The cost of my new digital album is $1.35. The simple explanation of how I arrive at this figure is that it nets me about a dollar. If a nobody like me somehow got a record deal it would be a reasonably thrilling to realize a $1 per album royalty. Thus do I explain what would otherwise be an excessively low price by almost any going standard.
For this price you get 29 160 kbps MP3s, a digital cover image and a rich text format file of album notes and lyrics. The album is 47.3 minutes long and the whole package is 86.4 MB of data.
My feelings about pricing for digital downloads of music are complicated but easily summarized: I think they are uniformly far too expensive.
Consider a minute music pricing in the conventional model. Let’s say I head over to the Billboard charts, find the number one album de jour (As I Am by Alicia Keys), and then head over to Sam Goody for the purchase price. It doesn’t get more conventional than that, Right? The price when I engaged in this exercise (well, I didn’t actually purchase it, but you know) is $16.99 for a 14 track album with a duration of about 50 minutes. That works out to $1.21 per track.
As far as I’m concerned $0.99 a track at iTunes is pretty much the same price. The accepted standard for a digital downloads, which can be placed unreservedly at the feet of Apple, falls squarely inside the conventional model. I’ve got a problem with this because I think a number of factors should mitigate the download costs as compared to CDs:
1. Lossy compression (encoding tracks in a lower-fidelity format like MP3) should reduce the price of the digital information
2. Lack of physical media, which serves as a data backup, and is still necessary when a computer or MP3 player isn’t available (e.g. I have to burn copies of my digital downloads on media I pay for to use them in my car), and lack of physical packaging (lyrics and artwork) should reduce the price of the digital information.
These issues are basically built into the digital download package - artwork and lyrics are seldom included and MP3s are the standard format. For these issues alone I think Apple’s $0.99 standard is too high. I also think a number of contextual issues should affect the price of a digital download. This is getting into territory where my opinions are more idiosyncratic.
3. Cultural prevalence and lack of currency. I think newer and rarer materials command a natural premium. They’re fresh, they haven’t been played out in the various public arenas. They tend more to represent an individual’s immediate work and there tend to be production costs that must still be covered. Conversely, the older and more common something is, the less willing I am to pay a premium cost. On a very basic level of practical value, I am comparing the price of the download to the price of a used CD, a comparison more suited to its availability and ubiquity.
This gets into my general rejection of the idea of uniform pricing. It’s another one I blame on Apple and while it might have made sense in the very restricted context of launching the iTunes Music Store it makes no sense in the evolving real marketplace of digital music downloads. If I went into Cheapo Records and found them charging the same price for a used copy of Dark Side of the Moon as for a brand new copy of the latest from, say, Tinariwen (I just picked the first thing of Pitchfork’s top fifty albums of the year list), I'd turn around and walk right out again. Of course I allowed the Apple iTunes Music Store to do just that thing to me not six months ago, but that was a gift card and prices just didn't seem that important.
In any case, I know the analogy doesn’t hold up. For one thing, I’ll download Tinariwen off of eMusic for less than 3 dollars, but that’s a whole other conversation. We’re talking conceptual spaces here, okay? Whatever, anyway:
4. The rare factor is mitigated by music quality, sound quality, and degree of independence of production and distribution. Music and sound quality are easy: less quality should mean less cost. Relatively, of course, all of these value judgments are relative. I’ve paid for plenty of low-fi, home recorded, even somewhat less than professionally played music. Let’s not be coy: if you purchase my greatest “hits” album, you will be purchasing an album of songs that are low-fi, home recorded, and yes, somewhat less than professionally played. I would be loathe to pay full retail CD cost for them, no matter how much I love some of the misbehavers.
Independence, though, can work both ways. On one hand I understand that independents have to support themselves, they do not have an organization to carry them or exploit economies of scale on their behalves. On the other hand, there are less mouths to feed between you and the artist, less overhead. On the other hand, it is almost certainly more work for the artist. I respect and want to support the artist who is starving one of the big four of their corporate graft, of money spent to people who are both stupid and, excuse me, assholes. But I expect them to cut me in on at least a small consideration of that action.
All of these things added up together translate to, you pay $1.35 for my album as opposed to, say, $7.99 for higher quality MP3s of Yellowcard’s Live from Las Vegas at the Palms, which is the first thing I see when I open a window onto the iTunes Music Store. Which is, like, what the fuck, Apple. Yellowcard? I’ve never even heard of it.
But it’s on iTunes Plus meaning I’m going to end up purchasing the goddamn thing, sight unseen (dear iTMS and eMusic, your live previews suck, love Jon). To review it, it’s like, you know, symmetry.
Anyway.
That’s like a saving of $6.64, two cents less than the Discount of the Beast! And may I thank you most kindly for your consideration.
By Sunday, I review my experience purchasing the Yellowjackets ahem, sorry, I mean Yellowcard from the iTunes Music Store iTunes Plus. Let me just drop a slight spoiler here: it’s not going to be a positive review. I’m gonna keep an eye on those Yellowjackets guys, though. I probably need a little jazz-fusion in my collection.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
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