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Bindrune Recordings is now offering downloads on a “pay what you want” basis. The label, which is affiliated with the Worm Gear zine/distro and Crionic Mind label, favors doom and black metal with a deep, ritualistic bent. I tested out its downloads store by buying Celestiial’s Desolate North. (Thanks to Dave of Metal Flows in My Veins for the tip.) Checkout was fast and painless. Soon, I had the album at 320 kbps, complete with PDF’s of all the album artwork. Perfect! This has been my go-to album when I want to cool down. It brings to mind an Arctic forest with a spring hissing steam nearby.
“Pay what you want” solves the problem of pricing that I’ve discussed before (see here and here). I believe that MP3 albums should not cost more than $5 each. Most labels would probably disagree. Where they have leverage over pricing (i.e., not iTunes, Amazon, or in the case of metal, digital distro Metalhit), they often charge more. Metal Blade’s digital store, for example, typically charges $8.99 per album. Justin Broadrick’s Avalanche Inc. charges £5 (currently $8.27) per MP3 album. Listeners, of course, want to pay as little as possible (hence illegal downloading). Given the low costs of digital distribution, the focus should shift from margin to volume. At some price point, a person will find purchasing more convenient than downloading, which involves search costs. “Pay what you want” lets people set that point themselves and thus might maximize volume.
This idea is slowly starting to spread. Moshpit Tragedy, a crust punk/metal label, switched to “pay what you want” in September 2007. It is still around, so evidently the move worked. Commmunitas Media, started by Chris Grigg (of black metal outfit Woe), is a platform for bands and labels to enact “pay what you want.” The service is free; Communitas gets a cut of the proceeds. Bindrune uses the Communitas platform, which has one interesting feature. Before checkout, it offers the buyer a selection of related merchandise (t-shirts, etc.). This is a perfect example of the loss leader model I’ve discussed before. Presumably MP3 albums won’t sell for much, but they could lead to sales of physical merchandise. Is this the way forward for album sales?
Listeners, of course, want to pay as little as possible
Pay what you want seems like a good idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if people consistently paid nothing. If they won't pony up a few bucks for an album, what makes you think they'd shell out more for a shirt?
This is an excellent business model. I hope more labels jump on board. I also like the way the desires of the artists are considered in what is offered for download (as is the case for Blood of the Black Owl not wanting one track from a certain album on the download).
If Nuclear War Now can sell their physical CDs for $5.00 (plus shipping), then your reasonable request for $5.00 digital albums shouldn't be too hard. And you're right, labels would very likely sell more.
I'm really enjoying this Shroud of Despondency album I just downloaded…
eMusic has been selling indie label mp3 albums for well under $5 for many years now. I pulled a ton of spectacular metal from that site over the years. A few months back they made deals with some major labels. Doing this raised the price per album to around $5. That is exactly the price I think mp3 albums should be selling for as well. In fact, I think CDs shouldn't go for too much more than that (being the cheap pieces of shit that they are).
It's simple, if you increase the number of sales at an easy to swallow price ($5), more people pay for music, and more people know about the band, while earning the right to have the feeling that they didn't rip off the band (or the label).
Here's another idea. A distro sells you a download for $5. You listen to it and love it. You now want the physical media. The distro then allows you to apply the spent $5 to the price of either the CD or the LP. That would really test the bloggers' theory that people use downloads merely as a sample before buying the actual album.
Agreed that emusic, even with the recent increase, is a great source of legal downloads.
Also, I visited the Moshpit Tragedy site linked in the article, and maybe I am just bad at the internet, but they have done an exceptional job of hiding the page which makes downloads of their releases available.
Anon – Albums and shirts are different things. Albums have been downloaded so much that people expect to pay less for them. That, of course, hasn't happened to shirts. Also, shirts have manufacturing and storage costs, which require higher sales prices to maintain margins.
Robert – Yes, I don't know how NWN does it. That is an insane CD price. I guess the overhead of one guy running an operation out of his garage is low. Also, he must have a great read on what his customers want, so that he isn't sitting on stock for long periods of time.
Miska – eMusic is a great idea, but I am iffy on their 192kbps VBR bitrate. To use MP3 encoding terminology, it's LAME.
Robert – I'll ask Moshpit Tragedy what's going on.
