Subject URL: pre_shrunk

Another one for RAN soon I'm sure... pre_shrunk went and released a new single, their new album and re-released their last album with a bunch of extras without me noticing. I should be shot. Out to get them all tonight. While they were at it they fixed their website (linked above) to be much less shite.

Subject URL: Buy entire Universal catalog for $43,000

From The Age today:

The plan by the Universal Music Group (UMG), the world's largest music company and a unit of French-based Vivendi Universal, will make individual songs available for downloading and recording to a CD for US99 cents ($A1.80), and albums for $US9.99 ($A17.90).

My comments and questions:

• Will it be US only?
• $1.80AUS a song is too much. 99 cents (AUS$ or about 55-60 cents US) a song is OK as-long-as an album is significantly less than 99xnumber-of-tracks (to encorage people to buy a whole album rather than individual songs).
• Will backcatalog b-sides be made available or just the current albums of artists?
• What's the quality like?

Stuff to remember, it costs us money to download an album and burn it to CD. The album should therefore cost at least that amount less than the CD version, especially given you are buying nothing but the music (ie. no product you can on-sell later second hand).... although people rightfully argue that it costs a lot of money to drive to a shop and get a CD too. Would we be complaining if this happened the other way around? (ie. new technology! Buy your music on a CD you can keep! But you have to get off your fat arse and come and get it.)

BUT if the stuff for sale is hard to find, like rare songs, b-sides, whole live concerts etc., I'd be more likely to spend $5-$10 to download it / burn it simply because there is no cheaper option. Right now I'm spending $10 to import a single from German because it has a b-side I want on it. I'd rather spend 99 cents and download (searches for this track on Kaaza have failed).

The prices above... a back catalog CD would cost about $17 at JB Hi-Fi. Why would I spend that money to download it?

By the way... mp3.WiredRecords.com has been doing this for at least a year... although they use WMA and have restrictions on burning CDs... and cost a lot more than 99 cents a song.

More info in this PCWorld article. File formats are WMA and Liquid Audio.

"Universal is committed to making every recording it controls available for Internet distribution."

So that includes b-sides and live tracks in the vault right? Right?

Oh yeah, and Listen.com's Rhapsody has been providing downloads for 99 cents for a few months now... assuming you are in the US.