Hi music lovers,
I’m a sophomore student, conducting a research project on the value of music. While music is not a physical object that can be tangibly owned like a fine art piece, I am still curious to know how much you would be willing to pay for a piece of music if you could. Of course, it will vary depending on your personal taste as to which artists or genres you like, but I’m hoping to get a general sense of what people think. If you have a few minutes, please take a look at the link below and leave a response. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Bit confused what you are asking about, as “own” could mean everything from full copyright to the piece in multiple countries & the ability to collect royalties & to sue people for using the piece without your permission, to owning the original written manuscript & composers’ notes, or owning a master recording, or a copy to play as one wished, or just access to a copy.
When you ask about the dollar value I’d give to specific pieces, I don’t know whether you want to know how I’d assign a monetary amount to the value to humanity, to the music industry, to the artists involved, the retail price of an album or single, or just what I’d pay today to hear those pieces.
I’d have no interest in owning full rights to music I had no part in creating, so wouldn’t want to buy such a thing - guess if someone gave me something like this as a gift I’d make it available to the world on a CCC license or similar?
Manuscripts & master recordings? Again, I’d want to make these accessible to the public.
Physical & digital copies of recordings am happy to buy, and do this instead of streaming. Have copies of the released stuff your survey mentions, but idk what I paid for any of it.
My question was a bit vague, but the main point was to ask how much personal value a particular music piece has. In other words, how much money someone is willing to pay to own that piece. In this regard, it’s important to compare owning music to owning a painting. For example, you have the right to display and sell it to others, but you don’t have the right to perform it, own the copyright, or create derivative works. Because this is a new concept, I wanted to know what people think about it. In the simplest terms, I want to discuss the value of a work of art when it is compared to the act of buying and selling a painting.
Still a bit confused - haven’t we been able to do this since the gramophone (if not before, idk much about early media)?
Vinyl, tapes, CDs, etc. & digital files? These can all be bought & sold today. My city doesn’t have as many record stores as it did in my teens, but two of the big chains are still here as well as one big independent, there’s a few small specialists & several second-hand places. Supermarkets & charity shops often have a small selection of new & second-hand respectively. Vinyl sales are steadily increasing & though I can’t imagine cassettes making much of a comeback, one local hifi shop recommenced stocking cassette players a while ago, and now carries three of them.
To display a piece of music you can usually apply to the copyright holder for a license - this is typically very expensive, with prices set by negotiation according to the purpose & frequency of the intended display and the audience size.
For the pieces in your survey which I have copies of, I paid whatever was the standard retail price at the time, but that spans ~16 years in different parts of the world. Sometimes music purchases felt expensive, at other times I was able to buy more than one album at once, but more often than not music purchases were plain out of reach. If I had to replace my whole collection now I doubt I’d bother, as I don’t really listen to music anymore, but if only a few albums got damaged I’d probably be ok replacing them at current retail prices.
Doubt I’d pay more for as-yet-unreleased work than for music which is already out there.
Your opinion is so precious that I can gain a lot of insight from it. However, I want to insist that, because of the inherited nature of music as a digital file, it cannot be owned by someone solely as we do in painting. I want to know how much you would pay if you could own a piece of music solely. I think you already understood and answered my question quite well. So it would be my pleasure if you kept asking me questions if you have any remaining ones.
Solely? As in being the only person to own a digital copy?
I’d have zero interest in possessing such a thing, and would go as far as boycotting any record company or artist that began to go down that route.
With two exceptions: if a friend gifted me some music which they did not wish to be released, or if someone asked me to guard their intellectual property in the event of becoming incapacitated themselves.