Why are downloaded cd's so expensive? Is it a rip-off?

[garylkoh]

Its because Audiophiles dont understand that business needs to make a profit or it doesn't survive. Without understanding the real costs of what it takes to run any business the opinions are truly meaningless.
what are the fixed costs of running one of these places? How much do the artists/record companies get? Without this info your GUESS is just that a guess.
Audiophiles are never happy with anyone making a profit as long as they get a deal

I attempted to explain some of the costs of doing this business earlier. Sorry that it comes across as a little angry.

I've been talking to Winston Ma (FIM) and Todd Garfinkle (MARecordings) about offering downloads because I want greater access to their high-rez files.

The biggest problem is that their customers think that downloads are intangible, and hence refuse to pay the same amount as they would pay for CDs (do I hear $3?). The second problem is that it costs just as much publish. Royalties, artwork, mastering and recording costs don't go away just because it is a download. The up-front cost is the same.

Production cost is a little lower for downloads only, but if they have to make CDs as well, then the total production cost goes UP. If they expect download sales to take the place of the CD sales, then the production quantity of the CDs have to go down, which would make the CDs too expensive. Then, they lose money on the CD that they don't make up on with the downloads.

Distribution cost can be the same. You can't just buy a server from Best Buy and hook it up. To get decent download speeds, you'll have to host it with Amazon Web Services or some other cloud provider. Bandcamp charges the musician 15% of the revenue, and CDBaby charges 20%. Both much less than Amazon or Apple, but they don' have the traffic or advertising budget that Amazon and Apple have.

Unfortunately...... as Beyonce found out, sell downloads and some physical disk retailers will drop your line. If your biggest distributors drop your physical CD because you are selling downloads and your download sales don't cover the loss of business, you go bankrupt. Remember, distributors buy in volume. Downloads sell in trickles....... which do you think will keep the lights on and employees hired?

Knowing how great the high-rez versions of Winston's and Todd's work are, I wish that they would be more easily available to the music lovers of WBF, but I would rather that they stay in business so that I get more music from them. Winston told me that it costs him from $75,000 to $125,000 to put out a title. That gets him about 5,000 high quality CDs. (If you didn't care for quality, you could probably get 20,000) On many of his titles, it could take him years to break even. Guess how much money he has sunk into the 20 titles he has put out in the past 2 years? And guess how much in the hole he is until he starts making a profit on the titles he's done?

If he starts selling downloads, and the physical disk sales slow down or stop altogether, all of the sudden the download revenue has to make up for the now-worthless CD's that have been paid for and stored.

If you want great music to continue to be made, give these guys a break. Go to their websites and buy a CD today.

http://www.marecordings.com/main/index.php

https://www.firstimpressionmusic.com/

Thanks. Sorry for the rant.

 

[cpp]

Its because Audiophiles dont understand that business needs to make a profit or it doesn't survive. Without understanding the real costs of what it takes to run any business the opinions are truly meaningless.
what are the fixed costs of running one of these places? How much do the artists/record companies get? Without this info your GUESS is just that a guess.
Audiophiles are never happy with anyone making a profit as long as they get a deal

I don't get these "audiophiles" will pay hundreds of dollars for some miracle cable, thousands for electronics and speakers but balk at paying for a download.

 

[edorr]

I don't get these "audiophiles" will pay hundreds of dollars for some miracle cable, thousands for electronics and speakers but balk at paying for a download.

My thought exactly. My 11 year old will man a lemonade stand for a day to acquire the funds for 5 Taylor Swift songs download and does not complain about price....

 

[Habanero Monk]

Number one web site costs including maintenance, customer service, etc, offsets any savings. (They still have to do artwork.) And aren't they allowed to make a profit to pay their employees? Talk to Channel Classics, one of the largest online sites like I did at RMAF, and they'll give you the reasons why the costs aren't any cheaper.

If it was so cheap, why isn't everyone doing it?

Not nearly the same thing. Artwork is done regardless. Content Management Systems abound and after initial setup allow the end user to administer the site.

You can get a Digital Ocean hosted server for $5/month that gives you a Terabyte of transfer a month. $10 gets you 2 TB. Great for a small artist.

Then you can move up the food chain for very little $$ for unmetered transfer.

I'm sure they can give you 'Reasons'. Anyone can line those up a mile long. The fact is digital distribution is scant pennies or even fractions of on a $ vs physical distribution.

