Quote:
Originally posted by Ryann
The value of music has decreased. Why pay 1.29 for it when you can:
- Get it illegally.
- Listen to it on youtube.
- Stream it on Spotify/Google/Tidal.
Back then it was rip it from the radio (in tragic quality) or buy it.
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Historically music has always declined in value. The recording industry was invented because it was cheaper to spin records than to pay someone to play music in a pub, club,... Physical distribution of records had a price tag like 50% of what you paid is the shop's profit margin and there were so much middle men taking a cut.
Internet changed it by cutting down the price of transferring any information like music, movies, games,... to practically for free. 15 years ago, a new era started with Napster.
Customers ain't stupid, if there are no physical shops taking 50% of the 20 dollar/euro album price, why can't it be 10 dollar/euro? iTunes store is like the importers, distributors,... and can take profit from that part. Why not 9.99 for a just released album.
Albums were invented, when singles were expensive (5 euro) because of price of making a disc, distributing it, handling/scanning it in the shops and the risk the shops took by buying discs that might flop and won't sell. If you have bought 3 singles for 15 euro
(and oh no if I want the 4th single too, that's 20 euro spent), you could also have bought the album and have more songs.
Internet also changed this, 1 song or 100 songs, cost practically zero to transfer over the Internet. Customers don't want the 8 or 9 fillers and want to pay for the portion of the album they like. If you like 3 songs, way not 3/12*10=2 euro for 3 songs? 66 cents for a single should be the normal full price.
Instead the industry tried to abuse iTunes to make twice the profit per song/album what they could make in the CD era. Apple doesn't make profit with iTunes, they have it because it's a good experience and branding for selling their devices like iPod, iPhone,... What's even the point of iTunes when you can get the CD cheaper on Amazon? Delivery time of the CD isn't a problem since Amazon offers mp3 downloads during the wait for the delivery.
However tech has moved on from the idea of owning music by downloading it to your pc, transferring it to your phone,...
(it requires a lot of care and attention) to pulling it out of thin air with streaming
(anywhere on the road, anytime of the day,...), you can search any song, artist, words,... to get some results, press save to have it on your pc, when your phone is on wifi it automagically download it too, when you come home, the phone tells your pc which song which seconds you were to resume the music,... A way more carefree way of consuming music. Spotify Premium 10 euro per month is almost as easy as breathing the plenty supply of ready-to-use air around us. You just like a song, an album, an artist,... and Spotify takes care of downloading it on pc, for offline use on phone,... Instant gratification.