Limewire is Doomed by RIAA Action

reply to post by K J Gunderson


I should have been more specific about mentioning big box retailers in general such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy

Used stores will have a niche, like Half Price Books does for books. Music-wise, I used to buy Goldmine Magazine to hunt down and purchase rare and out of print albums and singles. Tower Records in New Orleans was a great place to find anything priced ridiculously cheap.

And yes, part of the problem of P2P publishing/promotion by independents is a problem. If unknown artist makes his stuff free, why shouldn't big time artist too? Many (especially younger) people do not see the difference. Of course the easy question to counter that is why doesn't every artist go the way of street musician versus concert tours?

The problem really isn't so much of me making you a copy of a song that lasts forever, it is me making a song available to everyone for free that lasts forever. And that has the same quality as what is sold. If mp3's made the music flat and washed out, but were useful for promotion of sales, then RIAA would have no argument. But if people can make CD quality reproductions, then why buy?

And honestly, there are people out there that do indeed sell downloaded music and movies on discs that they have burned for the express purpose of selling them. The going rate is $2-$5 for an album, which is quite the competition to retail. Heck, the good ones do the cover art and album booklets too. They will sell them out in the open. Local police look at is as "well at least they are not selling drugs."

And yes, the industry does have their self to blame for lack of variety, distribution, lack of quality of artists and albums as well. Which is why their losses are not just P2P downloaded material. As for the high cost in stores, that is from all the middlemen getting their piece of the pie.

A mass produced album would cost about $1-$2 dollars to make (depending on cover, booklet vs. insert, case used, quality of the disc itself). The record company that pays for all that cost and is going to take a flat 200-300% markup for that service. So now we are at $2-$4 per CD. The artist has to be paid, $5-$6. Let's just add in transportation costs and make it an even $6 for an average. That is going to be close to what a store pays for our examination. The store has to pay rent, utilities, employees and still make a profit for the store owner. Looking at close to $18 now for the customer because the magic number in retail and restaurants is to triple whatever you pay for something.

That is why you pay what you do at the store for about 2 good songs. That and people don't want 30 minute CD's of 6 songs which is what the old standard was for LP. CD's are now basically what you would get if bought a LP plus all the B-sides of the 45's at once. And you get a small price break there, because CD singles usually went for $5-$7 each back in the day when CD's of album were $15.