iLounge

21

I have toyed with kazaa but the university where I work (where my MEGA fast, uber connection is) has started montioring for illegal file sharing. I hated the program to begin with because I could never get good quality stuff. I just checked out emusic today and saw a lot of artists that I like, i.e. musicians whose CDs I already own one of. I don’t know if it is worth $10 a month, but I will probably justify it by saying something like, “$10 is a good deal, that is less than the cost of one CD a month.” I do have to say that I am more inclined to buy a whole album online than just one song at a time. Sometimes the best songs on the CD are the ones that aren’t on the radio. So if a CD has 15 songs on it (which is a little above average I would guess) I would spend about $15 on ITunes (if I was an apple kind of girl). With eMusic, I would only spend 10, but the selection is much more limited. I guess the short of it is that I don’t think that $0.99 isn’t too much for a song because Rance is right. Muscians have to eat too. If you ever knew a muscian you would feel their pain.

Posted by michievespini on August 20, 2003 at 12:55 PM (PDT)

22

$0.99 is too expensive for 128kbps AAC.  192kbps or 256kbps AAC would be better

Posted by Phil on August 20, 2003 at 1:51 PM (PDT)

23

But are musicians making more money now that you can buy songs for 99 cents or are they still getting 10% or less of the profit (as is the case with a physical CD you would buy in the store)

Posted by digitaltrapper on August 20, 2003 at 4:10 PM (PDT)

24

I personally hate the music industry as it exists today. It has become something twisted and wrong, controlled by evil, soulless, record labels. Remember the days when you could buy an album and feel that you got every cent worth. Today’s market is all about image and singles. You buy a CD today and you’re lucky to get three decent songs for $17.99. I’d go on with my rant, but I feel it might stray from the topic a little.

Posted by Locke on August 20, 2003 at 7:41 PM (PDT)

25

kazaa isnt the way to high-qual mp3s

using d++ you can connect to lots of users and download whole albums from one user

and most people encode at 192 or higher

so you can get v.high quality albums that are well tagged from d++

Posted by ti on August 21, 2003 at 2:39 AM (PDT)

26

The reason an album is 9.99 after cutting out manufacturing, distribution is that the manufacturing cost of a CD is minimal to the overall costs (recording, advertising, hype, flunkies). iTunes is not a record company, but a retailer, so presumably making - like all retailers - a healthy mark-up between the costs they pay to their suppliers and their own costs. What’s needed are a few rival services, offering the same tracks, then the price will fall (as CD prices have - significantly - since the end of price fixing).

Posted by Jules on August 21, 2003 at 10:19 PM (PDT)

27

Hi Ti,

Are you sure CD prices dropped? Have a trip to your local music shop and welcome back in the world…

Mainly Majors and all music industry players found a new way to over price the tunes.

“What’s needed are a few rival services, offering the same tracks, then the price will fall (as CD prices have - significantly - since the end of price fixing).”

Posted by Michealex on June 8, 2004 at 11:45 PM (PDT)