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Digital Audio Insider is David Harrell's blog about the economics of music and other digital content. I write from the perspective of a musican who has self-released four albums with the indie rock band the Layaways.
My personal website has links to my LinkedIn and Google+ pages and you can send e-mail to david [at] thelayaways [dot] com.
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December 30, 2011
The Top 7 Digital Audio Insider Posts of 2011by David Harrell
The seven posts below generated the most page views, comments, and/or e-mails for this site over the past year. Thanks to everyone who read, commented, linked, and e-mailed. Happy New Year!
Spot the Spotify Payment
...the average streaming rate is small enough that it'd take 244 Spotify spins to equal the label cut of a 99-cent iTunes download. But the real question here, in terms of artist/label compensation, is what Spotify activity actually represents. That is, is it simply a new revenue stream, providing income from listeners who don't normally purchase music, or is there also a cannibalization factor, where some listeners opt for streaming over actual purchase? read more
A Few Thoughts On Pandora
Does Pandora's Music Genome-based programming give it a competitive advantage? That is, does it result in a better listener experience than with Internet stations like Last.fm, where "similar" artists are determined by listener overlap (listeners of artist A also like artist B), as opposed to song qualities? read more
The Downside of eMusic's Currency Pricing
Even after last year's subscription changes, average album prices at eMusic are no doubt less than the average prices at iTunes, Amazon MP3, and other digital music stores. Yet I believe that eMusic's switch from a credits system to currency pricing, in combination with Amazon MP3's $5 album deals and daily specials, presents a real challenge to eMusic's subscription-based business model. read more
How Much Does Rhapsody Pay Artists?
Here's how I'm paid for my self-released albums in the Rhapsody catalog:
1. A penny per stream. For albums distributed by CD Baby and TuneCore, I receive one cent per listener stream. CD Baby, which uses a commission business model, takes a 9% cut, resulting in a .91 cent payout per stream. TuneCore, which charges an annual maintenance fee for each album, passes on the full one cent. This one-cent rate has remained steady and unchanged from September 2004 to the present. read more
The Convergence of Owning Music and Renting Music
There are real differences, both logistical and psychological, between owning and renting music. But I'll bet that the preference for ownership will decrease as the listening experience for "owned" and "rented" music converges. read more
The Ethics of Downloading Music You've Already Paid For
An eMusic subscriber loses $200 worth of his downloads and posts this question to eMusic's message board: Is it ethical to download those same tracks from illegal sources (such as P2P sites)?
I was somewhat surprised by the responses -- by more than a 3 to 1 ratio, his fellow subscribers voted "no," most of them rather emphatically. Then again, maybe that's not surprising, as eMusic subscribers are a self-selected group of music fans who are willingly paying for digital content that they could probably download elsewhere free. read more
A Funny Spotify Experiment: Why Judas Priest Sounds Just Like Jerry Reed
The fact that the Spotify interface allows you to play tracks stored in your iTunes and Windows Media libraries made me wonder what happens when you use Spotify to "stream" a track you already own. From a performance standpoint, it makes sense for Spotify to pull the file from your hard drive. And doing so would also -- in theory -- relieve Spotify of any obligation to compensate the record company for that play, as the situation would be no different than listening to a track in iTunes. read more
Labels: eMusic, file sharing, Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify
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April 18, 2007
Play It Againby David Harrell
Last year, I noticed a slew of "sound alike" albums on eMusic, including some the re-recordings were actually by the original artists. (There's also a Molly Hatchet greatest hits package that's a "re-recording" from a lineup with no original members.)
Today's NY Times has a great piece on big-name artists re-recording their hits to keep a bigger share of song licensing revenue:
In 1986, the pop band Wang Chung released the ludicrous but catchy party anthem "Everybody Have Fun Tonight." Now two of the musicians behind the band have hatched a plan that might seem even more absurd than the lyric "everybody Wang Chung tonight." More than two decades after the song became a smash hit, they are recording it again.You can hear "before and after" samples here. Thanks, Porter, for the link.
