Posted By Idiot Kid on 11 Aug 2009 06:26 AM
Wow...that's amazing. I wonder is there any other industry where the creator of the product ends up with the smallest cut?
You'd be surprised how small the manufacturers/farmers cut is on many products on the shelves of your local tesco.
...but it does prove one thing, there's a hell of a lot of wriggle room for labels to lower the price per song. Frank Black recently said that we ought to be living in a "five dollar world", i.e. new movies and albums should retail at about 5 dollars (€3.50) to make them more of an impulse purchase. At those sort of prices, you'd be more likely to take a chance on stuff, leading to a more dynamic and interesting pop charts. There's way to much focus in the big labels on "event releases", big artists that you hedge all your bets on for the year. This isn't indie elitism, its common sense, the era of the huge MTV type star had been over for a long time. Cheap downloads, lower profit margins, but bigger turnover is the secret I think.
Some have also suggested "all you can eat" subscription models for downloads, but it's very hard to make that work along with providing access to all the different record label catalogs under the one umbrella, and also to compensate artists fairly. I think realistically any subscription model has to be capped.
Personally I'd like to see a world where music is still paid for (thus allowing people to make a living out of it), but so cheap that its an impulse purchase for non hardcore music fans, making the pop charts unpredictable and relevant again.