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Money question (not really off-topic)
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Maine Coon
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
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1659
Posted : Apr 28, 2014 19:15
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Maybe you are right about those LE CDs. At the time, that buy was a way to support the authors (and the label, I guess - I don't think it was available directly then). The disk itself was really a souvenir: I already had the MP3s from ... another source.
Which kinda brings me back to the "Damn Pirates!..." family of topics. IMHO, there is nothing wrong with the "try before you buy" scheme. As long as you actually buy, of course. |
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Colin OOOD
OOOD/Voice of Cod
Started Topics :
95
Posts :
5380
Posted : Apr 28, 2014 20:08
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Maine Coon
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
Posts :
1659
Posted : Apr 28, 2014 22:05
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Colin,
I don't know any psy-people outside this Forum (IsraTrance is still The Scene for me). But from reading here and talking to people outside the psy scene, it seems that there are four basic types of pirate clients:
1) Those who download, listen and then share;
2) Those who just download and listen (used to be a majority; probably not anymore);
3) Those who just download and hoard it dead on their gigantic hard drives (a quickly growing group, perhaps a majority by now);
4) Those who download, listen and like enough to actually buy (probably more common in niche scenes like this one).
In any case, it's easy to see that 1) probably does more good than bad, 2) is a shrinking group, 3) makes no difference at all and 4) is good news.
Besides this purely theoretical speculation, I have my own personal reasons to be lenient towards music piracy, which are actually related to my original question.
I discovered psytrance by accident, while searching for music of my youth (cheesy '80s Eurodisco) on a pirate blog. Then I explored it on a specialized psy pirate site that was actually soo well organized that a certain legit label advertised its releases there.  . A couple months later I discovered IsraTrance. I was in a very bad place then: unemployed for over a year, and not in a Swedish or even Canadian way. It's very ironic, but it was a psychedelic sub-culture that actually saved me from losing my mind.  A lot of it was due to hanging out here, in Isra forums. A lot was in discovering all kinds of music - through links in the Free Music section or YouTube posts here, through crawling around SoundCloud, big time through Ektoplazm. But also - and for a long time mainly - through pirates.
The way I see it, I would not order a new car model online - why should ordering a music album be any different? You go to a dealership and see it for yourself, you test drive, then you decide to buy or not. If not - you just added 2 miles onto somebody else's car, no harm done. If yes - both you and the dealer end up happy.
Anyway, I just thought about giving back a bit to the scene that propped me up during hard times and continues providing me with inspiration and insights, that's all. Just want to make sure my money goes where it should and not to the big castle in Cupertino, CA or Redmont, WA.
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Yidam
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
144
Posts :
3171
Posted : Apr 29, 2014 14:09
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Quote:
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On 2014-04-28 22:05, Maine Coon wrote:
The way I see it, I would not order a new car model online - why should ordering a music album be any different? You go to a dealership and see it for yourself, you test drive, then you decide to buy or not. If not - you just added 2 miles onto somebody else's car, no harm done. If yes - both you and the dealer end up happy.
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I like this analogy! Sounds like the record shop days where you could pull out vinyl and listen to it.
I think the final chapter of the fall of music sales was all the record shops closing down. I found myself always buying more CDs when in a store, and even some random music that I never ended up listening to... but when ordering online, will listen to it beforehand and meticulously pick what I want to buy.
I think that impulse buy played a big factor in music sales, it still does for most consumer products, and to some extent even with the known labels in the psytrance scene... there is a customer base that will always buy a release put out by a label like Ultimae, Parvati, Suntrip etc without even checking the samples.
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Xolvexs
IsraTrance Senior Member
Started Topics :
241
Posts :
2848
Posted : Apr 29, 2014 18:32
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how come the cd prices have gone up so much i remember they used to be between 10-12 US$ now most are almost $15...any reason for this why are the buyers of music being penalized ?
 When death comes to your doorstep, make sure you are alive |
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Yidam
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
144
Posts :
3171
Posted : Apr 29, 2014 19:43
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Quote:
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On 2014-04-29 18:32, Xolvexs wrote:
how come the cd prices have gone up so much i remember they used to be between 10-12 US$ now most are almost $15...any reason for this why are the buyers of music being penalized ?
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short-runs (100-200 copies) cost a lot more because you have to pay a fixed price for the glass master, it's the major cost when pressing a CD, so to keep price to sale ratio the same it will always end up a few dollars higher.
however there are some labels peddling CDRs at 15$ a pop, that's just greedy IMO.
a reasonable price in this day would be 6$ for digital, 12$ for physical and 15$ for limited editions.
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Yidam
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
144
Posts :
3171
Posted : Apr 29, 2014 20:30
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... and CDRs should just be banned, huge waste of resources, degrades and is discarded very easily and not environment friendly.
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Login
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
65
Posts :
1707
Posted : Apr 29, 2014 20:37
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these days the only psytrance I get is from Ektoplasm.
