boycott-riaa.com - Article: Record labels offer MP3 for 99 cents

Record labels offer MP3 for 99 cents

Posted by adam on May 25, 2002 at 11:45 AM (printer friendly)

Maverick Records and Vivendi Universal's online division are asking listeners to pay a buck for an unprotected MP3 version of a new single.

The companies put the song, a dance version of "Earth" by Meshell Ndegeocello, whoever that is, online Thursday on sites run by Vivendi Universal Net USA, including MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com. People can purchase the file for 99 cents and then do whatever they like with it, be it burn it to a cd or upload it to your portable mp3 player. The companies said subscribers of EMusic's MP3 music service will also be able to download the track as part of their memberships.

"Sure, there is always a concern of piracy; there's always the concern of people illegally transferring things. But we feel the best way to combat that is by giving people a legitimate alternative, and this is a test to make that alternative available to them," Grady said.

Could this be the first logical step by the labels? Sure 99 cents might sound a little expensive for ONE song to people who use winMX or gnutella daily, but this might turn out to the record labels first step to accepting NEW technology.

Read more about this story here http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-921792.html

User Comments (These do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of this site)


RyanS	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 3:39 PM They lost out when all of this started years ago. Why pay $0.99 when you can get it free elsewhere?? first post :mug:

backmann	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 4:40 PM I agree. If you can get something free you won't pay for it. Besides, if they make this retroactive, I would have to pay thousands of dollars for all my mp3s.

horsefucker	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 4:53 PM I would gladly pay for mp3s. My main problem with the recording industry is the options they have such as CDs, MusicNet, Pressplay, etc. Downloading mp3s is much more convineent. I hope this mp3 experiment is a success and the recording industry can start selling them.

DiscoProJoe	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 5:12 PM What bitrate do they use for their MP3s? If it's anything less than 192 Kbps, I'll stick with BearShare.

princess-angry	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 6:15 PM I hope it;s a good BW too.... Hoep also it don't charge more to your CC.... I've donw that b4 paying for online music with CC and it charged me 1.50 extra for a service fee... it sucked... I forget the site thou since it was back in '99....

princess-angry	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 6:17 PM I'd rather buy the single for 1.50 and get extra trakcs and you don;t have to wait for it to DL .... but it adds up to the same price as a regular cd...

smelv1n	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 6:23 PM 99 cents is about what you're currently paying for a song from a cd. 17 dollars a cd / 17 songs per cd = 99 cents a song. maybe once they see the opportunities with digital music they'll change their minds and we can all download mp3s at a fair price.

RyanS	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 6:26 PM I actually doubt that the bitrates will be anything other than 128. And knowing them it will be encoded like :poo:

mtbatol	Date: May 25, 2002 @ 11:53 PM ehh, that is a big quirrel with me and paying for music downloads. i've become more and more picky through my 1� of listening to mp3 music through my portable and all I found myself either trying to redownload alot of previous downloaded songs with at least a 160kbps quality or just buy the album for nice high quality. It'll be nice if these guys as with everyone else will offer 192 (wma8 or mp3 lame), 220, 320, etc bitrates and all but I guess that will be something that will be implemented later assuming that this whole idea takes off

ElmerFusterpuck	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 12:05 AM 99 cents was a good price a few years ago. We can easily put over 100 192K+ mp3 files on one CD. You think anyone will pay $99+ for one CD anymore. Methinks a major price shakeup will be in order...

Dopemine	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 2:48 AM Its probably some kind of test. Maybe they want to see how many of those people who buy it will "pirate" it. Any of the stuff they have done online like pressplay etc.. Seemed to be set so they will fail so they could say "see it doesn't work" the internet is evil. If they wanted to make it work why didn't they work it out with napster afterall.

dunno001	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 9:37 AM Good idea, way too late. There's already such a tarnished eye from the killing of the other programs that I don't see this working out anymore. In order for it to work now, they'll need to get the MP3 at a minimum of 256 kbps, and also possibly have this crap 32 kbps version that can be streamed to determine if it's even worth it. Furthermore, a price drop is needed. I think that 50-75 cents would seem fair.

Mediamaster	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 9:49 AM All users have a great point. I often download songs, however I would pay 99 cents for a song to get it legaly. But, Improvements would have to be made to the Mp3 format, such as better bitrates. I would not pay 99 cents for something I can download somewhere else. I do support the record companies for not opposing the technology and offering it in unprotected Mp3. Maybe they could be facing reality? Mp3 Lives On!! Hail Mp3!!!

TheWitchingHour	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 9:54 AM I can't see paying anything to discover new artists, if I like I will buy and encode myself into whatever format/bitrate I choose. :D

smelv1n	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 10:24 AM i think they'll just offer singles for a while, maybe a price drop, but i doubt it. there's no way they'll start offering whole albums in mp3 format, at least not for a while.

