8 ms·

This was also the time where music had the highest value. Consider revenue per song: - £0 per downloaded song via torrent - £0.003 per streaming song - £0.7

by buro9 6y ago

This was also the time where music had the highest value. Consider revenue per song: - £0 per downloaded song via torrent - £0.003 per streaming song - £0.70 - £1 per album song on CD - £0.99 per song on iTunes - £0.99 per single song on CD - £1 per single song on 7" - £1 per 10 seconds of song in a simplified midi track... equivalent to a per song value far higher Lesson here if no-one saw it, the more you control the means of distribution and playback, the higher the price you can extract from the listener. Long-term, when the final vestiges of openly available music vanish (CDs gone, streamed content heavily DRM'd), prices will definitely rise, or at least... those who most control the critical parts of distribution or playback at that time will be able extract the most revenue from the total revenue that exists. I believe that the pressure will be on the labels and artists at this time, and that even with technology helping to reduce the cost of recording and releasing music it's going to be hard on them. The winners are most likely the distributors of music across all platforms - Spotify look like a good bet. This is the subject of a piece of work I did for the independent music labels in the UK in early 2000s and it's still relevant.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
> "Long-term, when the final vestiges of openly available music vanish (CDs gone, streamed content heavily DRM'd)" Thankfully the options to simply buy and download music in DRM-free formats are better than ever. So I don't think that prophecy will come true. No matter how locked down mainstream music gets, there will always be artists who will stand up for open, easy and in some cases free access to their music.
- iso1631 6y ago
  And of course there will always be torrents, usenet, irc, or whatever. Even if that weren't the case, the final choice is "don't buy that song". There is always competition, and that will always keep a lid of prices to an extent.
chrisco255 6y ago
Ringtones barely made a blip amidst the rapidly declining CD revenue. CD revenue started to decline after Napster was released in 1999 and the music industry never fully recovered. Good chart here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/
- foota 6y ago
  It looks like this could also be partly due to the recessions in 2001 and 2008, based on the chart, as well as the decline in physical media.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    If you notice, the decline started in 1999, while economy was absolutely booming. There was also a recession in 1991, and the industry revenue continued to grow there. CDs were still very much the primary method of consumption for audio well into the early 2000s. But yes, eventually (by 2005 or so) the iPod had become very sleek and popular. Still, iPods were generally powered by iTunes sales, and you'll note the iTunes sales never made up for the loss in CD sales. Part of the reason for that could be that for the first time, you could buy single tracks rather than pay for an entire album of songs you may or may not like. Certainly torrents had a dramatic effect on sales. Even when I was in high school in early 2000s, kids were selling bootlegged CDs for $5 a pop because they had burners and fast enough connections to download many songs (broadband wasn't even that widespread in early 2000s). Everyone was on Napster after it came out in 1999. I can't even describe to you the magic of being able to download virtually any song you can think of. Prior to that, you had to hunt a song down physically or listen to a radio station for hours, hoping to catch it in time to press the record button on your cassette tape.
    - georgespencer 6y ago
