RIAA Says CDs Should Cost More

By ThePitt
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Community Regular

matthewf01

Posted
Posted
We have the CRIA, which is like the RIAA, so it could happen.

Plus were affiliated with the WTO (World Trade Organization).

Buying CD's are stupid nowadays, iTunes and other sorts are better.

Besides on the average CD there's only a few good songs usually.

One of my bandmates and I were actually discussing this the other day.

It's this mentality that will certainly one day soon lead to the death of "the album".

And generations even younger than mine (I'm 20) have neutral feelings about the CD, and music as a PHYSICAL medium, whereas today there are people who say CD is a bad format because the packaging is small, artwork is small, and a lot less interesting to hold in your hand. The youngest generation owns iPods, and knows no better.

Now with people downloading music [legally, even], there IS no artwork, there is nothing to hold, and you have rights to a file.

Then you have people who go on iTunes, and rather than getting the whole album from a band they want to hear, they pick up a song or two. This will soon lead to (if it's not already happening now) bands releasing SONGS instead of ALBUMS.

Sure there are albums that suck, and plenty do, or even a majority of an album, but that doesn't mean that the band doesn't deserve their [measly] cut of the first 10 songs they put on there, rather than you buying the two you really want. A lot of bands suck today, that's the problem -- everyone is a replica of someone else. "Hey, that sound is 'in', let's rip it off." Make interesting music people want to buy.

Make the physical CD something interesting that people want to buy.

Make ALBUMS, not songs.

And the RIAA is a huge problem... but I have a question for some of the overseas readers -- how is music managed in your country?

Grand Master

obsolete_power

Posted
Posted

Well the RIAA says a lot of things. We just tend to pass it off as idiocy and usually just ignore them.

The RIAA reminds me of a stupid little kid that keeps nagging and complaining about everything and starts jumping up and down and crashing into walls when he doesn't get something he wants and kicks and screams....The RIAA has to be the single most immature corporation in the entire world!!! All of the things the say or do are so preposterous and ridiculous that it makes me want to drive a tank right through their damned headquarters and end their pathetic existance!!

Grand Master

spacer

Posted
Posted
Well the RIAA says a lot of things. We just tend to pass it off as idiocy and usually just ignore them.

The RIAA reminds me of a stupid little kid that keeps nagging and complaining about everything and starts jumping up and down and crashing into walls when he doesn't get something he wants and kicks and screams....The RIAA has to be the single most immature corporation in the entire world!!! All of the things the say or do are so preposterous and ridiculous that it makes me want to drive a tank right through their damned headquarters and end their pathetic existance!!

You drive, I'll shoot.

Grand Master

redfish

Posted
Posted

Arguing about other factors such as cost of production aside, its stupid to try to use the CPI as a justification in the first place. Can you still make profit with CDs costing less? If the answer is yes, listen to consumers who say the prices are still high. Period. There's no more to it.

Grand Master

spikey_richie

Posted
Posted

Have they not taken into consideration the fact that to manufacture a CD with inlays now costs probably 1/10th of what it did 10 years ago?!?!

Agreed the price of labour, shipping, marketing etc... have all gone up, but there have been numerous technological advances which allow for a much reduced production cost.

Maybe it's because the artists are getting greedy, so the record companies have to line their pockets. So the knock on effect is that we the consumer have to pay twice as much for an album because the artist we like is a greedy son of a...

If it cost more than $20 to purchase a CD, I'd just listen to the radio.

Proficient

MaJoR

Posted
Posted

This is just insanity. Pure and simple. Oh wait, this is normal. If the media people had everything they wanted, there would be no radio; CDs would install software that watches and tracks the music and YOU, turning on your mic and webcam so they could watch you and you wouldn't be able to turn it off; Tape recorders, VCRs, CD-RW drives, DVD-RW drives, and more would be illegal; television would force you to watch commercials (they even wanted to put protections that would prevent you from changing channels at certain times) and even more. They don't want to you just be able to choose the content and enjoy it, they want to FORCE you to do what they want.

Greed. Pure and simple. Now if our backboneless government would stop taking money and stand up to these idiots and their big pockets.

Community Regular

matthewf01

Posted
Posted
It just helps the record companies make more $. Artists, unless you're say.. Prince, don't really make squat from CD sales.

-- Exactly.

To the person who said artists are getting "greedy".

Actually, they are just trying to get "paid".

Only the biggest of bands can get into contracts where they are actually doing pretty well.

U2 is so powerful, they actually own the rights to all their masters.

http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Courtney_Lov...rs_for_the_RIAA

Might wanna read this.

Courtney Love did write it, but it's actually very accurate, even though a few years old, and makes for an interesting read, especially if you're a musician who hasn't had their eyes opened yet.

Grand Master

redfish

Posted
Posted (edited)
-- Exactly.

To the person who said artists are getting "greedy".

Actually, they are just trying to get "paid".

Only the biggest of bands can get into contracts where they are actually doing pretty well.

U2 is so powerful, they actually own the rights to all their masters.

http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Courtney_Lov...rs_for_the_RIAA

Might wanna read this.

Courtney Love did write it, but it's actually very accurate, even though a few years old, and makes for an interesting read, especially if you're a musician who hasn't had their eyes opened yet.

I think people believe the large name artists are greedy when they earn a lot and then make statements in the press to the effect that piracy takes their earnings.

