Music Value

 As I sat wondering how to spend my leisure time last weekend, I wondered what would offer me the best value. Being a young artist going to school full-time, money is not something I can throw away every weekend, which I'm sure many of you can relate with. So entertainment with a good value is important to me, but as I learned not very important to the music industry.

I haven't seen a good movie in awhile I thought to myself....but thats probably cause there hasn't been many worth seeing. That and the average ticket cost for a movie is around $13! Not the best value for entertainment that will only last 90minutes or so, especially when for $8/month I can subscribe to Netflix and get unlimited access to movies. Then I thought about going to a club, catch a live show have a drink and call it a night. Well that sounds good in theory but, with cover being $10 at an average club, drinks being about $8 and no guarantee that the band will be any good I wasn't eager to risk it that night. So i thought I would download some music I've been meaning to get from Itunes, cook a nice meal with the remaining money I would have saved and have a peaceful night in.

 As I began my search for some interesting tunes for the night, I realized: 1) Itunes has raised the price of new releases to $1.29  and 2) .99cents/song is still a horrible deal!
At .99cents a song your full length album (assuming there are an average of 12 tracks) will cost you around $12. Roughly the same price distributors sell to stores at wholesale. But with Itunes, you get none of the artwork you would receive if purchased from a retail store, no lyrics, nothing. So lets do a little math and work this out:  Average song 4:00 x 12 = 48minutes so lets be fair and say that the average album has about 1 hour of music on it.  So 1 hour/music = $12.....Average computer game: $40,  playtime : 15/hours =  $2.60/hour............Netflix $8/month= unlimited viewing.

 Seems to me that the music industry desperately needs to re-evaluate its pricing strategy. With less and less sales of music every year, the major labels should be scrambling to attract people back to music. But instead they seem to be oblivious to this fact that music is one of the most expensive entertainment forms available. In my opinion this is what happens when major companies are calling the shots in an industry evolving around art. They are relying on pricing maximization to justify their existence to the share holders, which is absolutely the biggest mistake they could make in a time when access to the net can provide anyone free music on demand. When a consumer realizes that the price outweighs the value of the product than they will turn to another source.

It is time to wake up!! With concert tickets at easily $100 for big acts and single songs going for $1.29 on itunes, no wonder people are turning elsewhere for entertainment. I believe the majors have driven the nail into their own coffin, and with their death will spawn an affordable new music industry. One that will not cost me an hours wage to listen to one hour of my favorite artist!