How elastic is the music demand?
<rant>
Common market theory tells us, that price is a function of supply and demand. In case of digital goods the theory is flawed since one digital good (in the limits of bandwidth) is in unlimited supply. So the ability to price is bound to stimulation of demand. Or even better: if you can fix the demand you can play with the price at will (Just ask your next drug dealer about Junkies' insensitivity to the price of their next shot - they simply have to have it).
The music industry seems to believe, that their customers are junkies and need their daily shot. And weeding out (pun intended) any alternative supply guarantees pricing power. I can't imagine no other set of mind, seeing how the industry is treating their customers as criminals.
What could, and in my opinion will happen: slipping quality of music offerings paired with a growing number of people being p****d off by the industries attitude will send sales south leading to more panic in the industries execs' offices, leading to more customer harassment, leading to..,, you get the idea. In a country where copyright violation by file sharing carries the same sentence as man slaughter there is a serious lack of perspective or a serious warp in the perspective of the legal system.
Copyright first and foremost is a private protection right, dragging it into criminal law is bad (there are enough other provisions to punish for *profiting* from Copyright violations), as is DRM.
And I'll demonstrate that with my purse strings being closed for music purchases until it is resolved.
</rant>
Common market theory tells us, that price is a function of supply and demand. In case of digital goods the theory is flawed since one digital good (in the limits of bandwidth) is in unlimited supply. So the ability to price is bound to stimulation of demand. Or even better: if you can fix the demand you can play with the price at will (Just ask your next drug dealer about Junkies' insensitivity to the price of their next shot - they simply have to have it).
The music industry seems to believe, that their customers are junkies and need their daily shot. And weeding out (pun intended) any alternative supply guarantees pricing power. I can't imagine no other set of mind, seeing how the industry is treating their customers as criminals.
What could, and in my opinion will happen: slipping quality of music offerings paired with a growing number of people being p****d off by the industries attitude will send sales south leading to more panic in the industries execs' offices, leading to more customer harassment, leading to..,, you get the idea. In a country where copyright violation by file sharing carries the same sentence as man slaughter there is a serious lack of perspective or a serious warp in the perspective of the legal system.
Copyright first and foremost is a private protection right, dragging it into criminal law is bad (there are enough other provisions to punish for *profiting* from Copyright violations), as is DRM.
And I'll demonstrate that with my purse strings being closed for music purchases until it is resolved.
</rant>
Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 05 April 2006 | Comments (1) | categories: After hours