 

[cpp]

My thought exactly. My 11 year old will man a lemonade stand for a day to acquire the funds for 5 Taylor Swift songs download and does not complain about price....

so true, so very true

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

There is no good reason why the housing and distribution of electronic files is centralized at all. A marketing/data base front end, not unlike a bit torrent site, could provide the visual art (supplied by the artists), browsing, searching and downloading capability, and link directly to the individual servers of individual artists. De-centralizing marketing and distribution would have the potential to either reduce costs significantly, or put the money in the hands of the people actually making the music. I won't say the existing system is too expensive; everything is worth what the market will pay for it. But I will say without hesitation that it exists so corporations can control (read: water down to ruin) art and make far more from it than the artists themselves.

Same as it ever was....

The major labels won't allow it, of course, but check the artists' web sites for every independent release you're interested in, to make sure they're not offering it directly. It may not be cheaper, but at least you'll be paying the right people.

Tim

 

[Nevillekapadia]

I would always like to buy my music directly from the artists.

Even for the good musicians, by the time the royalties and logistics/distribution costs comes in their cut becomes so small.

@ Gary Koh, thank you for explaining the costs of the likes of Winston and Todd's examples. We certainly don't realize the hidden costs (license for being able to get the master for the title) till you showed us the maths.

I always pick up such audiophile titles when I travel from Oz to Singapore, as they have such a large great choice.

Neville

 

[Kingsrule]

Please look at my original post. It takes into account the basic (your hidden) costs.
The math is the math. There are so many costs that are not involved in downloads, they should be much less expensive vs. a CD.
If you want a CD, you should PAY MORE for it vs. the download, not the same. You have the disc, jewel case, booklet, etc. as well as the music. With the download you just have the music.
Any as with any viewpoint, Gary's post is basically skewed by the fact he is referring to 2 labels that have no relevance to the overall music world. With all respect, who gives a s--t about MA Recordings? FIM? Maybe a bit of interest. The small guys can't compete with the major labels on any front. With the new dynamic of downloading music, maybe they need to make a choice, like downloads only, to exist.

And add 2 another dimensions: who even wants a physical CD anymore and who wants to wait days to have them arrive vs. instant satisfaction?

 

[still-one]

Please look at my original post. It takes into account the basic (your hidden) costs.
The math is the math. There are so many costs that are not involved in downloads, they should be much less expensive vs. a CD.
If you want a CD, you should PAY MORE for it vs. the download, not the same. You have the disc, jewel case, booklet, etc. as well as the music. With the download you just have the music.
Any as with any viewpoint, Gary's post is basically skewed by the fact he is referring to 2 labels that have no relevance to the overall music world. With all respect, who gives a s--t about MA Recordings? FIM? Maybe a bit of interest. The small guys can't compete with the major labels on any front. With the new dynamic of downloading music, maybe they need to make a choice, like downloads only, to exist.

And add 2 another dimensions: who even wants a physical CD anymore and who wants to wait days to have them arrive vs. instant satisfaction?

I have no argument with your position that downloads should cost less.

As for your last point. Who wants the physical CD. I do. If I like the music I hear via Rhapsody/Sooloos I order it from Amazon and while I wait the two days for it to arrive I can listen to it via Rhapsody. When it arrives I download the CD to my Sooloos and the CD becomes my back-up. I don't want to get into the debate as to whether music sounds better off of a hard drive or a good transport. That will go nowhere.

 

[FrantzM]

I have no argument with your position that downloads should cost less.

As for your last point. Who wants the physical CD. I do. If I like the music I hear via Rhapsody/Sooloos I order it from Amazon and while I wait the two days for it to arrive I can listen to it via Rhapsody. When it arrives I download the CD to my Sooloos and the CD becomes my back-up. I don't want to get into the debate as to whether music sounds better off of a hard drive or a good transport. That will go nowhere.

+1
Substitute however Spotify Premium to Rhapsody and CD to HDD playing though JRiver or foobar and controlled by IPad/Android phone. I don't mind the debate about music coming off a HDD.. It sounds better

 

[still-one]

+1
Substitute however Spotify Premium to Rhapsody and CD to HDD playing though JRiver or foobar and controlled by IPad/Android phone. I don't mind the debate about music coming off a HDD.. It sounds better

Although I agree that Spotify's SQ is better than Rhapsody the full integration of Rhapsody into MDMS(Sooloos) more than makes up for it. Fortunately in the near future Meridian will update the system to include Tidal integration.

