Paying 5 Cents Per Song?

[Chaszmyr]

I don't think the music industry will go for this, but I think this idea has real merit.

To date, I have bought 30 tracks on iTMS at 99 cents each. I firmly believe that if songs were only 5 cents each, though, I would have bought well over a thousand. So add the computer tax plus the price of lets say 1000 tracks, that works out to a lot more than the $30 I've spent so far.

Futher more, while the decision is ultimately up to the record companies and not Apple, I think it's definitely in the best interest of Apple. I think if tracks were 5 cents each I'd be in the market for a 60gb iPod

 

[wide]

I've spent around 250 dollars on iTunes in the year that I have been using it. It's not that much music, but it's so much that I don't listen to most of it. At least 2/3 of that music has not been listened to in a long time.

If I were able to buy 5000 songs for the 250 dollars I spent (instead of 250 songs), would I? Hell no. That would be about 14 days of music. If I listen to music for one hour out of each day (with absolutely no song repeats), it would take me over 300 days to listen to those 5000 songs. Assuming each song is 4 minutes long, it would take me 330 days. I have barely been purchasing music for that long. Even if I listened to music for three hours a day, it would still take me over 100 days to listen to each song without repeats.

In order to make more money than they currently are in the legal online music downloading industry, each consumer would have to purchase 20 times as much as they currently do. (I know that they would also be "switching" people from KaZaA and like programs to legal downloading, which would increase the number of downloads, but I doubt even that would provide 20 times the number of current legal downloads.) Also, do they realize that they would be destroying the retail music industry by doing this? And destroying thousands of jobs?

 

[fabsgwu]

Kind of like what Hollywood is doing to combat pirated DVD sales in China, Mexico etc. Lower the prices of legit DVDs to squeeze out the competition. Of course its always hard to compete with free: http://slate.com/id/2114505/

 

[Durendal]

This idea is baloney. You know why? Because there would be a 1% sales tax on computers. Where would this money go? Two words: RIAA subsidies. You'll have to pay a tax on any computer you buy because you MIGHT download music with it. What a joke. So the local school district winds up paying more when they deck out a lab so that someone else can download music on their home computer. The RIAA are a bunch of greedy turds, yes, but I still think this plan is a steaming load.

 

[Lacero]

That's a good point. Microsoft is also doing the same thing with a lite version of Windows XP. People more likely to buy genuine Microsoft products even if it is slightly more expensive than the knock-offs. Same with DVDs and music downloads. Even at $0.25 per song, it is worth it, as long as the songs don't have DRM restrictions. DRM will kill 5 cent downloads.

 

[tveric]

This is an awesome idea. 5 cents per download for me???? EXCELLENT! Oh wait, I'm already paying about that much at allofmp3.com, and less than that at, uh, other places...

And for anyone complaining about the 1% extra tax on all computers, two words - LIME and WIRE. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

But seriously, folks, stop getting your panties all in a bunch. This will never happen. And if by some crazy way it does, you can take comfort in the fact that your bleating on the message board had no effect whatsoever. In either direction.

I will admit, however, that the entertainment value in the posts of the people banging their shoes against the podium in outrage is pretty high. Keep it coming.

 

[wPod]

crazy, but it just might work. id sign up for it!!

 

[Mechcozmo]

I like the iTMS as it is. This I hope is killed. Computer's shouldn't be more expensive for this reason. My grandma has no freakin' idea that you can download music (the internet was a big deal ) and she shouldn't have to pay an extra $20 or $40 or even and extra $1 because some moron out there is stealing music and ripping off the people that make music.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

lol, i'm writing this at McGill, yay! we made page 1!

I think maybe at 5 cents a song, I might be converted. For now, I prefer CDs enough to pay the 10 dollar or so difference.

(Lately HMV in Montreal has had tons of CDs on sale for 2 for 25$, everything good, Beatles, Metallica, Zeppelin, Radiohead, Doors, k-os, Jack Johnson, Miles Davis, Ibrahim Ferrer... all the big hits seem to be passing onto these sales racks, check it out if you're in montreal.)

At 5 cents a song though, that's a pretty sweet deal. It works for me, i'll let them figure out whether it works for them.

 

[andiwm2003]

Well technically you do pay for theft at Wallmart through inflation. Its part of their pricing schemes, they expect a certain percentage of theft and compensate for this by raising prices. I wouldn't be surprised if 1% of the cost of say a CD is to compensate for shoplifting.

I am not sure why everyone is freaking out about 1%, that was like $15? Whoopdido, if your paying 1500 for a new computer whats another $15 to download 5c songs. I do believe this wouldn't be good for a business at all, maybe a form of exemption could be put into place.

