Should C64Audio.com try the "Radiohead" model?

[Chris Abbott]

Can't you set up some kind of excel sheet that would calculate the royalties for such sales? Or better: integrate the royalty calculation into the shop.

It is integrated, and works pretty much as you describe: it does indeed need a new meta-object ("bundle"), which means infrastructural change.

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- Make the cart smart enough to recognise a full bundle in the cart, and have it substract a certain amount from each CD price
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That's an "ARGH!" from me: not because it's impossible or anything, but because I can see the code in my head and it gave me an allergic reaction (on add product, select bundles which contain product, see if any bundle is complete, if so, replace CDs with bundle). If we have bundles as separate buttons would that be worth it?

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- Set up tables for royalty receivers, and a relation table between those and the products where you store the percentage that is to be granted from the actual sales price. That is to be added to the royalty receiver's table where you could also store how much you actually paid them, so you always have a balance overview.
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The system actually does keep a running total.

The bundles did OK, and it's an idea that's probably worth re-introducing now the potential for the code is there.

So, all good ideas. I'm thinking based on this thread that the "choose your own price" model may not work as intended, and opinions seem to be split. The more vehement gut feelings seem to be against it.

To cover a couple of other miscellaneous points, I've never bought that people need to hear a whole CD to work out whether they like it or not. When you've got 10-11 minutes of stuff from a CD in high quality preview, that's plenty enough.

And we've now come to a situation where we can't guarantee sales success for Rob Hubbard or Instant Remedy, which is something I hoped I'd never see. Mind you, this thread has made clear there are global factors at work here as well which we're not independent from which are hurting musicians generally: ironically a flood of the professional sounding mediocre, as much as anything else... kind of like goods from China are redefining the standard of workmanship/lifespan you should/shouldn't expect from consumer goods...

You can see similar factors at work in the mobile phone, internet and media industries: even supposedly sane companies are bent in giving away as much as possible: usually the big companies, or the mythical "community of developers" (who are great at creating systems, but terrible at maintaining them). The collateral damage is the small fry on the edge no one cares about, trying to innovate but being continually kneecapped.

It's never been easier to create, but it's never been harder to earn by creating.

Chris

[Analog-X64]

The U.K. is probably the biggest C64audio Market, but I thinking Globally there has to be other markets that can be broken into.. Like Japan!!! There has to be a good Electronic type Music Following in Japan and even U.S. and Canada, I cant be the only one in North America who loves what is available on c64audio.com.

I like LMans suggestion of Bundles.

[Chris Abbott]

As a general rule, the Japanese don't get out much, especially to English sites, even though I take JCB (the card they all use out there). Plus they've got enough videogame music from their consoles and the C64 didn't make much of an impression at the time. There are exceptions, obviously.

Chris

[Tonka]

There's plenty of talent at KWED and C64audio. Unfortunately, there's never been any truly 'marketable' talent, as far as I can tell. Maybe this is why people aren't listening to C64 inspired beats in their millions...

Example: Elvis 'stole' the black man's blues and the white man's country music (allegedly), packaged 'em up with some good looks, good moves and an incredible amount of style. He was then propelled further than either of the said musical styles could have gone had they continued down their own linear routes.

And no - I DON'T like Elvis...

We have enough talent to make C64 music marketable, but we also desperately need a face in order to sell it and it needs to be fused with current popular music.

JMHO

[Instant Remedy]

I don't know what is the thing with the japaneese people, console music (at least NES) sucked 90% of the time. 10% was acceptable. As a source of music to listen to, not necessarily as an ingredient in a game. I have NEVER played a game on a console just to hear the music. For example Zelda 1, where the main tune which goes on forever is a loop of about 30 secs of music.
That doesn't get boring Well done music-guy
Castlevania was way better with different music for each level, and those were at least 1 min+ of music.

Besides, the NES had a really poor sound-chip to play with compared to the SID. So thin and uniteresting.
They must like it because of the nostalgia.

[Tonka]

Yeah - I think a lot of NES musicians just found the limitations if the chip too much and just didn't bother (though this is no excuse when you consider what Follin and Daglish did with the Spectrum 1 channel beeper chip)!

The Sega stuff was a lot better. Yuzo Koshiro's Streets of Rage stuff was (and still is) absolutely stunning for a 16 bit computer game.

[merman]

I can't see it working as a general business model for c64audio. However, it might suit the older releases once they have gone out of print.

I'm one of those people who still like to have a physical product when I buy music, so if new CDs were to emerge, I would still pay full price or donate more than the minimum.

[Reyn]

To Reyn's argument: Many of the people who downloaded the Radiohead album wouldn't have bought it anyway but would have illegally downloaded it via donkey or torrent. So if let's say 10 times as many people legally purchase the album and only 30% of them decide to pay, then you still have 3 times as many paying customers as you would have had with the standard model. => Radiohead model = good model

This sounds more like 'safe whatever we can before the ship sinks and be happy with whatever you could save in the end'. Ideally 100% of those people would buy the album, at least the ones that would normally buy the physical product. I know lots of people just download it for the actual 'having'. But I would be very naïve to think that we can go back to the way it was before downloading really took off and I almost feel old fashioned saying that what everybody is doing is 'plain stealing' of someone else's property. Which is pretty silly, though it's the truth..

