Pyrian on 11/4/2021 at 05:47
Quote Posted by Cipheron
The cost/benefit analysis shifts quickly in favor of streaming unless you really only have a few albums you like to listen to and don't want to get new ones very often.
Oh hai! Lol.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
A lot of younger people don't even have a CD player or music collection. Holding onto them at this point is mostly sunk-cost thinking. I haven't bought new CDs in years, and the only ones I'd consider would be some by a couple of new favorite artists of mine: stuff I'd buy as collectables **not to listen to**.
Weird fact: I have a bunch of "new" unopened CD's because Amazon essentially paid me to ship them to me. Here's what I mean: The cost of buying the digital album was
more than the cost of buying the CD,
however, the CD purchase
included immediate access to the digital album. ...For less than the cost of the digital album itself.
Jason Moyer on 11/4/2021 at 12:21
I buy CD's all the time, basically because it's physical media that takes up very little space and because I can then create my own compressed or lossless files from them to listen to on my PC, mp3 player, or phone which gives me control over the quality of the resulting files instead of depending on whatever random format I'm going to find in a torrent or on youtube (don't get me wrong, I like torrents and YT for previewing albums before buying them). I like having artwork and liner notes as part of the experience. I like having something I can listen to effectively forever without having to worry about an online service being inaccessible or dealing with DRM or whatever. It's just a better experience overall for me.
heywood on 11/4/2021 at 13:53
I still buy CDs and I buy downloads. I prefer to buy downloads if I can get them in FLAC or WAV format for the same price as the CD. Because if I buy the CD, I'm just going to rip it and throw it in a box. It's such a waste to produce and ship a plastic thingy when all I want is the data. But often the downloads cost more than the CD, and sometimes the download is only available in a lossy format.
The main reason why I still buy music is to patronize artists I like who aren't super popular and thus rich. There's a lot of good artists out there who are just making a living and they get basically nothing from streaming.
I also subscribe to Qobuz but I'm thinking of dropping it because I don't use it that much, mainly when my wife wants to hear something she remembers from the 80s or 90s.
Regarding the discussion of file degradation/corruption, anybody who has anything they don't want to lose on their computer should be backing it up regularly. If you're like me and you store important things like family photos & videos, tax forms and other important records, save files from your first time playing SS2 :) etc. then you really should consider having an off-site backup too in case of a fire.
Anarchic Fox on 11/4/2021 at 16:28
Quote Posted by Cipheron
...you can save up and buy two $30 new release CDs per year with that same money.
I don't know where you got that number from. New CDs are usually $10, and used ones go so low that shipping takes up most of their cost.
I use CDs because I have little willpower. My office has no PC, because if it did I'd spend half the day on the Internet or playing games. I do, however, have a CD player and a nice collection of CDs.
Cipheron on 11/4/2021 at 20:09
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Oh hai! Lol.
Weird fact: I have a bunch of "new" unopened CD's because Amazon essentially paid me to ship them to me. Here's what I mean: The cost of buying the digital album was
more than the cost of buying the CD,
however, the CD purchase
included immediate access to the digital album. ...For less than the cost of the digital album itself.
That's a marketing trick right there. See the psychology research, they know what they're doing:
(
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions)
I checked the times, at about 12 minutes into the video there's an example almost identical to the scenario you've mentioned.
In the video example, you can get
Option 1) digital subscription ($59)
Option 2) physical subscription ($125)
Option 3) physical subscription + digital subscription (also $125)
Basically nobody EVER picks option 2, and most people pick option 3 since it seems like the best value. However, even though option 2 is NEVER picked, if you actually remove option 2 from the menu, then most people switch from Option 3 to Option 1. Just having a clearly over-priced option tricks people into thinking they got better value for money and found a "loophole" in the system.
In your example, they have the digital version alone, or the physical version, which includes a "free" copy of the digital version, and you wonder why they even offer the digital version or why they don't at least drop the price. Well, just having that there make the physical version sound like better value, so it drives sales, and if they dropped the price of the digital version, then they've probably found that total sales decline. So those two prices are the way they are because humans are irrational, and displaying those prices maximizes sales.
So "useless" options are actually included because they've been proven to work. Even if nobody ever picks them, they affect behavior because they provide information about something the consumer lacks information about. This probably explains things like fast food meal-combo pricing too. You may have looked at the pricing and thought it's ridiculous, and it is, but they ALSO know what they're doing and have intensely research the psychology of pricing to get the prices just-right to steer decision making how they want.
Having the not-good-value digital version cost the same or more than the physical+digital version actually tricks people into perceiving the other option as being better value than it really is. It's the same psychology that shows that if you want to sell chocolates, make an advert that says the buyer could either get a $5000 diamond ring for their valentine or buy the $40 premium chocolates.
---------------------------
As for the better-value thing, personally i get all my music for free because most of what I want is obscure Touhou stuff, J-metal and other stuff that's not on the major platforms.
But if some younger person was to pick between having the premium spotify or buying new CDs then it would probably be easier to have the Spotify. The real question is whether you really want to have your house cluttered with junk or not, just so you can have a choice of what to watch, listen to, or play at any time.
There are definitely pros and cons to cluttering your house with detritus. It probably happened with movies first, because how many fucking times do you actually want to see the same movie to the extent that you have shelf after shelf of movies just sitting around cluttering your place up?
Cipheron on 11/4/2021 at 20:51
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
I don't know where you got that number from. New CDs are usually $10, and used ones go so low that shipping takes up most of their cost.
