what luckmann said. i'm donating cause i want them to get something for their work. i jsut ahve a problem with the 1 dollar per song, thats a ton. someone should sue ipod, allowing 30,000 songs on some ipods is suggesting that either every user has $30,000 or they are allowing a device to be filled with illegal things

of course thats unrealistic  and kinda doesnt make sense

but i guess my problem is i dont want to pay all the money, 1 dollar per song is a ton, but is it really? i pay 50 dollars for a game and hope to get at least 20 hours, usually around 100 if it was worth it, so thats a range of $2.5  for an hour of entertainment to $.50. then if i play 50 hours which is pretty good, thats a dollar per hour.i ending up paying $.40 for wow/hour with all fees, so that was good

so i'll round that to $.50/hour of entertainment because i think that seems to be a good value. with a 4 min song i can listen to it 15 times per hour. so .50 / 15 is roughtly $.03 to listen to a song once. So if i listen 100 times, its $3, which actually makes $1 a good deal. but cost also represents production costs. how much does it cost to make a song and how much time per person compared to a band? should that be included or should entertainment count. are games more entertaining, id say so. so maybe it should be 5 cents per hour instead of 40. music is also a bigger medium for most bands if everyone paid.

i need more info!!! anyone know so i can see i

so are songs really worth $1? who knows?  i say no.

are these comparisons legit? i don't know.

all i got out of this huge post was i dont know how much i should pay for a song

In that case, do what matters most;

They don't expect a reward, they are recording a PRODUCT for sale.

If the price is too high then it means you can't afford it.

Just bought "Death Magnetic" from Metallica at 15.99$/CD (without *any* regrets, i must add), two concerts are scheduled for Montreal in September (Both were sold out in a matter of hours). Thing is, they too perform in studio (which most bands rent, btw) & on stage (the logistics necessary are mind staggering!). And they really were at the spearhead of the anti-plagiarism controversy by MP3 downloads for years. Times have changed since, but that doesn't mean any musicians can't at least receive some minimal money for their work.

The middle-man argument(s) may soon disappear by bandwidth feeds -- numerous solutions exist today -- which can very easily match consumers' needs. I-Pods are no cassette players or FM walkman anymore. Even at a tiny dollar per pop, who's to prove Cyanide (formatted to compression worst than digital mastering, in fact... which is playing right now in WinAmp on my PC) delivers a mere dime directly to Metallica, a quarter to some online service(s) and the rest to Warner for packaging & manufacturing?

The problem is not from artists, it's caused by organizations & companies created to exploit these talents for supplemental profits.

Value your music as much as you want, the reasoning and the song remains... the same.

Money in, money out.

you are saying they are selling a product and if i cant afford, too bad, but then say the problem sint the artist.

so why should they be punished that i cant affford if it's not their fault?

I would stick with cds which are dirt cheap now esp if you look at the weekly sales at HMV (atleast here in Vancouver). I like the artwork, lyrics, having physical collection, you don't lose your songs and I like listening to the album as a unit in the order that the artist chose (which is usually for a reason). Also, I prefer the sound quality.

I also buy songs online but usually these are the one good song on an otherwise crappy album so I don't want to pay for the whole thing. In these rare circumstances I use itunes because I was given a giftcard.

Ideally, I would like to buy a physical cd from the artist directly but I don't see too much of that.

Well, I doubt that helps you much but I find it a fascinating topic so I piped up anyways

Except that the band you mentioned is the biggest supporter of keeping those record those fat cats' pockets lined.   Mostly because they believe they should continue to get paid for having played one song once.  

Here's a mind-blowing concept; just because you can't afford it/don't want to pay for it, doesn't mean you get to steal it. 

/smartass enough for ya?

As for an actual useful reply, I would pick Amazon's service over iTunes any day.

Long post ahead, you have been warned.

$1 per song is about what you pay for a CD, so i have no problem paying that for just the one or two songs I'd actually listen to on the CD if it gets me out of paying $15 for the whole CD.

I have one of the older 30 gig pods, and it's only about 25% full with 1500+ songs on it - nearly all of them legally purchased through iTunes or ripped from CD in my possession, with the balance ripped from CDs I had at one point and no longer have for one reason or another. What got me hooked is both the massive selection available and the actual service itself. Probably half of what I have is music I'd either never heard of or forgot about until their recommendation system pointed it out. The only real down side is the 30 second previews, but that's what youtube is for

As for the massive 80 gig drives, my brother in law has nearly filled his, with legal music at that. Keep in mind that 30,000 assumes *average* song lengths, and doesn't include podcasts, videos, photo albums, etc. In his case it is full length symphonies, personal recordings and thesis work - he's working on his doctorate in music. One sympthony can be more than an hour long and fill more than a gig by itself.