      Great point about CDs being pretty much recession-proof. Minor quibble: > iPods were generally powered by iTunes sales I think this is the lionised view of the iPod, but it's not really backed up by the stats or the early marketing ("Rip. Mix. Burn.") which was targeted at folks who were still buying CDs. Apple sold its 10 millionth iTunes song in September of 2003, and around that time would have sold around 1.5 million iPods (they'd sold 600k in January '03, and announced that they'd shipped 2 million in January '04). So if you assume that all iTMS sales are to iPod owners (as someone who did not own an iPod until around 2007, but bought music on iTunes, I am a very small datapoint that speaks to this not being true!), then the average iPod owner either only had only around 7 songs on their iPod, or iPods were principally powered by CD rips and illegal downloads. It doesn't change the thrust of your point but I thought you might find it interesting.
ponker 6y ago
Do you remember ring BACK tones? In some countries you could choose what your ring sounded like on someone else's phone. So I could force your phone to play the latest Britney Spears track or whatever. Complete violation of personal space.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  I don't remember it but isn't ringback tone the tone that your hear when calling someone. Here is the sample for Europe: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/1TR110-1_Kap8.3_Freiton1.ogg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/1TR110-1...
redis_mlc 6y ago
> - £0 per downloaded song via torrent For most Youtube musicians: - £0 per song video view via Youtube
draw_down 6y ago
> Lesson here if no-one saw it, the more you control the means of distribution and playback, the higher the price you can extract from the listener. For a snapshot, a brief moment in time, sure. But notice what the article points out- this business is gone, gone, gone. It is possible to think on longer timeframes than one transaction, one offering. Lesson here if parent missed it, provide actual value if you want to exist for longer than a moment. Someone once told me he made $60 an hour doing the easiest job of his life. I asked what it was, and he told me someone paid him one dollar to watch their seat for one minute. Not a bad rate- not a sustainable one either.
toohotatopic 6y ago
Long-term, the only valuable resource is attention. Content is accumulating, faster and faster due to automation, thus its value is declining. Artists can make money with concerts so they will pay you to become part of your life. Even now, youtube is already playing entire songs as advertisement. Why should it stop there?
- rootsudo 6y ago
  This is incredibly true and scary. Just had that realization. The only answer is less engagement.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  If you consistently churn out good content, you will have people's attention, and that attention is monetizable. It has never been easier to go from nobody in the middle of nowhere to somebody known everywhere. There isn't one big category of losers so much as pockets of people who don't adapt well to the platform economy. I do, however, think that we should reduce monopolistic behavior by platforms to enhance gains to content producers and consumers. I also think that the government should provide a better safety net, so that content producers don't have to lose several years of their life to a miserable, existential slog with the hope of stardom. It might still be a slog, but it doesn't have to be so miserable (no government health insurance is a big factor in America).
toast0 6y ago
In the US, the ringtone company I worked for charged $1 for monotonic tones, $2 for polyphonic, and $3 for 'real tones', a short sample.
ecf 6y ago
Remember [HitClips](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/9f3q8p/anyone_remember_hit_clips/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/9f3q8p/anyone_re...)? One minute of incredibly low quality audio from popular songs stored in a physical cartridge, with a dedicated player. The 90s had some wild ideas for music monetization.
soylentgraham 6y ago
I definitely paid over £5 once for a cd single in the 90's, so pretty sure this isnt when music was worth the most

