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How much should music cost?

After my talk at the SEMCON last week, I was approached by several attendees to discuss several stuff. One of the topics included the state of online music store in the Philippines. The main question I was trying to answer was — How much should music cost?


Well, we already know Apple set the universal trend of $0.99 per song but other players like AmazonMP3 are challenging that. Still, the notion that you’ll have to shell out Php45 a pop for your mp3 seemed insane in the Philippine internet landscape.

For over a decade, the majority of Filipinos got their favorite songs for free. In the late 90’s, it was thru mIRC, then Kazaa, LimeWire, Bittorents, etc. Yes, it becomes obvious that this generation is not used to paying for their songs. Does that mean, music/record labels should wait for the next generation? Guess not.

So, here’s the question — How much should music cost? Five, ten pesos? Twenty? Forty, fifty?

We already have millions of people downloading ringtones for Php15 to Php25 a pop and that figure doesn’t seem to stop them from downloading for more. Just ask the telcos and their content partners how much they’re all raking in from ringtone downloads.

[tags]mp3, music, songs, ringtones, download[/tags]

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

13 Responses

  1. Avatar for louie louie says:

    I think 10 pesos per song would be great! For 5 pesos per song then it should really be a crime to download
    music =)

    or how about 100 pesos prepaid card for 25 songs?

    not bad for the consumers but how about the profit margin of the artist? record producer and the website
    operator?

    Pero considering the present market price of albums i think 15 pesos per song is the right amount. Pero 10 pesos might be ideal price to shift the market habit.. but for 5 pesos per song then people might just download songs for the sake of it being cheap =)

    what do you guys think?

  2. Avatar for My Name Is Daaviiiid... My Name Is Daaviiiid... says:

    i think pinoys would prefer music free.

    People generally would prefer freebies. But it wouldn’t be really fair to those who worked hard to offer such without being “justly” compensated somehow.

  3. Avatar for GUrbi GUrbi says:

    AT GURBI, MUSIC IS ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!

  4. Avatar for dwek dwek says:

    price of song should depend on it’s popularity… Mas mahal siguro kung sikat at maganda yung song…

  5. Avatar for spidamang spidamang says:

    Sure they downloaded for free over the years. But of the gigs of songs the downloaded, how many of those songs do they actually like and listen to?

    A 10-20 peso range with special bulk prices for albums should do it. IMHO. For providing a legal, high quality copy of a song complete with the proper ID3 tags, in a platform that should be easy for one to search a particular song/album he likes, paying for that service alone is already worth the price of a song.

  6. Avatar for BrianB BrianB says:

    First they should make it very convenient to download. Ten pesos is okay. If you can afford an MP3 player or an MP3 phone, you can afford ten pesos per song. A thousand songs is ten thousand pesos. Not bad.

  7. Avatar for Alwell Alwell says:

    I read from yahoo news the other day that former RadioHead vocalist allow fans to download his new album at a price to be determined by the them. It is said fans can even download it without putting a price at his official album website.

    It seems that this new model is effective so far for the artist. Amazingly naka $1.2million sold na daw yung album in mp3 format.

  8. Avatar for quezacolt quezacolt says:

    3.50 – 5 sana, masyadong mahal kc pag $0.99 paburn ka nalang hehehe

  9. Avatar for XpressMusic XpressMusic says:

    20-25php/song would be great for music chart toppers then 10php/song for non-popular songs.But I don’t believe that this will stop piracy in the whole country.

    *-DRM should be included and implemented incase the project will be launched.

  10. Avatar for jomark jomark says:

    5 peso per song is the most practical. We are talking about mass economics here.

  11. Avatar for elmer valenzuela elmer valenzuela says:

    4.50 na lang. ten pesos lang kasi pera ko..5.50 pang nescafe 3 in 1..

  12. Avatar for issai issai says:

    i think pinoys would prefer music free.

  13. Avatar for Jeffrey Jeffrey says:

    10 to 25 pesos a song seems viable in the Philippine internet economy.

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