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| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
So your argument here seems to be that music is worthless. That doesn't hold water either. How then do you explain the exponential growth of the iTunes store and other online distributors? |
Far from worthless. But it does feel like people believe it has less value than other forms of entertainment. I believe the problem is the way people look at piracy as a whole, not just music. Music is just on the bottom of the food chain so it gets hit hardest.
| quote: | | Originally posted by DigiNut So now you're saying that a high price creates a perception of value and low price creates a perception of fluff? This, again, does not stand up to evidence - far more people are buying $2 tracks online today than there were buying $20 albums a few years ago. |
A better indicator would be the percent of people that purchase compared to pirating. More people are buying simply because there is a greater volume of people going after music. Internet era. I'd say 25% at most of people buy their music at this time. For industry I say it's closer to 50% but that's even more ridiculous if you think about it.
| quote: | | Originally posted by DigiNut And then there's the iPhone App Store's infamous race to the bottom, all of those crummy little 99 cent apps lowering the bar for serious developers. A lot of these apps really are crap in a truly objective sense, but people buy these, mainly because it's so cheap that it's below their "oh, what the hell, why not" threshold. Tracks are in the same price range and consumers appear to demonstrate roughly the same behaviour. |
I have first hand experience with ploys like this although mine was with Motorola which was the first company to be big on purchasable apps roughly 5-6 years ago. It is a purchase made out of convenience. Not need but convenience. Why do you think Beatport just made a portable client? That exact reason. People will sit there playing with their phones and if they see something they like they purchase it; especially since they usually bill to your cell instead of actually having to put in CC info. If you put together one click purchasing and impressionable minds it's game over.
| quote: | | Originally posted by DigiNut Your statement also ignores the fact that piracy is every bit as rampant with games as it is with music; the whole point, which you still seem to be ignoring, is that the good game distributors find ways to use this in their favour instead of using it as an excuse. |
The difference is you can go to any Fred Meyers, Wal Mart, Best Buy, or any other store that carries any electronics and buy a video/computer game. We both know that is not possible with edm music
| quote: | | Originally posted by DigiNut Your belief that people pirate because they don't have money is mistaken. These people who are downloading $2 tracks are doing it on a $1200 PC with a $40/month internet connection, and listening on their $400 iPods/iPhones which they upgrade religiously year after year - you really think they can't afford it? |
They are pirating because they don't need to spend their money on the product they are trying to pirate. It's quite easy to rationalize from a non industry perspective. They aren't going to use the tracks to play out so the quality hit is meaningless. Why even open a beatport account when you can pirate every track you want for free? That's their train of thought. In fact I doubt most consumers even know about beatport or other download portals.
| quote: | | Originally posted by DigiNut Your assertion that they aren't "stand up enough to be legit" may be correct, but it's ultimately irrelevant, as those people do not represent lost sales! If that is truly the way they think/behave, crippling their ability to obtain the music for free will only result in them not listening to your music, which is throwing the baby out with the bathwater - giving up the publicity and brand loyalty it creates simply to shut a few fans out of their dirty habits. |
They don't directly correlate to lost sales but their actions influence people that do correlate to lost sales. People are impressionable and still want to get the music they want even if they can't afford it or don't want to pay for it. Thus they heard about big Cron on the TA forums talking about how easy it is to pirate full unmixed tracks and they try it out for themselves. They are now hooked. Now even when they do have money to allocate towards buying some music they continue to pirate because "nobody will miss my sale".
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