But they have their reasons. In the decade and a half since Wang Chung dissolved, the licensing of music to advertisers, television and movies has become more acceptable -- and much more lucrative -- for performers from the past. And by remaking their own hits, these artists can keep a much bigger share of the proceeds. "To re-record our back catalog is a way of empowering ourselves," said Nick Feldman of Wang Chung. "We can be much more selective about where these songs end up and how much we charge for them."
Labels: eMusic, music licensing, sound alike music
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February 01, 2006
The Digital Pricing Conundrum Part III: A New Idea for Variable Pricingby David Harrell
The advent of online sales of individual songs has created a slew of pricing issues and contradictions -- discrepancies based on song length, the number of songs on an album, etc. (see Part I of this series). Yet any pricing solutions based on track length or popularity appear to be inherently flawed (Part II). And the issue getting the most attention these days is that the major labels are chafing over the single price for all individual song downloads. They're pushing for variable pricing that would allow them to charge more for new albums and individual songs and (perhaps) less for older catalog material.
With the caveat that the $9.99 album price at iTunes is already too expensive relative to the CD price (personally, I think the prices at eMusic are just about perfect for digital downloads), in many ways, this makes sense. As Glenn pointed out in a comment to Part II of this series, the costs to labels and artists vary greatly with each album. On new releases, artists/labels might be trying to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars of recording and promotional costs. Older releases, on the other hand, might have been profitable for decades, so any additional revenue is pure gravy. Plus, that's how music is already priced on CD. Head over to your local retailer and you're likely to pay top dollar for the new Madonna album, while you can pick up tons of older CDs for well under $10. (That is, if you pay list price, as opposed to buying a new release as a loss-leader special at Best Buy...)
I think it's likely that the major labels will eventually convince Apple to allow a premium price for new releases, both for individual tracks and entire album purchases. If Apple agrees, premium pricing will -- of course -- spread to the other online stores. But here's an idea for a twist to the variable strategy, one that might be better for all involved parties -- labels, artists, iTunes, and consumers -- than a simple price increase for all new material:
Allow variable pricing for individual songs based on purchase order. That is, charge more for the first track a customer downloads from an album, but then charge that customer less for additional downloads from that same album.
If, as far as the major labels are concerned, the "cherry picking" of individual songs is the evil downside to online digital sales, then, in exchange for a higher profits on the first song or two purchased, they might be persuaded to accept lower profits on further purchases from that album, along with a different pricing structure for older albums. Here's how it could work:
For new releases, maintain the current $9.99 price for the entire album. From what I've read, the major labels don't seem to have a problem with entire albums being sold at that price, it's the individual sales that irk them. A "premium price" would be charged for the first two downloads from an album, but all subsequent single song purchases would be at a reduced rate.
New releases
| Purchase entire album for $9.99, or | |
| First song | $1.49 |
| Second song | $1.39 |
| Any additional songs | $0.89 |
Then, for older albums, keep the current 99-cent price for the first song, but make subsequent downloads cheaper:
"Mid line" albums
| Purchase entire album for $7.99, or | |
| First song | $0.99 |
| Second song | $0.89 |
| Any additional songs | $0.79 |
"Budget" albums
| Purchase entire album for $4.99, or | |
| First song | $0.99 |
| Any additional songs | $0.49 |
For labels and artists, the increased revenue from the premium sales could be substantial. Currently, Apple keeps 29 cents of a 99-cent individual song download, with the remaining 70 cents going to the label, which then pays royalties to artists, songwriters, producers, etc. If Apple can be persuaded to maintain its 29-cent cut, a label's take for a $1.49 song sale jumps from 70 cents to $1.20, a 71% increase! And a $1.39 sale would result in a 57% increase for the label. Plus, even with the discount pricing for older albums, the labels would receive their current cut for the first song anyone downloads.