by buro9 6y ago

KozmoNau7 6y ago

> "Long-term, when the final vestiges of openly available music vanish (CDs gone, streamed content heavily DRM'd)" Thankfully the options to simply buy and download music in DRM-free formats are better than ever. So I don't think that prophecy will come true. No matter how locked down mainstream music gets, there will always be artists who will stand up for open, easy and in some cases free access to their music.

iso1631 6y ago
And of course there will always be torrents, usenet, irc, or whatever. Even if that weren't the case, the final choice is "don't buy that song". There is always competition, and that will always keep a lid of prices to an extent.

chrisco255 6y ago

Ringtones barely made a blip amidst the rapidly declining CD revenue. CD revenue started to decline after Napster was released in 1999 and the music industry never fully recovered. Good chart here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/

foota 6y ago
It looks like this could also be partly due to the recessions in 2001 and 2008, based on the chart, as well as the decline in physical media.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  If you notice, the decline started in 1999, while economy was absolutely booming. There was also a recession in 1991, and the industry revenue continued to grow there. CDs were still very much the primary method of consumption for audio well into the early 2000s. But yes, eventually (by 2005 or so) the iPod had become very sleek and popular. Still, iPods were generally powered by iTunes sales, and you'll note the iTunes sales never made up for the loss in CD sales. Part of the reason for that could be that for the first time, you could buy single tracks rather than pay for an entire album of songs you may or may not like. Certainly torrents had a dramatic effect on sales. Even when I was in high school in early 2000s, kids were selling bootlegged CDs for $5 a pop because they had burners and fast enough connections to download many songs (broadband wasn't even that widespread in early 2000s). Everyone was on Napster after it came out in 1999. I can't even describe to you the magic of being able to download virtually any song you can think of. Prior to that, you had to hunt a song down physically or listen to a radio station for hours, hoping to catch it in time to press the record button on your cassette tape.
  - georgespencer 6y ago
    Great point about CDs being pretty much recession-proof. Minor quibble: > iPods were generally powered by iTunes sales I think this is the lionised view of the iPod, but it's not really backed up by the stats or the early marketing ("Rip. Mix. Burn.") which was targeted at folks who were still buying CDs. Apple sold its 10 millionth iTunes song in September of 2003, and around that time would have sold around 1.5 million iPods (they'd sold 600k in January '03, and announced that they'd shipped 2 million in January '04). So if you assume that all iTMS sales are to iPod owners (as someone who did not own an iPod until around 2007, but bought music on iTunes, I am a very small datapoint that speaks to this not being true!), then the average iPod owner either only had only around 7 songs on their iPod, or iPods were principally powered by CD rips and illegal downloads. It doesn't change the thrust of your point but I thought you might find it interesting.

ponker 6y ago

Do you remember ring BACK tones? In some countries you could choose what your ring sounded like on someone else's phone. So I could force your phone to play the latest Britney Spears track or whatever. Complete violation of personal space.

mrkramer 6y ago
I don't remember it but isn't ringback tone the tone that your hear when calling someone. Here is the sample for Europe: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/1TR110-1_Kap8.3_Freiton1.ogg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/1TR110-1...

redis_mlc 6y ago

> - £0 per downloaded song via torrent For most Youtube musicians: - £0 per song video view via Youtube

draw_down 6y ago

> Lesson here if no-one saw it, the more you control the means of distribution and playback, the higher the price you can extract from the listener. For a snapshot, a brief moment in time, sure. But notice what the article points out- this business is gone, gone, gone. It is possible to think on longer timeframes than one transaction, one offering. Lesson here if parent missed it, provide actual value if you want to exist for longer than a moment. Someone once told me he made $60 an hour doing the easiest job of his life. I asked what it was, and he told me someone paid him one dollar to watch their seat for one minute. Not a bad rate- not a sustainable one either.

toohotatopic 6y ago

Long-term, the only valuable resource is attention. Content is accumulating, faster and faster due to automation, thus its value is declining. Artists can make money with concerts so they will pay you to become part of your life. Even now, youtube is already playing entire songs as advertisement. Why should it stop there?

rootsudo 6y ago
This is incredibly true and scary. Just had that realization. The only answer is less engagement.
keenmaster 6y ago
If you consistently churn out good content, you will have people's attention, and that attention is monetizable. It has never been easier to go from nobody in the middle of nowhere to somebody known everywhere. There isn't one big category of losers so much as pockets of people who don't adapt well to the platform economy. I do, however, think that we should reduce monopolistic behavior by platforms to enhance gains to content producers and consumers. I also think that the government should provide a better safety net, so that content producers don't have to lose several years of their life to a miserable, existential slog with the hope of stardom. It might still be a slog, but it doesn't have to be so miserable (no government health insurance is a big factor in America).

toast0 6y ago

In the US, the ringtone company I worked for charged $1 for monotonic tones, $2 for polyphonic, and $3 for 'real tones', a short sample.

ecf 6y ago

Remember [HitClips](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/9f3q8p/anyone_remember_hit_clips/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/9f3q8p/anyone_re...)? One minute of incredibly low quality audio from popular songs stored in a physical cartridge, with a dedicated player. The 90s had some wild ideas for music monetization.

soylentgraham 6y ago

I definitely paid over £5 once for a cd single in the 90's, so pretty sure this isnt when music was worth the most