Your favorite record. It's not just a collection of songs. Your favorite record means something to you; it moves you - to dance, or to think, or to plot the overthrow of the government, or to just sit there and feel a chill rush up your spine. If someone asked you how much that music was worth, how could you answer that? You know it's worth more than the $6.99 you paid for the LP back in 1979, or the outrageous 17.99 the industry was charging for CDs in the late 90s, or the 99 cents you paid for each of the songs on iTunes last month.
The fact is, we cannot put a price tag on music. We can put a price tag on the delivery mechanisms, though. A CD costs a certain amount of money to make and to package and to distribute and sell. Price it too low, and you don't cover your costs and go out of business. Price it too high, and no one buys it and you go out of business. Fine. That's how most businesses work. But what about the move to the digital realm? When you download a digital audio file, the artist or record company that made it doesn't have to make another - everyone can just basically copy the same file. How do you price something like that?
The answer is... well, we apparently don't know what the answer is yet. Which is why we have an industry flailing about, trying to figure out how to sell something that is intangible and ephemeral but comes in a variety of tangible, physical, or virtual forms. iTunes files will now be priced at 69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29. If you want to hear an old favorite from when you were a kid, it'll cost you pennies. On the other hand, if you want Neil Young's Archives recording, it'll cost you 99 bucks for the cds, or $199 for the DVDs, or $299 for the Blu-ray discs.
And of course, there's a whole generation that's grown up thinking that music is free. The problem is, they're right. Music should be free. But the reality is that musicians and composers have a right to earn a living from their work, and so do the people who produce and manufacture and distribute the music. So in China, where 99% of the music is illegal, the record industry has partnered with Google to give the music away for free, legally, in exchange for advertising revenue.
Now the big question in the industry seems to be - how do we get the people buying single songs for 99 cents to actually buy whole records instead? After all, a business built on transactions that make a profit of literally just a few pennies each is not very efficient. And so we have these iTunes passes, offering fans of a band the chance to buy all the songs, all the remixes, the outtakes, the videos, over a period of weeks or months, for a price that's only slightly higher than if you'd bought the regular CD.
The problem is, this compounds the fundamental problem with the music industry: when so many full-length albums have one or two good songs and then a load of filler, it doesn't help to add still more filler.
Tell us: how do you figure out how much to spend on music? When does $299 seem like a bargain, and 99 cents just not worth the price?
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John Schaefer has hosted Soundcheck since the show’s inception in 2002. He has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series New Sounds since 1982 (“The No. 1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard) and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986.
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