>

I must admit to having perused their catalogues, but not (yet?) having
purchased any music from them. At the time, I was a little wary of
submitting my credit card details to a Russian web site, but as time has
passed without any reports of fraudulent activity this may be an unjustified
concern by now.

It's an interesting site, with interesting issues at stake. I would dearly
love to see the legality of the downloads challenged and established through
a western court. I more than half suspect that the RIAA and like bodies
would rather do anything than take the risk that they could lose such a
case.


--
Barry

> (and, incidentally, all Beatles records, and a lot more 'stuff', can be
> obtained from the 'legal' download site of www.allofmp3.com)

Not unless you live in Russia. ALLOFMP3 has a license to sell MP3s in
Russia and only in Russia. Any MP3 sales to people out side of Russian
are "legal" in the same way the old Napster was legal.

> [Curious, I checked out that site. I suspect the RIAA would take a dim view of it ... AllOFMP3.com's Administration does not keep up with the laws of different countries and is not responsible the actions of non-Russian users." users." -Adam]

They were investigated by the Russian version of Justice Department
which concluded that ALLOFMP3 could legally sell MP3s in Russian
according to the licences it had signed with Western record companies.
Those licences do not permit ALLOFMP3 to sell mp3s outside of Russian.

However, ALLOFMP3 has gotten around its licenses and the investigation
by claiming that it cannot tell where its users are physically located
and that it does not condone purchases from non-Russian users.

Of course ALLOFMP3 web site is very accessible to non-Russian speakers
and there were English and German version of the site the last time I
checked.

Ahteri Forcada




--
:--------------------------------------:
R. Ahteri Forcada-Lowrie
ahteri [at] alumni [dot] ucsd [dot] edu

On 9/15/05 at 2:05 PM, ahterigmail.com (Ahteri Forcada-Lowrie)
wrote:

>Of course ALLOFMP3 web site is very accessible to non-Russian
>speakers and there were English and German version of the site the
>last time I checked.

That still is the case. And clearly, if allofmp3 were truly trying to restrict sales to Russian citizens the web site would be in Russian with no English page readily accessible.

I use AllofMP3 all of the time and use my credit card. I have used this service for over two years, since its inception. I have never had a problem with my credit card and never have been overbilled or my card used fraudulently by another party.

Personally, I love this service and have used them to replace my old vinyl LPs with digitized versions. I even get the iTunes encoded files and they are wonderful in their fidelity and clarity.

I would recommend this service to anyone.

I also speak and read Russian and this has helped me in a number of cases where i got a few things incorrectly and was quickly and happily refunded. These guys are honest as well as accommodating.

Anyse