DualDiscs - Solution To Piracy?

I don't see this being a "solution" one bit. Aligning value to selling price is all they need to do to sell more albums. Adding a bunch of video content when I want to LISTEN to music isn't going to do a damn thing!

I don't know why record companies feel that $15-$17 is the magic number for sales, trying to do whatever they can by adding content to get up to that price. At $5 a pop for a CD with 10 good songs on it, I'm buying a hell of a lot more titles.
 
i feel u . . . . phuck the major label stuck up wit their hi azz prices . . . until they come down . . . i aint buyin no more cds . . . . . STRIKE!!!!!!!


SHOOT -- im sellin my cd for $5 . . . email me for a copy!!!!
 
randyfromde said:
I don't see this being a "solution" one bit. Aligning value to selling price is all they need to do to sell more albums. Adding a bunch of video content when I want to LISTEN to music isn't going to do a damn thing!

I don't know why record companies feel that $15-$17 is the magic number for sales, trying to do whatever they can by adding content to get up to that price. At $5 a pop for a CD with 10 good songs on it, I'm buying a hell of a lot more titles.
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I agree to a point. But $5 for a professional world class quality cd? Pro musicians/engineers/producers might as well go work at McDonald's at that point. It's hard enough to make a living in this business as it is. I think having the option to pick your own tracks when buying a cd would be another way that might work as well.
 
I agree to a point. But $5 for a professional world class quality cd? Pro musicians/engineers/producers might as well go work at McDonald's at that point. It's hard enough to make a living in this business as it is. I think having the option to pick your own tracks when buying a cd would be another way that might work as well.
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Then some of them should be doing something else. While I'm not advocating piracy, the mp3 phenomenon shook the system up and is starting to weed out a lot of the wasteful spending.

$5 for a CD might be low, but something in that $5-10 range definitely is feasible. I've heard (and own) a lot of indie CD's made for $30k or less. 8-12 quality tracks. Then the performer goes out, gives the performance of their life every night, recoups the money no sweat selling 10-20 albums a night. No million-dollar advances, no forcing it down anyone's throat with ridiculous advertising. Just quality music that sells itself.

If indie artists can make a competitive product at $30k, record labels should be able to do it as well. Even if the budget has to go up to $500k, the record sales to break even are meager.
 
I agree that budgets are ridiculous for recording when it comes to major labels, (I know friends of mine who have through the process) and I would say that yes, $10 is a fair price for a cd, but my point was that $5 for a full length cd is not going to make money for anyone.

It used to be called the "me" generation, but now it's more like the "free" generation. It's like saying ... I refuse to spend what they're asking to see a movie at a theatre, and video/dvd stores prices are way too high as well, so I just won't bother watching the movie ... or I'll find somewhere to download it free. If I went to school and worked my butt off for years to be a lawyer or doctor, only to find out that people could suddenly get my services free, or for next to nothing, how would I feel about that? Like I'd wasted a lot of time for nothing. My point is ... there has to be a pay off somewhere down the road, or the world is going to stop hearing a lot of great music, because most people who could be great songwriters won't be bothered to waste their time trying to slug it out.

Yes, the majors have sort of cut their own throats, (actually the radio programmers are even worse), but there are still some great bands out there, putting out high quality music on major labels. I believe if I like a song ... I should buy the song. If I like a few cuts I should buy the full CD. Maybe we need to go back to the days when people released 45 singles and full length records. If you only like one song ... just buy the one song. Bottom line ... people need to keep paying for music that they like.
 
the whole problem with the piracy thing is it's giving the record companies an excuse to raise the prices. truth is, they aren't losing any money at all. period. what they AREN'T doing is they are not investing time and money into more bands. They're only producing a fraction of new CDs than they used to. Let's say they used to come out with 100 brand new albums one year....now they're only doing like 70 a year. They're not taking risks at all, and they're using the excuse of MP3s to explain why they aren't selling as many CDs. If they put in as much money as they used to, they'd get more money out of it. And I won't believe that MP3s are causing such a problem until people like Britney Spears starts making as much money as I do. It's like when football player or baseball players complain about their pay and go on strike. I have no sympathy. Making 70million a year while I just squeak by....screw you is what I say. (and for the record, I don't advocate downloading music either).

One last this is a quote from Frank Filipetti, producer of such people as James Taylor, Mariah Carey, Barbar Streisand, etc.;
"I remember when CDs first came out and record companies charged $14-15 because it was costing them 9-10 per cd. and people kept saying once they sell a lot of them the price is going to come down. Now it costs them .05 cents to make a CD and they still charge $14-15 a CD!"
 
Well it's a way for the industry to fight back I guess.

