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Subscription service coming (no commercials!), also... fill out ipod and bittorrent
A lot of people have asked to pay for a commercial free shoutcast station, and I've also heard the same for commercial free browsing.
So... what I'm currently working on is a subscription service for Magnatune that will be tiered something like this (please give feedback, the details are still up on the air)
a) $10 / month - commercial free everything - album streams, genre mix playlists, all 1 hour long podcasts and shoutcast radio. Includes 1 album download a month of our choice.
b) $20 / month - all of (a) plus 2 free album downloads a month of your choice, one free album download a month of our choice. Access to the 3h and 10h long podcasts, good for a working day.
c) $30 / month all of (b) but at 4 free album downloads a month of your choice
d) $50 / month all of (c) plus the right to play our music in your commercial environment to the public (ie, restaurant, cafe, retail shop). Includes an ASCAP/BMI fee waiver, which most retail environments normally have to pay, which typically starts at $150 per quarter.
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This is all an outgrowth of another in-progress project, the "fill your ipod" idea, which is:
1) Fill-your-ipod. For $150 we'll give you our entire catalog as VBR-MP3 (or OGG-VORBIS, your choice) which amounts to about 30gb of music. You don't get access to the WAV/FLAC files at this price, but the VBR/OGG files sound awfully good. This works out to a cost of 35 cents per album.
2) To download this much music is not that simple, so we'll give you a choice of a) a bittorrent URL which downloads all the files individually, organized into directories (not zip files) b) or a windows and mac self-executable bittorrent program that automatically runs and downloads the magnatune catalog. This is very handy for people who don't have bittorrent and really looks more like "the magnatune catalog downloading program". Nice aspects of this include: a) mp3 files are downloaded individually, so you can start listening before everything is downloaded b) you can stop and restart the program, and downloading will pick back up where you were
3) I will probably offer entire genre downloads for lower prices, but I haven't figured out what those prices might be
4) The $150 is a one-time purchase and you don't get the right to new albums we add.
5) For a $50 per year subscription fee, you get access to all new albums for a year, as we'll publish new torrent files you can download which will then only download the new albums you don't already have on your drive.
6) since these are mp3s (or OGGs) they'll work with any music player, not just ipods.
7) $150 to fill your ipod is a lot more reasonable than the $15,000 it would cost from the iTunes music store (or CD purchases) to fill a 30GB ipod.
This is the next major step for Magnatune, and I still have a few month's effort to make this all work.
Feedback appreciated!
Posted by John Buckman on February 4, 2006 at 10:45 AM | Permalink
Comments
For the 1 album download in option A, it says "our choice". Typo?
JY
Posted by: Jeff Yankauer at Feb 4, 2006 11:17:02 AM
"For the 1 album download in option A, it says "our choice". Typo?"
Not a typo - $10 a month gets you no commercials and Magnatune chooses one album free a month. At the $20 a month level, you get to choose your own albums.
Posted by: John Buckman at Feb 4, 2006 4:44:01 PM
I was wondering why there was a press release about the fill-your-iPod plan, but no such offer on the website. That didn't look good, but while I noticed that blogs were picking up the news, no one seemed to be complaining that it was an unfulfilled promise.
Posted by: Nathan Jones at Feb 4, 2006 5:14:55 PM
I was wondering why there was a press release about the fill-your-iPod plan, but no such offer on the website. That didn't look good, but while I noticed that blogs were picking up the news, no one seemed to be complaining that it was an unfulfilled promise.
It's still planned, just not yet available. The press release was announcing the intention, not the availability. Feedback we got on the plan was that we needed a way for people to keep up to date with the new releases, which led to the subscription plan idea, so now it's a bigger project.
Posted by: John Buckman at Feb 4, 2006 5:19:24 PM
While the subscription service doesn't interest me, I think the fill your iPod idea is pretty great. It seems awfully cheap, though - can you really do this and make money? Or is the idea more to get press and get new users to come to your site?
I'll commit to the classical stuff, if you so decide. However, when you say MP3 VBR, what bit rate?
