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On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Look at it from the other direction: the market was willing to cough
> up $100 million dollars to listen to a Dixie Chicks album, in a world
> where those people could download the songs themselves for near-zero.
> That means the mere convenience of getting it on a small disk that
> they can take to the car, the "coolness" of having an authorized copy
> with artwork and liner notes, etc., and perhaps the value of assuaging
> their conscience that they are obeying present law, was worth $100M.
Another thing they're paying for is circumventing latency. When Ani
DiFranco's Up-up-up-up-up-up came out, I bought the disk b/c I knew it
would take me forever to track down all the individual songs from it,
and I'd have to wait until they percolated out into Napsterland in the
first place.
> That's completely on top of what they get for live concerts, appearances
> on television, endorsement deals, and other income not dependent on
> IP. Anyone who argues that the age of downloading (which takes away
> only the value of that conscience-stroking) will cause artists to
> starve isn't doing the math.
Let's stack the argument even more against voluntary payment. Let's
say that a cold 50% of those people were unaware that they could
download all the Dixie Chicks they wanted with almost no chance of
getting caught. That cuts DC's gross to $50 million. Let's say the
band makes 2% of that after all the 'little people' have their cut
ending up with a paltry $1 million. $333,000 and change per Dixie
Chick per year. I wouldn't quit my current (extropic) job to have
theirs, but I'd quit the one I had in Michigan in a hot minute.
Of course, with such a business model in place, DC would take in
far more than 2%, since as pointed out by other posters, they could
tell their record label to take a hike and distribute their music
directly. Smaller pie, bigger slice.
- --
* I believe that the majority of the world's Muslims are good, *
* honorable people. If you are a Muslim and want to reassure me and *
* others that you are part of this good, honorable majority, all *
* you need to say are nine simple words: "I OPPOSE the Wahhabi cult *
* and its Jihad." *
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