Monday, October 11

indie online

A few days ago I wrote about how in online music stores, record labels get a huge amount of the profits, with those who run the store taking a fairly small share. One of my friends said she doesn't like the online music stores because they only have the pop schlock, and none of the indy bands whose albums you can find on limewire or whatever. But she felt guilty about stealing the music, so she's gone back to just buying cds.

But what if the indy labels started their own online music stores? Apparently the online stores don't cost too much too run—although this might only be true if they're selling a big volume: the economy of scale.

I buy a lot of albums in large part because of the label they're on, so by

I know of at least one indy label, Warp Records, which does mostly electronic and a little rap, sells its music online. It's $1.35 a song, but I think it's expensive because they're in the UK where music costs more in general. (Here in Geneva, regular CDs are the equivalent of a $24 sticker price, and I've heard it's similar in the UK.)

Warp's store is actually pretty nice because you can listen to the whole song. They tried to stop pirating off their store by lowering the quality and putting breaks in the song, so every 30 sec you have to push a button again to keep listening to it. But especially with electronic music, where the songs can be long and often start slow, it's nice to hear the whole piece.

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