Personally it sounds like a good idea but there are waaay too many minor problems and possible loopholes in this scheme for it to be viable.

you're missing one important point: if a company raises the prices on it's goods to compensate for theft I can decide if I buy there or not. If an unrelated business raises the price on all computers and i need one I can't decide. that pisses me off. it's not about the 15 dollar. after all I buy mac's and apple takes more than 15 dollar . it's about somebody else feeling entitled to my money. who do this people think they are?

And for anyone complaining about the 1% extra tax on all computers, two words - LIME and WIRE. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

But seriously, folks, stop getting your panties all in a bunch. This will never happen. And if by some crazy way it does, you can take comfort in the fact that your bleating on the message board had no effect whatsoever. In either direction.

I will admit, however, that the entertainment value in the posts of the people banging their shoes against the podium in outrage is pretty high. Keep it coming.

of course you're right. whatever i rant here won't influence the outcome. and in the unlikely case it will happen i get finally my moral justification to start stealing music.

as for the entertainment value wait to see first the law suits against the 1%. when the tax is confirmed we will see every lunatic filing a law suit to get 1% of something. McDonalds wants 1% of all hard disk sales because people refill the small coke five times instead of paying for the large coke. Bring on you're ideas, maybe we'll get rich.....

 

[Sundance Kid]

Ok this tax is totally BS. I live in canada and am already paying 14.5% tax on everything i buy, IN CANADIAN DOLLARS.



EVERYTHING IS SO EXPENSIVE

 

[GmailGuy]

Drop The Tax, Bring On The Five Cent Song

Drop the tax, bring on the $.05 song. Make sure the artist gets a proper cut and pay them directly. This way we decide who the new superstars of music will be. Talented musician everywhere get a shot of making a living at their craft. Move into the digital age.

 

[HiRez]

great idea. oh, too late, its called income tax.
ah well

Only if you play the game with The Man and have a job...sucker!

 

[deanbo]

5 cents a song

I dont see how any musician is going to be able to pay for a recording for only 5c a song.

But I do expect mp3 prices to come down in the future.

As more and more users d/l their music, and as it becomes easier for musicians to post a song online, record companies (middle men) will become increasingly out of the picture.

I expect in 5 to 10 years time for record companies to handle promotion for artists, and thats pretty much it.

Personally, I think artists should be making money from live shows, record sales should cover recording and marketing costs, and that's it.

i.e. If you can't do a decent live show, you don't make a living.

 

[HiRez]

To date, I have bought 30 tracks on iTMS at 99 cents each. I firmly believe that if songs were only 5 cents each, though, I would have bought well over a thousand. So add the computer tax plus the price of lets say 1000 tracks, that works out to a lot more than the $30 I've spent so far.

For myself, I agree, I'd probably spend exponentially more on music, but it still bothers me to make everyone pay this blanket tax to subsidize only people who download music. I realize we do this sort of thing all the time (like pay higher auto insurance rates for unlicensed/unregistered/uninsured drivers) but I don't like it. The 5 cents per song is fine, if they want to try that, but the tax on hardware is not. And as another poster hinted at, this will most certainly be abused over time as greedy lawmakers keep creeping that tax up on us each year, just as your cable bill seems to mysteriously inflate each month. And it'll start creeping into other things as well, just wait until you see a "piracy tax" on DVDs, satellite television service, television sets, stereo systems, TiVos, video game hardware and software, and who knows what else (on top of the stealth taxes we're probably already paying on those).

 

[bennetsaysargh]

hmm. i think apple has a chance to capitolize, and get all of these anti-riaa groups on their side.
suppose if the prices for a song went up, or even stayed the same. then, apple could have artists upload their own songs to itunes, and the songs only cost 50cents (no pun intended). 25 cents to apple, and 25 cents to the artist. apple only currently gets less than that, right? and the artists get something like 15cents, right? of course, with this bands would have to have physical pressence in stores sometimes, but suppose apple was a record label? of course this would all be under the iPod company because of legal stuff with apple corps.
huh?

oh yeah, i think we get the point that most everyone is against the 1% tax

 

[rhpenguin]

i'm absolutely against the 1% fee. it's like charging 1% of your car to cover shoplifting at walmart. since when can private enterprizes take away money from private citizens without providing any product or service?
(the goverment is supposed to do that but not private companies. )

Think of it this way. Its like a big honey pot that everyone can dip into whenever they feel the need because they have already paid that fee. Dont look at it as having to pay the fee and not get anything out of it because your not stealing music, but this enables you to "pirate" or download at a cheap rate and be guilt free about it.

