Intellectual Property Rights: Piracy FTW :b: :b:

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
I also value the joy that 9-year-old Thai sex slaves bring to our lives. I think that being able to schtup a 9-year-old Thai sex slave when one can't afford it is a very good thing.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Slade Wilson
Part of a free market is that you make something and sell it for what the buyer will pay. If you demand too much, they wont pay-in other words, you take prices from the customers. If you cannot make your gig work at the market price-get out. There is no moral law that says you deserve anything for your work. There are copyrights that exist to facilitate the producers of content-abuse it and lose money, use it wisely and profit. What value people place on their own labor is irrelevant. If this is not true, why do we allow companies to go out of business? Because they are bankrupt, inefficient and outdated? All the work those employees put into it, the 'trust' stockholders and investors had, didnt it have worth?

Users of Itunes for example, have indicated what price they find acceptable for music. Its not 20$ per album. Their alternative is free, so they show willingness to pay. Piracy wouldnt be anywhere near as bad if the music industry would set more reasonable prices.

Maybe I should take the term "free market" more literally. You don't like the price of something, just take it outright.

Again, what is a good price for a cd?

Personally, I think 15$ is a fine price for a cd, but usually I shoot for 13$ where I can find it.

[Kidlicious]

A CD might be worth 20 or 30 $ for some people. That's not really the point.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Kidicious
A CD might be worth 20 or 30 $ for some people. That's not really the point.

He said that cd's are overpriced, its only natural to ask what he thinks the appropriate price should be.

And you think music is overpriced as well, as you'd rather take it than pay for it, so what do you think is a fair price for a new cd or mp3?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Aeson


No one just downloads stuff to delete it, unless to prove a point. Why waste bandwidth?

Lots of people stream content. It is basically downloaded and deleted. If you don't believe me then check out popular streaming video sites which allow you to stream movies, videos, TV shows, etc... including just about any show on TV or recent movie.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Lots of people stream content. It is basically downloaded and deleted.

That isn't "to delete it" now is it? They are downloading it to play it.

(And no, streaming media is not necessarily deleted. For instance, on several occasions I've saved FLVs from my browser cache so I can watch them later without having to download again.)

If you don't believe me then check out popular streaming video sites which allow you to stream movies, videos, TV shows, etc... including just about any show on TV or recent movie.

OMG, they have these? Welcome to THE FUTURES!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel

Maybe I should take the term "free market" more literally. You don't like the price of something, just take it outright.

Again, what is a good price for a cd?

Personally, I think 15$ is a fine price for a cd, but usually I shoot for 13$ where I can find it.

For me a reasonable price would be 10 Euro (which seems to be roughly equivalent to the 13 $ you mentioned).
As in most LP-CDs there are only a few songs I hear more often than once prices above this Level definitely make iTunes the better alternative as there I can pick and buy only the songs I like.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


He said that cd's are overpriced, its only natural to ask what he thinks the appropriate price should be.

And you think music is overpriced as well, as you'd rather take it than pay for it, so what do you think is a fair price for a new cd or mp3?

They are overpriced. Just because you think something is worth 30 $ doesn't mean you should have to pay that much. You should have to pay how much the cost of production is. In the case of shared music, since listening doesn't cost anything, it should be free.

[Proteus_MST]

The costs of production for music are more than that.

You would have to take into acccount an hourly wage for the song writer (even if not specified) costs for the musicians who play the title in the studio till recording is complete and of course rent for the studio as well as wages for the studio technicians for the time this special track is recorded and should divide it by the estimated times rthe track will be sold.
this would be a fair minimum price for a single track.

Just like with games software, where you don´t only have the cost for copying the CDs/DVDs but also thousands of man-hours for developers, graphics experts, testers and the like which have to be paid

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Kidicious


They are overpriced. Just because you think something is worth 30 $ doesn't mean you should have to pay that much. You should have to pay how much the cost of production is. In the case of shared music, since listening doesn't cost anything, it should be free.

So you believe all music should be free?

Do you even know what goes into the production of music?

[Slade Wilson]

Selective reading. Kid said ''in the case of listening''

He said that cd's are overpriced, its only natural to ask what he thinks the appropriate price should be.

Itunes users have indicated the price they pay for music is not 20 dollars per album.

Only in the case of music could a label set an outrageous price and have it be supported.

[Slade Wilson]

Selective reading. Kid said ''in the case of listening''


Itunes users have indicated what they find a reasonable cost for music-its not 20$ per album. A company has the right to charge 30 dollars per CD, they also have the right to go out of business. They dont deserve anything for their effort, if they sell it for profit good, if you cant make profit get out.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Slade Wilson
Selective reading. Kid said ''in the case of listening''

What else would you, as an end user, do with music other than listen to it?

Originally posted by Slade Wilson
Itunes users have indicated what they find a reasonable cost for music-its not 20$ per album. A company has the right to charge 30 dollars per CD, they also have the right to go out of business. They dont deserve anything for their effort, if they sell it for profit good, if you cant make profit get out.

Where are these $20 cds? I bought two new cds last night for $25 and change (total) at best buy.

And how does your view that something is overpriced give you the moral authority to just outright take it?

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


What else would you, as an end user, do with music other than listen to it?

Well, personally I just collect it. I have zounds of stuff I've just downloaded, burned to a DVD ans stored away... Wierd it is.

Anyways, my excuse is the fact that I tend to listen to stuff not available on stores locally, and rarely on any online shop. You think 25 $ is too much? Try 500 $ for out of print game soundtrack...