It's quite simple and cheap for an independent artist to write, record and put out a CD nowadays, but it's not so easy to put out a mixed media CD, so if the majors can shift people to only buying mixed media and expecting some video then they can hold on to their market domination.

Ultimately i think buying any form of music in the form of a physical product will die off, the customer will just download, why use up oil producing bits of plastic when it's no longer necessary to do that in order to hear & distribute music?

Think of the resources wasted on cassette tape, vinyl, and soon CDs, all that oil gone forever! Now useless junk.

Still, I'll be adding to it with my own CD album next year!!
:-)
 
I think glynb is right. Like it or not, physical mediums will go away. Any solution to piracy that involves a physical medium is temporary. The only reason CD's and DVD's still sell so well is that they're still by far the most convenient medium for most people. When hispeed internet becomes as common as phone service, when portable digital media players are as cheap, and there's a convenient way to distribute my digitized music to all the playback devices I own with minimal effort, CD's will begin to fade.

That may take ten to fifteen years, but unless we recess into the next dark age it's inevitable.

Might as well keep using them for now, I suppose...
 
I just *hope* that this will not happen. I can already d/l an album if I want to, or I can rip it from the CD a friend of mine bought, or I can even copy it, but still I buy the original. I find it only fair to pay a price both to the artist and the label, regardless of whether they're rich or poor. When someone puts money & work into something you can't just rob him by copying it.

However, it's more than obvious that the price of most CDs is still outrageous and for this very simple reason I don't usually buy new CDs. I mean, in Athens (Greece), old CDs (stuff like Queen, Scorpions, Led Zeppelin) and much newer stuff (Placebo, Radiohead, PJ Harvey etc) are ocassionally on sale for $10 (or a bit lower) at the biggest Greek CD-store, and so I just hurry and buy a few of them. Then, for the rest of it, I either try ebay for used ones or wait until the album's price has dropped. There are exceptions of course, if I really want a CD I will buy it for its normal price. But in general I only d/l songs as a preview, or if I want one song but don't care too much about it etc.

BTW, I was speaking with a small Italian label owner the other day and he was telling me that CDs would have to be sold for $8 to $10. This is the ideal price, as it's high enough for the label/artist/promoter/distributor/blahblah to make profit and it's low enough for a person to buy it without feeling like an idiot........ I suppose that could make things perfect, but the big labels seem to just be totally unable to understand this.

Ah, last thing: what I really love about the MP3 however, is that now you can d/l a song you would have to buy in a single for $8 or more!!! If albums are overpriced, then singles must be called a robbery!
 
Feanor IV said:
I just *hope* that this will not happen. I can already d/l an album if I want to, or I can rip it from the CD a friend of mine bought, or I can even copy it, but still I buy the original. I find it only fair to pay a price both to the artist and the label, regardless of whether they're rich or poor. When someone puts money & work into something you can't just rob him by copying it.
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I wouldn't hope that CD's won't go away; I'd just hope they figure out a way to ensure respect for copyright and artist/label compensation with digital media before it happens.

It's really inevitable. Consumer audio equipment is already moving away from CD audio with mp3 players, surround systems, etc. It's just a matter of time before it becomes less convenient to use the CD. Then it's just a matter of making it convenient to be honest and pay for what you get. That's probably what they ought to be putting energy into now, rather than new CD copy protection schemes.
 
Well i din't say I thought CDs would disappear because of illegal copying, though that will be a factor. i think the idea of having to store a piece of plastic in a case around your house in order to listen to music will just, well, wither away.

Historicaly the act of recording a performance and selling a tangible product from that has only been around for little under a hundred years. There's no inevitablility aboout always having products to purchase in the form of a piece of plastic. Instead you'll pay to download the music from the net and store it on a hard drive, iPod, or whatever the medium is at that time, but you won't go out and buy a product from a shop to hold in your hand as such. That's the way i beleive things will go. It's better for the environment, but not so good for the music biz.

The copyright thing is another issue, you can breach copyright by copying a CD, you can breach it by illegal downloads, whatever the medium. When it was vynil people used to tape LPs to cassettes, it's always gone on.

Artists will have to make money from live performance and royalties from legal downloads in future, not selling units in the old sense of records sales.

Personaly i couldn't care less, as I'm not employed by the music biz. None of this will stop great music being created, but if there's less money in it then it might just stop some shite music ever being created in order to sell units!!
 
I have to agree that some sort of paid music downloading probably needs to be the trend of the future. Adding video, etc, to a cd is really only going to be a temporary "band aid" solution to the problem of piracy. (If it even works at all). Some interesting comments on the subject here so far ...
 
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