How much is fair to pay for FLAC / DRM free MP3? Options

[jonb]

Thanks again to everyone who responded to the Codec question. Our encoder is making a series of tests based on your recommendations.

Now, onto the money question. The question is: is $1.29 a fair price to download either a FLAC or LAME V? CBR 192kbps MP3 version of a track. If not, what would you charge? Does it make sense for variable pricing depending on file type?

Any comment will be appreciated and taken very earnestly into account.

[goodnews]

Thanks again to everyone who responded to the Codec question. Our encoder is making a series of tests based on your recommendations.

Now, onto the money question. The question is: is $1.29 a fair price to download either a FLAC or LAME V? CBR 192kbps MP3 version of a track. If not, what would you charge? Does it make sense for variable pricing depending on file type?

Any comment will be appreciated and taken very earnestly into account.

I am an independent artist with 9 albums out and I sell all my music for $.99 a track (DRM or no DRM), FLAC/MP3 on my web site and using M4A/WMA protected on iTunes, MTV Urge, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Music, etc.

I think the $.99 price (U.S.) works well or $9.99 for an album, as many of my albums which have 14, 20 or one even has 30 song tracks. I sell more albums that way by placing 13+ songs on an album, and that seems better than the per song price I get if the albums had less songs or crappy "filler" songs on them.

Hope this helps. I guess the market could bear $1.29 a song for non-DRM MP3 or Flac format, but I like to look at per album pricing as I get more $$ that way from online music sales.

This post has been edited by goodnews: Jul 28 2006, 20:56

[kwanbis]

I personally don't understand why we have to pay the same, for something with less value:
No box.
No physical media.
No "booklet"

The only convenience is not having to go to the music store. But so is a convenience for the sellers.

[goodnews]

I personally don't understand why we have to pay the same, for something with less value:
No box.
No physical media.
No "booklet"

The only convenience is not having to go to the music store. But so is a convenience for the sellers.

Agreed it is much cheaper to sell online music than physical CDs. No inventory, etc.

I don't even sell physical CDs anymore (except for a few I am clearing out of old inventory). Online music is the way to go in my opinion (for small indie, self-published artists).

Since you can't buy CD singles for 99 cents, that is a moot point on pricing comparison. If someone wants to "cherry pick" songs from albums I publish they should pay the higher 99 cent price rather than the usually cheaper $9.99 per album rate. I don't know what music stores charge for new CD albums, but I don't think it is $9.99 or less. Perhaps in the $12.98 to $16.98 range (especially for albums with 13+ tracks)?

I, as an artist, receive about 63.5 cents per 99 cent song sold by iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Music, MTV Vibe, etc. after my online distributer's 11% cut. Since I either own or have a paid-up license for all the rights to the music sound recording and the actual underlying songs, I get to keep the whole 63.5 cents per song (or $6.35 per $9.99 album sold), unlike many other artitsts who have to pay mechanical licensing and other fees.

So I prefer online music as I usually get my money within a month or two of the sale without me having to make physical CDs. So it is a win-win for both me the artist and also for the buyer of my music. I don't care if they sell it DRM (iTunes or WMA music stores) or non-DRM (such as emusic). I plan to have all my music available for download in FLAC format on my web site, as I trust my listeners to pay me for the music. Otherwise, they are stealing from me if they continue to use the music and don't pay. Since I publish Christian music, that is between them and God, if they want to steal music from me, as I trust Him to enforce the payments.

This post has been edited by goodnews: Jul 28 2006, 21:31

[kwanbis]

Since you can't buy CD singles for 99 cents, that is a moot point on pricing comparison. If someone wants to "cherry pick" songs from albums I publish they should pay the higher 99 cent price rather than the usually cheaper $9.99 per album rate. I don't know what music stores charge for new CD albums, but I don't think it is $9.99 or less. Perhaps in the $12.98 to $16.98 range (especially for albums with 13+ tracks)?

In Argentina, a cd is about 9.5 dollars. Obviously in dollars is very cheap, but it translates to about 29 pesos.

I plan to have all my music available for download in FLAC format on my web site, as I trust my listeners to pay me for the music.

Can i get some samples to see if i like it? Obviously with the intention to buy if i do.

[jonb]

What do you think a fair price for an album would be? Does the file type factor in?

[kwanbis]

8 dollars for downloadable ones.

[JeanLuc]

What do you think a fair price for an album would be? Does the file type factor in?

In my opinion, it surely does ... a file that has been encoded with a lossy process should be less expensive than the same file in a lossless format.

When selling your artist's music files online, you could add some value by offering high quality artwork (e.g. 300+ dpi scans, liner notes, lyrics etc.) along with the files ... that way, your customers (which surely deviate from the 'joe average online music store vistor') will most likely accept the higher price (compared to iTunes cr*p) due to higher overall product quality.

And btw ... personally, I think that 15-18€ would be appropriate for a full FLAC album in Chesky quality with complete artwork/lyrics etc. The same album in a lossy format should be less expensive (by perhaps 30%) ... with the option to 'upgrade' to the lossless version by just paying a little more than the price difference between MP3 and FLAC.

This post has been edited by JeanLuc: Jul 28 2006, 22:32

[zipr]

audiolunchbox.com charges $.99/track for vbr lame mp3s, $9.99 for an album. Seems to be the going rate.

[Synthetic Soul]

I think the lossy files should be very cheap compared to the CD price, while a lossless download should be closer, but still noticably less.

I like JeanLuc's idea of "try before you buy". If your system could recognise users that have downloaded a lossy version and charge them only the difference to download the lossless version it would be good incentive I'm sure. This may mean users downloading the album in lossy and then downloading those tracks they come to love in lossless.

