P2P systems. To Bootleg or Not To Bootleg, that is the question.

PC Magazine ^ | Sept 24, 2002 | John C. Dvorak

[alligator]

Who here has not burned a song or two on a CD? Did you get the material using P2P, or from a CD itself, or from a friend? Does it matter the source?

Water...It is relatively cheap and easy to get. Just open a tap at the house. Yet people are willing to pay more for bottled water than for gasoline (which takes tremendously more refining before it hits the market). Does the RIAA needs to rethink its business model?

[KantianBurke]

hmm...I think this was posted yesterday.

[mhking]

Does the RIAA needs to rethink its business model?

In a word? Yes.

[terilyn]

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[Eala]

blank CDs now outsell prerecorded discs

False comparison.

I buy blank CDs to burn software on them -- software such as RedHat 7.3. This year I bought a pack of 50. But this year, also, I have not as yet purchased a single music CD because I consider their prices to be (artificially) too high. I have yet to download any music, and I have yet to burn a single music track onto a CD.

They're using my purchases to skew their statistics.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The industry can still make millions of dollars, just not billions.

This one statement is anathema to the Big Labels and their brownshirts, The RIAA. They will never concede.

We can etch the phrase on their tombstones:

[RicocheT]

Right, saying the number of blank CDs bought indicates music copying is bunk. I use my CD burner to put on my digital snapshots and send them to family members in the mail. Most of my relatives don't have high speed internet connections and mailing a CD with my pictures is better than sending them as email attachments. I still have a pile of unburned CDs, so counting them as music stolen is more bunk.

[zx2dragon]

Exactly. I picked up a pack of 100 blank CDs for work and it cost all of $10 after mail in rebates, etc. A new music CD @ $13 and times that by 100. Gee, no wonder blank CDs outsell prerecorded.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I've searched but no can find. Do you have a link to it?

[Irene Adler]

"hmm...I think this was posted yesterday."

Doesn't show up under either "P2P" or "bootleg".

[stylin_geek]

Since it costs less than 25 cents to mass-produce a CD, $1.40 is reasonable and profitable.

Again, a silly statement. This is the same argument that was used when Bill Gates was being questioned in Congress about the price of software. Yes, it may cost 25 cents to mass produce a cd, but it costs millions to create the original cd. The same argument is also used against drug companies. The drug itself costs 50 cents to manufacture, and people scream "price gouging" which conveniently ignores the original billion dollar investment to develop the drug.

[Pravious]

"...The heyday of the 78-rpm disc was probably the 1930s, partly because of the emergence of electric recording using microphones in the mid-1920s, along with the popularity of the jukebox, which took over where the coin-operated player piano left off. It was a pay-for-play period."

Well, this statement is just flat out wrong. The "heyday" for 78's was the 1920's not the 1930's. For example, popular Victor 78's sold 20-35,000,000 discs each year during the 1920's. Because of the depression and popularity of radio, however, record sales FELL so steeply in the 1930's that it almost put the industry out of business. For example, at the high point of 1921, Victor sold 35,782,182 records - and at the low point in 1933 they sold only 1,648,214.
That said, I should point out that I DO agree with the author's overall point - if the music industry priced it's product competitively, people would buy instead of download. For them to keep coming up with more and more absurd and fascist ways to prevent the evil of music piracy is simply stupid. I know the day they finally succeed in bribing the politicians into passing a bill allowing them access to our home computers to hunt for mp3s is the day I never, EVER buy another legitimately released CD again.

Dou

[Snuffington]

Again, a silly statement. This is the same argument that was used when Bill Gates was being questioned in Congress about the price of software. Yes, it may cost 25 cents to mass produce a cd, but it costs millions to create the original cd. The same argument is also used against drug companies. The drug itself costs 50 cents to manufacture, and people scream "price gouging" which conveniently ignores the original billion dollar investment to develop the drug.

Yes, and no. No doubt there are some lavishly produced recordings for which this is true. But the majority do not have huge production costs anymore. The technology needed to produce has gone down across the board, but the prices have not.

I think Dvorak's essential point is correct, even if he gets the details wrong about cost of manufacture. And he's certainly wrong to go from higher fixed price to lower fixed price. The market should be able to determine that.

[stylin_geek]

Yes, I agree with you on that, and I do concede Dvorak has a point. However, his examples are specious, and do not support his argument. Which, for me, creates more doubt about him, than it does about the music industry and their profits.

[Rodney King]

We are a mercantile culture

What does that mean?

[Rodney King]

I've gotta say: Regardless of how one might feel about this issue, this is just terrible journalism. Every other sentence is some sort of cliche, misuse of the english language, or totally unsupprotable assertion.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Since it costs less than 25 cents to mass-produce a CD, $1.40 is reasonable and profitable.

Again, a silly statement.

Yes, I agree. But I didn't make it.

[IMHO]

Backstreet Boys? A million? N-Sync?

I doubt these are necessary expenses.

[Ziva]

Look at the value offered by a DVD which can be purchased for $13 to $20, roughly the cost as an audio CD. You get a full-color hi-res 2 or 3 hour movie, one or two additional commentaries by the director/film editor/screenwriter/actors, additional short films about the making of the movie and its authenticity, extra deleted songs and scenes, history of the era or the people in the movie, slide shoes, additionaly soundtracks, color versions of b&w material, etc.

I rarely ever bought pre-recorded, but I have been buying up many movie and TV-series DVDs (more DVDs in the last 2 months than tapes in 20 years.) There is SIGNIFICANT added value to the DVD.

$1.40 is a bit low, but I would think a 72-minute audio-only CD would be worth maybe $5.

[weegee]

I'd like to see the entertainment industry explain why a prerecorded DVD can be had for $8-14 (other titles up to $25 with discount, few non-boxed sets sell for more) while CDs are $13-20 each. I know what the answer is but I would like to see them justify it (it would definitely increase sales to drop CD prices).

CDs are this high because it is what the market will bear. They are trying to get the prices up higher. In the UK, CDs have run ~$16-22 for decades. In Japan CDs have run $22-30 for decades. Now that cassettes have been phased out, the companies have eliminated one of the signs that got them busted for price fixing (cassettes were more expensive to manufacture than CDs but cheaper at the retail price than CDs).

DVDs are being blown out in pricing right now to increase saturation of DVD players in people's homes and it is creating a larger market for home video purchasing. Why rent a title for $3-5 on DVD when you can own it for $8-15? Europe is experimenting with rental priced DVDs as well as sell through. Japanese DVDs are typically $50-66. Hong Kong releases can be found for $5-18 (generally under $10).