I never thought I would see the day that I would be praising Bono for anything music-related, let alone Paul McGuinness (even tangentially) for efforts in the digital music space. But the new (RED) product — actually a service — seems to be the best step in the right direction since iTunes launched, 5 billion songs ago.
“Each week (RED)’s service will deliver two songs in MP3 format, one from a superstar act like U2, whose frontman, Bono, was a co-founder of (RED), and one from a less established artist. The third piece of content will be a “crackerjack surprise,” a song, video or short story.” — (source: NY Times, from paidContent.org; hat tip to Gerd Leonhard’s Daily Wisdoms)
While I probably wouldn’t like most of the tracks they promote (I’m only an actual fan of one of U2, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Elton John, Emmylou Harris, and Death Cab For Cutie… and it’s not Death Cab), the regularly updated and new content is definitely going to attract plenty of attention.
I can’t wait to see this for more styles of music… to see this in niches other than a very broad sweep through “adult contemporary” would be incredible.
And to think, the $5/month subscription prices tracks at 63 cents or less.
July 9, 2008 at 5:10 am
The problem with this plan is that it still feels like a big marketing ploy. It’s giving over control of my music purchasing to a group notoriously undeserving of my trust. It’s like getting netflix and saying “I’ll pay you half the normal subscription fee, and just send me whatever the producers in Hollywood want me to see” Sure, I might get Shawshank Redemption one week, but I might also get George of the Jungle the next. The cost of the music you would never purchase adds up pretty quickly.
If you get 8 songs a month, that’s .63/song. Now that’s pretty cheap, but say one of those songs you would never have bought yourself. If you adjust the value of that song to 0.0, because you will never get any use out of it, every other song becomes .71 — This hardly seems like a great deal at all anymore.
Now if you plot that as $/song = 5/number of songs you liked, the point when it crosses .89 - the price on itunes for a drm free song, you get .702… that means you have to have over 70% confidence in these people…
Apart from the numbers, there’s another story here. How many times have you been to a show and walked out onto the street, only to be approached by a “less established artist” with a cd in hand? Every once-in-a-while, it’s a good listen, but nine times out of ten, I never even bothered ripping those cds, even if I listened to them on my computer. The even worse scenario is when it’s a guy with a lanyard and a polo handing you that cd and it has half well known artists and their singles, and half “less established artists.”
A mix cd with half big names and half unheardofs is usually nothing more than major labels swinging their weight around. They don’t pay their A/R guys to find music I would like - a lot of times, it doesn’t even cater to the style of show they’re at, they’ll just sit outside the House of Blues every night handing out this sampler.
Suffice it to say that I’m tentative, at best, to swallow a system for me to pay for music before I hear it on the sole recommendation of people I don’t trust.
Don’t get me wrong I do appreciate productRed and what they do - it is a creative idea and a good cause, I just don’t trust that the choice of music is going to be the attraction - I see it going more the way of NPR. If you appreciate the idea, and enjoy the programming at least a little, give us some money and we’ll make you feel altruistic. When they start giving away tote bags, you’ll know I’m right - until then, this is just how I see it, I could be wrong.
July 24, 2008 at 10:50 am
Well in the UK, the BPI (aka the major music industry), the government and ISPs have ironed out an agreement based on three strikes of file sharing and you are disconnected.
I have written an article on my blog which examines whether this bandaid is actually hitting the root cause of a lot of piracy.
The blog also has a video interview with Pim Betist the founder of http://www.sellaband.com
Be good to get your thoughts…
http://www.themusicvoid.com/?p=110
Cheers,
Jakomi
August 2, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Aw, gee. And to think I’ve been getting tracks at .37 cents over at eMusic.
Gosh.