Lady Gaga Says Albums Only Worth 99 Cents, Not Every Artists Needs A Label [Video]
When if asked if her new album wasn't worth more than 99 cents that Amazon charged, Lady Gaga responded, "No. I absolutely do not, especially for MP3s and digital music. It’s invisible. it’s in space. If anything, I applaud a company like Amazon for equating the value of digital versus the physical copy, and giving the opportunity to everyone to buy music," she said in a new Wall Street Journal interview. "It also wasn’t really 99 cents, because Amazon paid the difference on all of those purchases as part of their promotional campaign for one of their new services." Gaga went on to talk about how, thanks to the internet, many artists don't need the help of a record label. WATCH THE VIDEO:
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She wouldn’t be saying the same thing if the mechanical royalties had been adjusted according to the price of the album on Amazon…
.99 works for her because Amazon was willing to eat the difference for a limited time only, so she still got her money. .99 doesn’t work of there’s no sponsor, so it doesn’t scale at all as an industry-wide solution. I’m also kind of horrified that she basically is saying there’s no value to her music unless it’s affixed to a chunk of plastic. Really didn’t expect that to come out of her mouth after all she does to get respect as a musician and not just as a sideshow attraction.
Interesting. I respect her even more now for stating what I always believed was an obvious truth. (and I’m a musician with no label and no sponsor)
Quite easy for her to say, when making bunch of money and having a lot of people working for her…
Would she say the same if she was a small unknown artist?
Interesting stance: “Yes, I think albums should cost .99, except for the fact mine do not.”
Well argued and very honest, to boot.
Where you say “it doesn’t scale at all as an industry-wide solution” you mean it doesn’t scale from a record label perspective. It is however the direction music is headed. With 5 million bands between mySpace and Facebook, many of whom are giving away their music as promotion, this trend will push the cost to the consumer to zero over the next few years.