Would you be willing to pay to download all the legal MP3s you want?
“I’d only pay if was very reasonable price 10-30 cents a song.”
“pay=$0 that’s how much i would pay to download mp3s”
“HELL NO!”
“I would only be willing to pay the artist directly per song or album. The record companies keep saying it’s the artists losing royalty money. THAT IS BULLSHIT!!! The record companies are the one’s who are screwing the artists more than people downloading the music for free.”
I personally dont like this at all. I don’t mind paying the $50 dollars, but now they’ll have some kind of record of who I am. And this thing about downloading music I already own is just plain rediculous. What possible reason could I have to waste my bandwidth downloading music that I already own and could rip the music on to my computer. Nothing is going to change, people are still going to download music from napster or MP3.com, except that now they are going to pay a very reasonable price. Of course there are many ways that I could get that $50 to them and not let them know who I am, but why bother there are alternatives to napster, newsgroups, mirc, etc.
Perhaps. It would depend on the subscription fee.
Would I pay $50 to download MP3s of music I already own?…no way!!! I can rip my own MP3s for my own CDs, thank you very much!
I have purchased a number of CDs from listening to MP3s I have gotten from Napster…but I’m sure I am in the minority…I feel that if artists do not get paid for doing their music, they won’t do it!…bottom line…everybody loses…and I fear that the mob mentality will win out…sad…
No, free is better.
If you are, what would be the most you’d be willing to pay?
Full access to *ALL* music (not just hits of today) for one year, $100 –
150 (buying the music, not requiring that I have the CD already)
If I have to have the CD, $25 (I can just encode it myself…)
$50-$100/yr. Or perhaps $10 for 30 days?
I would go for something that was an inexpensive flat fee for unlimited usage. $50/yr for
Napster would be a good deal. I’d even put up with the d/l problems (only
dial-up here) and audio quality problems (there’s a bunch of trash out
there).
. . . around $5 a month
Only a few bucks a month, if push comes to shove. I’d much rather keep it free or one-time fee.
I would probably only be willing to pay 20 dollars max a year for
unlimited access to all MP3’s.
$2/month or one $25/year payment.
If you aren’t, why don’t you think you should? Isn’t it like going to the CD store and taking some of those? Or do you think it’s like something else?
This isn’t really any different than all the folks that taped stuff
years back. It’s a difference in degree not in kind and that’s the rub.
Everyone has a computer now and it’s ‘easier’ than the old ways. Also,
everyone likes to actually justify the investment in the computer.
I’ve never had much of a moral conflict about downloading mp3’s because most of the music I was getting was old enough to not create a big artist royalty issue. I mean, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix and Fats Domino are not going to suffer if I get a few of their songs. Most of the other stuff that I get from current artists (which for me is Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, old Genesis, The Who, etc…) are songs from albums I already own, but which are on LP’s, and would be a royal pain to convert to mp3 format. Anything I have on CD I rip myself.
If I really thought that what I was doing was truly wrong, I wouldn’t do it. But if all of these issues can be resolved by making Napster a pay service, so much the better.
I listen to the radio frequently and never once have I complained about radio ads. I have even forced myself to ignore that stupid monkey that taunts me from your page. I realize that ads like that allow me to enjoy the rest of your site.
I am willing to pay an artist for her work. I am willing to pay a record company for their distribution, but I don’t feel too guilty about stealing from thieves and bullies (record companies and the RIAA). Very few artists own their music. Artists are forced to accept to bad contracts to be heard. I’m willing to pay the real owner, the artist. Any money collected by Napster or MP3.com should be shared.
CDs in record stores are stolen property. I don’t go into record stores any more. I don’t buy stolen property.
When the record companies start attacking the public for “stealing” music we should be taking steps, ie write your congress rep., about breaking up their monopoly.
It’s not my fault that musicians aren’t as good at what they do as they would like to be to earn the money that they would like to.
Yes, I think it is stealing
The FCC has regulated all technology, they have regulated Laser Printers as to not print money, if we are infringing then the FCC should then regulate the technology to not be able to convert and transfer these files.
I am perfectly willing to pay for music I like. I hate getting a crappy CD crammed down my throat and pay $17 for at the most 3 good songs, I took almost 15 years of Metallica CD’s and put all the good songs on 2 CD’s (in redbook format, and the second cd wasn’t full). That is simply pathetic and most other bands aren’t much better.
Not at all. I dont care what people say, it isn’t the same quality. . . . It is not the same as stealing because you miss out on the art and other things that could be in the CD…you miss out on some things, it’s just not the same. I would also like to note this: remember the last time you taped your favorite song off the radio? Did you feel the guilt?, well you should have.