Charging the premium price on the first songs an individual buys is also a better bet for the label than trying to set a higher price for the "hits." For new releases, there's no way to predict which songs will be popular. And for catalog material, you could charge the premium price for the historically popular tracks, but that's looking at popularity in aggregate. Part II of this series noted that the least popular song on the Police's "Synchronicity" album was "Mother," the track by guitarist Andy Summers. While more people will want to download "Every Breath You Take," some Police fans are no doubt sick of hearing that song on the radio, but still listen to other tunes from the disc. For those individuals, "Mother" might very well be their first download choice from "Synchronicity." This plan allows the labels to get more for EVERY customer's favorites, not just the most popular tracks.
So how do these premium prices benefit customers? They don't, if you never buy more than a couple of tracks from newer albums. Even so, paying extra for the first two downloads from an album is certainly preferable to a unilateral price increase for ALL the tracks on new albums and entire album purchases.
But individual customers would come out ahead if this plan results in a lower average download price for all of the songs they purchase. And even if the average price for ALL download sales drops below 99 cents, labels and artists still come out ahead if the increase in download volume leads to greater total sales. Dropping prices for subsequent downloads gives customers an incentive to dig deeper into albums, and might give labels sales they'd never see otherwise.
Granted, the prices above fall apart for albums of less than 10 tracks. And the suggested premium rates are somewhat dependent on Apple and the other online retailers not demanding a larger dollar cut of the premium priced downloads. Given that Apple's real incentive is to sell more iPods, it might be content to keep 29 cents out of a $1.49 sale, other online retailers might want a larger chunk. If the premium price approaches $2, it might be enough to cause a consumer backlash. The number of legal downloads is still far less than the traffic on file sharing networks. The last thing the industry should do right now is push single-song download prices to a point that drives their current customer base away.
I wish I had some hard data on actual purchase patterns -- how many songs the average iTunes customer purchases, single songs vs. album purchases, purchase of "new" songs vs. buying digital replacement copies of tracks already on album or CD, etc. With such numbers, a more solid case might be made for this idea. But even without that information, I'm guessing that this type of pricing strategy would be better embraced by customers than an across-the-board rate hike for new albums while at the same time alleviating the labels' concerns over the cherry picking effect.
Comments are open -- please let me know what you think!
Labels: cherry picking, digital music pricing, eMusic, iTunes, variable pricing
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January 19, 2006
The Digital Pricing Conundrum Part 1: Song Length and the Number of Tracksby David Harrell
In the late 1990s, I worked a regular Saturday shift at a Chicago record store. The pay was negligible, but I received an employee discount and had a first crack at all of the used CDs that came in. Plus, in those dark days before mp3 blogs and Internet radio, it was the best way to sample new music.
There was a staff of three on Saturdays and we'd "rotate picks" to choose the discs for in-store play. My two co-workers often opted for rap and hip-hip and I usually spun indie rock. I paid a price for that stylistic choice: Most of my CD selections had about 45 minutes of music while my co-workers' picks, with longer songs and more of them, often lasted 70+ minutes. My nominal 1/3 control of the store's stereo was sabotaged by the average track length and number of tracks of our respective CD picks.
Today, track length and the number of tracks on an album are both resulting in some major pricing discrepancies within (and between) online music stores. Let's start with iTunes, which uses a default album price of $9.99. A single slice of that pie costs 99 cents. The trouble is -- if albums are pies -- they come in different sizes and the number of slices varies with each one. As the following examples will show, it can create some real chaos. (This model, with some variations in base track/album prices, pretty much holds for the bulk of the online stores. Apple does deviate from the $9.99 album price on occasion, but not the 99 cent track price.)
Then there's the eMusic subscription model, where you pay for a set number of downloads each month. I've got the 40 for $9.99 plan, which works out to 25 cents per track, assuming you use all of your downloads. The issue here is that all downloads count equally against your monthly allotment, be they 30- second mini-songs or 20-minute opuses.
