Re: [LAU] OT - Digital Rights

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 1:13 PM, alexander <axeldenstore(a)gmail.com> wrote: what an interesting claim. perhaps you explain to me how it is that this is for sale at (typically) US$0.49 per track: http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/album/Global-Illage-Sushilove-Sessions-MP3-D…: and yet I'm still several thousand dollars in debt from the process that led to its creation? (this wasn't supposed to be a blatant ad, but if it turns out to be seen as such, my apologies). you seem to have this idea that every piece of recorded music always makes enough in sales to pay for its production. i can't cite anything right now, but my impression is that the opposite is actually more correct - a (huge?) majority recorded music never makes back its costs. that's why major selling albums were so critical to the recorded music industry of the last 50 years. this is partly why businesses like emusic and itunes are so ideally positioned: like the major labels of the past, they don't have a stake in whether or not any particular album/tracks sell particularly well, only that the overall aggregate sales from their catalog are high, since they take a cut on every sale. they don't care if the sale was Yet Another Lady Gaga or Maestro Boris and His Yucatan Yodellers. better still, they don't even face any of the costs of producing Boris' music, so even if it never sells a single copy, its not an issue for them to list it (their marginal cost is close to zero). the financial risks they face are almost entirely related to technology, fraud and large scale deals with distributors - their risks from actual sales numbers are minimal. all of which means that you need to be fairly careful when you say things like "the profit margins are 100%". there's more to recorded music than selling/distributing it. it has to exist first, and this is not a zero cost activity (more or less).