P2P: a matter of price level
{Initially posted 14 Apr 2003 on ZDNet as A matter of price level - a TalkBack to Can Apple make pirates surrender?}
When books were hand-copied by monks, one copy was, say $5,000; the © (Copy Right) was in the same order of magnitude, say $5,000.
When Gutenberg came with print, one copy dropped to about $50 - the © for one copy dropped to $50 accordingly, and everyone got some benefit: the buyer from the lower price, the seller from the increased volume. Of course that implied the producer changed somewhat his work, in particular from employing monks at hand-copying, to using workers and workshops at printing.
When vinyls came, sameway listening to a piece of music dropped considerably in price, and much business went from concert handlers to record labels.
Now more recently when CD came, cost for a copy dropped to $0.5 for a copy, but Record Labels fastened their mutual links, preventing © from dropping accordingly; this monopoly has kept prices artificially high until now.
Downloading is currently bringing the cost for one copy still greatly lower, bringing a huge benefit to the community. That benefit should be equitably shared between the artists, the editors, the distributors, and the consumers; if one part deserves a bigger part, it is the ones who brought that improvement, i.e. the IT industry.
Unfortunately, a single of these categories, who were not the ones bringing that progress: the editors (i.e. the record labels), by the monopoly previously built, have got able to corner for themselves alone the main part of the benefit: while the cost for 1 copy of a song has dropped to, say, $0.01, the monopoly is keeping the © for a song to about its former price, say about $1.00.
Now is the time when that monopoly has to be dismantled, and the benefit returned to the community and fairly shared between all the categories. Music Files have to be for sale at an intermediate price, say $0.10 for one song; then when you want another copy, you just buy another from the File Company, you don't need or even care to swap them from a P2P network.
I think Record Labels underestimate the revenue they can get from increasing volume when the price is right; and they underestimate as well the attitude from the market: when the price is right, all those young people frantically pirating by now, will no more wish to pirate.
Yes the File Companies will have smaller revenues than current Record Labels have; but not this smaller, and much better justified and accepted by customers - which should improve the business on another important side.
Paris, Mon 31 Jan 2005 15:42:00 +0100
When books were hand-copied by monks, one copy was, say $5,000; the © (Copy Right) was in the same order of magnitude, say $5,000.
When Gutenberg came with print, one copy dropped to about $50 - the © for one copy dropped to $50 accordingly, and everyone got some benefit: the buyer from the lower price, the seller from the increased volume. Of course that implied the producer changed somewhat his work, in particular from employing monks at hand-copying, to using workers and workshops at printing.
When vinyls came, sameway listening to a piece of music dropped considerably in price, and much business went from concert handlers to record labels.
Now more recently when CD came, cost for a copy dropped to $0.5 for a copy, but Record Labels fastened their mutual links, preventing © from dropping accordingly; this monopoly has kept prices artificially high until now.
Downloading is currently bringing the cost for one copy still greatly lower, bringing a huge benefit to the community. That benefit should be equitably shared between the artists, the editors, the distributors, and the consumers; if one part deserves a bigger part, it is the ones who brought that improvement, i.e. the IT industry.
Unfortunately, a single of these categories, who were not the ones bringing that progress: the editors (i.e. the record labels), by the monopoly previously built, have got able to corner for themselves alone the main part of the benefit: while the cost for 1 copy of a song has dropped to, say, $0.01, the monopoly is keeping the © for a song to about its former price, say about $1.00.
Now is the time when that monopoly has to be dismantled, and the benefit returned to the community and fairly shared between all the categories. Music Files have to be for sale at an intermediate price, say $0.10 for one song; then when you want another copy, you just buy another from the File Company, you don't need or even care to swap them from a P2P network.
I think Record Labels underestimate the revenue they can get from increasing volume when the price is right; and they underestimate as well the attitude from the market: when the price is right, all those young people frantically pirating by now, will no more wish to pirate.
Yes the File Companies will have smaller revenues than current Record Labels have; but not this smaller, and much better justified and accepted by customers - which should improve the business on another important side.
Paris, Mon 31 Jan 2005 15:42:00 +0100
posted by Michel Merlin at 3:42 PM
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