IO – To clarify. When eMusic launched (about ten years back, I think) they used 128. When variable bit rate encoding came around they upgraded (almost) all of their files to around 256 (not 192). Although I'm still surprised from time to time when I get a lower quality bit rate. That usually has something to do with the dynamics of VBR though.
Like you, I am a sucker for 320kbps. Until storage capacity and band width becomes a non-issue I hope that the industry standard jumps to that.
Speaking of quality, both iTunes and Amazon use 256. The difference is that iTunes uses aacs rather than mp3s. I believe they sound better. I'd say an aac at 256 competes with a 320 mp3. What say you?
Miska – I avoid proprietary Apple formats, so I wouldn't know. I've heard that at the same numerical bitrates, AAC sounds better than MP3.
Robert – On Moshpit Tragedy's front page, the list of downloadable releases is next to the turntable graphic up top. Just click on the band name to go to the download page.
I really wanted to try this, was thiking of grabbing the Blood Of The Black Owl album but when it came to confirming my card on PayPal it just wouldn't have any of it. Which is a shame.
This is indeed a great system…
I will say that everyone needs to pick up the ACTUAL new Wodensthrone CD, Loss. I've been listening to it non-stop since receiving via mail earlier this week.
And yes, I ordered it from Bindrune the old-fashion way. I got several very nice confirmation emails sent by an actual person and received the CD very quickly along with a free patch. Mail order is still a great thing.
So support Bindrune and buy from them both ways…
This isn't exactly pay what you want but it's a cool idea nonetheless. http://turnitupmedia.com
You have to watch 10 video ads (ranging from 10 sec to 40 sec) to download a song. So to download an album it takes at least an hour.
I hate using it because it's boring and time-consuming. However, I find that I often pledge not to buy a certain CD because it is available on turnitup, but I know that I never will download it from there anyway.
P.S. Artists/labels get compensated for the downloads. At least that is what they claim…
Looks like Turnitupmedia is down, if not out…
But see also:
http://www.gimmesound.com/
Free downloads, artists/labels paid out of ad revenue. Another interesting model.
If one considers the original model of music sales when it became viable enough commercially in a pop music sense, the tradeoff of artists licensing their music to the radio in exchange for royalties, was the original method. In that sense, it was always try before you buy, because the single was the album in the 40's and 50's and it wasn't until the 60's the the album oriented format really expanded in that there was a perceived need for songs beyond the singles.
There was no real guarantee that artists would sell physical product from freebies to potential fans over the radio. Technically, that was all free for the consumer until/ if they bought the release.
Personally speaking, i've never noticed any increase in sales from lowering prices at certain times–deals, bonuses, etc. People seem to want the physical product, regardless of what it costs. I have a smaller audience that seems to not even want to bother with MP3's….downloads, MP3's don't really do much better than physical sales in my case, but we're also talking more obscurist collector types there, I think.
MP3's I don't put too much stock in. I have them, but I think that they're too easy and too convienient and there's nothing at stake there. To me, the main problem with online listening/ purchasing is that if you want the physical medium, you have to wait for it. As a label, i'd love to ship everything out priority mail, but it costs alot and vinyl isn't an expense clearing affair when you try to keep prices reasonable.
That's the biggest hurdle that I think artists have…..I would hazard a guess that if more obscure releases were available in stores, that they'd still sell more, because a record store has the advantage of impulse purchases, where you're looking around and see something in the store that you forgot you wanted, or something that you figure may take awhile to ship in on special order. When I go to the record store, I knock back 100-200 dollars…..but online, I get more careful and buy less at a time, maybe because of mail getting lost, breakage, scams, etc. And I think that many other people think the same way.
MP3's and the convienience are made popular moreso not because it's illegal (as many think), I think that it also has alot to do with "I really like this music, I don't feel like waiting a week or two to get the record".
It's not the music industry that's in trouble, it's the distro–getting it into stores, getting it into enough stores in which to sell. When they're shutting down, that benefit of physically being able to go to your local store and get that release right now–in cases other than the most popular releases–is decreasing. Even HMV only stocks the most popular titles by the most popular artists…..alot of the popular artists, you still have to special order it.
Yeah, I noticed that it was down a few days after I posted this. Oh well. Now I can buy my CD's and not worry about it, though.
Thanks for that site, it looks pretty cool. The model they have is simply awesome. It looks like there's only really obscure, independent artists on there. But that's cool.