W-B	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 2:42 PM Correct me if I'm wrong, but . . . didn't the industry's efforts to do away with singles play a huge part in the popularity of "file downloading" services?

horsefucker	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 4:11 PM I think that $0.99 is a good price for an mp3 file. It is true that 17 of them would cost the same as a CD, but then again, When you buy a CD there is usually only one or two songs that are good, so you are actually paying about $8.00 for each song with CD technology.

smelv1n	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 5:42 PM on second thought, if i only had the choice to buy a cd for 17 dollars or download the whole cd in mp3 format for 17 dollars, i'd choose the cd. when you buy the cd you're getting alot more, it gives you the options to rip it to mp3s, it comes with its own jewel case (i'm running out and too lazy to buy new ones) plus all the artwork that you usually get (sometimes it's not bad) if they really want to get into digital music they gotta shape up.

thumbtack	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 6:07 PM Exactly...smelv1n... 17 bucks for an MP3 version of a Cd is ridiculous. Mp3 version should be no more than half of the cost of a CD.

jank0	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 8:24 PM I really don't see why this should be anything special. Lots of Major Label recording artists give away exclusive MP3 mixes for free already. Just check out Alicia Keys' Website http://www.aliciakeys.net for example ... Well, at least Maverick understood to make a big marketing fuzz out of it ...

LIF4ALL	Date: May 26, 2002 @ 9:11 PM emusic.com sells MP3 encoded using OLD VERSION OF XING and at 128... They know how bad this is, of course... Their site as a good looking to impress all Joes...

weaponzero	Date: May 27, 2002 @ 12:50 PM cdnow has a shopping cart where you can pay for mp3s, some are cheap like 30 cents.. others are a buck fitty. REAL record companies put mp3s up for FREE. hell, the entire get up kids album is streaming at their website ( www.thegetupkids.net ). fat, epitaph, vagrant, asian man.. most record companies that CARE about their fans have tons of free mp3s on their site. usually 192kbps, too :\|

weaponzero	Date: May 27, 2002 @ 2:11 PM er.. .com :\|

smelv1n	Date: May 27, 2002 @ 2:46 PM cool

princess-angry	Date: May 27, 2002 @ 3:09 PM I would only pay 75 c at the max for an mp3 file....

Spwee	Date: May 27, 2002 @ 11:09 PM 99 cents for an mp3 song you can legally share is a good start i think. I'll be happy to purchase singles that i can legally trade for a dollar. But what i need to know is HOW GOOD and HOW LARGE the selection is. I mean if you don't have a descent selection then why would i ever want to come back and shop again. If you don't keep in stock the latest hits or have some cool independent music available i'm going to lose interest. That's the key to selling Mp3s online>>> "variety and volume". oh, and low price too :)

ravenstarr	Date: May 28, 2002 @ 11:52 AM What about starting over a new site using this similar concept. However, artists and labels can set the prices for their mp3s. Someone small and just starting out might offer them for free, even large labels can run free promotions as they do now. Then folks like Metallica can come in a post their's for $1.50 each . I think this is a little more reasonable than charging a flat fee across the board, and charging monthly fees for accounts that may not get used. I know I don't listen to mainstream, and so I am leary to shell out membership fees when I am not guaranteed to have what I am looking for waiting for me when I get there. Another option might be to create a site that charges membership fees to use a P2P network. However, the network would track what files are being sent where, and could pay charges back to the labels similar to that of streaming webcasts. .001-.007 per song isn't a bad thought. Even with operation charges on top of it, a decent service could be created. This leaves more room for folks to share files of any genre, not just what the particular company deems as worthy of sharing. I do believe there has to be a happy medium somewhere.

WhoDatSooMe	Date: May 28, 2002 @ 1:46 PM RavenStarr, very good. Of course, they would also have to track by user, which would entail ISP Addy. Why? The thought occurred to me, after I thought this was a great plan myself, that someone like Vanilla Ice could log on himself and download the file 50,000 times so he can finally pay off his 1991 Buick.

blackhawk1932	Date: May 28, 2002 @ 6:25 PM idea ain't worth the powder it'd take to blow it to hell!!!