I still buy techno/house/prog house form beatport form time to time because is convenient and I like how you browse the site, and the Myfav artist/label features makes easy to find stuff I like. I have tried other sites but they don't have all the stuff I want and by now it is a PITa to list all my favs.
I Agree with Detox, the scene is a chaos now, but I think promoters are having a harder time finding who is really popular now (outside of the 20 old acts you see very year at every festival) and booking them.
"The dedication to repetition — the search for nirvana in a single held tone or an endlessly cycling rhythm — is one of electronic music's noblest gestures." |
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Maine Coon
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
Posts :
1659
Posted : Apr 29, 2014 21:56
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Quote:
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On 2014-04-29 18:32, Xolvexs wrote:
how come the cd prices have gone up so much i remember they used to be between 10-12 US$ now most are almost $15...any reason for this why are the buyers of music being penalized ?
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Buyers of music are not penalized. Buyers of CDs are. |
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OzMike
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
148
Posts :
1681
Posted : Apr 30, 2014 02:21
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$12-15 is fine for me. Back when record shops existed here in Australia Goa/Psy went for $30-40 on average so even Saikosounds was cheaper. Now I pay $10-15 for CD & digital download from Bandcamp. It's great.
The thing I find about the current state of music in general is the lack of investment in to recording. The quality control is not existing & there has been a few release IMO that are just falling flat because of poor finalizing. It's really sad.
Cuntus Maximus. |
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dick hardman
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
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369
Posted : Apr 30, 2014 02:45
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Also a factor is listeners trust. Used to be a time when a particular artist or even label came out with a new release, you could buy it unheard and trust it would be good, or at least care enough to take a chance. These days there's so many new artists there's no trust. What else to do but try before buy.
MahaRichie
~'~PsyTribe~'~ |
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BraneFreeze
Started Topics :
0
Posts :
51
Posted : Apr 30, 2014 19:07
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Quote:
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On 2014-04-29 21:56, Maine Coon wrote:
Quote:
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On 2014-04-29 18:32, Xolvexs wrote:
how come the cd prices have gone up so much i remember they used to be between 10-12 US$ now most are almost $15...any reason for this why are the buyers of music being penalized ?
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Buyers of music are not penalized. Buyers of CDs are.
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Buyers of music are penalized if digital albums (when available) are only priced $1-2 below an inflated CD price.
(My idea of a reasonable price for high quality digital is around $1/track, or $0.80/track if you buy an entire album.)
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Maine Coon
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
Posts :
1659
Posted : Apr 30, 2014 19:42
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What a price of something should or should not be has been a topic of a very lively debate, both in peoples' kitchens and in academic halls. I doubt we are going to solve this puzzle here and now.
Among many other factors determining a price is anchoring. Notice how your idea of a reasonable price reflects pretty much exactly that of iTunes? |
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BraneFreeze
Started Topics :
0
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51
Posted : Apr 30, 2014 20:40
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Bandcamp comments re pricing:
"Please take what we’re about to tell you with a grain of salt. Part of what makes Bandcamp Bandcamp is that you, not some corporate behemoth, set your own pricing. And that’s really as it should be, since the most effective price just isn’t the same for every artist, and you know your fans better than anyone. That said, we have the advantage of a metric crap-ton of data, and that data tells us a few things:
For digital albums of seven tracks or more, most artists will maximize their earnings by charging $7 USD. For EP-length albums (six tracks or fewer), $4 USD is the sweet spot. But again, there are exceptions, and if you’re an established artist who has seen recent success charging $18 for your digital albums, go for it. However, in all cases, leaving “let fans pay more if they want” checked is key: fans pay more than the minimum a whopping 40% of the time, driving up the average price paid by nearly 50% (in fact, every day, we see überfans paying $50, $100, $200 for albums priced far lower).
While we have your attention, we would like to discourage you from doing one-penny-off pricing (e.g., $0.99, $9.99, $11.99). Though it may be an effective tactic for selling waterbeds, cell phone plans, and Angry Birds 34, when we see that sort of pricing on an artist’s own website, we do not think “gosh, this is a good deal” but rather “what we previously thought was a person/band is actually a marketing department, and they’re subtly telling us they think we’re idiots.” Present a straightforward price, let fans pay more if they want, and they’ll reward you."
(BTW, iTunes prices are not reasonable because their bit rates are poor.)
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Maine Coon
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
Posts :
1659
Posted : May 2, 2014 00:49
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Sounds like BandCamp is the way of the future: both great for fans (easy search, full previews, "supported by" etc) and fair to artists. Got to browse it a bit in the last couple of days: it's a truly awesome site. Gotta say, it changed quite a bit since the last time I used it (Langbortistan release - fall 2011?..).
Thanks a lot, everybody, for an interesting discussion and very useful info.  |
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