Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 11:17:44 +0200
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: What Price Music?
To: Dave E-mail Pamphleteer Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
What Price Music?
By AMY HARMON
The New York Times
Published: October 12, 2003
Since the introduction of vinyl records after World War II, recorded music
has assumed many shapes and sizes, each one coming with a higher price tag
than the last. Eight-track tapes cost a dollar more than LP's when they rose
to popularity in the late 1960's and cassettes commanded a premium over
eight-tracks. When CD's debuted in the mid-1980's, record labels sold the
shiny discs for $18, more than double the price of what they charged for the
same music on LP's and cassettes that cost more to manufacture.
Unlike these formats, which the industry adopted voluntarily and marketed
vigorously, the latest shift? to digitized versions of songs that can be
distributed online? have been thrust upon it, the outgrowth of a technology
it could not control. Battered by a sales slump it attributes largely to
digital piracy and heartened by a limited test with Apple computer owners,
this fall the record industry is trying to catch up with its file-swapping
customers: the major labels and many independents have agreed to deconstruct
the album, allowing anyone with a computer to buy any of hundreds of
thousands of individual songs. Soon huge catalogs of every genre of music
will be available for sale on the Internet from over a dozen retailers,
bearing the blessing and license agreements of the major record labels.
No one knows what all the effects will be. But one will certainly be on
price; music in the new format will cost at least a little less than it did
in the old. The standard charge has become 99 cents a track. Albums that
cost between $12 and $18 on CD now sell for about $10 online. The labels
have also authorized several services to offer a kind of online lease
program for music: subscribers pay a flat $10 a month to listen to as many
as half a million tracks as often as they want over the Internet, rather
than storing them on a computer or burning them to a CD.
--snip--
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/arts/music/12HARM.html?pagewanted=all&posi
tion=
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