I use CDs because I have little willpower. My office has no PC, because if it did I'd spend half the day on the Internet or playing games. I do, however, have a CD player and a nice collection of CDs.
From the prices we pay in stores. I did say "new release" CDs. As in the current new releases. Not "new CDs" as in, cost of printing a CD, which is like 2 cents.
(
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/collections/music)
For example the top one here is the new release Taylor Swift album, $30.99. I'm thinking from the perspective of a younger person who wants access to the current music. They pay a premium for that, the same as launch prices for games. Sure, you can wait and get the same album half the price in a year, but that's really the same discussion as launch prices for games. Those people want the current stuff when it's out, because of course they do. If nobody wanted the current stuff when it comes out, then those industries would collapse and there wouldn't be any "wait a year and it's cheaper" thing going, since those games / music / movies wouldn't get made in the first place.
But it also makes sense for an older person. For example, I used to have pretty much ever Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd album, but i don't now. If i want to listen to all those again, I could either shell out hundreds of dollars for copies of all that stuff, spend weeks tracking that shit down, or I could shell out $10 a month for premium Spotify access then just listen to the albums I want to right away, plus browse thousands of other artists i never got around to listening to.
Pyrian on 11/4/2021 at 21:22
Quote:
Option 1) digital subscription ($59)
Option 2) physical subscription ($125)
Option 3) physical subscription + digital subscription (also $125)
Umm... In the scenario I'm discussing, the physical+digital is
cheaper than the digital alone, rather than more than double the cost. The important difference is that this is kind of a trick whereas in what I experienced you're just literally getting more for less.
Quote:
Well, just having that there make the physical version sound like better value, so it drives sales, and if they dropped the price of the digital version, then they've probably found that total sales decline.
Maybe, but I doubt it. I bet they do it because the digital version simply has more demand, and can therefore command a higher price, with a lot of potential customers never doing the comparison. "Anchoring" is a real thing but it works better with items less ubiquitous.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
For example the top one here is the new release Taylor Swift album, $30.99.
I'm like WTF, that's not right. Then I look at the link. OHHHH you're in
Australia, land of high entertainment prices for no discernable reason. That same two-CD album is $17.59 on Amazon in the 'States.
heywood on 11/4/2021 at 21:26
Quote Posted by Cipheron
That's a marketing trick right there. See the psychology research, they know what they're doing:
(
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions)
I checked the times, at about 12 minutes into the video there's an example almost identical to the scenario you've mentioned.
In the video example, you can get
Option 1) digital subscription ($59)
Option 2) physical subscription ($125)
Option 3) physical subscription + digital subscription (also $125)
Basically nobody EVER picks option 2, and most people pick option 3 since it seems like the best value. However, even though option 2 is NEVER picked, if you actually remove option 2 from the menu, then most people switch from Option 3 to Option 1. Just having a clearly over-priced option tricks people into thinking they got better value for money and found a "loophole" in the system.
In your example, they have the digital version alone, or the physical version, which includes a "free" copy of the digital version, and you wonder why they even offer the digital version or why they don't at least drop the price. Well, just having that there make the physical version sound like better value, so it drives sales, and if they dropped the price of the digital version, then they've probably found that total sales decline. So those two prices are the way they are because humans are irrational, and displaying those prices maximizes sales.
Your example is different from Pyrian's example. In Pyrian's example, option 1 costs more than option 2 and option 3. That's right, the digital download alone costs
more than the physical copy + digital download. His is not an isolated example. I see it too and it's the reason why I still buy some CDs. I would rather just download the product. It's more convenient for me and more profit for them. But I'm not going to pay extra to not have a physical copy.
Cipheron on 11/4/2021 at 23:21
@Pyrian, @ heywood
While it's not *exactly* the same, the psychology angle is still there.
While you say you doubt it, wouldn't you equally doubt the actual findings from the research in the video? I'm sure if the scenario *just happened* to be the exact scenario from the video and I said removing that option would change people spending patterns, you've have doubted that *and for the same reasons*. What does that suggest?
The video example is just an *example* of a situation where that occurs. If you see the rest of the video they were able to engineer the same type of thing in a variety of domains, quite flexibly. So it's reproducible and the exact specifics aren't that important: pairing an option with a slightly worse version of itself makes that option look better, not just against the "worse" option, but against unrelated options.
In this case, the "option" that it's competing with is *literally anything else* you could spend that same money on:
Option 1: buy something else entirely
Option 2: digital only (say $15)
Option 3: digital plus physical (say $14)
So Option 2 is still the "slightly worse option" here. Making it cost a dollar more instead of the same price hasn't changed that, in fact, the fact that it's stealing a dollar from you makes it more effective in making Option 3 look like a better bargain: you get a free CD PLUS a free dollar by picking Option 3.
And unlike the constrained options in the study, an "Option 1" always exists in the real world, since you can decide to buy something else, so that's always an implicit Option 1.
Kolya on 11/4/2021 at 23:45
I buy FLAC files, mostly of bandcamp. Mere access to music, especially in an inferior quality like Spotify streaming, is worthless.
What I care about is selection, quality and support. 99% of all music is shit. So I spend a lot of time to select music and when I find an artist that clicks with me, I want to support them so they make more good music. And I want excellent quality at my pleasure.
Spotify can't help me, because I can already listen to more than I could ever consume, access ain't the problem. It can't help with selection either, I tried that. And it will not help with supporting musicians.
Finding good music these days is work. You either do the work or you listen to old stuff and get sad or to the inoffensive shit list everyone else listens to and get emotionally numbed.