No. When a person buys a CD at the store, he or she is buying a CD, a CD booklet, and possible extras included on that CD. He or she is not buying a computer file.
I’m 27yrs old and like free stuff……. I love going to certain warez sites that really have free games and programs(WinME, Win2000-PRO, Deus X, and well I have a CD I made that has over $5,000.00 worth of stuff on it…..
I’m not rich and really feel like a kid in a candy store getting free stuff!!!! They can’t stop it….. warez sites or the MP3 thing. There is always gonna be people that can and will do it. And I’m just along for the ride.
It’s like going to a friend’s house and borrowing some CD’s.. and hell if i’m gonna pay my friend for that!
98% of the music I download is not available in stores. The other 2% of music I
download is to sample stuff I haven’t heard before… if I like it, then I
buy it.
It’s like Home Taping brought kicking and screaming into the Digital Age.
The songs I do download are RARELY a favorite song of mine, which I intend to listen to time and time again. Usually, they are simply songs which I happened to think of, and decided that I would like to hear. Now, no one in their right mind would go out and buy an entire CD to casually listen to a song one or two times.
So, I am left with two choices.
First of all, I could call a radio station and sit around for an hour waiting for them to play the song. Furthermore, if I so desire, I can hook up my tape player or my computer to a radio receiver and record the song when it is played. Because it is transmitted over the public airwaves, it is perfectly legal to record, just as it is perfectly legal to record movies on television.
OR, I can log onto Napster, download the song, listen to it and be on my merry way without having to listen to 500 songs other people have requested and without inconveniencing other people by forcing them to hear a song that they, perhaps, did not wish to hear.
Because the music industry is charging too much. Prices are bloated. I can get original US CD’s in Taiwan for around $6.
I sort of think of it as free internet access, the record companies have
had a monopoly on music for years and now that they have competition they’ll
just crush the competition in court.
I think it is stealing but I really don’t care because there are basically no repercussions.
I know that downloading mp3’s is stealing but I really don’t care. I don’t listen to CD’s that much anymore since I’m at my computer most of the day almost all the music I listen to are MP3’s on my computer.
I would not pay for it because I am not really getting anything. I
would rather spend the extra cash and actually buy the CD. Then I have a
really copy. Also, I would not pay for anything electronic. For a few
reasons. First, there is nothing of substance, just a special sequence
of electrons. At least with a CD you have something you can hold onto and
say here is where my $15 went to. Second, for the amount of times I
reformat my hard drive, the information I am paying for will never stay
around for long anyway. Why would I pay for something that I am going to
delete?
Nope. Music should be free and so should the Internet. I have over 350
MP3’s and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
(Editorial comment: I almost got a hernia resisting the urge to tell this fellow
to come work for me for free from now on because I think his labor should be free, too. Something tells
me he’d find something wrong with that. :))
If you aren’t, if a few people you know started getting arrested for downloading non-legal MP3s, would that change your mind? Would you just stop downloading them, or just keep doing what you’re doing?
I’d never pay for any music-sharing service, legal or non-legal. If people started getting arrested, I’d probably just continue downloading legal mp3’s.
No one’s going to get arrested because too many people steal it and going after everyone would be impossible and the whole public would be upset.
If some people got arrested, I would still take some mp3, but I’d increase my anonymity (proxies, gates, etc).
I would stop downloading mp3’s if the people were getting arrested for downloading. I would just borrow a cd from a friend and RIP the Mp3 myself.
It depends on how they got caught. If they were running a 200gb MP3 server of some sort, and I wasn’t connected to it I would keep going. But if they had 5-10gb collections on cable, I think I’d find another way.
No change of heart; I’d just stop.
I would do it less and a lot more cautiously.
I live in the Philippines. . . . I’m not quite sure if this will apply to me, seeing that there’s a MASSIVE
proliferation of pirated audio cd/mp3 cd/software cds being sold OPENLY in
malls. They should be cleaned up first.
It depends on the situation. It’s pretty easy to put up a firewall among other things and being that I use a cracked free ISP (no ads) and fake name and address, it would be more difficult to track me.
Yeah well you get in trouble for taking from a CD store. With Napster they cant catch you. MP3 is software; CDs are material. Napster bans you, use hack. follow instructions. and get back on 🙂
If you aren’t, if getting good MP3s started getting a lot harder than it is now, would that change your mind? Would you just stop downloading them, or would you just keep doing what you’re doing?
The key is how hard it would be to find good mp3’s. If it was a lot
of effort, yeah, I’d probably quit. Either that or make new friends with
CDs I could copy. I think the cat is out of the bag – there is an amazing
depth to the content on Napster – I find stuff that I didn’t think many
other folks had heard of. I don’t think the cat can be put back in the bag.
