This made me try to calculate something. If you're a radio station and want to allow your listeners to choose each song (in effect what you're saying), what would be the cost per song listened? In the classic model it's very small, but this is only because the radio station pays per song bought, not per song listened. In the new model, the number of used songs would be much greater. How much exactly? This would probably depend on how many songs are chosen from the long tail.

Anyways, what is clear is that the difference between a bought song (20-100c) and a listened song (0.0???c) is only a difference in freedom to choose. Sooner or later the two must come to a compromise.

Broadcast licensing music (at the broad level that you need for a radio station) is a non-intuitive thing, and hasn't really adapted to the modern broadcast model. If you purchase a "radio" license you can play anything, but only if you follow certain conditions - like making it difficult to make perfect copies, allowing minimal amounts of fast-forwarding, and not explicitly allowing the listener to pick songs (that's why Pandora does/did all that - not just for kicks).

If you want a license that allows user choice - as in allowing you to specify which song you want to hear and then have it stream directly - it costs a hell of a lot more in licensing. Having said that, this calculation is applicable for ASCAP licensing; if you were willing to get access to less (for example, only from a specific label), you could probably get a slightly better deal.

Last I checed a few years ago seting up a radio station to play songs over the radio costs 7c per user per song. So ~ 8 * 60 / 5 * 7 * 30 / 100 = 201$ / month for 8 hours a day.

However, change that to 0.7c per song and it's reasonable.

But, that's just a point of negotiation nobody actually pays that much. So finding the actual costs is rather hard.

Isn't this the cost per song played? If you have 1000 listeners the cost per user per song is 0.007c.

But if you go and try the "request" approach, then you have 1000 users requesting god knows how many songs. The trick is to manage to pay about as much as before (0.007c), but let each user choose what to listen instead of broadcasting the same song. Problem is, if two users want the same song, but 10 seconds one after the other, will you pay 7 cents or 14?

The difference is that if you publish a playlist your not a radio station and so have to pay big royalties.

I've thought this for a while. I would definitely pay a monthly fee for an all you can eat iTunes plan. Or something tiered. $100/month for all you can download? They'd have my money. Of course I'm not sure of the likelihood of that ever happening.

There's a nice idea there. We could pay a monthly fee(that goes to the artists) for a high quality bittorrent tracker. Sort of like the radios pay. I'd pay 40%/year there.

Who wants to make a legal oink?

Definitely. I already pay to watch netflix over my xbox 360, and I think people would be very open to this if they could ditch cable...I think that's the problem.

I'd happily pay $20 a month for all my food, but in reality it takes something like $500 to fill me up.

I'm being a pedantic dick by pointing out that I can't give you my piece of fruit and still have it for myself, right? That there are real costs associated with storing and transporting food, and that the production cost of food scales with the number of people who want to eat, right? I mean, it's kind of an assholish thing to actually write this out, as if you didn't already know it, right?

Have you ever made a feature film? The one we're making has cost us $50k so far and we've not even got a master yet, even with most people working for points not hard $.

The catering alone was $2k. Fruit isn't free.

But it's a one time production cost. Once its made, copies are free. Distribution is getting to be near free. It's fundamentally different from food.

What, exactly, are you hoping to get paid for? I don't mean that sarcastically, I really want to know. In an economic sense, what value are you providing? Entertainment has always made its money in one of four ways: by limiting access (theaters, concert halls), by selling physical objects (books, cds, paintings), by draping it in ads, or by pure patronage.

You've still got 3 out 4, and yet you're on here bitching just because someone told you how much money they're willing to pay you for one form of content delivery.

The exact same argument can be made for software, and anything else you can do on the computer. A few people are happy to create things for free, but those same people would generally prefer to be able to make a living doing what they love.

I'm not expecting this to be new to anyone here, as most of these arguments have been on the internet for years now.

Where was I "bitching"? One time production costs are still costs.

We're hoping to be recompensed for our time and effort and recoup our costs plus some profit to invest in the next film. It's how all business works.

$5 a month is a very low number. I work in a cinema, your $10 to see a film just about covers cost.

Well if there was a bittorrent for food, that would be great for you.