Illegal Downloads Don't Equal Lost Sales, Judge Rules, article.
"Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price," he wrote...
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In my personal guesswork, most downloading is done by students who have no money, but build huge libraries of music and films. Meaning probably they download at the very least twenty times more than they would ever have paid for. It would be a very good business model for content providers if they could force networks to compensate them 1:1 for every download!
Eric said:
Instead of filing lawsuits they need to adjust their business model. Digital versions of most media are worthless- they're easy to make, easy to get, easy to copy. Selling low-quality DRM packs MP3s for 99 cents is a rip-off. Granted, they've started to drop the DRM, and the quality is improving, but it's happening way too slowly and the price is still too high. An MP3 isn't worth more than 5 or 10 cents. A flac file would be worth a lot more, but even then they really shouldn't charge more than 25 cents. 50 cents should be the ceiling.
Ideally they'd make up for the loss of profits on individual tracks by selling in bulk. If they want to stop people from pirating they need to make their stuff too cheap to steal, and they need to make it more convenient than torrent sites. Say 15 dollars a month and you can download as many MP3s as you want as use them however you wish. Upgrade to the 20 dollar package and you get lossless audio and access to exclusive interviews from the artists and clips from their concerts. They could even add in social networking, giving artists a place to congregate where their fans can find and interact with them easily. It would be better than myspace since it would ensure you've found the real band and hopefully it would streamline the process.
There's no reason there couldn't be a similar service for movies. $1.99 would be a reasonable price tag for a typical movie about 700mb in size. For $25 a month you could download all the movies you want and you'd gain access to a slew of interviews and "making of" clips.
Basically they'd be better served if they stopped trying to make money off of music and movies and instead focused on making money off of services that provide them. They could pay royalties on the basis of what gets downloaded the most and what gets the most user feedback.
They've already got services like this but it doesn't go far enough. For fifteen dollars I can sign up at Napster and listen to all the music I could ever possibly want, but I can't download those songs and listen to them indefinitely. Netflix is great for watching movies and I don't think they could make a better rental service for physical media but as far as I know there's nothing nearly as good in the digital realm.
5 comments:
AT last! A Western judge realizes what I've been saying about "parallel" videogames in Lebanon for years!
I did buy a few originals. But essentially, things that I *really* was ready to pay for.
Used games in France, very reasonably priced.
The complete uncensored european version of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, unavailable on the local market. (For no special reason, simply, those who copy the games didn't follow the news to know there was a demand for a special version.) And I found it at only $19.99, so it WAS decently priced.
In fact, I was ready to also buy the French version when I saw it, be it just to have the translation of all the hilarious dialogue and innuendo. But I gave up, because for some reason THAT version was at $60. Boo!
Another, quite exceptional, official game buy, was the special 3-disc edition of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. It was insanely expensive for my budget and my criteriae, $66. But, I already knew that it was an extremely rare and limited edition, nearly impossible to find even in the West. Bear in mind that I had already paid $10 for that game, between the first Snake Eater edition, and the 2-disc Subsistence later edition.
But I would definitely not go crazy like that on a regular basis. That $66 game was practically a once in a lifetime thing, because of unique circumstances. It's healthy to go nuts once in a blue moon... if it doesn't cost you 30 years of paying back a credit!
Now, if only buyers actually had the genuine possibility of picking another OS than blasted Window$$$, you can be ruddy sure there wouldn't be any lost sales for Redmond from unregistered versions, either.
"Genuine Advantage Notification", my galactic Uranus!
):-P
I agree with that, people with money will buy the originals for convenience and status, people without wouldn't have bought anyway. I suspect there may be some lost sales but thats probably more then made up for in the free advertising
And that's another thing, thanks for the reminder Suhiko:
Just how much of those admittedly outrageous price tags are simply about the consumer paying for all those costly advertising campaigns, with the companies basically selling hype?
"Let's spend $100 million on advertising for our $50 million movie, I'm sure we'll more than make up for it with the effect on our DVD sales."
And when it doesn't systematically work, they blame the downloaders and make them pay for their frustration!
MORONS! Schmucks! A good film, music album or videogame promotes ITSELF, consumers make sure to spread the word worldwide if something's "unforgivable to miss".
In my opinion at the very best they could claim a loss of a video rental and whatever the fractional royalty they would have received. I download and watch movies sometimes. But I never buy them. I mean never - they just aren't worth anything to me as a "collectible".
Instead of filing lawsuits they need to adjust their business model. Digital versions of most media are worthless- they're easy to make, easy to get, easy to copy. Selling low-quality DRM packs MP3s for 99 cents is a rip-off. Granted, they've started to drop the DRM, and the quality is improving, but it's happening way too slowly and the price is still too high. An MP3 isn't worth more than 5 or 10 cents. A flac file would be worth a lot more, but even then they really shouldn't charge more than 25 cents. 50 cents should be the ceiling.
Ideally they'd make up for the loss of profits on individual tracks by selling in bulk. If they want to stop people from pirating they need to make their stuff too cheap to steal, and they need to make it more convenient than torrent sites. Say 15 dollars a month and you can download as many MP3s as you want as use them however you wish. Upgrade to the 20 dollar package and you get lossless audio and access to exclusive interviews from the artists and clips from their concerts. They could even add in social networking, giving artists a place to congregate where their fans can find and interact with them easily. It would be better than myspace since it would ensure you've found the real band and hopefully it would streamline the process.
There's no reason there couldn't be a similar service for movies. $1.99 would be a reasonable price tag for a typical movie about 700mb in size. For $25 a month you could download all the movies you want and you'd gain access to a slew of interviews and "making of" clips.
Basically they'd be better served if they stopped trying to make money off of music and movies and instead focused on making money off of services that provide them. They could pay royalties on the basis of what gets downloaded the most and what gets the most user feedback.
They've already got services like this but it doesn't go far enough. For fifteen dollars I can sign up at Napster and listen to all the music I could ever possibly want, but I can't download those songs and listen to them indefinitely. Netflix is great for watching movies and I don't think they could make a better rental service for physical media but as far as I know there's nothing nearly as good in the digital realm.
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