Billboard analyzes the $.99 download and whimpers that "no one is getting rich." Perhaps this is because the entire industry needs to be restructured to a model that emphasizes quantity at a reasonable price (MUCH lower than .$99 per song) rather than the all-or-nothing hit model that is failing so miserably today. Dumbshits - your very expectation of "getting rich" short term belies your mindset:
- As the 99 cent digital singles model begins to take root across the industry through services like Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, Liquid Audio, Rhapsody and a host of others set to bow for the PC this fall, industry executives and artist representatives are questioning whether the pricing model makes sense financially.
With all parties involved angling for nickels and dimes in the average download sale, labels, artists and service providers all agree on at least one thing: No one is getting rich from singles sales at this point.
....Still, digital distribution advocates say the long-term potential is there.
If the industry can figure out how to sell downloads numbering in the tens of millions, labels can theoretically scale back their physical manufacturing costs and enjoy a healthy alternative revenue stream to the CD.
Despite being limited to the percentage of Mac users running OSX, the iTunes service has sold more than 5 million downloads since its April 28 bow. It has average sales of about 500,000 tracks per week, according to sources.
Artist representatives say overall digital download sales must surpass 20 times that 500,000 weekly volume for the pay-per-download business to become economically meaningful once larger PC services kick in.
Article comments
1 - Michael Croft
This reminds me of the When Music Stars become like Authors piece I wrote for BC about a year ago. Going back to the Wolff Article, what I most wonder about are the sociological questions: "Will the Allure of being the musical equivalent of "The Next John Grisham" be enough to continue to feed the raw materials needs of the Musical-Industrial Complex?" "Will self-producing/self-publishing scale up to a point where a larger percentage of those with the need and drive to make music an make an independent career of it?" Right now the answer is "I dunno, pass the popcorn, watching it happen will be a great show."