Remye	Date: May 29, 2002 @ 7:01 AM I kinda like this idea. I don't always like _all_ the songs on a cd. If there's 12 tracks on a cd that I paid 12bux for, I only get about 8 bux out of it. This way, I only pay for what I want to hear. It's not a perfect solution to be sure, but it's a start. If the RIAA had merely done this or something similar at the beginning instead of taking away my rights as a consumer (re: copy protected cds) then I personally would not have been as pissed off. Looks like someone in the music biz is starting to listen to us, think about the issue.. or .. hopefullly.. BOTH

horsefucker	Date: May 29, 2002 @ 7:11 AM I wonder if there is another way for teanagers to pay. For example, you can go into a store and pay cash for a phone card, then call a number to put some amount of credit in an account which would allow you to download some number of songs based on the price of the phone card.

oldfart	Date: May 29, 2002 @ 12:30 PM MP3.com has an interesting idea on their CDs for independents, they charge $6 less for a "web CD" where you download it. If you want a shiny plastic disc with music on it it costs you $6 more....That's really the smartest thing I've seen one of the labels do. Now if they will just do this for the mainstream artists, thye may well have a winner.

sybesma	Date: May 30, 2002 @ 4:58 PM At least someone's trying to go about this the correct way. Now they need to bring the price down a bit. I would reason that based on several factors, an oldies MP3 should go for less than 40 cents each. These factors are: 1) the industry has already made most of the money it will ever make on a song after 15-20 years; 2) there is virtually no cost involved in distribution, marketing, replication or storage, and; 3) Oldies CD music (which necessarily has to shoulder all of the above costs) commonly goes for less than a $1.00 per song anyway! For these reasons and others, I think it would even be reasonable to expect to see oldies MP3s at 25 cents apiece. That kind of reasonable low price would put a huge dent in the problem and would make the use of P2P to search for and download MP3s of questionable quality somewhat inconvenient for users compared to the guarantee of mint quality MP3s at a reasonably low price. I say to the record companies, open all your archives and get to the business of encoding everything into MP3s now! I'm a very willing buyer if the price is reasonable.

neilyoung	Date: May 30, 2002 @ 6:03 PM No no no, this is all wrong. They just don't understand MP3s, internet users and people in general. When you buy records or CDs you are getting a physical product in exchange for money, but MP3s are just data. Most people download them to HEAR the music, and purchase so they can OWN the music. That's the important thing Maverick Records and Vivendi Universal do not realise: the only reason people download MP3s is because they are FREE. It's just data which you can do anything with, you can delete it if you want and there's no great loss. However, if you payed 99 cents you couldn't delete it for that would be throwing away your money. Music should be free for everyone to hear, this has been true forever.

sybesma	Date: May 31, 2002 @ 4:46 AM You are on one extreme, and the RIAA is on the other. You have seen nothing but how the industry is not supposed to work, and automatically assume that the complete opposite extreme must be the Holy Grail, but it ain't so. As much as I like to poke fun at the RIAA for its nasty attitude toward its customers (see the Gateway thread where I posted a notice from Hilary Rosen/RIAA), I realize that music is something that should be paid for, but what I have always been taught is that in the ideal capitalistic society, the customer makes the rules on how he wants to buy the product, and not the damned arrogant marketer/seller (which unfortunately, too many are). Whether or not you pay to listen to music, or own it makes no difference in reality. Reality is, if you never had to pay to listen to music, not only would the evil music business be gone, but so would many good musicians we like. There's no point in buying the music if your entire intention is to listen to music for free and not own it, and that music should be free anyway. The sad truth is (as much as I hate the RIAA) the vast majority of the music I love I would not be able to listen to if there were no money involved. It is the artists themselves who would probably not play their music, or if they did I might never have heard it, if there was nothing in it for them. Artists have to make a living too, and I believe in paying them. I only wish they were given a lot higher percentage of the profits than what they get. Trust me, the artists are getting screwed on most of the deals. Artists really only make decent money when they go on tour. Studio musicians don't make much at all. The RIAA and its member companies are greedy its true, but the answer is not to take all money out of music. The answer is to take power away from the RIAA and give some back to the artists (who make it possible for those music pimps to survive in the first place), and to the people to choose how they buy their music and which songs to buy. My beef is that we are forced to buy the music in the format they want to sell it to us in, and in combination with whatever songs they want to sell us. The game all along has been to get the public to buy tons and tons of music they don't want, repeatedly on different and more expensive formats, in order so that we can get the few measly songs we do want. It's a scam.

