There have been rumors that since online music stores such as iTMS have been doing so well, the music studios would like to hike up the price. This sounds incredibly hippocritical - “Oh, an online music business model *does* work, lets make more money on it!” Then, when sales begin falling due to the price/convenience ratio rising too high their new answer - “See, online music doesn’t work - people must be pirating!”

And then there are the bands that see “the album” as a entire piece of work, rather than merely an amalgamation of songs onto one 60-70min CD. Therefore, in their artistic vision, they would prefer to not allow consumer’s to purchase a song. While I respect artistic vision, in the end an artist in this case is still producing a consumer good which must be consumed. Therefore, if someone wants to buy a single song and “ruin the artistic whole”, so be it. Take their money, thank them kindly, and scoff at them if you will.

So, this brings me to my point. I was ecstatic when I saw that Dave Matthews Band would be released on iTMS. For me, the iTunes pricing model, implementation, and integration is the very model of a modern major music service. It has the excellent price to convenience ratio where I can deal with slightly annoying DRM and the possibility of limited audio quality for the sake of getting a plethora of songs which I can listen to and are immediately available and I don’t have to haul around with me.

But when a band/label now starts charging $11.99 for their album, I have several questions:

1. Do they think their album has higher value/quality and therefore should charge more?
2. If you want to sell the *album* and not songs, why make the price of the album almost in line with the price per song? It makes it very attractive to really just buy the songs one may like than say “hrm, I’ll just get the entire album - it’s not that much”
3. Why should I pay *more* for limitations ala DRM, quality, lack of physical medium, and possiblity to lose the digital version with no recourse to recovery when I can pay *less* at my local record shop - there is no pricing for “new releases” on iTMS like there is in a store
4. To even make matters e’en odder, I could have purchased a pre-release of one of the songs for the (current) price of $0.99, and then *repurchase* that song with the album. Hrm… “Can I sell one” - negative

Methinks I’ll be stopping in at a local shop to get me the physical version of the new dmb album. Perhaps I’ll even see some new local stuff I’ve been meaning to check out.

I’ve been a subscriber to Audible.com, an excellent audio book distributor, for over a year now. I receive one book and one subscription service per month for the low-low price of $15. I am actually behind on material, since I end up choosing rather lenghty works (such as George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire saga. I also get This American Life, from NPR, which removes me from the problem of having to remember when its on the radio, catch it, or deal with RealAudio files that I can’t save and listen on my iPod later.

There are some serious shortcomings however. Each month, when my subscription automatically renews, I have to remember to go to Audible.com and choose my new “subscription choice” (This American Life) and my audio book. If, after a month I don’t choose these, they are gone. Just like that, $15 down the tube, thank you, you may now choose next month’s if you remember.

Audible.com has recently added the feature “My Next Listen”, where I can queue up audio books that will automatically be purchased at the end of a month. However, this can’t be applied to the subscription choice. Furthermore, many times This American Life is a repeat (at least on Audible’s listing), so it’s like I lost a week in there with no new material. I also have to deal with Audible’s sometime slow download system, get it into iTunes, and then sync it to my iPod. This can be cumbersome, annoying, and difficult to remember. I just want to have new material with me when I get into the car/bike/foot/chair/plane/state of choice.

Enter the new-fangled (though not really) Podcasting (or here). As much lauded as this new technology is, in reality it is not a new concept, just a new mechanism. Using the magic of RSS feeds, MP3 enclosures, periodic updates/checks via nifty sofware and wonderful (though sometimes troubling) iTunes, sound files can be automatically grabbed from the web, downloaded and put to my iPod the next time I connect it. What did I have to do for this magic? Install iPodder, add the feed to iPodder, and set it to automatically check the sites. From then on, new material shows up with no sweat and much reward. Yay unto technology.

This seems like an excellent tool for businesses such as Audible.com to use, or even NPR itself. With Audible, I would subscribe to my own Audible.com RSS feed. Each month when iPodder (or similar magical-app) checked the feed, it would see my monthly subscriptions and next listen book and grab them, put them in iTunes, and make it available on my next Sync. NPR could either provide this service for free, or even charge micro-payments (which still have never taken off) per download to cover the bandwidth. I definitely would be willing to give ~$1 (or more) for each show I downloaded. Make it similar to grabbing an iTMS song.

Well, I’m still looking for that “This American Life” podcast, if anyone has a link. Fortunately, Rizwan Kassim has made them all available via MP3, but I still have to remember to go and grab them. Now to figure out where to send my donation check to TAL/NPR.

After living two years in the SouthEast Michigan area, I really don’t feel like I’ve taken as much advantage of the area as I should have. Luckily, visitors really wanted to go to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, so I got a good excuse to go.

There was an excellent violinist, who at 24-years old owns and plays on a 300-year old Stradivarius. How does one get a piece of musical equipment ~ 275-years older than they are?

The DSO has a number of interesting concerts coming up as well: Music from Final Fantasy in July, and the music of Star Wars next January.

The breakdown of the cost of a typical high-rpofile new album with a list price of $15.99

• 17 cents - Musicians’ unions
• 80 cents - Packaging/manufacturing
• 80 cents - Retail Profit
• 82 cents - Publishing royalties
• 90 cents - Distribution
• $1.60 - Artists’ royalties
• $1.70 - Label profit
• $2.40 - Marketing/promotion
• $2.91 - Label overhead
• $3.89 - Retail overhead

Source: Almighty Institute of Music Retail
Or, in a pretty form:

Besides the rather self-aggrandizing name, here is what the ‘institute’ does:

The Almighty Institute of Music Retail helps record labels and music retailers better communicate with each other to sell and promote more music.

Bell Sympatico in the great state country of Canadia have put up a slew of concerts that can be viewed streaming, online. Of course, this includes the very excellent Great Big Sea, which is a Newfoundland Canada group playing a rock/celtic music. They had a great concert in Royal Oak, Michigan last year that I got to see them at.

Streaming concerts, especially after the fact, seems like a great marketing ploy. As I consider going to a band’s concert, or even checking out their music, a concert is an excellent chance to see them perform, but in this case without the $50 upfront cost. It will never replace going to a real (good) concert, or stop me from buying an album that has been laid out and I can easily take with me on my iPod.

You’ll also find The Cure, The Killers, and Black Eyed Peas.