A great example of digital pricing confusion is this recent pick of mine from eMusic: McLemore Avenue by Booker T. and The M.G.'s. The 1970 release covers most of the Beatles' Abbey Road and the album artwork even features the M.G.'s crossing the street outside the Stax recording studio, just like the famed Abbey Road photo. On eMusic, it's a major bargain, as most of the songs segue into each other, so it counts as only four downloads against your monthly subscription, for a net cost of around $1. Over at iTunes, that same album costs $9.99, but how can you then charge 99 cents for the four tracks? You can't, so iTunes lets you buy the two shorter ones for 99 cents each and makes the other two "album only." And things get really goofy over at the MSN store, where the longest track on this album is priced at $1.39 and the other three at 99 cents. You can download all four tracks for a grand total of $4.36 but MSN also gives the option of downloading the entire album for $8.91!
On average, there's an iTunes/eMusic pricing multiple of approximately four: 99 versus 25 cents per track. But for this specific album it's 10, as the average track price in iTunes is nearly $2.50. The eMusic model, though, is absolutely brutal when it comes to albums with lots of short songs. Download Human Amusements At Hourly Rates by Guided By Voices and you'll burn through 32 of your monthly downloads. That's around eight bucks worth of a $9.99 subscription, so in this case the iTunes/eMusic multiple is down to 1.25.
While the Booker T. album makes a great anecdotal example, it's not just a case of a few odd albums causing pricing anomalies. Entire genres of music are affected. Many classic jazz albums feature just a few, relatively long tracks, making them incredible bargains on eMusic. Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins is a mere five tracks, Relaxin' With The Miles Davis Quintet has only six tracks, and so on. (MSN somehow failed to catch this quirk: As with the Booker T. album, you can purchase all of the tracks from these discs for much less than the "buy album" price.)
From a consumer's standpoint, should a Guided By Voices disc cost eight times as much at eMusic as does a Booker T. and the M.G.'s album? And for the artist and record company, should a musician be penalized (or rewarded) for artistic decisions made about song length and the number of tracks on a disc?
If there was an easy answer, I'm thinking it would've been figured out by now. The simplest solution I can imagine is setting a standard price for an album download, then dividing that amount by the number of tracks on the disc to price individual song downloads. Another option would be to charge for music by the minute, using $9.99 for a 45-minute album as a starting point to establish a 22.2 cent charge per minute of digital music. (This model is somewhat in line with how mechanical royalties are paid for both physical CD sales and digital downloads. These royalties go to songwriters and publishers and are separate from artist royalties, which are usually set as a percentage of the wholesale price of a format. As of 1/1/2006, mechanical royalties have increased to 9.1 cents per song for songs of five minute or less, anything longer than that is paid at 1.75 cents per minute.)
But both of these solutions go against the "one price" that Steve Jobs is currently holding the line on at iTunes. And both would create a ton of accounting headaches for the digital stores, basically resulting in an infinite number of royalty rates. Plus, while I doubt most musicians would give it too much thought, it does create economic incentives for artists and record companies that could affect creative decisions. Making the fadeout on a potential hit single a bit longer could mean thousands more in digital royalties for an established artist. On the other hand, an unknown artist might feel pressured to keep songs short, to create a "bargain" price for a track.
You could argue that despite all of these weird pricing elements, consumers are still coming out ahead with digital music sales in that they now have the option now of buying single tracks instead of entire records. Whatever the track price, it's still a major bargain if you only want one or two songs from an album. Which is no doubt one factor behind the major labels' push to lift the 99 cent price ceiling, something that will be covered in part II of this series.
(Correction -- the bit about Apple's occasional deviation from the $9.99 price was added on 1/20.)
Labels: digital music pricing, eMusic, iTunes, MSN music
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January 09, 2006
Why Music Subscriptions Are Like Health Clubsby David Harrell
You've probably heard of the "health club business model." The idea is to sign up as many people as possible for a service that most are unlikely to fully use. A health club would be overrun if all of its members exercised regularly, but since most of us have better intentions than discipline for exercise, gym attendance drops dramatically as New Year's resolutions are broken. And if you never get around to canceling that membership, the result is a "free" income stream for the health club. Gym rats get their money's worth from their memberships, the rest of us are paying for something that we don't use.