There will always be an “illegal” place to download, and I will always find it.
Now what if Napster closed???? To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less, and would be happy in a way. That is the lame way of getting mp3’s and is so easy to get many people are getting them VIA download now; they dont even learn how to rip the CD they own.
I’m not a Napster Fanatic… I get most of my Music from actual friends, and they get it from me, not much the RIAA can do about that.
Of course, Napster was a good thing – but to tell the truth, I never used it. Just a simple search would give me enough links for any MP3.
Well, I don’t think that good MP3s are going to be difficult to find. There are SO MANY options beyond Napster that it doesn’t matter to me if Napster goes down. The free digital music revolution is too far along to stop.
Personally, I hope Napster gets shut down, this will make my job easier. See, there are those at my high school who pay $1+ per song — when Napster goes, this price will, of course, go up.
If downloading mp3 would get harder, I’d search even harder. 🙂
If it became impossible to DL mp3’s then I would stop downloading them.. I would also stop buying CD’s and only listen to the songs on the radio.
Let me start out by saying that it really doesn’t matter whether Napster gets shut down, or starts charging or anything else. Napster is just a program that allows MP3s to be traded over the internet. MP3s were traded prior to the creation of Napster, and they will continue to be traded whether Napster is around or not. According to the record companies, it is Napster that is causing all of their supposed problems. But in reality, it is not Napster, but the people who trade MP3s that is the source of their discomfort. Many thousands, if not millions of people, are trading MP3s. And unfortunately for the record companies, it doesn’t matter how much money they throw around, there is nothing they can do about it.
I don’t download that many mp3’s these days so I wouldn’t really mind the extra effort, I think it should be harder (like with mIRC) so the media doesn’t blow it all out of proportion
I would be pissed, but I still would not pay. If they became
unavailable for free I would stop downloading.
There’s always websites and MirC. If it’s a challenge, bring it on. No damn nerd in glasses or crack-high drummer is gonna stop me from getting something.
If I can’t download MP3s easily, I guarantee that I won’t be buying the CDs those MP3s were
derived from. I have no problem sitting on my wallet when merchants get a
little too uppity with the customers who keep their ungrateful behinds in
business.
Roughly what proportion of the MP3s you download do you end up hanging on to (i.e. you burn them, or they won’t get deleted in your next hard drive cleanup)?
I usually hang on to all of my MP3’s, unless they are say bootleg (right
to the recycling bin). Very seldom are they from bands I only like a few songs from, maybe a
couple albums at the very least.
Well, I tend to know exactly what song I’m looking for when downloading MP3s, and am downloading them because I’ve already heard them and liked them. So, I keep most of them. On the rare occasion I rip or download a whole CD that I haven’t heard before, I tend to keep (on average) one or two songs if any.
Now it’s 90%, might dump a few more but usually I know what I’m
getting – not many experiments to fail. Do occasionally get a version of a
song I don’t want.
I save around 10%, of the mp3s I download. I only hang on to the really rare
ones.
Almost all of them. If I really like a CD, I just buy it.
Of those you hang on to, how many of them are songs by artists for which you’d never buy the CD because you only like a couple songs from them? If you could buy CD-quality singles of these songs for a dollar or two, or say, a collection of your favorite songs for the price of a normal CD, would you be more likely to buy them?
Very seldom are they from bands I only like a few songs from, maybe a
couple albums at the very least.
What I do is: I hear a song I like, I download it, along with some other
songs from the same artist, and if I like what I hear, I buy the CD, If I
don’t like it, I don’t feel that they deserve my money(~$15) for only one
good song, so I just hang on to the MP3
One-hit-wonders get the MP3 treatment, though (which is all they deserve). CD quality, eh? Yeah, then it would be ok. But isn’t that just like the custom CD-making machines they have in a few places already?
I like only a few songs from each artist, yeah, thats true, I would
never buy a cd single.. thats for sure, If cds dropped prices to 1-2
dollars, then mp3s might not be so popular, thats for sure.
50% I wouldn’t buy. If I could buy the single for $1 or less I’d consider it. Mainly because the marginal cost of making another mp3 is very close to zero. So it doesn’t actually cost them anymore to make another mp3, where CDs actually have a higher marginal cost.
80% are from artists who I would consider one-hit wonders and the rest are from bands that have put out songs I like over multiple albums. If I could buy a CD that every song on it was one I liked I’d buy it.
I’d say 50% of the songs I get are songs from artists whom I like just one
song. But the other 50% are artists whom I’m checking out before buying
their CDs.
Most of my kept songs are the cliched “only good songs on the album.” No
way I’m paying $15+ for that. A buck per good song is plenty–if the artist
can’t produce more than one good song per album, he doesn’t deserve any more
than his current scut royalty.
