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  1. #1
    DF Admin 4me2's Avatar
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    Attention Album price 'should drop to £1

    Album price 'should drop to £1'

    By Ian Youngs Entertainment reporter, BBC News



    Rob Dickins oversaw REM's UK releases while in charge of Warner Music in the 1980s and 90s


    The price of music albums should be slashed to around £1, a former major record label boss has suggested.
    Rob Dickins, who ran Warner Music in the UK for 15 years, said "radically" lowering prices would help beat piracy and lead to an exponential sales rise.
    Mr Dickins was in charge of the label from 1983-98, working with acts like Madonna, REM and Simply Red.
    But his "revolution" in album prices has been met with scepticism from many in the music business.
    Speaking at the In The City music conference in Manchester, Mr Dickins said album prices had already been pushed down by price wars and declining demand, and were likely to fall further.
    "What we need is a revolution. What we've got is an erosion. When I was running Warners, a chart CD could be £12.99. A chart CD now can be £6.99, maybe even £5.99."
    Some major album downloads currently sell for as little as £3.99 through retailers such as Amazon.
    If record labels made the decision to charge much less, fans would not think twice about buying an album on impulse and the resulting sales boost would make up for the price drop, he predicted.



    To a degree it solves piracy because if it's such a small amount people are more likely to pay it”

    Making the comments during a debate with REM manager Bertis Downs, Mr Dickins advocated a "micro-economy" in which fans would make many small payments.
    He said: "If you're a fan of REM and you've got 10 albums and there's a new album coming out, you've got to make that decision about whether you want it or not.
    "If we lived in a micro-economy, that wouldn't be a decision. You'd just say 'I like REM' and you'd buy it."
    Major albums would sell 200 million copies, he predicted. Last year's global best-seller, Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream, sold eight million.
    He added: "To a degree it solves piracy because if it's such a small amount people are more likely to pay it than [download for] free."
    In his scenario, record labels would be able to make "big money" from other sources such as gig tickets and merchandising.
    Mr Dickins said Prince went down this route when he gave his album Planet Earth away with the Mail on Sunday newspaper in 2007.
    Fans had to pay a relatively small amount - the cost of the newspaper - but it generated enough interest to sell out 21 nights at the O2 arena in London.
    Mr Dickins chaired the BPI, which represents UK record labels and stages the Brit Awards, four times between 1986 and 2002 and was made a CBE when he stepped down.




    It's a big risk and the record companies will resist it”

    But he was dismissed by some at In The City as being out of touch and his idea is unlikely to be embraced by the current music industry.
    Jonathan Shalit, who discovered Charlotte Church and manages N Dubz and Russell Watson, described it as a "totally ridiculous suggestion".
    "Right now if you buy a bottle of water it's £1," he said. "A piece of music is a valuable form of art. If you want the person to respect it and value it, it's got to cost them not a huge sum of money but a significant sum of money."
    Chris Cooke, editor of music industry newsletter CMU, predicted that the major labels would "resist it hugely".
    "It is a gamble," he said. "Once you've slashed the price of an album you can't really go back. It's a big risk and the record companies will resist it. But he's not alone, outside the record companies, in saying perhaps that is the future."




    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11547279
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  2. #2
    DF VIP Member Over Carl's Avatar
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    Finally someone with sense. If I could get a legit album for a quid I would to save pissing around with all the low quality and incorrectly labelled ones I've downloaded in the past, and I would feel I'm giving something to the people who've created it.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    its the same with console games, been saying for years. if they (and pc games) were say £2.99 i would buy every game that comes out. instead what we have is greedy corporations who are able to manufacture discs very cheaply but still knocking them out for £45-50 a pop. i realise they have staffing costs and some games take up to 2 years to make but if you take the amount of people who cannot afford £45 but would gladly pay £3 i think this would be the same effect on games and push piracy out of the window.

    dont get me wrong, if theres a game or app i like i buy it, i bought every one of the battlefield series and bioshock plus every half life pack going through steam so i do believe in supporting authors. but games like colonization which were OK but not worth £30 for i will install a pirate copy. unless it went for a decent amount - even now its selling for £7 new, why could they not do that at first?

    it costs them pennies to press a disc yet we pay a premium.

    when the companies realise that by lowering prices they will get more sales is the day piracy will be beaten.
    A wise man once said " "

  4. #4
    DF Super Moderator {{909}}'s Avatar
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    you cant compare music sales and video game sales, for a start its FAR more expensive to produce a game than an album, although there are exceptions. Its perfectly feasible for 1 person to sit at home on a 500 quid laptop with £200 worth of software and make an album within a few weeks/months.

    I dont fully agree with the OP, dropping the prices too low can have a negative effect and it would probably throw all chart/popularity research up in the air. having said that, theres plenty of artists giving their music away for nothing and they are still making money.

  5. #5
    DF VIP Member rIKmAN's Avatar
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    Most musicians / artists nowadays make most of their money through touring and live appearances, not the actual sales of the albums / singles.

    Althought I think they do charge too much for games, I also think that it makes the software houses HAVE to (try to) make a great product, as they know that people will only buy games that are worthy of the £40-£50 they ask, otherwise people will just download/pirate them.

    If all games were less than £5 then I think most companies would pump out loads of games of shitter quality than we have now, simply because of the price.

    I also think that if games were this price, people would still pirate anyway, probably using the logic that it doesn't do any harm as it only costs £5 to buy, so what the hell.

  6. #6
    DF VIP Member flumperino's Avatar
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    I think that £1 is infeasible...but £3 would be much better and more reasonable methinks.

    Of course, physical albums are likely to be almost completely dead within 10 years. Can't remember the last time I bought a physical album - have been using digital downloads for years.

    Shooooooo-ryuken!

  7. #7
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    I'd buy more albums if they were only £3 for a download or even a fiver for a hard copy. All of my new music at the moment comes from Spotify so i'm legal

  8. #8
    DF VIP Member Freddy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    I think a quid an album is too much because there is a solution already; subscriptions. I pay £10 a month (Spotify) and listen to all the music I want. I can store it locally and put on my iPhone.

    We pay for TV to be streamed into our homes and can watch as little or as much as we like. Imagine paying per program or for a series. Fuck that.

    I used to dl music as there wasn't a solution in place and I was sick of being robbed £15 for an album with 2 good tracks on it. Fuck that. So I fully supported the digital revolution and even owned/coded some underground torrent sites to help bring the music industry down. As soon as a descent subscription service was in place I bailed and signed-up.

    Same with movies. I now have a LoveFilm sub.

    So you can forget £1 an album or 99p a track from Apple. I don't need tangible content or an MP3 taking up HDD space. Stream. 100%.

    Just waiting for a gaming subscription...

  9. #9
    DF VIP Member DJ OD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Album price 'should drop to £1

    Be funny if albums were dropped to a quid each.

    Bloody vinyl records 12" singles are at least a fiver now!


    DJ OD

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