 

[Nounours18200]

I have been refusing to pay so much for the downloads, and I will continue to refuse : the costs cannot be justified (to my eyes).

Secondly I prefer to have the physical support (CD) than simply a file : I get more for less money.

The only reason for which I would download, is the high resolution files (24/96 or higher) : but these files are even more expensive to download than the usual 16/44.1, and there is little reason for that. As ALL the digital recordings are made at 24/96 or higher for years, there is no additional cost: they should not be more expensive than the CD format.

---> I let the majors with their dream, I do not want to be racketed...

Over the past year, I have evolved and decided to go back to the Vinyl: it offers a better quality than CD and costs less than the high resolution files available for download.

I very much believe in the "small labels" versus the majors, that issue very high quality vinyls : this might be the future for the Audiophiles. At least I BUY a lot f high quality vinyls, and I still see no reason to pay a lot for high resolution files...

 

[Kingsrule]

Well, this thread has gone quiet for too long.....

Isn't it obvious with all the deals HD Tracks has been promoting in the last few months that there is a ton of margin in their prices? The download sites screwed themselves with absurd pricing opening the door for hi rez streaming. What goes around comes around........
Just wait until Tidal gets more widespread...their prices will drop even further.

 

[Light Dependant Resistor]

My advice would be to steer clear of proprietary file types if downloading, as over time
they will no longer work due to the proprietary file owners invariably moving the goal posts.

Stick to Flac and Ogg, which are free formats and typically much better in sound quality.

 

[Joe Whip]

Well, this thread has gone quiet for too long.....

Isn't it obvious with all the deals HD Tracks has been promoting in the last few months that there is a ton of margin in their prices? The download sites screwed themselves with absurd pricing opening the door for hi rez streaming. What goes around comes around........
Just wait until Tidal gets more widespread...their prices will drop even further.

Or they will be just like CDs, the less they sold because of the likes of Napster, the more the record companies increased prices which led to even lower sales which increased prices further ad infinitum. People never seem to learn from history.

 

[RayDunzl]

Here's my most significant problem with hi-rez downloads.

Here are a few artists for which I have made recent purchases.

From HDTracks:

We found no results for 'hermeto pascoal'

We found no results for 'ray anderson'

We found no results for 'jude swift'

We found no results for 'rob wasserman'

We found no results for 'gil goldstein'

We found no results for 'kazumi watanabe'

We found no results for 'sergio and odair assad'

We found no results for 'Freeway Philharmonic'

We found no results for 'eva cassidy'

We found no results for 'stanley clarke rite of strings'

We found no results for 'Captain Beefheart'

Search result for 'bobby previte' - whoa! found some!

- three I have on CD already, and the download is 44.1/16, so, ???
- one I don't have, at 48/24, and it's only $35.98

$35.98

I'll stick to what I'm doing now, occasionally run across a used CD copy of something I think I want in Like New or Very Good condition, and buy that, on average, maybe two or three a week.

 

[amirm]

Hi Ray. Let me start by saying that the search on HDTracks is awful. I have shared that with David Chesky. As such, I almost never use it. Instead I use google to search their site. When I do it that way, I find hits on most of what you had listed but not as the primary artist. They are mentioned in the text page for each album which HDTracks' own search does not use.

In general, I find about 25% of what I am looking for on HDTracks. I do however buy a lot of tracks from them by sampling what they have. Sign up for their newsletters and you get discounts every week of 15%. And introduction to new titles they have received for that week. I average 3-4 titles as a result of each one of those titles.

Do the same with Prostudiomasters and you can easily spend more money than what you wanted on high-res downloads .

 

[BlueFox]

I wonder why Adele isn't on HDTracks?

 

[NorthStar]

I wonder why Adele isn't on HDTracks?

? http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/25/9800508/25-streaming-pandora-radio-service-licensing

 

[amirm]

Must not have a deal with their label (XL records?). I find that with common pop music, Pono does better, no doubt due to Neil Young's better music connection: https://www.ponomusic.com/ccrz__CCP...f:8d119aea4ad6487d9e17746be2ba7e90&type=Album