Of course, if you think about it, this principle applies to pretty much any business that offers an unlimited commodity or service for a fixed price: Lose money on a few customers and make it back (and more) with the rest. An all-you-can-eat restaurant can tolerate a few gluttons because of most of the dining crowd isn't so ravenous. Similarly, a healthy majority subsidizes the seriously ill within a health insurance plan.
With online music subscriptions, there's no worry that subscribers will overrun a physical location (for the sake of argument let's assume that server capacity is unlimited) and "running out" of downloads obviously isn't an issue. But there is an unavoidable limiting factor -- the fees the service must pay record companies and distributors for each song downloaded or streamed. Here are the details for Rhapsody Unlimited and eMusic, based on the actual per-song payouts that I've seen:
Rhapsody Unlimited allows subscribers unlimited listening to all of the tracks in its catalog for $9.99 a month. From that subscription fee, record companies and distributors are paid one cent for every song streamed. While $9.99 would cover 999 songs a month (ignoring all other business expenses for Rhapsody), a subscriber can easily exceed that number. Assuming an average song length of 4 minutes, you can listen to 15 songs in an hour. It'd take a whopping 67 hours of listening time each month to hear 999 tracks, but that averages out to just over two hours and 15 minutes a day. Factoring in other costs (servers, salaries, marketing, etc.), any customer who regularly listens for an hour or two daily is probably a net loss for Rhapsody.
With eMusic, it's all downloads, not streams. There are three subscription plans, starting at $9.99 a month. Technically, eMusic has a revenue sharing model where a percentage of its subscription revenue paid back to the record companies and distributors. But the revenue share dollars are translated into a per-track royalty each month when paying the record companies. (I'm assuming the revenue sharing amount is simply divided by the total number of downloads for the month.) Due to reporting lag, I only have data for one month of our sales via eMusic. For May 2005, it was 24 cents a track.
Because "royalties" are a fixed percentage of revenue for eMusic, it doesn't really matter how many tracks subscribers download each month. But it is interesting to see that how the royalty-per-track paid for a specific month compares to the subscription prices:
eMusic royalty costs per subscriber, May 2005
| Subscription Plan | Downloads per Month | Maximum payout to record companies |
| $9.99 | 40 | $9.60 |
| $14.99 | 65 | $15.60 |
| $19.99 | 90 | $21.60 |
In this interview, CEO David Pakman says that eMusic subscribers are currently averaging 31 downloads a month. Using the 24-cent-per-track royalty rate from May, that would translate into a revenue sharing amount in excess of 70% of the base subscription price. Given other expenses -- including what appear to be massive customer acquisition costs as eMusic pays its web affiliates a $6 bounty for every new trial user they deliver -- it seems likely that eMusic's current profit margin is razor thin, at best.
I'm wondering if such numbers are the reason behind Apple/Steve Jobs's reluctance to offer a music subscription service. From what I've read, Apple doesn't make much (if any) money on the downloads sold at iTunes, though the service does help Apple sell gazillions of very profitable iPods. But given the devotion of iPod/iTunes customers, maybe Jobs figures they're all a bunch of gym rats that would stream tracks all day with an iTunes subscription service, putting a major dent in Apple's bottom line.
(Note: some changes were made to the eMusic section on 1/17/2006, after I confirmed that eMusic did in fact have a revenue sharing model. Which means that the health club comparison really doesn't hold for eMusic, though I'm still amazed about the percentage of its subscription revenues that eMusic pays to the record companies.)
Labels: Apple, eMusic, health club model, music subscriptions, Rhapsody
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January 04, 2006
Download Rolloversby David Harrell
As a customer, my one small complaint about the eMusic model is the "use-it-or-lose-it" component of your subscription: If you don't use all of your monthly allotment of downloads, they expire. On the flipside, as discussed in my previous post, I think this feature actually benefits the artists distributed by eMusic by encouraging customers to take chances on unknown bands.
