Crank It Up To Eleven! 04.14.09: You Will Pay What we Say You Will Pay

Posted by Sandeep Murali on 04.14.2009

An undisguised rant about the latest money making plot from the recording labels.




Well, hello there and welcome back, folks. I am writing this column with some severe nausea and overall crappiness, so pardon me if this one is a bit short. I hope you guys enjoyed Wrestlemania and the little bit of fantasy that we indulged in right here in the spirit. Here's what the readers had to say about it:

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Talk dirty to me:

Michael L Agrees with me on the Undertaker/ Metallica front. See! I knew it was a match made in heaven (hell?) when I wrote it!

SCSDisturbed Wants to know which band Stone Cold Steve Austin would be. KGNine, for whatever reason equates him to Waylon Jennings, but I'd personally put him on par with Iron Maiden for putting on the best damn show on the planet whenever he steps into the arena.

AndrewCrow has a detailed writeup relating John Cena to the Backstreet Boys and Mick Foley to Slayer. Can't say I disagree with either of those, but as mentioned before, I wanted to limit this to the rock/ metal realm. Hence the omission of any boybands/ rappers etc.


Bouquets, brickbats, whatever you got; throw ‘em this way. It's all good.

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Highway robbery:

Remember when we Revisited Napster ? Well, one of the major advances the music industry went through since then was properly organized electronic sale of music, which (may or may not surprise you depending on what your views are on piracy) went on to become a success. One of the biggest complaints that people had against the recording industry was that buying a CD (Or cassette tape) made little sense to them when all they like from the album is one song. Well, stores like Amazon and the most successful of them all, iTunes provided them with a legal alternative. 99 cents to a song hardly broke anyone's bank and with the cult-like popularity of iPods, youngsters (and some oldies) actually took pride in the legal songs they purchased.


Sure, there was the complete Idiocy of DRM which threw a spanner into the works early on. Digital Rights Management is probably the worst ever attempt at curbing piracy ever. In the simplest terms, DRM'd music was paid for by you, but you were still at the whim and the mercy of the provider to be allowed to listen to it. If for some reason the license was lost/ expired/ deprecated, the songs were as good as junk. Those folks who were physically and emotionally tethered to their iPods didn't mind much. But others who preferred to use more open players etc. didn't like these shackles one bit. Even folks who were genuinely considering a legal purchase of music turned a middle finger to this unnecessary complication and went on to more shadier avenues in search of the tracks they liked. Well, after years of burying their head, the music industry finally understood their sheer folly and freed the music stores of DRM.


And everybody lived happily ever after? Not quite. The recording industry for some odd reason cannot get their heads out of their collective ass and decided to give YET ANOTHER incentive to people to not buy music from them or their affiliates. Before we look into it, let's re-examine the major advantages e-distribution of music has with respect to physical media:


- No costs involved in CD replication and the likes. No costs involved in printing Album literature. Other than the computer hardware involved, no physical equipment is necessary for replicating sound tracks. They can sell as many copies as they'd like and it'd cost them the same to make them.

- No transportation charges and no corresponding logistics. This is a corollary to the first point.

- Just one middleman. Other than the e-store that sells their music (iTunes, Amazon. Wallmart etc.) there are NO other parties involved. Result? The pyramid has fewer tiers with each concerned party receiving a bigger chunk.


So, to put this in very basic terms, the industry has a LOT to gain and very little to lose from e-distribution. Even at 99c to a song, they are making more money per song/ per album than CD sales could bring them. Yet, these beacons of intelligence (or greed) decided to introduce yet another unexplainable change to the electronic music stores:


Variable song pricing.


Yes, As of April 7th, the biggest online music store, iTunes introduced variable prices for their songs. Instead of the across-the-board pricing of 99c, songs were now priced in 3 tiers. $1.29. $0.99 and $0.69. The "Official" explanation was that the most popular songs would obviously be priced at the top level, with the other two tiers taking effect as per the ratings of the songs. Sure enough, every single song in the top ten were now priced at $1.29. Just one problem though: You see, most of the major journalistic avenues decided to perform checks on the catalog available at the lowest rate. Quoting one of them, even garbage such as LFO and Vanilla Ice where pegged at $0.99. Next to nothing was available for the cheapest price.


Translation: Crap was still priced at where it was before and the stuff worth buying is now more expensive. Within hours, Walmart and Amazon too revised their pricing to three tiers. Quite clearly, a sign that this move was in planning for quite some time. So how did the public react?


As per a report from Billboard.Biz, there were 40 $1.29 songs in the iTunes top 100 on the day of the price raise. Within a day, at an average, the $1.29 songs fell 5.3 places while the $0.99 ones (There were no $0.69 songs anywhere in the vicinity) gained 2.5 places. See a pattern? Unfortunately, this is not enough to help this move backfire. Even with the drop in the positions, more money is being made selling the songs at these inflated price tags. Would this prove to be a success story for the labels and a triumph for greed? Or will they, as usual take a decade to realize that their master plan is not working as expected?


Time will tell.

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Never say goodbye:

What are your thoughts on this matter? Do you think a tiered pricing is justified? Or do you think that the drop in interest for higher priced songs will prolong? Do let me know.



Rock on and see y'all next Tuesday.