# Mobile Music Apps - Who Subscribes?



## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Reading an article in Rolling Stone just now and they are ranting on about the future is digital music. Now I guess I am a bit behind the times because I was unaware that you can now subscribe to one of several services that offer unlimited downloads for a set price per month. Most all of these are $9.99 per month that they are featuring. 

Who currently subscribes to one of these services? Are they good? Is it the future?


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2010)

I wouldn't call it new. I've been an eMusic.com subscriber for some 5-6 years now. Lately I haven't been using my monthly allotment. Really wish they'd let me roll unused downloads over...

I guess you could say I like it. I keep the subscription active.


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## Peter (Mar 25, 2008)

It's not that we're behind the times, it's that we're from a generation where for example almost everyone on this board has bought or owned a CD at some point. Think about the next generation of kids who are starting to consume media in the next 5 years - many will only ever own digital albums/movies/books etc.


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## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

iaresee said:


> I wouldn't call it new. I've been an eMusic.com subscriber for some 5-6 years now. Lately I haven't been using my monthly allotment. Really wish they'd let me roll unused downloads over...
> 
> I guess you could say I like it. I keep the subscription active.


I thought about it Ian, how is the selection?


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2010)

Starbuck said:


> I thought about it Ian, how is the selection?


Two years ago I would have said outstanding, and I guess in some respects it still is, but in the past 12-18 months there hasn't been enough new stuff coming in that's piqued my interests enough for me to download my purchased allotment every month and I've burned through all the old back catalog stuff I was after. But for years it was kid-in-a-candy-shop. I'd blow through my 25 downloads as soon as they became available and have to keep a future download queue going so I'd remember what I wanted come next month. They have labels I really like like Arts & Crafts and Darla.

I'd say to anyone interested: you'll definitely get full value from it for the first year. No doubt about that. They have a _lot_ of music.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I realize I could google this myself, but does anyone know how the subscription fee breaks-down into royalties for the artist? Paying $15 for a CD or $9.99 for a download from iTunes makes sense, because it goes directly to what you downloaded, but how does $9.99 get divvied up if you're downloading several different artists' work? Is it a straight % of what you're paying, or do the download companies just kick a lump sum to the artist to have access to their work?


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

The 4 different companies that they were highlighting in the RS article had millions of songs. The lowest one had 9 million songs to choose from. But I guess where I am coming from is the $9.99 monthly fee. Does anyone listen to music enough and have that much of a hunger for constant new listening to make it worth it. I mean, I have sirius radio and they mix it up for me, costs around the same amount.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2010)

hollowbody said:


> I realize I could google this myself, but does anyone know how the subscription fee breaks-down into royalties for the artist? Paying $15 for a CD or $9.99 for a download from iTunes makes sense, because it goes directly to what you downloaded, but how does $9.99 get divvied up if you're downloading several different artists' work? Is it a straight % of what you're paying, or do the download companies just kick a lump sum to the artist to have access to their work?


Here's how eMusic.com pays out: Does eMusic's Math Work For Labels? - hypebot -- in most cases payouts are made to labels, who are the publishers and the license owners of the materials. How those payments are transferred to the artists from there depends very much on their contract. I doubt the artist is seeing 60% of the iTunes track purchase cost. More likely it's <30% as the label takes its cut.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2010)

GuitarsCanada said:


> The 4 different companies that they were highlighting in the RS article had millions of songs. The lowest one had 9 million songs to choose from. But I guess where I am coming from is the $9.99 monthly fee. Does anyone listen to music enough and have that much of a hunger for constant new listening to make it worth it. I mean, I have sirius radio and they mix it up for me, costs around the same amount.


For $13/month I only get to download 24 tracks. So total tracks available doesn't matter. 

I listen to a lot of internet radio these days, find new artists that way, and then go explore their catalog through eMusic.com.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

iaresee said:


> Here's how eMusic.com pays out: Does eMusic's Math Work For Labels? - hypebot -- in most cases payouts are made to labels, who are the publishers and the license owners of the materials. How those payments are transferred to the artists from there depends very much on their contract. I doubt the artist is seeing 60% of the iTunes track purchase cost. More likely it's <30% as the label takes its cut.


wow, that article was an eye-opener. the amounts are tiny! I wonder if some artists even see any money at all from online sales, or if their contracts only include hard-copy sales.

I wonder if artists get screwed like David Prowse has by Lucasfilm. I don't really know enough about artist's contracts or how they're set up, but do they make money on a per-sale basis or on a gross/net profit basis?


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2010)

hollowbody said:


> wow, that article was an eye-opener. the amounts are tiny! I wonder if some artists even see any money at all from online sales, or if their contracts only include hard-copy sales.


Going only on what I read in 'Everything you always wanted to know about the music business..' and what I saw in contracts offered to me circa 2003 or so the standard contract didn't pay out much for non-traditional sales or streaming. No doubt that's changing now that iTunes and other streaming or encoded-delivery methods are seriously big outlets for media. But it's definitely a long way from *all* the revenue given to the label when a sale is made through one of these venues.



> I don't really know enough about artist's contracts or how they're set up, but do they make money on a per-sale basis or on a gross/net profit basis?


It's all going to depend. But bottom line: unless you're an independent artist, with no label at all, you're not going to see 100% of the payout from online sales and you won't see a dime of it until all your expenses have been recouped by the label at your royalty rate. So if your online sales royalty rate is 1% and you owe the label $10,000 for recording expenses and every track sold through iTunes nets $0.50 then you won't start seeing royalty cheques for these sales until you've sold

10000 - ((0.50 x 0.01) x S) = 0
S = 10000/(0.50 x 0.01)
S = 2,000,000

That's right: 2 million copies of that track. That's assuming your only outlet for sales is online. And it's just the one single. It's a little better if you're selling the album for $9.99 online and the revenu is $5/sale instead of $0.50...

10000 - ((5 x 0.01) x S) = 0
S = 10000/(5 x 0.01)
S = 200,000

Only 200,000 copies of your album need to sell now before you've paid off your debt to the record company and start making $1/album sale! Wheeeeee!

In the interim the record company has made:

(200000 * $5) - $10,000 = $990,000

Tidy.


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## torndownunit (May 14, 2006)

I definitely want to use a subscription service, but I don't think any of them are 'there yet'. Especially not in Canada anyway. I think Pandora is leading the way, and we can't get it here by legit means. 

We also lag behind in subscription video services. It's cool that Netflix is finally here, but the content available to us is barely even a fraction of what's available in the States. We can't use Hulu here (again, not by legit means) either.

A big problem here is that a lot of people I talk to know nothing about subscription services. They assume the only system available for music downloads is either through a store like iTunes, or through illegal methods. Same with video. These subscription services in the States are ahead of us by years. There will always be people who download illegally, but there is also a large segment of customers who are like me... they want to use pay services, but want a GOOD pay service.

From what I have read it's a case of the CRTC being stuck in the past with both issues, as usual.


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