Re: The Future of Music (was: Re: e-book pricing)

From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 02 2000 - 21:33:50 MDT


>From: Max Møller Rasmussen <maxm@normik.dk>

>Fra: Zero Powers
>
> >Its no secret in the music industry that over 75% of the cost of a CD
>goes
> >into manufacturing, packaging, distribution and record company profit.
>Only
> >about 1/5 of the price pays for actual production of the recording and
> >payment to the artist. It is *only* that 1/5 that I have any desire to
>pay.
>
>The cost of a CD consists of several layers:
>
>Demo
>Recording
>Graphic-artwork
>Music video
>CD-Production
>Advertising campaign
>Distribution (transport/stores)
>sales tax
>
>A CD-Production costs about $1 including packaging and printing of the
>booklet.
>So yes you can save that.
>
>You can also save most of the distribution costs. Especially as bandwith
>gets cheaper.
>
>But that still leaves:
>
>Demo
>Recording
>Graphic-artwork
>Music video
>Advertising campaign
>sales tax

If I'm purchasing an MP3, and *only* an MP3, I don't feel I should have to
pay for:

Graphic-artwork (don't come with the MP3);
Music video (don't come with the MP3);
Advertising campaign (I get no benefit from that);
sales tax (so far the net is still pretty much tax free, and that's fine by
me)

>A million artist doing their own website for promoting music will not do
>that. I have no time to search all that information. I don't even have time
>to do it on mp3.com as they take in everything. All I have ever heard (well
>almost all) on mp3.com is demo quality at best. An artist is not the best
>judge of his own work. Thus I want a filtering infrastructure that can give
>ME the high quality music that I like.
>
>This is what a recording company should do (You can also call them editors,
>critics etc. Same difference.). So I don't think they will go away. I don't
>want them to go away.

True, the recording companies do perform the much needed job of filtering.
However, looking at it from a cost-benefit analysis, I don’t think that
service is worth the huge chunk of the cost of the CD that I pay for that
service. I think the filtering job could be done just as well (if not
better) and much more efficiently by other methods. Say commercial radio,
word of mouth, etc. So, while I agree with you that record companies will
not be going away anytime soon, I for one would not be sad to see them go.

-Zero

Learn how your computer can earn you money while you sleep!
http://www.ProcessTree.com/?sponsor=38158

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:32 MDT