The New Beatport & Digital Pricing

[LA_Boxers]

Recently I tried JunoDownload and for comparison I also used Beatport to price match. There was literally nothing in it price wise, and i bought a good 10 tracks. Is Boomkat/Digitaldownload/somewhere else cheaper than the 2 i tried??

[abZ]

My labels gross increased 300% upon being accepted to beatport. And Juno is just as bad. They take just as much and they don't even screen the releases.

Mix of positive and negative there, can't really work out your standpoint.

Tangent: Does this mean that in the end labels begin to take the same standpoint as Beatport, less 'screening' of releases and more 'throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks'. It's far too easy to release digitally, but then i guess, why shouldn't it be, it's a valueless format essentially.
The fact of the matter is, digital-only labels don't have to deal with the quality control situation dictated by vinyl. The floodgates have opened, and the epic amounts of shit music (my opinion) is free-flowing through (this is not aimed at you abZ, i'm not familiar with your music/label)

There is no real alternative if you are trying to sell digital music. You are forced to go with these companies because that is where the customers. I don't know why people can't be bothered to make a conscious desicion about buying music. At least the people that go there actually spend money. That is becoming hard to find now.

[ed teach]

Recently I tried JunoDownload and for comparison I also used Beatport to price match. There was literally nothing in it price wise, and i bought a good 10 tracks. Is Boomkat/Digitaldownload/somewhere else cheaper than the 2 i tried??

There are alternatives, it's just whether that particular artist is willing to make their release available in a variety of outlets. As I mentioned earlier, some artists will be given better deals or incentives to distribute their release exclusively through a single retailer. This is a really slanted way of doing business as it puts all the power in the hands of retailers and forces the buyer to purchase from one source, in most cases at a higher price. This is the equivalent of the old style record industry model, only it's actually worse for the artists and the music buyer.

Bandcamp is a good bet, but only if you can find what you're after. I wish more people would start using it. There's also Greedbag, which facilitates artist controlled retail. Read more here: http://blog.state51.co.uk/greedbag/

It seems a two or possibly three-tier system is developing with music retail. You have people who want to buy music purely to listen to as an individual consumer, most of the time on an Mp3 player or personal/portable device. You then have working DJ's who want to buy music to play in clubs. But there's also another market for people who buy music to play in their bedroom, at parties and smaller venues or on the radio. All three groups have different musical requirements yet we all pay the same high price for the same low standard. It should be noted here that the first and second groups rely on each other (the one leader /many followers situation), whereas the third is self supportive, generally being more productive, creative, collaborative and inventive within it's own community.

I've never had a problem spending 5-6 quid on a vinyl, and have done so for many years. This is becoming impractical for various reasons and we need to develop alternative strategies for music production/distribution/consumption so we don't get choked by tech companies and marketing platforms, or they need to start responding to their customers and giving us a fair deal.

[etidorhpa]

I've never had a problem spending 5-6 quid on a vinyl, and have done so for many years. This is becoming impractical for various reasons and we need to develop alternative strategies for music production/distribution/consumption so we don't get choked by tech companies and marketing platforms, or they need to start responding to their customers and giving us a fair deal.

Agreed.

But take Spotify for example, free home streaming, this and file sharing caters I'd imagine for the vast majority of the third tier mainstream customers you speak of - The new generation of music consumers have been fed the notion for a while now that it's OK to not pay for music, that's what we're up against first and foremost.
It's only now that labels are struggling to break even that the finger is pointed at the likes of Beatport.

[ed teach]

That's a good point. Even in this case I still feel that the best way to get people away from file sharing would be to charge a lower price for the track they want. Then there would be less of an excuse for people who download for free given the low price and accessibility of high quality legitimate music, straight from the mastering studio. The profit lost from reducing the price of a track would be more than offset by the greater number of people who would be buying it.

So let's say a track comes out and it's working. Promoted and received well at all levels, hitting hard in several countries simultaneously.

First week sales: 50,000
First year sales: 250,000

First week illegal downloads: 1,000,000
First year illegal downloads: 5,000,000

50,000 sales @ £1 a pop roughly means about £23,000 going back to the artist after the retailer takes their cut and various merchant fees are taken into account. First year sales taking that up to around £125,000. Now let's be frivolous and say the track was sold direct for a quarter of the price at 25p. If just 10% of people started buying instead of file sharing, the increase in revenue would be nearly 100%.

100,000 x 0.25 = £25,000 (-10% for basic costs) = £22,500

Figures on this vary, but I looked at a few sources:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/95-Perce ... 2185.shtml
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-if ... -progress/
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.c ... ll_on_rise

Strange that there's not much reportage been done recently.

People did used to buy music. It made a lot of money. Most of the money went to people who didn't deserve it. Now it doesn't have to be that way.

I'm just saying.

[etidorhpa]

This argument might go down well at an EMI meeting, but when we're talking about underground dance music the figures won't add up.
People who download music for free, it could be argued would never have bought the music in the first place - The only thing that will change that attitude is if it's enforced on them or it simply isn't available for free in the first place.
You're argument starts to make sense when we consider that an mp3 is essentially valueless, once purchased from a store it holds no monetary value.

But forcing prices down is a double edged sword especially in the case of underground music, the flipside to the situation that you suggest is that filesharing increases at an even more rapid rate because it seems pointless to someone to fork out a measly 50p when it's still free anyway.

[yoowan]

I'm just saying.

hhhhhhhhnnnnnnggggggggggggg

[say_whut]

Boomkat is where I'm at for pretty much all of my purchases now. 320kbps tracks at reasonable prices.

[abZ]

I've never had a problem spending 5-6 quid on a vinyl, and have done so for many years. This is becoming impractical for various reasons and we need to develop alternative strategies for music production/distribution/consumption so we don't get choked by tech companies and marketing platforms, or they need to start responding to their customers and giving us a fair deal.

Agreed.

But take Spotify for example, free home streaming, this and file sharing caters I'd imagine for the vast majority of the third tier mainstream customers you speak of - The new generation of music consumers have been fed the notion for a while now that it's OK to not pay for music, that's what we're up against first and foremost.
It's only now that labels are struggling to break even that the finger is pointed at the likes of Beatport.

Thats a fair point I suppose. The last bit there. It doesn't make it right though. I think my whole point tho rather than coming off as whining... Is that this whole business model is not working unless you are beatport obviously. I think its just time to forget about charging for music. I have seen this coming for a while. Its time to put my money where my mouth is. I think the label concept will fade out as well. Time to stop beating the dead horse and embrase the future as the present.

[Majin]

Digital pricing sucks, the new Beatport sucks because you still can't download artwork. I know on the flash version you can bring up the .xml file and grab the image URL from there but why don't they just let you grab it straight on the page?