Posted by: Kirk McElhearn at Feb 5, 2006 9:57:43 AM
While the subscription service doesn't interest me, I think the fill your iPod idea is pretty great. It seems awfully cheap, though - can you really do this and make money? Or is the idea more to get press and get new users to come to your site?
While the per-album rate is certainly very cheap, that's a huge incentive for people to spend a lot of money with us. Since the average Magnatune buyer purchases 2.5 albums per year with us, for about $20/year, getting $150 up front is really attractive for us.
So, with "$150 for everything" we get a much larger amount of money from a customer than we would otherwise, and the customer buys way more music than they normally would, because the per-album price is so low. I think both Magnatune and the customer win in this scenario.
I'll commit to the classical stuff, if you so decide. However, when you say MP3 VBR, what bit rate?
Same as all our other VBRs, it's created with -V 0 --vbr-new - this is the highest quality VBR possible (except for the "insane" option) with lame, as described here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28124
the target rate appears to be 245 kbit/s
Posted by: John Buckman at Feb 5, 2006 11:55:12 AM
Dear John:
I think this different way of pricing and delivery is a good alternative. I can easily imagine buying a month of downloads in a given year. I could then download in a fairly leisurely way a few things of interest to me, perhaps realizing a slight economy for me, with some accompanying benefits to magnatune.
I am sure each person has a different story, but for me, a "subscription" would be a less likely result than to buy a day, week or month in a one-shot package.
I'm pleased you're inclined to offer this option.
Best,
Robert Nunnally
gurdonark
Posted by: gurdonark at Feb 6, 2006 4:32:29 AM
I think this different way of pricing and delivery is a good alternative. I can easily imagine buying a month of downloads in a given year. I could then download in a fairly leisurely way a few things of interest to me, perhaps realizing a slight economy for me, with some accompanying benefits to magnatune.
I am sure each person has a different story, but for me, a "subscription" would be a less likely result than to buy a day, week or month in a one-shot package.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you proposing another form of buying -- where you buy 10 albums ahead of time, or are you saying that how you view the "subscription" concept is really as a set number of albums you get to download each month.
Probably, subscription is the wrong word, "membership" or "club" might be better...
Posted by: John Buckman at Feb 6, 2006 8:35:34 AM
This is VERY attractive for me too John... but I'm curious to see how artists would feel about it. I don't see how this could be helpful to them.
Posted by: Ryan Sawhill at Feb 6, 2006 8:43:09 AM
To clarify, I was specifically speaking about the $150 one-time download everything option.
Posted by: Ryan Sawhill at Feb 6, 2006 8:47:14 AM
John, was not clear before, partly through not reading carefully enough the first time.
Let me try again. I think that I could see two
ways in which this would be attractive for me.
If one could buy x downloads, useful over y extended time period, for a cost of z, in which
the price per download was less than the Magnatune minimum of 5 (let's imagine it might be 4 instead, or 12/48 dollars), then the volume discount might be win/win for everyone.
What I had in mind when I originally posted was a "download what you wish in the next month for aa dollars", which would be a very attractive thing for me as a consumer, if it could also work for magnatune.
Best, Bob
Posted by: gurdonark at Feb 6, 2006 3:11:28 PM
While I applaud the desire to implement concepts of creative packaging I hope folks can remember that the artists on this label are REAL PEOPLE, and though you may personally be interested in getting a "better deal" most of the artists on this site really do appreciate your PATRONAGE. So please keep that in mind while you debate the merits of paying $5 versus $6 per CD.
Posted by: Charlie at Feb 6, 2006 7:42:07 PM
That's a good point, Charlie. When I buy from Magnatune now, I price point above the median.
I think of the pieces,though, that I might not buy at a 12 or 14 dollar price point, but might add to my collection if the price point were lower. Then I might buy the ones I normally buy individually, plus additonal ones I might not have otherwise bought.
But I don't want to take away from your point--although the people who make every thing I buy are real people, too.
Posted by: gurdonark at Feb 7, 2006 3:58:04 AM
