I really believe a open download system would be far more profitable. Even at 25 cents a download that if the three million people on kazza download one son a day that is $750000.00 a day times 365 days a year is 27,375,000.00. Is that chiken feed to the music industry? yes. BUT cheep access would yeld profits that are going lost now to lesser quality versions. It would also make a market for financially unviable specialty songs. (just ask Dr. Demento)
Problem is when you can download it for free why download it for a quarter? On top of that if the price is that low the overhead of processing the credit cards (remember credit card companies get paid in both directions, greatest scam ever) will eat your margins. Actually your number is chickenfeed to the music industry, according to VH1 (
http://www.vh1.com/shows/dyn/vh1_all_access/64070/episode_wildcard.jhtml?wildcard=/shows/dynamic/includes/wildcards/all_access/rocks_richest/aux.jhtml&event_id=864498 )the Rolling Stones (#2 grossing act of 2002, Paul McCartney was #1) made 44 million this year (Paul made 72 million, The Donnas made enough to buy some shoes at Saks), now that's across the board and mostly on tour and memorabilia and if there's one thing the Stones have learned in the last 40 years it's how to print money. The music industry deals in BIG money (an album that goes gold hauls in around 9 million), but it also has a huge overhead (artists are expensive, lawyers are expensive, studios are really expensive, promotional material isn't cheap) and a complex distribution system. To give you an idea how much it costs to make music Jimmy Buffett came in at number 15 with 17.6 million and had to split costs of his tour (and therefore profits) with Corona.
Actually there's an excellent market for less popular music (none of the stuff Dr. D played was produced by or for him, it was already published stuff that he manged to find), they just don't spend as much promoting it they rely on off standard radio shows and word of mouth, also they don't print as much to start with and don't pay the artists as much.
The biggest problem with the industry right now is that the big dogs have gone tharn, they're not willing to take risks anymore. All you have to do is look at the pop charts, it's all people on at least their 4th album, popstars are supposed to be 1 hit to 3 albums. It's a high rotation section of the business but nobody is willing to put forth the money to fabricate the next big posterbait. On top of that the little guys have been gobbling up old established acts (if you like 70s and 80s heavy metal go to Spitfirerecords.com) which is giving them the funds to self publish and distribute (they used to work with big dogs on that which helped spread risk on marginal artists and allowed both to profit on suprise success).
Add to that easy piracy from the internet, a struggling economy and general disastifaction with the direction of the industry (only true music junkies like me realize how much great stuff is being published right now), and youve got an industry in deep doo-doo. Sadly they're focusing on the piracy when they should be focusing on the photogenic teenagers (the music sucks, but it's damned profitable) and getting their fingers back into the low end pie.
what i was thinknig should happen is the artist that havethe songs that are getting downloaded from kazaa should set up a paypal account on their websites so that people that got the songs free from kazaa can donate mopney oto the artist or band directly i dont know why they havent starteddoingthat before now that way they dont haveto get al lthere royaltys passed through 10 or 15 middle men before they see it and get like 1 penny for every single sold i am sure the people that download the songs would mind giving the artist that made it a qaurter or dime if the like it enough on kazaa then everyone is happy that matter snad the iraa is cut out of the loop and will eventually go bankrupt s o it will be a win win situation for everyone
_-It would also make a market for financially unviable specialty songs. (just ask Dr. Demento) __
I was able to get some ancient Firesign Theater off Kazaa that I couldn't even find in the record stores. Some of the mp3's had been recorded off VINYL!