DEAR LAZYWEBS

[ewt]

Because y'all are far more likely to answer questions if they're in a little tickybox, I bring you:

[Poll #894173]



Do feel free to pass this one on. More data = for teh win.

DOH. Forgot to put EUR in the pricing one, and I can't go back and edit the poll. Meh.

Comments

[velvetpurrs.livejournal.com]

If you've not already seen it, go check out www.magnatune.com (or magnatunes.com, can't remember). They do something very similar to what you're proposing, have been very successful at it, and may give you some good ideas on pricing too.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I have seen it, though what I'm doing is not quite the same. Thanks for the link. :)

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

Instead of getting a cd then I for one would be more then happy to pay the same amount of money (less postage) and just download the tracks CD quality (FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net) springs to mind here) - it's what I do with CDs I buy anyway, and wouldn't require manual burning/postage/packing on your part. Only this would take up space (50-70% of the original PCM). This would also increase the amount of bandwidth used...

This could also be made an option - with a suitable extra fee? - for people that want a CD with art/case/sheet music/etc but want their music now not when the CD goes *thunk* on their doormat, the CD then being a useful backup device and allows the music to be played on devices that accept CDs but not audio files without the user burning a disk themselves.

I'm sure someone's mentioned (and probably done) this already but I have no real idea how popular it might be with users in general.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I have thought about this a bit but was unsure of suitable formats - thank you for the link.

What is a PCM?

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

How audio is stored within (most) WAV files and on a CD - uncompressed raw audio, basically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation if you want to read more...

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Many thanks.

I have so much to learn with this project. It is stretching my brain in many many directions!

[arkady.livejournal.com]

My answer on the "participation" bit is in part due to the fact that I'm not sure I will have the time to be able to commit to something like this - whilst I do have demos of my own work, they are very rough and ready and I certainly don't want them being released, but I am unlikely to be free to record proper versions for quite some time to come - and to be honest, I would prefer to be paid for my work.

The stuff I write is folk-based which means anything I perform could well end up being performed by other folk artists and I won't see a penny from those performances anyway, so I'd really rather not find myself in a position of being completely out of pocket for recording expenses. So I'm afraid no, I shall not be releasing my work under any form of creative commons license any time in the near future.

I'm afraid I don't agree with the idea that music should be completely free - composers deserve to be paid for their work the same as anyone else.

[pfy.livejournal.com]

If I hear music I like in MP3 format, I buy a copy if one is conveniently available at a reasonable price. If it's something that's no longer available new, for example, I'll buy it if I happen to see it on a second-hand CD stall, but I can't usually be bothered to faff around with Ebay. A few of my MP3s are things that I'll likely never be able to buy in any format (for example, I have one song from a limited-edition CD that was sold only to members of the band's fan club). 'Reasonable price' is largely determined by how much I enjoy the music and how much I'm likely to enjoy anything else that happens to be on the same CD.

Skills: I can write HTML and Javascript, but my aesthetic abilities are iffy when it comes to web design, so maybe someone else should handle that bit. I can write CGI scripts in a variety of languages, and can do Linux/Apache/MySQL admin stuff reasonably competently, so I'd probably be best at back-end programming/sysadmin stuff.

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

I know what you're on about, but it's hard to tell if it's from the writing because you've explained it personally so many times.

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I'd go for mix CDs. I'm lazy and like it when other people think about what ought to go together on a CD for me.

Will it be the sort of free license where I can download all the music and offer it on my website?

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Will it be the sort of free license where I can download all the music and offer it on my website?

As long as you don't charge money for it, this should be okay. I think. I want to offer people different levels of CC license, so it's possible that some might say 'listen but don't re-distribute', or 're-distribute but only with attribution' or something.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I *think* I get what you're doing, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm assuming:
You're looking at a site with free music on, but where people can pay for CDs/special access etc
This will primarily be 'western art music' as opposed to folk/popular, from the kind of terms you've been using

Is that correct?

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Oh, and as far as buying stuff that I get as MP3s...
Most of the stuff I listen to on MP3 I won't buy the CD of, because I simply don't have enough money. But I do also pay for MP3s (I have the maximum membership level on emusic), and I am FAR more likely to buy an album or go to a gig by someone whose music I've previously downloaded than otherwise.

[qadira.livejournal.com]

regarding question about buying copy of mp3s I hear & like.

If it's posted free, I probably won't, because I already own a lot of music and I'd rather use my limited fun-money for other things.

If I really like the artist, I'll probably try to buy a copy of the album in a format that allows that artist to collect their royalties. If I am ambivalent about the artist, I probably won't bother.

Basically, I am at a point where I have plenty of music I enjoy listening to, so there's seldom a burning drive to acquire more. If it's there free, I'll add it to my collection unless I actively dislike it, simply because I have packrat/magpie tendencies and find it hard to resist Acquiring More Shiny!

So, if I like it, I will listen to it, and it seems honorable to pay for the stuff I actually listen to. If I don't like it, I don't listen to it, and it might as well not even be on the machine. That's pretty much how all of us sharing the music directory at home feel about it, so most everything has been purchased at some point. heh.

[hennes.livejournal.com]

If I hear music I like in mp3 format, I usually buy a copy:
Depends on the circumstances (please explain in comments)

for me this depends or several factors:

• Just how much do I like the music?
  
• Are there just one or two nice songs on the CD, or is the entire CD filled with music that I like? (Obviously being able to choose which songs go on a CD has a lot of influence here).
  
• Can I rip the CD to a format that I will actually use?
  (Or can I already download it in that format? In which case I wouldn't mind paying for the music (lossless quality) and I would not require a physical medium).
  bandwith might be a problem with this though.
  
• How long will the CD last?
  This last point is because there is a large difference between burned CDs. Some last only a year before becoming unreabable, while others seem just as good as pressed CDs. Personally the CD is just my backup in case I loose my ripped music, so this is important to me.
  

[kake]

Good point about how long the CD lasts. Part of my uncertainty about buying music in mp3 format is that I know I suck at keeping backups, and I don't really want to shell out for something that I know I'm going to lose at some point, without being certain that I'll be able to get another copy without having to pay for it all over again.

I buy a fair number of ebooks from fictionwise.com because they let you download things you've bought as many times as you like - and also, I've been a customer of theirs for years and I'm confident they're not just going to up and disappear. Oh, yes, I also like their Micropay system - they sell a lot of things which are too cheap for it to be worth their while making a credit/debit card transaction for, so they let you buy Micropay credit in blocks of US$5 at a time, and then you can use that to buy a 99 cent book here, a 99 cent book there, etc.