I agree with kwanbis, and no doubt everyone else: the price should never be more than the price of a CD. I'm dumbfounded that buying an album of songs on the Internet in lossy format is more expensive than buying the CD (if the CD has more than nine tracks or so, which many do). Absolutely crazy.

Edit: I don't understand Euros or dollars, so as I guideline I would say:

CD: 100%
Lossless: 80-90% (of CD price)
Lossy: 50-70%

This post has been edited by Synthetic Soul: Jul 28 2006, 23:08

[ConCave]

I would say about €9.99 Euros for an album in flac with high quality scans of the artwork and linear notes. And about €6.99 Euros for the same album in mp3 quality. And about 0.99 cents for a single in flac and about 0.70 cents for the mp3. You sould also think about offering some free full length samples of one or two tracks from an album this would help people make up there minds about purchasing, as i find the 30 second samples on iTunes are to short to get a good overview of an artist or album.

ConCave

This post has been edited by ConCave: Jul 29 2006, 05:10

[Cyaneyes]

Now, onto the money question.

50 cents per lossless song, $5 per lossless album. Significantly less for lossy. Anything more, to me, isn't worth it considering the lack of physical backup (the CD), physical artwork, etc.

I doubt we'll ever see the day those prices become reality. Until then, I stick to buying CDs.

[Patsoe]

In a way, there's also an extra value to getting flacs over getting cds: you don't have to do the ripping anymore

Surely, a cd is sort of nice as a physical backup, but then a statement from the shop that the bought content will always remain available for download is a good backup, too (it's even off-site backup ). I wouldn't mind being charged a small amount for a re-download.

Actually, why not charge per download size at purchase too? Let's say 4 dollars for the album, then 1 cent per MB for the downloading?

[Lyx]

Important:

Allow the user to redownload stuff which he bought already. If you go with the "MP3 in CBR and VBR"-proposal, then buying one of them should automatically buy the other. Thus, if someone downloads the VBR-version, but then notices that he has a crappy portable (bad VBR-support), then he should be able to download the CBR version without any additional costs or hassles.

- Lyx

[Andavari]

I would personally try to be very competitive to the other online stores, yet attempt to be priced less with more value for the money spent.

In U.S. funds:

• .59 cents per lossy track
• .79 cents per lossless track
• $ 5.59 per lossy album
• $ 7.99 per lossless album

More value meaning:

• Educate, educate, educate your customer with intelligently written F.A.Q's as to why the lossless version of the album is recommended over the lossy version, e.g.; quality-wise/archival-wise, gapless, convertibility to any of their chosen lossy formats, etc.
• Keep a detailed purchase record so people don't accidentally re-purchase a track they already have (easily happens with 1000's of tracks in a large music collection), yet be smart enough to show that they bought the lossy version and offer an upgrade for a small fee or the actual difference in price to the recommended lossless version.
• The ability to re-download tracks/albums and the artwork if they're lost in a hard drive failure.
• The ability to download high quality album artwork regardless if the lossy or lossless version is purchased.
• Pre-made CD templates with the high quality artwork for usage in many programs, e.g.; Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Word with Avery add-on, Open Office (open source free software), SureThing CD/DVD Labeler, or make your own Firefox extension that prints your CD artwork, etc.

[OmniCbex]

In US currency:

30-50 cents a track for lossy
4-6 dollars per album for lossy
60-80 cents a track for lossless or raw
7-10 dollars per album for lossless or raw
Compared to 12-16 dollars per physical media album because that contains an actual disc and booklet.

I don't think DRMed music should even exist in any future strategies.

PS: If you ever want decent deals on imported CDs, don't use Amazon.
The Black Mages II, The Skies Above on Amazon: $50; on Play-Asia: $23

[Gecko]

Assuming CD prices are fair:

x =
CD price
- cd production cost (incl. booklet print etc.)
- distribution and logistic costs
+ hosting/bandwidth cost
+ additional web design/shop frontend cost

Where x would be the fair album price for CD quality equivalent files i.e. lossless. When you get less (lossy mp3 downloads) you should pay less.

Of course it's not that easy taking into consideration encoder licences etc., but maybe if you subtract the money saved due to lower bandwidth demands it evens out a little.

Considering that DRM is useless (has it reduced piracy?), you can save a whole bunch of money by not using this technology. So progressive minds would argue that DRM free tracks should cost less than their restricted counterparts.

Basically, whatever money you save by taking the digital distribution route should be passed on to the customer.

[molnart]

1. I have doubts, that anyone who downloaded a ~200 kbps VBR MP3 will ever want to upgrade to a lossless version
2. A downloadable booklet will never be the same as the one that comes with a physical copy.
3. Not considering the booklet thing, a digital copy is more worthy for me than a physical (Does anyone here still listen cd's ?)
4. Price construction: your expenses + money recieved by artists per track/album + margin (i think you are going to run a commercial service, right ?)

Considering the fact, that we're talking about an indie record label, there's another interesting question: Will be there physical copies available to everyone who's interested ? If the only version will be the downloadable one, i think 10 $ per album would be a fair price (for a preceptually lossless version).
If there will be CD version, the price for the download has to determined from CD's price.
I think there's no reason to make filler tracks available to single download, so i'd set the price for singles to 0.75-0.5 USD (assuming that only the 50-75% of the album's tracklist is available for individual download)

As most likely the music offered will be unknown for the large audience, did you consider making available full tracks for free, for example as 64 kbps MP3 ?

[Egor]

(Does anyone here still listen cd's ?)

I do listen to CDs . Jazz and classical genres, I believe, are great to listen as a whole album on a standalone CD player, and therefore cue files would be great for the purchasers of a lossless version.

This post has been edited by Egor: Jul 30 2006, 12:36