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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 160 responses total. |
krj
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response 65 of 160:
| 
Oct 22 04:02 UTC 2002 |
Rolling Stone has a piece on some of the upcoming fall releases.
The article says that the labels used promtional pricing as low
as $9/disc (where??) to boost sales. But we should expect to
pay about $20/disc for big name releases in the fall.
"Label sources say that because of the industry's slump
-- 2002 sales are off almost ten percent -- they can't
afford to lower prices."
I dunno, that just put a big smile on my face.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=16879&afl=mnew
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krj
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response 66 of 160:
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Oct 22 04:04 UTC 2002 |
(Um, the labels used promotional prices this summer, I left that phrase
out.)
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mdw
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response 67 of 160:
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Oct 22 04:58 UTC 2002 |
Sounds to me like they should be anticipating more of a slump.
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other
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response 68 of 160:
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Oct 22 07:46 UTC 2002 |
It would be nice to see the RIAA's funding basis dry up like a puddle at
nuclear ground zero.
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gull
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response 69 of 160:
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Oct 22 13:04 UTC 2002 |
I kind of wish they'd just accept the law of supply and demand as it
relates to pricing, instead of trying to prop up prices with
legislation. I worry about the legislative damage a dying RIAA could do.
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mcnally
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response 70 of 160:
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Oct 22 13:39 UTC 2002 |
The "law of supply and demand" is exactly their problem now that
it's technologically trivial to make nearly limitless copies of
the product they sell.
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gull
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response 71 of 160:
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Oct 22 19:06 UTC 2002 |
My point is that if they weren't still trying to fix the price at $16
per disc, they wouldn't be having so much trouble. I suspect fewer
people would download music and burn it to CDs if CDs weren't so
expensive. There's room for them to make a profit, just not the huge
profit they're used to.
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anderyn
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response 72 of 160:
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Oct 22 19:30 UTC 2002 |
I would buy a lot of CDs that I don't now if they were $15/16 a disc reliably.
That seems fair and reasonable enough to me. Cheaper would be nice, but I
would feel as if I were spending an okay amount if they were a straight $15
or $16 per.
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slynne
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response 73 of 160:
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Oct 22 20:41 UTC 2002 |
Yeah, a lot of cd's are more like $19
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dbratman
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response 74 of 160:
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Oct 23 00:05 UTC 2002 |
"because of the industry's slump ... they can't afford to lower prices."
OK, I admit I wasn't the top student in my econ class, but that's a
direct contradiction to my limited understanding of the law of supply
and demand.
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other
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response 75 of 160:
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Oct 23 02:02 UTC 2002 |
It depends on the false assumptions they bring to plan.
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polygon
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response 76 of 160:
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Oct 23 04:58 UTC 2002 |
They think of themselves as being like the health care industry. They
have a monopoly on music, so that supply and demand stuff doesn't apply.
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jazz
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response 77 of 160:
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Oct 23 13:25 UTC 2002 |
I particularly love how the RIAA tries to make it look like Napster
has hurt their business to the point to which they have to take drastic
measures, but every indicator I've seen, including their yearly profit, says
otherwise.
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gull
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response 78 of 160:
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Oct 23 15:11 UTC 2002 |
Interesting how the decline started *before* Napster was released, too,
isn't it? Apparently it not only allows people to share files, it can
go back in time, too.
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scott
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response 79 of 160:
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Oct 23 15:47 UTC 2002 |
Harrumph. Those people were holding off buying CDs, waiting for Napster.
Well, I couldn't find it, but I read an item recently claiming the whole RIAA
"piracy" fight was really intended to stifle small competitors, especially
in Web radio.
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gull
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response 80 of 160:
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Oct 23 16:00 UTC 2002 |
I'm a bit puzzled by the RIAA's contention that web radio is different
then terrestrial radio because it allows "perfect digital copies."
Whoever wrote that has never listened to a 32 kbps RealAudio stream.
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jazz
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response 81 of 160:
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Oct 23 16:20 UTC 2002 |
That's something that's true at the moment, but five or ten years from
now, you may well have realtime access to 144 or 192kbps mp3 quality audio
streams in realtime to the average American user.
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gull
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response 82 of 160:
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Oct 23 18:09 UTC 2002 |
No MP3 stream is a "perfect digital copy", though. It's lossy.
|
keesan
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response 83 of 160:
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Oct 23 18:22 UTC 2002 |
I hope 32K sounds a lot better than the 16 20 and 24K I have been hearing
(which is still less hissy than the mono broadcast radio I listen to since
there are no longer any local classical stations). I have seen 128K stations
listed already.
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jazz
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response 84 of 160:
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Oct 23 18:39 UTC 2002 |
MP3 streams are lossy compression, but considering that (a) it's
usually "good enough" for most listeners, and that (b) a MP3 stream from a
MP3 source is a perfect digital copy ...
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krj
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response 85 of 160:
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Oct 23 18:52 UTC 2002 |
(I had a response lost by a connection lockup which was going to say
essentially what jazz did in resp:81 :: we assume that the bandwidth
available to home users is only going to get better, and the sound
quality of Internet radio will only get better. So it's not irrational
for the music business to be planning for this future in which
digital streams are close enough to CD quality for most people; we've
already seen that a tremendous number of people find MP3 files
"good enough.")
The essay Scott mentions in resp:79 is most likely titled
"Raising the barriers to entry" and it's at:
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/raising.html
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russ
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response 86 of 160:
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Oct 24 23:04 UTC 2002 |
Re #81: What gull said. That's no excuse for writing a law which treats
a stream which is degraded far worse than a cassette recording of an FM
broadcast the same as the .WAV file straight off the CD. If you're
going to argue that "perfect copies" are the problem, then you shouldn't
be applying the same law to grossly imperfect copies.
Of course, this law is more about restraint of competition for listeners
and attempting to dictate musical tastes than "piracy". That's why it's
important to puncture the falsehoods around the RIAA's case.
Re #85: Then perhaps a rational law would allow no-royalty broadcasting
above a certain rate of distortion. That would allow small webcasters
to get started on the cheap, and work their way up to high-quality streams
as the revenue appears to pay for it.
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tpryan
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response 87 of 160:
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Oct 29 22:13 UTC 2002 |
If an internet radio site has a maximum of say, 128 listeners,
it is negligeble to a small FM station that usually reach 12,800 listeners
(small town) or or 128,000. What are the royality/air-play rates those
stations pay?
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gull
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response 88 of 160:
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Oct 30 00:33 UTC 2002 |
Radio stations only pay songwriter royalties, not the record company
royalties that are being proposed for Internet stations.
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krj
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response 89 of 160:
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Nov 7 06:57 UTC 2002 |
Assorted sales news: A story reports that online sales of CDs
have taken a sharp nosedive this year, down 25% from last year,
which is much sharper than sales overall.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021104/ap_on_hi_te/onli
ne_music_sales_1
(note the URL wrapped)
Meanwhile, USA Today reports that while overall CD sales are down
over 10% this year, country music sales are *up* 5%.
This correlates with sales being up at Wal-Mart and other
"rack accounts;" such retailers sell about half of the
country sales.
Is this the effect described by Moby: would country music fans
be less computer-literate than rock and rap fans?
Or is this evidence that what's going on is a huge shift in
public tastes?
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2002-11-06-cover-country_x.htm
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