Within a couple of days of each other, Sony BMG and Universal Music have made announcements which makes you wonder if they actually understand this whole Interwebthingy.
Both companies will be releasing the very cleverly named ‘Ringle’ CD which will retail at $6 in the US. UK pricing is unconfirmed, but recent examples suggest that companies refuse to see the Internet as a good reason to standardise pricing globally. Anyway, for this you get your single, a remix, and a ringtone.
Will it work ? Well, to get the ringtone on your phone you’ll presumably need to use your PC. That’s the same PC which can download the song for free and then turn it into a ringtone, also for free. So there might be a problem there. And someone should probably point out that iTunes has just released its Ringtones store. Oh, and that ringtone sales are in decline. And that the market’s saturated.
Universal are also considering moving ahead with their ‘TotalMusic’ plan. The idea behind this is basically to charge every one of an ISP’s (and mobile carrier’s) customers a flat monthly fee to exchange files using P2P programs. Whether they actually do it or not. So, for example, your £25/month bill becomes £35/month, but your P2P sharing becomes ‘legal’.
Whilst a scheme like this would generate revenue for the labels, the likelyhood of it happening are slim to none. It’s based on the principle you can force users to pay for something they can either buy elsewhere when they want it or get for free – and whether they share music files or not. And that’s before even thinking about the headache of negotiating deals between all the ISPs and all the record labels.
You have to assume that companies of this size have departments dedicated to combating the loss of revenue due to ‘Internet-related’ activity. Is this really what they come up with ?
Filed under: Tech