They could be concerned about the smaller trying to make money though. Although, I don't think they have their material pirated as much, and pirating increases exposure to their music. If all of their music was pirated of course it wouldn't help them, but I'm sure if the industry wasn't controlled by what record companies wanted it would be easier for them to find ways to make money.

I think the large name artists don't realize this, because a lot of the time part of the reason they have the market power they do is because the recording industry made them. The recording industry gets to determine who is promoted on the market and who isn't. If they didn't have so much power, the market for music would be completely different. Less artists like Britney Spears.

Smaller artists may not realize this either because all they're trying to do is work in the industry that exists and make day-to-day earnings.

I would expect artists that are already frustrated by how the industry is controlled are more open to alternative ways of getting paid, however.

No where in the article does it say they want the CD's to be more expensive. The article, itself, is simply pointing out the value of CD's at their current $12 price point.

No but they argue it in a way that they would say its would be perfectly justified if CDs were be more expensive.

You don't make price arguments based on the CPI. Especially when you're defending against 'alternative' ways of getting music. The RIAA really does treat anyone who has downloaded a song as a criminal, so they don't care about the argument that they have to lure people away from stealing music. They would be happy if people were so frightened about going to cour tthat they didn't. So they can keep CD prices high and have laws that punish downloaders, even though its neither necessary nor realistic.

Like I said above, the price of producing music may be different if the industry were different. The RIAA's press statement says the most expensive part of producing music is marketing. They claim the Internet doesn't change that. The Internet doesn't change that, yes, if you're ruling out free distribution. If you're not, then the Internet does change it. Its not that word-of-mouth marketing didn't matter before, but now its more viable. They don't want to rely on it though, because a large amount of what they put out now wouldn't become popular by relying on the Internet or other more independent venues that would still exist. They want to rely on their industry machine.

None of this justifies their market model.

They're relying on the idea that the public appreciates them just because they want to get a lot of music.

I think one thing that will happen in the future as things change and this fight dies down, is that music will be a lot less important. A lot of people today fetishize music and have thousands of songs downloaded. A lot of the reason music is so important today is because of the pop culture and the industries that support it. But in the past music has been no more important than other forms of art, whether visual or literary. Music is going to be put back into its place. People get bored more than they get "re-entertained" by a CD

Edited by brianshapiro
Mentor

etempest

Posted
Posted

I think there complaining that market demand is trying to force them to lower price of cd's and since there stranglehold of the market and price fixing keeps the market from correcting there price and when its starting to hurt them (the revolt against them), so there grasping at straws as to why they want to increase prices.

The end result is even more revoult and p2p.

Grand Master

ozgeek

Posted
Posted

Some people still buy music media because they have a hard reliable copy of what they want to listen. Yeah I know about downloaded music but it's not as reliable as a CD becauase it tends to get lost in the thousands of downloads you do and it becomes more DRM'ed or corrupt.

The reason why CD's are still costly is because the artists don't work for free. You can't expect to get everything for free. Yes there are free music but this is like free software avaiablity when there are Microsoft, adobe, corel making successfull business advances.

Most of you kids have no idea what else the costs include. Do you think they just make music and put it on disc? It's way more than just that. publishing costs, marketting, registeration of ownship of music therein, etc, the list goes on and that's why hard media music is expensive than music downloads. But some will buy the CD's over downloads.

Grand Master

redfish

Posted
Posted (edited)
Some people still buy music media because they have a hard reliable copy of what they want to listen. Yeah I know about downloaded music but it's not as reliable as a CD becauase it tends to get lost in the thousands of downloads you do and it becomes more DRM'ed or corrupt.

The reason why CD's are still costly is because the artists don't work for free. You can't expect to get everything for free. Yes there are free music but this is like free software avaiablity when there are Microsoft, adobe, corel making successfull business advances.

Most of you kids have no idea what else the costs include. Do you think they just make music and put it on disc? It's way more than just that. publishing costs, marketting, registeration of ownship of music therein, etc, the list goes on and that's why hard media music is expensive than music downloads. But some will buy the CD's over downloads.

Hard media will always be more expensive than downloads, its not really the issue.

The issue is whether the product they're selling is worth the money they're charging. The fact that they have to spend a lot of money marketing music doesn't make the end product worth more. That just gives them a bad business model.

The business model can be changed any number of ways, whether it means to make money in different ways, produce different music, or just simply find different ways of marketing and packaging.

Or if they want, they can insist everyone who pirates music goes to jail. That's what they think is the right way.

Edit:

And it should be obvious that the marketing (creating desire in consumers) should have nothing to do with the worth of the product (utility to consumers). If marketing is used to justify worth, then the price is self-justified, and they could justify any price they sold it at as long as marketing could be used as an excuse, because they need to pay for the marketing to make that price profitable.

Edited by brianshapiro
Grand Master

Glassed Silver

Posted
Posted

I don't have $2369.57...

Do you accept souls either?

-fm

addition:

@matthewf01:

it's not too bad here in Germany... Though, RIAA influences us all in the end.

Grand Master

remix17

Posted
Posted
RIAA says that I should pirate more...

Seriously, how I can buy music legally if I don't have the money to buy them because it cost too much?

Exactly :yes:

Its like they want you to pirate stuff isnt it? :rofl:

Yes! They want you to pirate and then have the ability to sue you for thousands of dollars. It's their strategy. It's how they make profits. CD sales is just a cover-up.

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