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Also the best way to summarise the research and the distribution angle was: The avg value a consumer expresses for: * listening on a radio in medium or high q
by buro9 8y ago
Also the best way to summarise the research and the distribution angle was:
The avg value a consumer expresses for:
* listening on a radio in medium or high quality is near zero
* downloading a track in medium quality is near zero.
* buying an CD album in high quality is 75p per track.
* buying a CD single in high quality is 25 per track.
* buying sheet music in an abstract quality is £3 per track.
* buying a midi file to use as a ring-tone in lowest quality for portion of the track is close to £12 per track.
The fidelity and quality were not a major influence on the value... but the distribution and how controlled or locked-down the distribution and means of playback for the end consumer of the music had a direct impact on the value. The ring-tone was DRM'd (badly) at the time, which meant it was not trivial to put your own music on there but yet people would pay £1 for barely 20 seconds of a barely recognisable midi file.
The more you can lock down the distribution and control the means to access the media, the more you can push the price up.
Or as I think it... if Apple hadn't come along and artificially held the value of music at the price it did by controlling distribution, the sooner we would have reached another age of patronage. I still believe that Apple, and now Spotify, are merely holding back the inevitable and they haven't stopped it but will get very rich in the interim.
- snowwrestler 8y agoI think it's incomplete to characterize the state of the industry today without discussing how those consumer perceptions of value were intentionally created. If you worked in the music industry for 10 years then your experience almost completely post-dates these efforts. Starting even well before Napster, investors and technology companies saw the opportunity to change the allocation of value from artists and producers, to distribution. To be clear, that was not the allocation 30+ years ago. Record stores and radio stations did not make immensely more money than the labels and artists. Tech companies and investors worked aggressively to "commoditize their complement"--that is, depress the value of art on their platforms, so that they could reallocate consumer spending to their products and services. "Buy a computer and Internet connection and you can have all the music and movies you want for free" was explicitly advertised by technology companies--see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ I think this historical perspective is crucial for understanding how we got to today. Music files are small, so the music industry was attacked first. The large size of video files kept them safe for long enough for visual artists and producers to understand what was happening and counteract. That is why you see producer-owned distribution channels for video today (Hulu, HBO Go, Disney+, etc), but not label-owned distribution channels for music. This is why Netflix, Amazon, and now Apple have had to get into original video content. They were not able to beat the movie and TV producers before the producers could figure out the technology themselves.
- buro9 8y agoI did not say the 10 years was to now, I've been in tech for the last 20, my time spanned late 1980s to late 1990s... the time you speak of.
- snowwrestler 8y agoGot it--bad assumption on my part. Interested in your thoughts on my comment.