This is stupid...

[SeanTK]

Warning, link contains some language.
http://gizmodo.com/5361697/music-indust ... nd-samples

Basically, a couple of royalties groups want to charge online music services for the sample 30 second clips that they play. If they have their way, then predictably a consumer would probably have to pay a few extra cents just to hear a sample of a song that they are interested in getting. I understand that they wish to make sure that all artists get "monetary recognition" for their works, but this has gone a little too far in my opinion.

[skoker]

Why the hell would you pay for a sample?!?   If your gonna pay for a sample then just buy the dang song!

[ApplePie]

Aren't samples supposed to make you want to buy the song?

[SeanTK]

Here is the much more in depth cnet article if you want both sides to the story:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10355448-93.html

[machineman9]

Aren't samples supposed to make you want to buy the song?

Yes. So include charge for those songs and you are either going to:

1) Ignore the song and the producers because of their stupid preview costs
2) Download the song illegally
3) Preview the song elsewhere for free (Such as youtube, but this ties in with point 2)


It is really quite stupid. You wouldn't pay to test drive your car before buying it... It is the incentive to get you to buy it.

[Steve M]

Aren't samples supposed to make you want to buy the song?

Yes. So include charge for those songs and you are either going to:

1) Ignore the song and the producers because of their stupid preview costs
2) Download the song illegally
3) Preview the song elsewhere for free (Such as youtube, but this ties in with point 2)


It is really quite stupid. You wouldn't pay to test drive your car before buying it... It is the incentive to get you to buy it.

Pretty silly idea. Most hit songs, that you may want to purchace, are usually played on the radio which can be played using your PC for free. From there you could just save the music for personal use using the right software.
By making it tough on the consumer, they are just screwing themselves and pushing more people to run to the other options. No matter what they do to protect thier interests, someone, somewhere, will come up with ways to skirt the legal proccess.     

[machineman9]

Yep exactly. They can't protect themselves from every method people can use to get their music, so they may as well make it easy on themselves and give us the music as simply as possible so that we are likely to buy it.

In the modern world, it takes one person in the world to buy a song for everyone else to be able to use it. If you bring in more barriers to getting the music, more people are going to file share and get the songs for free. Which is a worse loss?