Fact: When you pay retail price for a CD, you are paying not for the CD itself, but for the content
True, so if a dataplay disc costs $5, then that is an additional $5 compared to the price they would charge for a CD, where the cost is negligible.
(alternatively, if it turns out to cost less than a CD, then they must be making lots of money on those CD's, right?*)
Record companies face declining overall CD sales due to piracy. CD album sales were up only 1% last year (average yearly increase has been 15%),
I read up 8%. Is it due to piracy? I dont know. I suspect it may also be due to many factors, including;
- Piracy,
- CD's costing too much so people arent buying them (Thereby increasing piracy, but that isnt money the record company would ever have got)
- Sampling ( I downloaded some tracks from an album to try before buy, a few weeks ago. It was crap, so I didnt buy it. Previously I might well have bought on the basis of the bands name. OTOH I have also bought CD's because I liked some songs, but I suspect I've decided more are not worth it than are.
- Converting form factor. You have convinced me I am paying for the content, not the CD. But I already bought the content when I bought the vinyl, didnt I?
However, I was offered no discount when I did rebuy my vinyl as CD, so for infrequently played LPs it seems reasonable to many people to get a discount via a download.
Music singles were down 47%!
Rocky, I'm not surprised when they charge $6 (uk price) for one! Even my kids say thats ridiculous and they are not going to pay that price, its not worth it for one song. If they were a reasonable price they would buy them to get the nice packaging etc. As it is, they copy or download them but this is not money the record companies are losing because the kids would never have bought them anyway. They only lose when someone downloads a song they would otherwise have bought, something that is conveniently ignored in industry statistics. To them, every download is $18 they would have got. Sorry folks, it doesnt work that way.
Dataplay is better than anything right now when you factor in form factor size, price, optical tech, and industry support
Rocky, we havent seen prices yet have we? I mean, we have seen prices for blank discs, but until we see prices for players, and prices for pre-recorded discs, that doesn't mean much.I agree, the form factor is neat, but so is minidisc and that hasnt really taken over from CD has it?
Tw
* Seems to me there is a pricing dilemma between dataplay and CD.
Charge less for Dataplay, and CD prices will have to drop. But surely they cant do that if they are only breaking even on them now?
Charge more, and they wont sell any.
Charge on pay-per-play and look at DivX for what will happen.
Charge the same, then you'll be making $4 or $5 less per dataplay.
Charge the same, I might as well buy the CD then record it and several others (maybe that I borrowed from friends) to a blank Dataplay disc. much more versatile than buying some preset collection I might not want (and have the irritation of having to contact someone when I want to listen to bits of it). Also, I can then play the CD at home, in my car, etc which I cant do on Dataplay since my CD doesnt have a Dataplay unit.
However, the consumer is a strange and fickle beast, so anything could happen, it should be an interesting Christmas this year, I presume this will be make-or-break for them, if they cant get the volume out by then, they are going to have a long and hard struggle to build sales over the following year. |
