Re: Followup to "What will it take..."

I have only paid the full price for one CD in the past year, John Coltrane
and Monk at Carnegie Hall. Everything else has come from Emusic. I think
that this is what you have to deal with now. Kevin Van Sant has countered by
making his music available by paying for and downloading one tune at a
time.With the rise of these Ipod and MP3 type of music services sales of my
CD have fallen to 0, we are all in the same boat.

Charlie

<Tim Berens> wrote in message news:43bb2d6a.42525332@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Friends,
>
> I thank you for your responses. It was absolutely fascinating to get
> such honest, unvarnished views of CD buying habits. I have read
> everything through twice so far, and plan to print it out to go over
> it again at some point in the future. Once again, this group proves
> to be a marvelous resource.
>
> I did not want to respond to anybody in that thread because I said I
> wouldn't -- and because not responding (and potentially sidetracking
> things) encourages more people to kick in their opinions on such an
> open ended question like the one posed in that thread.
>
> Here are some general thoughts:
>
> Price was mentioned by several people. There really isn't much that
> is trickier than deciding how much to charge for a CD. My personal
> feeling when I buy a CD is that $15.00 is not enough money for a CD
> that I will love...and $1.00 is too much for a CD that I'll hate.
>
> There are recordings in my collection that I have listened to hundreds
> of times. This comes down to pennies per hour for something that
> brings immense joy to me. There are other recordings in my collection
> that I listened to once and didn't like and will never listen to again
> -- not even worth $1.00. The problem is that you never know which it
> will be until after you buy it.
>
> It could be that the economic model for CDs on this scale requires
> that you only sell them to people who can easily afford them. On my
> gigs, people (generally an upscale audience) never bat an eyelash at
> paying $15.00 for a CD. It seems to me that the people who won't pay
> $15.00, won't want to pay $10.00 either. I just can't afford to sell
> it for much less than $10, as each copy costs me $7.20 (initial
> recording costs + mechanical license fees + duplication costs + fees
> paid to the musicians on the disk) / 1000 copies. If (a huge if) I
> sell more than the initial run of 1,000 copies, the cost per unit will
> go down. I honestly do not expect that to happen.
>
> I like the idea of electronic distribution and am going to check into
> it. Does anybody here have any experience with CDBaby's electronic
> distribution?
>
> Excellent suggestion about giving the bass player credit on the CD
> Baby webpage. That was just a simple oversight. There are too many
> things to keep track of when you're putting together a CD -- this just
> got overlooked. It will be taken care of in a day or so.
>
> Sales from the bandstand is something I have pursued, but perhaps I
> need to pursue it with more vigor. I have found that people usually
> just stare at me with annoyance when I announce that I have a CD for
> sale -- maybe you just have to learn to love being annoying in order
> to sell CDs. Does anybody know of a good display case/stand that is
> gig worthy (rugged) to display CDs for sale at gigs?
>
> There were several comments about taste, such as not liking CDs of
> standards. Discussions about taste are interesting but ultimately
> circular. For everybody who doesn't like a CD of standards, there is
> somebody else who does. For everybody who only buys original music,
> there is somebody else who never does. Dan and I made a CD of music
> that we like to play. That somebody won't like it is a given.
>
> Once again, I offer my thanks to all who offerred suggestions and
> comments.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://timberens.com
> A Website for Guitarists
> Learn something...Have some fun
> timb at erinet dot com


.

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