He compared it to buying/stealing a car. But that is a bad analogy. A car is a physical object. It takes physical parts to manufacture it. It costs basically twice as much to make two cars as it does one. Conversely, it costs roughly the same to sell one computer program as it does to sell a million (minus middle man expenses).
Now when it comes to music it costs almost exactly the same to sell one MP3 as it does to sell a million (minus negligible bandwidth costs). And now thanks to the long tail of digital media, record companies can make money on back catalog that previously wasn't worthwhile to re-print. Throw it on a server. If someone wants to buy it, that's 99 cents you made that you wouldn't have had before. Money that was left on the table until now - and it's millions! Ask Apple.
But it's the part about charging what you think it's worth that kind of caught my ear. The music industry doesn't think like that. They're used to being in a physical object market and aren't adjusting well to this digital market.
But what I thought was interesting is taking a song and putting a value of say $10,000 to me. I put $10,000 worth of time and effort into it. Or I need to make $10,000 on this song to make songwriting a worthwhile venture. Now $10,000 may sound high but I equate it to a plumber or some such occupation that charges a high hourly rate. But you need to keep in mind that he's not generally doing that kind of work 40 hours per week. I'm not going to write 500 $10,000 songs per year. If I could make 3 $10,000 songs per year I would be happy. Hell, one would make me ecstatic.
Now I can charge $1 for each download and reach my goal when I sell 10,000 copies. Or I can sell it for $10 and only need 1000 sales. But the point is I can adjust that marketing curve to wherever it needs to be. If 20,000 will buy it for 50 cents - fine! Or if 200,000 will buy it for 5 cents - GREAT!
So I'm thinking of a model that adjusts to the old marketing curve - kinda like they do with electronics now. When a new gadget first comes out the early adopters pay a premium. Of course in this instance it
That's the reverse of what they're doing with a lot of CD's and DVD's. They have them on sale the first week, presumably to boost chart numbers. Then it goes to the regular over-price. But who the hell pays attention to charts anymore. Everything is a niche. The long tail economy on the web is fragmenting the music industry. It used to be the top 100 artists selling 1,000,000 records. Now there is more money made on the 1,000,000 bottom selling artists selling 100 records. The math may be a little off, but the point is in there somewhere.
So how about if we had a model in place for songs where you sell the song the first week or month for $1 then it drops a little, then a little more. Your 1,000 die-hard fans that Jonathan Coulton and Wil Wheaton talked about that would buy anything you make -
Or would it even be worth it to say that I'll give the song away for free after making that $10,000. If I've got a good enough audience that likes me and wants other people to find me they will help me get to that $10,000. And then when it's free even more people are likely to download it and get introduced to me. And I've gotten what I wanted out of the song.
Anyhow, just something I had percolating around in my head and had to write it out to see if it made any sense at all.
