MP3 pricing
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The comments about MP3 downloading on the previous post got me thinking. “Free” is everyone’s preferred price for music. But nothing ever truly comes free. Illegal downloading, while free of monetary cost, has other costs (“search costs,” in economics-speak). There are risks, however small, like prosecution and viruses. There’s lack of control over what one gets; one is at the mercy of whatever bitrate and encoder the original uploader chooses. If the uploader added incorrect ID3 tags or omitted them altogether, one expends energy to rectify that. P2P file-sharing requires downloading software which takes up computing resources. Finally, there’s time. Granted, the cost can be little. Those savvy with search engines can find virtually anything available for download. But the search can be a pain. The ideal time to get something one wants is “now.” If the price were right, people might prefer to buy instead of illegally download.
Assuming an optimal album download (DRM-free, high bitrate, artwork and lyrics included, instant checkout), at what price would you choose a purchase over an illegal download?
Maybe a fixed price per album isn’t the way to go.
Albums on iTunes typically cost $9.99 each, with individual tracks costing $.99 each. Amazon’s MP3 store charges around $8.99 per album and $.89 or $.99 per track. But fixed rates don’t really work when albums have very long or very short tracks. For example, Trees’ Light’s Bane, which we reviewed here, is two long tracks totalling 27 minutes. On Amazon, it’s underpriced at $1.98 (!) because each track costs $.99. Southern Lord, whose catalogue has many long tracks, has dealt with this problem by negotiating slightly variable prices (in increments of roughly $.99) based on track length – Sunn O)))’s Black One is a good example. However, Amazon doesn’t seem to dip below its $.89/$.99 norm for extremely short tracks. Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s Altered States of America crams 100 tracks into 20 minutes, yet each is priced at $.99. (One “saves” $89.02 by buying the whole album for $8.99.) The notorious Russian site allofmp3.com (which morphed into mp3sparks.com) had a pricing scheme based on bits downloaded – the longer the track, the more expensive it was. This was more equitable, though labels/stores might prefer a fixed price per track/album for ease of accounting.
Would an ideal MP3 store have fixed pricing per track/album or variable pricing based on track length?
