Enabling musicians to sell their music
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Let us say that 35,000 CDs have been released every year since 1980, and will continue to be released.
Let us also say that a CD can generally be represented as a 100MiB MP3 file at an acceptable bit rate.
From the `back of envelope` table below we can estimate that the cost of storing all the CDs ever released on a hard disk drive will fall to about $100 in 2015.
I suggest that the next file sharing application won`t be one that lets people pick and choose which CDs to share or audition. It will simply replicate and distribute EVERYTHING.
There won`t even be any point in deleting all the CDs one doesn`t like. The problem will be entirely one of deciding what the heck to listen to.
Even so, once we have discovered the musicians we like there will still be the problem of how to persuade them to make more great music. Even all the music ever released can pale next to one more album from a favourite artist.
Don`t worry. That`s the problem I`m working on enabling a musician`s fans to exchange their money for the musician`s production of music.
It`s not rocket science.
You just have to bear in mind that it`s not about enabling CD manufacturers to sell copies, but about enabling musicians to sell their music to their audience directly instead of via record labels and CD manufacturers.
When you`re selling music instead of digital copies you don`t benefit from a monopoly; on the contrary, you want your music to spread far and wide.
| Year | Price of 1TiB HDD | CDs | MP3 TiB | Storage cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | $1,336,434,513.25 | 35,000 | 3 | $4,460,831,447.94 |
| 1981 | $735,038,982.29 | 70,000 | 7 | $4,906,914,592.74 |
| 1982 | $404,271,440.26 | 105,000 | 10 | $4,048,204,539.01 |
| 1983 | $222,349,292.14 | 140,000 | 13 | $2,968,683,328.61 |
| 1984 | $122,292,110.68 | 175,000 | 17 | $2,040,969,788.42 |
| 1985 | $67,260,660.87 | 210,000 | 20 | $1,347,040,060.36 |
| 1986 | $36,993,363.48 | 245,000 | 23 | $864,350,705.39 |
| 1987 | $20,346,349.91 | 280,000 | 27 | $543,306,157.68 |
| 1988 | $11,190,492.45 | 315,000 | 30 | $336,170,685.06 |
| 1989 | $6,154,770.85 | 350,000 | 33 | $205,437,640.87 |
| 1990 | $3,385,123.97 | 385,000 | 37 | $124,289,772.73 |
| 1991 | $1,861,818.18 | 420,000 | 40 | $74,573,863.64 |
| 1992 | $1,024,000.00 | 455,000 | 43 | $44,433,593.75 |
| 1993 | $563,200.00 | 490,000 | 47 | $26,318,359.38 |
| 1994 | $309,760.00 | 525,000 | 50 | $15,509,033.20 |
| 1995 | $170,368.00 | 560,000 | 53 | $9,098,632.81 |
| 1996 | $93,702.40 | 595,000 | 57 | $5,317,013.55 |
| 1997 | $51,536.32 | 630,000 | 60 | $3,096,378.63 |
| 1998 | $28,344.98 | 665,000 | 63 | $1,797,619.69 |
| 1999 | $15,589.73 | 700,000 | 67 | $1,040,727.05 |
| 2000 | $8,574.35 | 735,000 | 70 | $601,019.69 |
| 2001 | $4,715.90 | 770,000 | 73 | $346,302.24 |
| 2002 | $2,593.74 | 805,000 | 77 | $199,123.51 |
| 2003 | $1,426.55 | 840,000 | 80 | $114,279.38 |
| 2004 | $784.61 | 875,000 | 83 | $65,472.90 |
| 2005 | $431.53 | 910,000 | 87 | $37,450.41 |
| 2006 | $237.34 | 945,000 | 90 | $21,389.85 |
| 2007 | $130.54 | 980,000 | 93 | $12,200.23 |
| 2008 | $71.79 | 1,015,000 | 97 | $6,949.38 |
| 2009 | $39.49 | 1,050,000 | 100 | $3,953.91 |
| 2010 | $21.72 | 1,085,000 | 103 | $2,247.35 |
| 2011 | $11.95 | 1,120,000 | 107 | $1,275.91 |
| 2012 | $6.57 | 1,155,000 | 110 | $723.68 |
| 2013 | $3.61 | 1,190,000 | 113 | $410.09 |
| 2014 | $1.99 | 1,225,000 | 117 | $232.18 |
| 2015 | $1.09 | 1,260,000 | 120 | $131.35 |
| 2016 | $0.60 | 1,295,000 | 124 | $74.25 |
| 2017 | $0.33 | 1,330,000 | 127 | $41.94 |
| 2018 | $0.18 | 1,365,000 | 130 | $23.67 |
| 2019 | $0.10 | 1,400,000 | 134 | $13.35 |
| 2020 | $0.06 | 1,435,000 | 137 | $7.53 |
So, if you`re hoping to fill that hard disk you`d probably better get started today.
