Not really because the value of the CD is in the content creation side, not the production of a plastic CD, case or paper slieve.
We should assume 90% of a CD cost is not manufacturing costs. Shipping will vary, but it's not that much easier. It probably costs less than a dollar to make and ship a CD.
You're paying for the record labels executive wages, the sound producers wages, the artists wages and so on so forth. The mediem it's delivered doesn't directly matter that much in this case.. they are both cheap.
It might be that running a CD/DVD creation plant actually costs a lot less than running a music service with all the modern demands and datacenter backends. CDs you just make and ship and they are never again your problem.. as the manufacturer or vendor. It's pretty much a one way deal.
The real difference is competition. The internet created a much more competitive marketplace for music and that's why albums can be had for a bit less than 30 years ago, but not really a lot less and record companies are still the ones getting the lions share, so all in all very little has changed other than for a couple decades user got back at the record companies for overcharging them and many wlll keep doing that because of silly licensing agreements that limit what Goole, Spotify and Apple can really do.
It's sad, but the record industry is sabotaging itself still. I'd just easier to pirate music than it is to use their backward desitgned apps that are made to sell music not to listen to music. This is probably why combining your music player and marketplace are a really really bad idea. It creates this Amazon like atmosphere where every piece of code checks to figure out how it might be able to sell you something.
I appreciate the effort when reccommendation engines work, but to ignore the UI and not really seem to care about users endless complaints and people LITERALLY BEGGING for tiny tiny UI features for 4 years and not getting ANYTHING.
It's not a platform I want to be part of. No offense though.. Apple and Google are even worse UI wise. It has a lot to do with licensing costs and pressure to make money trumping user needs. Until these services wise up they are not going to get the level of subscriptions they want.
Spotify doesn't make much money on streaming and nobody really does. It's a low sum game just to lock people into various platforms and deny them features to try to sell them content.
As soon as someone puts out a better app people are going to mass switch and leave you all holding the license agreement. The problem with streaming like this is there is no real incentive to stay. If you don't improve the UI then there is no user loyalty really. Also.. the playlists really aren't that good.
If I had a real app to make playlsts I could make top dozens of 'top' Sptoify playlists in a day. I normally put together playlists with like 1000 good songs, not like 100. I would get tired of such a short playlist... shuffle isn't magic unless you have the memory of a goldfish.
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random