Self-determined pricing October 15, 2007
Posted by JSM in Music.add a comment
“Radiohead killed the record label”
Radiohead, with the release of their new CD In Rainbows have made a bold statement about the music industry and the pricing of music. Their fans have the ability to buy the CD at whatever price the deem to be appropriate. So far the average price being paid for the downloads, now exceeding 1.2 million, is $8.00 CDN. That makes the total sales so far $960,000. Not a bad test run of the waters.
This coming at the same time as a huge victory in the courts for the record labels. The Recording Industry of America and six labels successfully sued a single-mother to the tune of $220,000 for sharing 24 songs online. A price of $9200 per song.
Finally, Issa (formerly Jane Siberry) released her music with what she called “self-determined pricing” much like Radiohead, where the buyer could set the price, if they felt it was worthy of paying for. She offered four choices:
Free
Pay Now
Pay later
Standard price
You can read her open letter to her fans here:
https://www.sheeba.ca/store/letterSDP.php
And check out her new website:
Right now a few artists are taking the effort to reward their fans for loyalty and trust them to pay for the music they appreciate. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a revolution against overpriced CDs and the beginning of as Issa put it, allowing us to “decide what feels right to your gut.”
Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize October 12, 2007
Posted by JSM in Real world.add a comment
Former US Vice President Al Gore is the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He has said that he will donate his share of the $1.5 million US prize money that accompanies it to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Maybe it’s just me, but what does crusading for climate change have to do with peace? I guess it is the only category that his contributions could possibly fall under, but I wonder how much of this choice was of a political nature and an attempt to legitimize speculative science. Just me being cynical.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe climate control and global warming are things that we need to pay attention to, but the science he is pushing is very much based on speculation. Here’s an interesting article on National Geographic’s site, which looks at the science.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-global-warming.html
Free Burma October 4, 2007
Posted by JSM in Real world.comments closed
I have never considered myself to be much of a political activist, but after watching the news for the past few days, I decided I had to post this link.
