According to a rolling stone article, Tom Petty Is Pissed, and rightly so. Coming on the heals of an interesting slashdot discussion on cd protection, I think this bears a little discussion.
My uncle doesn't agree that if you reduced the cost of CDs, you'd reduce the piracy. I say maybe yes, maybe no. You might not reduce the piracy, but you'd turn more profit from CDs I think. Right now I'm working for myself, doing the contract programming gig... money is tight. The decision on whether to buy (for example) the new Elvis CD (the 30 #1 hits one) would be a lot easier if the price wasn't over $20 (Canadian). See, if it cost, $3.00, or even $6, that's almost pocket change, and combined with what you can find in the couch, it's affordable. But with CD prices what they are, going in and buying more than two or three CDs is going to be a major purchase. When I filled in my collection of U2 CDs a while back I paid over $100 before I walked out of the store!
Anyway, I think that the opportunity to have consumers do impulse purchases would dramatically go up if CD costs went down. Then it would be worth it to them to just grab a CD instead of downloading from Kazaa or whatever. Of course, this leaves out the issue of buying a 12 track CD with two songs on it you want to hear, and the rest "filler" :)
Erhmm... anyway, Tom's got some good stuff to say about this, how he won't charge over $65 for a ticket to a concert (when he's being told he could charge $150), radio, and lots of other stuff. Kudos to Tig for pointing it all out.
Posted by Arcterex at November 06, 2002 04:09 PM
The record industry has access to 1000's of record. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Pressing a CD costs almost nothing, downloading even less.
The music industry is basically just trying to min/max their profits from our culture.
The industry is relying on the average person only wanting to listen to 2-3 Brittney Spears albums, and music geeks who will spend tons of money no matter what.
Of course, they are learning quickly that people want VARIETY (shock! like the RADIO!).
I agree with you, Arc. RIAA, etc. sucks.
I knew I liked Tom Petty for a reason!
heard this on the radio today, thought it was appropriate :-)
Lyrics: The Last DJ
Well, you can't turn him into a company man,
you can't turn him into a whore.
And the boys upstairs just don't understand anymore.
Well, the top brass don't like him talking so much,
and he won't play what they say to play.
And he don't wanna change what don't need to change.
There goes the last DJ
who plays what he wants to play
and says what he wants to say, hey hey hey.
And there goes your freedom of choice,
there goes the last human voice.
There goes the last DJ.
Well, some folks said they're gonna hang him so high
cos you just can't do what he did.
There's some things you just
can't put in the minds of those kids.
As we celebrate mediocrity
all the boys upstairs wanna see
how much you'll pay for what you used to get for free.
There goes the last DJ
who plays what he wants to play
and says what he wants to say, hey hey hey.
There goes your freedom of choice,
there goes the last human voice.
There goes the last DJ.
Well, he got a new station down in Mexico
and sometimes it would kinda come in.
And I'll bust a move and remember how it was back then.
There goes the last DJ
who plays what he wants to play
and says what he wants to say, hey hey hey.
There goes your freedom of choice,
there goes the last human voice.
There goes the last DJ.
Tom Petty