Assuming a conservative 20Mbps share rate (given an efficient file-sharing system and no network contention) that works out at around 75TiB per year. In other words, all music ever released could be shared via the successor to BitTorrent within two years at such time as it became economic for everyone to store a duplicate set.
Within a decade, those who don`t share published music will be seen as a burden upon everyone else, akin to the way leechers are already perceived today.
[OK, Crosbie. You've been talking about this for quite a while -- let's have some more 
- Cheers! ]
Crosbie Fitch – Digital Productions
[Fitch says he's researching and developing revenue mechanisms and business models for producers of digital art and in the process, 'has discovered that copyright is not only an ineffective anachronism, but is unethical and unconstitutional'.]
May, 2009
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May 30th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Uhm…..I know prices have dropped significantly as technology has improved, but I’ve yet to see a 1 TB drive for 40 bucks. In fact, I’ve yet to see a 40 GB drive for that price, so I think the theory is pretty flawed.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
$39.49 for 1 TB in 2009 what $ is that and is he assuming street retail prizes here?
I have seen some weeks ago those nice little 1 Terrabite [sic!]
STORE alu external drives from Toshiba for EUR 70,- as a special offer at a supermarket(!) opening(*) “Normal” streetprice is 89 to 99 euro at the moment in germany (89 Euro = 125,80 US-Dollar, 89 Euro = 157,45 Australia Dollar, 89 Euros = 137.61 Canadian dollars)
(*) http://bayimg.com/aaojcaaBl
May 31st, 2009 at 7:22 am
I did say ‘back of envelope’, and don’t forget there’s still 7 months left in 2009 for a 1TB drive to reach $40.
This item was on my shopping list about a month ago:
Item: Hitachi DeskStar 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache – OEM
Qty: 1Cost: £52.16
So, please do tweak the prices more in line with your expectations. You might also decide that 100MiB per CD is a little generous. Any labels might also like to provide more accurate figures for CDs released to date each year for the last 40 years and forecasts for the next 10.
Anyway, the point is that by 2015, at a ROUGH GUESS, you’ll probably be able to store all the CDs ever released as MP3 files on a hard drive that costs around $100. The cost of a few UltraVioletRay HDDVD-ROM packs of the same capacity is also probably going to be around the same price – Total Music Jukeboxes aren’t that far away…
May 31st, 2009 at 8:17 am
You should redo your math, the cheapest you can buy a 1Tb drive is around USD $90
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148433
Also getting all that music is a bit of a problem (aside from the copyright issues)
We have a website where we let people store all the files they want for free, we have some hard core music collectors, we have several millions of files already, costing us several terabytes (and more than anything money on bandwidth, if only we could share all that data over p2p, but copyright issues screw us and all the files have to remain private to the uploaders) and we know we’re still nowhere near having a complete music collection.
Cool idea though, it’ll certainly be like that the day that copyright issues are no more
May 31st, 2009 at 8:19 am
I do agree however, that we’re probably close to storage breakthroughs that will leave all current harddrives obsolete, there’s a lot of research on this field coming mostly from nanotechnology, so we can expect Petabyte storage the size of a quarter any time within the next 10 years. And that’ll easily hold all the music ever recorded, not to mention improvements in audio compression formats
May 31st, 2009 at 11:12 am
Perhaps the price column should better be read as “Price per Tebibyte” rather than retail price of a 1TB hard drive, i.e. how much is the price per TB of a 100TB drive array (as would be needed to store 100TiB)?
June 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Yeah nice theory, but there’s more music than that, and hopefully at least 50% of us already would prefer lossless files, not lossy mp3s, and for music’s sake, hopefully the younger generation will realize the crummy audio quality they’ve been lapping up at some point. Just have to get them out of those stock earbuds and buy them a nice pair of speakers for their rooms!
Still that’s a very intriguing chart. The thought that in only a couple years time I’d be able to store every song I’d ever want to hear (not EVERY song ever made) ever again on a single device is pretty uplifting.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Interesting article but it still doesn’t address how musicians will actually make any money selling music. I’d rather read the article that explains how that’s going to happen. Right now touring is the only way to get paid. Music itself has to be given away free. If you don’t, or can’t, tour then music is only a hobby. You can’t make a living from it. I want someone to figure out how we go forward from here. I agree that record labels are obsolete but we need a way to earn some kind of money from the music we make so we can continue to make more without having to go get a job doing something that just wastes valuable time that could have been used creating more music.
I do agree that storage capacity is increasing at such a rate that it would technically be possible to share everything ever made, that is as long as your ISP doesn’t cut your speed or kick you off for using a P2P program. Yeah, that’s aimed right at Comcast. Really though, just because you could download every album ever made, who would really want to?