Would you be willing to pay an artist directly for a song or album? How much would you be willing to pay for a song you really liked in MP3 format? Higher-quality audio?
Yes, I think that would be a good idea on the record company’s behalf,
but I doubt it would be 50 cents, that sounds a little cheap for big
corporations who don’t like MP3’s in the first place, but If it were to
come out, I wouldn’t pay more then a dollar extra.
Yes, I would be more willing to buy say 10 of my favourite songs for $15
than to buy a CD with 15 songs where I only like 5 – 7 songs.
I would be ***VERY*** willing to a scheme kinda like Stephen King has for
his online book “The Plant”, as he writes it, people can read it for free,
and then pay if they like it, about 75 – 80% of the people that read it, pay.
Directly? Sure, who cares who gets the money, as long as I get the music. MP3: nadda. They sound like crap (especially the way all the deaf asswipes on Napster rip them with gay Best Buy CD-ROMs and encode them with Xing. ugh.) so why pay for that? Higher quality…maybe. Depends how good the quality was. CD or better, then sure, why not.
If you’re talking directly to the ARTIST, that gets my attention but I
don’t think the record companies will stand for being out of the loop.
Perhaps $0.50 ?? and I would expect ‘original master’ quality at 160kbps,
more or less. Higher and the trade-off between quality and storage space
isn’t there.
I figure that a buck a song would be what I’d be willing to pay.
Umm.. no, I wouldn’t want them to know I like their music, and I’m not
paying for it like I should be.
Yes, I would prefer to pay the artist directly. At the most $1 per single. If I wanted higher quality audio I’d buy the CD. But I’d buy mp3s directly from the band so the money goes straight to them.
I’d probably pay $.50 or $1.00 for a song directly to artist but not
through a record company at all.
Not paying an artist for a song, i feel I’m paying for the CD. I beleive an artist should be in the career he is in not just for the money, but for the fans. This money mak’n crap is BS.
I’d be willing to pay 50cents max per song, in high quality format. MP3s are substandard in quality, and thus should remain free.
If I knew the money was going to go directly to the artist then I would pay no more than a dollar a song whether in good mp3 format or at higher quality.
Yes. It might be a good idea to support an artist directly. For a single,
I’d probably prefer to pay lower than the standard single (we do have to pay
our own internet costs, plus we don’t get a CD). Higher quality audio is of
course preferred.
Record companies need to be taught some humility, preferably in
bankruptcy court. As the artist is the music’s creator, he deserves the
lion’s share of the money from its success. Because MP3 is a low-quality
format, I wouldn’t pay more than 25 cents for one. True CD-quality would be
worth $1.
Alternatively, would you be willing to pay, say, fifty cents extra per blank CD, the money going to the recording companies, in return for perfectly legal MP3 (or better quality) downloads from those companies, with some provision made for artists to collect based on the number of downloads?
Nope, those record executives are fat enough already, and even if it were the case CDs are too expensive (compared with the US and Japan) in the UK anyway.
No, that’s like a tax. I hate taxation. People should pay for what they use. I don’t like supporting other people. My story would likely change if I was one of the people who needed the support, though…
I think CDs are overpriced. If the
model you seem to be getting at comes to fruition in one form or another, I
would hope that there would be a drastic reduction in pricing. The costs
assigned to the physical media, distribution to the wholesaler and retailer,
and the wholesalers and retailers profits SHOULD all disappear. Based on my
subjective impression of record companies, they would try to maintain the
current pricing levels – mostly out of greed but also to try and protect
their wholesalers/retailers. Commendable and with ample precedent, but
we’re talking about a total restructuring of the business model for music
distribution. One factor to consider is how people are going to actually
listen to their music – will the CD player go away to be supplemented by the
PC or a new ‘appliance’? What about automobiles? Will the market support a
two-tiered pricing system (on-line v. physical media) – I think so,
especially as burners become more prevalent. LOWERING THE COST OF ON-LINE
DISTRIBUTION **SUBSTANTIALLY** COMPARED TO TRADITIONAL CD COSTS IS THE ONLY
WAY THAT FREE ‘SHARING’/DISTRIBUTION WILL BE CURTAILED.
I would prefer to support a band, not a record company.
I really would rather not go through the record company kinda cut the
middle man less money charged everyone’s happy 🙂
How do record companies justify paying $15 for a CD that maybe cost a million to make when movies which cost anywhere for a few million to a few hundred million only charge about $20.
Personally, I would rather pay the artist directly and watch the
recording companies burn in hell.
This is also a good idea, you don’t have to buy a full CD from someone who
only has one good track. Plus, you can customise your CD to your tastes (no
more need to lug about 15 audio CDs).
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