But there is more. Because of the big companies screwing up in the '80's and '90's we now also sit on the blisters. In that period and also before, music was the most hip thing and everybody was into music. The companies got cocky and were filling their pockets with one crappy productions after the other knowing it would sell anyway. That was not a good thing for the music as an art-form and music became something more common that was always there. Now music as an 'just ears'-form is not interesting for the youth anymore and they rather spend their money on their mobile or on games, or whatever multimedia is hip at the moment. But during this period music lost its "ART"-tag and it got 'cheap'. So it's definitely not just the downloading, but also the lack of interest of the people in general.

As I said before, we're in a really 'interesting' moment in time and nobody will know what the future will bring. How can we make music ART again? Musically we have been stuck for a long period of time. Already Wagner did pretty much found out what was possible with our 'tonal' music and set most boundaries already back then. We are still stuck in this "three and a half minute, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus"-thing since Elvis and the Beatles. That's like more then 50 years pretty much of the same. And also other related avant-garde styles and dance for that matter are repeating themselves and will be heading a dead-end soon. And contemporary music lost it in the '60's already. Come on, there was more progression between Mozart and Beethoven and they even met each other. And I don't get it, we now live in this age of communication and everything is for the grabbing. When will this new prodigy arise? So the biggest question of all would be: What's next?......

Maybe music as an art form should go back to the same level as other forms of art. Face it, music hasn't been art since the '70's, but some kind of sweets on the side. And maybe it should go really back to an art-form and people would just enjoy musical experiences that would be sponsored or subsidized by the government like the opera. And frankly, the internet is not helping either. There's sooooo much music on the globe but it does not really have a new direction. It's so easy now to power up a PC and make something without any musical background with Garageband and Reason or even with sequencers like Cubase or Logic. The output at the moment is enormous and that also makes the internet very foggy and hard to find the new real deal or a new direction. And if the people aren't that picky in what they wanna hear, it's going to be a hard struggle.

Isn't this a great time? Aren't you also curious what's going to happen next? I know for people like Chris, and maybe also for me when I can't pay my bills anymore, it can be tough. Though I think we are right now in a transition period and I think we can really tell what's going to happen when data/internet/music/video will run out of the tap like water does now, unlimited. Maybe get rid of the copyright, make everything free. Then everything will be open and endless, and who has the courage THEN to set new boundaries?............

Reyn.

[Razmo]

Don't know if I should participate in threads like these anymore, but I'll give it a punch anyhow:

I don't feel your prices are wrong or too high Chris... I believe the problem is that you keep trying to figure out how to make people who get the music by piracy interrested in buying it legaly to increase your customer base... now I personaly don't think this will happen cause those types of people WANT it for free... they do not want to pay for it no matter how low the prices are... I think you should invest some more time on those people who actually buy from your store, and also try to get the attention of more of this type of people to your site by advertising where these people are (and no... not all potential customers are aware of the scene, so don't think you can just put an add up at RKO, Remix64 or Slay Radio).

What I still believe is, that you should focus more on turning your eyes against those that DO want to buy from C64audio.com ... forget the pirates, they're not worth it... If this group of pay-willing people are big enough for C64audio to run properly, I cannot say... that's for you to find out.

One suggestion: Have you adds out on other chip-tune like sites? ... there must be other sites with music related to this scene that has more willing customers? ... have you had a look at the community at http://www.spacesynth.net ? ... this is a scene devoted to creation of synth music and old spacesynth like music (Koto, Laserdance)... I've seen people there discussing C64 remixes as well...

[LMan]

Valid point by Razmo.

[Steve B]

one of the first things i did when i got a pc and connected to the interweb back in '97 was bung a search in for "c64 music".
one of the first hits (if not the first) was C64Audio.com
i saw Back in Time and thought, "what the hell. its only a tenner." (christ, i'm glad i did!!)

bung a search into Google now for "c64 music".
go on.
i have Google set to display the first 100 hits.
c64audio.com is not on the first page!

put a search in for "commodore 64 music" and C64Audio.com is the 96th hit !!

how is this ??

i bet it cant help.

[Chris Abbott]

one of the first things i did when i got a pc and connected to the interweb back in '97 was bung a search in for "c64 music".
one of the first hits (if not the first) was C64Audio.com
i saw Back in Time and thought, "what the hell. its only a tenner." (christ, i'm glad i did!!)

bung a search into Google now for "c64 music".
go on.
i have Google set to display the first 100 hits.
c64audio.com is not on the first page!

put a search in for "commodore 64 music" and C64Audio.com is the 96th hit !!

how is this ??

i bet it cant help.

Maybe Google is against me since I unsuccessfully applied for an adwords account and they insisted I send them copies of every single contract for every single tune I was selling online, and I refused, telling them they could check up with PPL, MCPS/PRS and STIM that I was a proper record label. I wouldn't put it past them. I wasn't aware it was this bad, though.

Chris

[Chris Abbott]

I've made some changes to the front page. Let's see what happens.

Chris

[Vosla]

That said let's spam Google with C64Audio.com queries to get more hits...

[Razmo]

...now I just wondered: How many active sceners are there here on R64? ... many accounts must be "dead" ones or rarely used ones?... I'd really like to know how many members is here regularely?

At the same time, how many visitors does RKO have in realation to this number?

I'm just wondering how many of those that use RKO, also are an active part of the scene, or just "leechers" that are uninterrested in the scene in general.