Some cell phone plans allow you to rollover your unused minutes each month and it seems like a similar feature would be great for eMusic subscribers. But that's extremely unlikely to happen. Here's why:
It'd be an absolute nightmare for eMusic. Accounting regulations require companies to recognize revenue and expenses at the same time. With subscriptions, even if the money is paid up front, a firm can't recognize that revenue until the product/service is delivered. (This is a simplified explanation based on some details about "deferred subscription liability" that my stock analyst colleague Joe B. kindly shared with me.) If a subscriber piles up hundreds of downloads by rolling over each month's download allotment, eMusic can't recognize the monthly subscription revenue. And, unlike providers of cell phone service, where the liability is primarily an internal expense, eMusic has huge external expenses associated with each download -- the money that must be paid to the record company or distributor for each song. (More on this in an upcoming post!) So don't hold your breath waiting for a rollover option for your subscription.
Labels: eMusic, music subscriptions
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January 03, 2006
eMusic and iTunesby David Harrell
I'm a big fan of eMusic, both as a subscriber and as a musician with tracks available via the service. Businessweek's Byte of the Apple blog recently posted this interview with eMusic CEO David Pakman. Reader comments on the story include some thoughts about song length and pricing (a 30-second song and a 20 minute track both count the same against your monthly download allotment) and the audiences for each service.
I'm saving the variable pricing issue for an upcoming post, but here are a couple of quick thoughts on the eMusic audience:
1. Self selection -- because eMusic doesn't carry any current major label releases, anyone who subscribes to eMusic is, by default, someone receptive to music outside the mainstream.
2. Use it or lose it -- your download allotment at eMusic expires each month, whether or not you download anything. So by the end of the month, subscribers are very inclined to take a gamble on an unknown artist.
Hence, indie bands should probably expect more sales from eMusic than iTunes. My own band has two albums available via iTunes and one (the first) currently available at eMusic. Because of reporting lag, I've only seen one month of data for our eMusic sales, but it was a good one. Though Apple pays out more per track to record companies and distributors than eMusic (70 cents vs. 24 cents), I expect we'll make more in the long run from eMusic.
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The Digital Pricing Conundrum series:
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
THE LAYAWAYS
Out Now -- "Maybe Next Year" -- The New Holiday Album:
"This is a sweet treat, deliciously musical without being overbaked for mass media consumption." -- Hyperbolium
"Perfect listening to accompany whatever holiday preparations you may be making today." -- Bag of Songs
O Christmas Tree - free mp3 lyrics and song details
Away In A Manger - free mp3
Download from eMusic, iTunes, Amazon MP3, or Bandcamp. Listen to free streams at Last.fm.
"...about as melodic and hooky as indie pop can get." -- Absolute Powerpop
"Their laid-back, '60s era sounds are absolutely delightening." -- 3hive
"...melodic, garage-influenced shoegaze." -- RCRD LBL
Where The Conversation Ends - free mp3
January - free mp3
Keep It To Yourself - free mp3
Download from eMusic, iTunes, Amazon MP3, or CD Baby, stream it at Last.fm or Napster.
"The Layaways make fine indie pop. Hushed vocals interweave with understated buzzing guitars. The whole LP is a revelation from the start." -- Lost Music
"Catchy Guided by Voices-like rockers who lay it on sweetly and sincerely, just like Lionel Richie." -- WRUV Radio
Silence - free mp3 lyrics and song details
The Long Night - free mp3
Download from eMusic, Amazon MP3, or iTunes, stream it at Last.fm, Napster, or Rhapsody.
"These are songs that you want to take home with you, curl up with, hold them close -- and pray that they are still with you when you wake up." -- The Big Takeover
Let Me In - free mp3
Ocean Blue - free mp3
Download from eMusic, Amazon MP3, or iTunes, stream it at Last.fm, Napster, or Rhapsody.
More Layaways downloads:
the layaways website