And to people who say it hurts the economy, I say this. It may hurt the American recording industry, local music retailers and the artists, to some degree. However, that 20 € I don't use for the CD, usually ends up buying something else, like doughnuts from local bakery. Yummy doughnuts, and my money helps my local economy thrive.

[Sirotnikov]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/04/the-inevitable-march-of-recorded-music-towards-free/

The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free
Michael Arrington
179 comments »

2007 is turning out to be a terrible year for the music industry. Or rather, a terrible year for the the music labels.

The DRM walls are crumbling. Music CD sales continue to plummet rather alarmingly. Artists like Prince and Nine Inch Nails are flouting their labels and either giving music away or telling their fans to steal it. Another blow earlier this week: Radiohead, which is no longer controlled by their label, Capitol Records, put their new digital album on sale on the Internet for whatever price people want to pay for it.

The economics of recorded music are fairly simple. Marginal production costs are zero: Like software, it doesn’t cost anything to produce another digital copy that is just as good as the original as soon as the first copy exists, and anyone can create those copies (meaning there is perfect competition and zero barriers to entry). Unless effective legal (copyright), technical (DRM) or other artificial impediments to production can be created, simple economic theory dictates that the price of music, like its marginal cost, must also fall to zero as more “competitors” (in this case, listeners who copy) enter the market. The evidence is unmistakable already. In April 2007 the benchmark price for a DRM-free song was $1.29. Today it is $0.89, a drop of 31% in just six months.

P2P networks just exacerbate the problem (or opportunity) further, giving people a way to speed up the process of creating free copies almost to the point of being ridiculous. Today, a billion or so songs are downloaded monthly via BitTorrent, mostly illegally.

Eventually, unless governments are willing to take drastic measures to protect the industry (such as a mandatory music tax), economic theory will win out and the price of music will fall towards zero.

When the industry finally capitulates and realizes that they can no longer charge a meaningful amount of money for digital recorded music, a lot of good things can happen.

First, other revenue sources can and will be exploited, particularly live music, merchandise and limited edition physical copies of music. The signs are already there - the live music industry is booming this year, and Radiohead is releasing a special edition box set of their new album for £40.00 simultaneous to the release of their “free” digital album.

Second, artists and labels will stop thinking of digital music as a source of revenue and start thinking about it as a way to market their real products. Users will be encouraged (even paid, as radio stations are today) to download, listen to and share music. Passionate users who download music from the Internet and share it with others will become the most important customers, not targets for ridiculous lawsuits.

The price of music will likely not fall in the near term to absolutely zero. Charging any price at all requires the use of credit cards and their minimum fees of $0.20 or more per transaction, for example. And services like iTunes and Amazon can continue to charge something for quality of service. With P2P networks you don’t really know what you are getting until you download it. It could, for example, be a virus. Or a poor quality copy. Many users will be willing to pay to avoid those hassles. But as long as BitTorrent exists, or simple music search engines like Skreemr allow users to find and download virtually any song in seconds, they won’t be able to charge much.

Update: There are some blog responses to this post that are, inevitably, complaining about fairness. Arguing against basic economics makes about as much sense as arguing against gravity. Zero marginal cost + competition (anyone can create a copy of a song) results in a zero price, unless government creates artificial barriers to a free market.

http://runningwithfoxes.com/2007/10/04/people-still-dont-get-webonomics/

People Still Don’t Get That Music Labels Are Dead

Mike’s post on “The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free” stirred up a lot of controversy and oddly confused analysis from places I didn’t expect.

Mike’s marginal cost argument isn’t so much that music should be priced at their marginal cost of production, but that they will inevitably have to price at that level. It’s the economic law of gravity powered by competition, be it from legal or illegal sources. Music labels used to have a monopoly over distribution, but digital distribution has ensured that’s no longer the case. I find Mike’s statement that “every consumer is also a potential producer of any song” particularly poignant.

Freakonomics, one of my favorite blogs, had a great roundup of opinions digital music a couple weeks ago. I don’t agree with all the opinions, but Koleman Strumpf (Harvard) has a great empirical analysis of the situation.

The counter-arguments I’ve seen don’t dispute the fall in price, but rather counter the fairness or un-sustainability of the business model. To that I say that “fairness” isn’t a business model. I’m also getting really tired of the starving artist meme. The industry makes all its money off of the big names that hit it big, but always points to artists that didn’t make it when they want to curry favor with the public. The fact is that most artists don’t make it in the current system, and still won’t in the new one. However, the new system will give artists a greater control over their destiny as they can run around labels and connect directly to consumers.

The un-sustainability argument mainly complains that the analysis doesn’t take into account average costs and fixed costs. But consumers and competitors don’t care what your cost structure is. They just care about how much they have to pay.

It’s the same issue technology firms confront. Once the IP is created, it costs nothing to proliferate. To ensure continued innovation, these companies are awarded patents to protect their works. But a similar system doesn’t make as much sense in the case of music. First of all, labels aren’t the root of the creativity, the artists are. Second of all, there’s not a compelling public interest in managing such a costly system. The RIAA is already seeing how much of a money pit that enforcement can be.

The music industry will have to search for natural ways of wooing consumers to their products in ways they can make revenue. Live and exclusive content make sense. However, there’s also the value of convenience that consumers will pay for. iTunes will still make money because it’s become a convenient destination for buying music online. AllOfMP3 effectively charged for this convenience factor at their lower price point.

Labels are dead, long live artists.