From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Oct 24 2001 - 19:41:39 MDT
Plus, another question must be asked... How important is it to protect a
very small minority of artists' ability to earn $100M for recording one
album (probably around 1 month's work). If there is an ability for most
producers of quality work to support themselves, which I feel there probably
is in a freely downloadable content model, that must be better than the
current situation.
Emlyn
>
> > For example, the Dixie Chicks sold 9 million copies of
> their Fly album in
> > the two years after it was released [1]. It probably sold
> for about $15.
> > If they had reduced the cost to 1/10 as much or $1.50,
> would they have
> > sold 10 times as many copies? 90 million copies? That's
> almost as many
> > as there are households in America (116 million [2]).
> >
> > I don't think the market is that big for the Dixie Chicks' music.
> > Even at $1.50 a copy, they would not sell an album to every
> household
> > in the country. They would make less money at 1/10 the
> price per unit.
> >
> > The Dixie Chicks do better to sell their album for a larger
> amount and
> > sell to fewer people. The exact point of optimality will
> depend on how
> > quickly the market falls off as the price rises.
>
> Look at it from the other direction: the market was willing to cough
> up $100 million dollars to listen to a Dixie Chicks album, in a world
> where those people could download the songs themselves for near-zero.
> That means the mere convenience of getting it on a small disk that
> they can take to the car, the "coolness" of having an authorized copy
> with artwork and liner notes, etc., and perhaps the value of assuaging
> their conscience that they are obeying present law, was worth $100M.
> That's completely on top of what they get for live concerts,
> appearances
> on television, endorsement deals, and other income not dependent on
> IP. Anyone who argues that the age of downloading (which takes away
> only the value of that conscience-stroking) will cause artists to
> starve isn't doing the math.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein
> and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used
> or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or
> notification."--LDC
>
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