For those about to point out I could lose my music to iTunes going away, I point out that your full collections could just as easily be wiped out by fire or natural disaster; insurance covers your computer, not the data on it. A full collection of CDs is about the only true insurance, and even then good luck proving how many you had.

I'm not sure what the actual breakdown on this is, as I'm more familiar with print than music; I assume it is fairly similar. What Warner is getting money for is marketing and risk. Sure, for Metallica the risk is minimal; they could record the band reading an instruction manual and probably make money. For a new or less popular band, it can be substantial.

It costs money to support the band while they write and record songs, or an author while he writes. The publisher gives them an advance (maybe 30-50k for a book, probably more for music) and they get a contract which gives the publisher much of the proceeds from the sale of the book/album. Once the work starts selling, the publisher keeps both its share and the artist's share until the advance is paid back. After that, the publisher gets a percent of the profits and the author collects their share as royalties. The important thing to know is that (for books anyway) about 90% of everything published doesn't sell enough for the author to ever get royalties.

What this means is that the artist is getting most of their income up front, whether the work sells well or not. The publisher is taking the risk that the work doesn't sell well enough that they recoup what they paid the artist (the break even point is well below the point where the artist starts getting royalties, but not as low as you'd think). The artist benefits by 1) getting enough money to make the work to begin with and 2) getting an assured income off the work. If they attempted to self-publish, they could make substantially more money, or they could not sell enough to cover what they spent making the work. It is less risky for the publisher, as they are making the same gamble on many bands at once. Some may fail, but their bottom line isn't dependant on any one work selling well as long as enough of them don't fail to cover the ones that do.

This is a pet pieve of mine. Plagarism =/= piracy. Piracy is when people copy music without paying for it. Plagarism would be someone selling copies of Metallica's work and claiming it was their own. I'm fairly sure Metallica is concerned with the first of those issues much more so than the second.

hey -  I was in the same boat.  I had alot of music illegally obtained.  I decided I did not want to be like that. I think you'll find, like I did, that you CAN find a service with a monthly fee, but then you are tempted to rip those files... and still be guilty of a crime if you do (even if you justify it by saying I paid my subscription)... generally, once your membership expires, you aren't legally entitled to those songs anymore.  The solution?  Buy your songs.  I like Amazon (NO DRM!!!).  I think you will find that if you use a service like pandora (FREE), you can still get all that music you loved.  I didn't think it would be like that, but you might be surprised like I was.  There are SO many options out there for free music now.  I haven't bought a song in about 3 months and I still have access to the latest and greatest. 

Getting close to marxism here.

if you want to reward musicians, go to their concerts. they get more satisfaction out of 50,000 screaming fans than the number of cds they sell. most of the money you pay goes to the retail businesses anyway.

 i checked a while back, sadly no upcoming modest mouse concerts

http://www.modestmousemusic.com/events

they are touring

^^

thanks, i was a bit too lazy to check being i checked a month ago

now the question is it it morally ok for me to isntead of buy their cd's go to their show?

i just bought a song on amazon and they are a good site

but before i bought it off of amazon i thought about illegaly downloading the song hell i illegaly downloaded some realspace 3 music off of a forum with the links on it and because i dont have much of that little voice that tells you when something is wrong (IM NOT GOING INTO THAT LAST DAY OF 4TH GRADE WHEN I CALLED A GIRL A B%%^H) so i didnt really feel bad about it BUT i didnt fell good about it.Im not ashamed but im not gratifed.just if you dont know who the band it and you know you cant find it on. Google,Bing.com,Ask.com or msn search just find a link (if your lucky) and click it if you get windows media player.Add the sond to your libary,plug your mp3 or Ipod in and JUST PUT IT ON i didnt put those songs i got illegaly on my mp3 because listening to them over and over gets annoying and that what i do with my songs

                                                             Its maxim the terribael teacher

                                                                    "ya,ya i guess i am"

and if you want to know the story about the day i called a 10 year old girl a bitch go here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/356732 me (i was 10 too ok to its not child abuse its getting back at a bully) (and no im not a pussy i just coulnt do crap because i was waiting)