Taryhn	Date: May 31, 2002 @ 11:16 AM I agree with Sybesma. I cannot tell you how many times I have bought a CD and I liked one song and the rest of them sucked. In my eyes, I have payed $17 for one or two songs. Outrageous! And it's not the artist's fault, or the recording company's fault, or the manufacturer's fault that I didnt like the rest of the music. HOWEVER, there are a few bands who I have grown rather fond of recently. I go and download the main song I like, but I am also open-minded enough to download a bunch of their songs that I dont know. This way, I use the system to learn what is and is not worth my $17. With more than half of the nation's population living in the seat of technical poverty (myself included, even though we make "decent" money) it is ridiculous to expect the common man to spend the kind of money they ask for a CD. When we have artists having to file bankruptcy because the industry officials have their hands so deep in the artist's pocket, there is something wrong. I have no problem with paying for music. And if I find an artist whose music I like, over all, and not just one song, I will buy their CD. I've had Nirvana's Nevermind album 3 times now. LOL And I'll buy it again, once I have the money. (I'm not allowed to have that album... Keeps disappearing on me hehe) But the point is; If the music's worth having, it's worth paying for. They need to stop freaking out about this. When I was a teenager, I spent hours recording music off the radio onto cassettes. And I know I'm not the only one. I dont think they ever sued the radio stations because of it. And you know, it never stopped me from buying the music I wanted. I think the idea of being able to pay a certain amount of money to DL the songs I want and burn them to a CD is a fabulous idea. But let's not forget, folks, about the many times we have bought an album and DID like all the music on it, or at least the vast majority of it...

pipimo	Date: June 2, 2002 @ 2:53 PM I disagree with you sybesma, i think the artists are getting more money and more appreciation now with file sharing and all. The price of a cd is outrageous and therefore it makes it really hard for any unkonwn artists to become popular because no one would pay 20$ to see if they like what they're listening to. My favorite band today is Mudvayne, i have all there songs on my computer, if ever they come to my town i would go see them in concert. But I would have never bought there CD before file sharing because i wouldn't have known what i was getting. Nowadays, we get all the music we want, and the deserving artists are getting more money. The only people who are gettin screwed are the music industries and radio bands (ie. backstreet boys, britney spears), and they shouldn't even be in the picture anyways. If the bands are making there own music they wouldn't even need music industries.

Dastrix	Date: June 5, 2002 @ 8:05 AM I think this lends itself to a lot of problems, a one-at-a-time approach will leave music co's with and easy excuse for not adapting technology (we charged for it on the site but people just downloaded on AG ..etc... anyway). It's all or nothing peeps!

poptones	Date: June 6, 2002 @ 5:20 PM The reality of all this is, even if none of us ever had to pay for music again, artists would still create - because that is what artists do. Would they be able to devote their lives to riding limos and hanging out at Denny's? Nu-uh. But then, that ain't the life they lived before they "made it" - the life that inspired them to create in the first place. Would we lose some artists? Sure - those who are driven by money, just looking for that free ride. I honestly don't believe there are that many, 'tho I do believe the system we have now does nothing but encourage this element. Lately I've been listening to an artist known simply as "Linda." You'll only find her in usenet and a few .ru sites, 'tho, because Linda is Russian. And in a country where piracy is rampant - and bordered by a (Russian speaking) country the US has gone so far as to sanction for "piracy," Linda has managed to earn enough from performances and recordings to live. And, judging by Crow (Vorona), not only living, but thriving. Produced behind her own iron curtain, in her home studio, this album is technologically, musically, and stylistically the equal of the best I've heard from "Western" artists (no, I don't mean Lyle Lovett). In a country where every release is widely pirated within hours of its release, artists are creating, performing, and earning a living. Because people WILL PAY. Not because they have to, but because they WANT to. If artists can do this in a country where they cannot even do much to protect PHYSICAL forms of their works, how exactly do they stand to lose in a country where they enjoy far more protection under the law? Usenet, p2p and even fan sites would provide nearly unlimited bandwidth for artists to distribute their works... without the need for, or intervention from, RIAA member organizations. Home studios today can be every bit as capable as those pricey enclaves pictured in industry rags. A world where publishers are stripped of the power to control use of works which they are merely "middlemen" for does not have to be one devoid of art. In fact, most evidence suggests such a world - devoid of "gatekeepers" and "thought police" - would be far richer in creative expression. I bought the CD and DVD releases from Bjork because I dig her so much I want to see her go on to create and share new stuff with me. I didn't buy it because I had to, or even because her music was drilled into my head on MTV and the radio - I don't get MTV, and I don't even own a radio anymore (sad, what it's become). And I'll buy Crow as well... just as soon as I figure out where to send my money so I can be sure it's going to Linda - and not some Russian mafioso.

wallofwoodoo	Date: June 18, 2002 @ 9:21 AM i could be agree with pay the RIGHT price for download mp3 files. But 1$ for a mp3 is a thief !!!! So if you want download 20 songs (about one 80 min cd's) you have to pay 20$, as many as an original cd's !!!! I love www.emusic.com, we pay 10$ a month with any kind of download limit. or 15$ a month for 3 month's account. I hate RIAA, but is obvious that if noboby pay anything for music, music will die .