Theyre just making the music more accessable.

 

[HiRez]

25 cents to apple, and 25 cents to the artist. apple only currently gets less than that, right? and the artists get something like 15cents, right?

Apple currently gets 34 cents per song, most of which goes into supporting the infrastructure, so I doubt they'd like anything much less than that. I'm pretty sure the artists get whatever the record company decides they get out of their 65 cents (or what they're contracted to get). I'd be surprised if it was even 15 cents but I don't know. There's nothing stopping Apple from signing artists directly now, but the record companies have such a stranglehold on artists that it's hard to find any truly independent artists. I think they need some kind of nonprofit artist co-op who can pool influence for independent artists. But even that's difficult because the record companies almost exclusively control all the advertising and promotional channels and performance venues.

 

[starwxrwx]

business models need to evolve or die

first up: a tax is a stupid idea.

second: just make the downloads 5c, no drm, with a decent distribution interface/backend so its fast and easy. most people would rather pay 5c than hunt around to dl for free. the amount of downloads would increase so significantly that the tiny margins would add up to more than current margins on say iTMS.

think about it - if you wanted to hear a song NOW you could just download it. make it so cheap and easy that its preferrable to download it AGAIN rather than hunt down the cd/ipod/harddrive its on.

i have no pity for the record industry. you can't whine when your business model wont adapt to a new age. technology isnt slowing down. move on! people will still always be able to make music, just like they always have. maybe a big shakeup will happen and totally change the way the business operates. i hope it does.

and i DONT think that artists are being screwed at all. they should be the ones pushing for new ways of getting their music out there. anyone who already has airplay on commercial radio stations, who is on the charts due to marketing bull doesnt need any more money from me. the artists ive never heard of but would probably love will never reach me or any of my $$$ if the music industry stays as it is.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I don't think this plan will fly. I think that the artists will start bypassing the greedy record labels because they'll realize they'll sell more music and make 5-10x more money - and there's NOTHING the record labels can do about it. Even the RIAA will be powerless to stop that trend once it starts. If this happens...bye-bye DRM, bye-bye illegal file sharing, everyone wins!

 

[pizzach]

lol, i'm writing this at McGill, yay! we made page 1!

I think maybe at 5 cents a song, I might be converted. For now, I prefer CDs enough to pay the 10 dollar or so difference.

(Lately HMV in Montreal has had tons of CDs on sale for 2 for 25$, everything good, Beatles, Metallica, Zeppelin, Radiohead, Doors, k-os, Jack Johnson, Miles Davis, Ibrahim Ferrer... all the big hits seem to be passing onto these sales racks, check it out if you're in montreal.)

At 5 cents a song though, that's a pretty sweet deal. It works for me, i'll let them figure out whether it works for them.

Sweet! I may just walk home from school tomorrow along St Cat if it isn't too cold.

As for the people saying Apple pays so much money for infrastructure, don't those costs go down as technolegy improves? I don't even think an online store selling songs would have been profitable at 5 dollars a song in the 56K days before Cable and DSL.

 

[Lacero]

The executives at Apple (or whomever is paying the IT guys) make millions -- the executives in any large industry make quite a bit of money. The vast majorify of people who work in the record industry (including the "executives" at some indie labels I've met), just as the vast majority of people who work in the IT field, work paycheck-to-paycheck.


Likewise, the vast majority of artists do not earn a handsome living from their craft. "Let's help ourselves to music for free" goes down a lot smoother if you believe that everybody who contributed to the music is a millionaire, but it's simply not true.

 

[itsa]

As an artist I don't see how that would ever fly. I don't make that much per song as it is. The big 5 will eat us alive with this. Everyone will be going indy if something like this takes place..

 

[~loserman~]

The Globe and Mail reports on one McGill academic's proposal to stop unauthorized music downloads on the internet.

At the Canadian Music Week conference in Toronto Sandy Pearlman proposed setting up a robust search engine of all recorded music such as Google or iTunes and charging 5 cents per song alongside a 1% sales tax on new computers. Doing so would theoretically increase the number of online sales, and reduce illegal downloads.

Pearlman and Apple have been in talks about this possible system -- but the recording industry is against such a system. This would obviously require the recording industry's approval for such a system to exist. Apple, however, has always maintained that the iTunes Music Store has been a vehicle for them to sell more hardware (iPods). As a result, this sort of plan might be very beneficial to Apple.

Peter Openheimer told me that Apple doesnt make but a little over a penny a song from the iTUNES Music Store

 

[maehara]

What's next, extra taxes on automobiles because of car thieves?

Already pay it. Car insurance.