Tony Fabris ([info]tfabris) wrote,
@ 2008-04-28 12:44:00
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Downloadable liner notes
For those who bought, our wish to buy, our new album in MP3 format from CDBaby, I fully support you. Digital distribution is the future. I even approve of CDBaby's encoder settings. But although CDBaby includes a scan of the album cover, they don't send you the rest of the CD liner notes, and you don't get to see the great 13-magpies photo in the booklet gatefold.

So. What to do?

Put up a link to download the full liner notes as PDF files on our Music Page, that's what.

Enjoy!

Vixy & Tony's Schedule
GeekHackFilk.com

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[info]technoshaman
2008-04-28 08:13 pm UTC (link)
*grins as he tracks down where in cyberspace that server really is...*

Awesome, guys.

Oh, one thing I noticed in sniffing about... vixyandtony.com's email pointer is set to smtp.cyphertext.net, which doesn't exist anymore... it doesn't look like you have any links actually pointing there, but if somebody does something whacko like try and hit hostmaster@ or something, it's gonna bounce... :(

-- Friendly neighborhood fan-boy BOFH :)

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[info]tfabris
2008-04-28 08:17 pm UTC (link)
> if somebody does something whacko like try and hit hostmaster@ or something, it's gonna bounce...

GOOD!!!

In fact, the only mail I get that goes to the generic addresses at Geekhackfilk.com are spam. In fact, I think most of the spam I get in my inbox is simply redirects from those addresses. I'll go disable those now so that they behave more like Cyphertext in that regard. Thanks for the reminder.

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[info]mdlbear
2008-04-29 01:49 am UTC (link)
Not to mention the fact that you get more money from a download. And the lower (i.e., zero) cost of goods sold.

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[info]tfabris
2008-04-29 01:55 am UTC (link)
Neither of those are factors to me, I'm just happy to get the songs out to everyone who wants them in whatever format they prefer. :-)

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[info]lola_mccrary
2008-04-29 06:13 am UTC (link)
Thank you Tony and Vixy for providing this to us downloaders. I enjoyed looking at the files.

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[info]tfabris
2008-04-29 03:30 pm UTC (link)
Quite welcome. Gone are the days when we get a big 12-inch piece of art with our records, but we do what we can. :-)

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[info]egoldberg
2008-04-29 06:50 am UTC (link)
Free tip, do with it as you will (was just discussing this with Margaret Davis last night, actually):

CD Baby lets you specify the Digital Download price, even though it defaults to the same price as a physical CD. When I lowered it to be competitive with other download services ($9.97), digital sales via CD Baby jumped.

A few reasons why I did this:

* You have $6+ in overhead on each physical sale (CD + CD Baby's cut of it), but only about $1 on a digital sale. So you actually make just as much gross profit at the $10 price for digital as $16 for a physical CD.

* If I charged 50% more than iTunes or Amazon, why would I expect my customers to pay 50% more to buy through CD Baby -- when I know I wouldn't? You only get ~$6.50 from an iTunes sale after everyone takes there cut (vs $9.10 for a CD Baby digital sale @ $10), so you're better off with people buying through CD Baby as well, rather than going to iTunes.

Anyway, these unsexy details may be less pertinent to you since you aren't trying to pay back $20K/CD in production costs and working to maximize your avg. unit price.

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[info]egoldberg
2008-04-29 06:56 am UTC (link)
What I mean to say is: by lowering the digital download price to be competitive with other services, you make the rational decision for your purchasers to be the one that also happens to offer you the greatest value as a publisher, while also benefitting the purchasers as well.

Off to catch the train to Germany,

Eli

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[info]tfabris
2008-04-29 03:28 pm UTC (link)

I didn't realize that Amazon and iTunes had a digital download price that was so much less than the CDBaby digital download price. Our album hasn't shown up on those services yet (last I looked) so I have no idea what their charges are. Of all the arguments you make for lowering the download price, that's the one that makes the most sense.

I'm not going to discount the price now, if only because it wouldn't be fair to those who just paid full price recently. Perhaps later, though, I'll do that as some kind of a promotion.

Conceptually, though, I have always believed that the thing I'm selling isn't physical. Despite the physical delivery medium of a CD disc, the thing I'm selling is actually a specific pattern of vibrating air molecules. Those patterns spark ideas and emotions in the people that encounter them. What I'm selling is air, and feelings, and ideas. So no matter what its delivery method, you're getting the same thing. So from one point of view, there's no reason the download price should be different from the disc price.

On the other hand, from a different point of view, I never entered this thing as a profit venture in the first place. From that point of view I should give away the album for free. :-)

Speaking of that... how do you know the album didn't cost 20k to make? :-) When you include all the new gear I bought, it probably comes out pretty close to that. Of course, that gear is going to get used in other projects, but I did buy it specifically for this album.

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[info]egoldberg
2008-04-30 07:56 am UTC (link)
Interesting! I think we do music - at least in part - because it allows us to express our identity and values, but I had always had always set aside making such an expression in pricing decisions, and instead using more traditional business analysis.

In this case, I think there is a cultural premium placed upon physical/collectible objects (especially as filk CDs are even arguably souvenirs to remind you of convention experiences, your friends, etc - it's not just the music), and therefore I think a higher perceived value currently exists among most buyers for the physical product over just the content itself. And not everyone is interested enough in a product to want to spend $17+ on a full CD, so I always want to appeal to people who are interested, but more price-sensitive.

But that, again, is reflective of a value set of trying to assess what is valued among one's audience and match up offerings with those value perceptions. It's not a "right" way to do it - especially for our own hobbies where we don't have stockholders to answer to - and it's really interesting to see the idea of making pricing decisions based an expression of one's own perceptions of value.

(FWIW, when I discounted the price, there were only one or two digital download purchasers. So I just gave them a free album download to avoid any risk of their feeling ripped off.)

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[info]dan_ad_nauseam
2008-04-30 03:15 am UTC (link)
CD Baby said they were mailing yesterday. I'm in the same city as their offices. We'll see how long US Snail takes.

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