My 5 kopecks on copyright or A little about the price structure of legal digital content

    In this article, using the example of one portal, I will talk about the cost structures of music, movies and books. In the set of material I was helped by various people, both creative and simply related to this business.

    So, here is this portal, which, he claims, occupies about 60% of the licensed digital content market. Any copyright holder can enter into an agreement with him (and this is not necessarily the author of the work). The store takes 40% of the cost.

    Now let’s concretize ...

    Music


    So, the standard price for an album is 80 rubles. The copyright holder receives 80-32 = 48 rubles per disk.

    And now the copyright system is interfering. As one knowledgeable person (who worked in this area) told me, there is no standard “commission” that rightholders take upon themselves. Depends on the group and its agreements with them. Alas, he did not voice any specific figures. “... the music market is extremely confused, especially in Russia. The final cost for the user is dictated by the copyright holder. Here you need to understand that the copyright holder is not even a record label. "How much of this money the author receives. I'm afraid no one can say.”

    Thus, it is quite clear that the artists who fall into this system give a lot to her. The question is how difficult it is. One can only say firmly that before it was almost impossible for musicians to spin up without companies selling cassettes and disks. Well, now thanks to the Internet, their importance is gradually decreasing.

    Under the next heading there will be an interesting comparison with films.

    Films


    The standard price is 50 rubles. The copyright holder receives 50-20 = 30 rubles.

    I suppose it’s not worth explaining that the cost of the film is much higher than the cost of recording a music album (even with the invitation of a symphony orchestra). And compare the cost with the music. What's the secret? That films will then be shown on television and will receive money for this? Hardly.

    As I understand it, correct, if I am mistaken, the main reason is the lack of an intermediate link in the producer-consumer chain. No non-manufacturing copyright holders. All rights, as well as distribution efforts, are in the hands of production studios.

    As a person who does not work in the film and music industries, I may not know something, but I believe that anyone will see that there is some discrepancy between the cost and final prices caused by the intermediate link, which is currently losing its real value.

    Books


    The standard price is 30 rubles. The copyright holder receives 30-12 = 18 rubles.

    It's harder for me to say. Now I could not find out for sure whether publishers interfere in the activities of writers who want to publish an electronic version, or whether they take a commission from this. In 2006, when they were discussing at one thematic forum, some sources stated that publishers were extremely neutral towards such actions of their writers. Then this market was so underdeveloped that there was nothing special to share.

    Given my knowledge of this area, it is likely that it remains the same at the current moment. The publishing business is extremely confusing . And overpayments to eminent authors pay off due to underpayments of less circulation.

    But, given that in this case, the writer is the copyright holder of the placed book, then from one copy he will receive more than one copy of the printed book. Perhaps even 3-4 times (depending on the publisher, genre and a number of other conditions). Based on economic theory, with lower prices, demand should increase! Even taking into account the inelasticity of book prices, lowering the price from 150-250 (and somewhere more) rubles to 30 should simply (if you have technical equipment, such as readers) increase demand. However, do not forget about electronic piracy.
    Example: Anton Pervushin’s book “Cosmonauts of Stalin”. The author invested 8 months of work on the book, 60 thousand rubles (in particular, on access to various archives). The book was published with a circulation not exceeding 10 thousand copies. The corresponding fee (as a rather well-known author) is 40 thousand rubles. Even cash investments did not pay off, not to mention temporary ones. In a month, it was downloaded from only one pirate site 25,000 times.

    I think everyone will draw conclusions easily. The only thing I would like to say is that the left uncles and aunts are taking part of the money with music now, but this is not a reason, IMHO, to refuse to pay the artist for his work.

    Bonus


    Now let's talk about the donate system.
    There are a lot of conscious people on Habré who are not too lazy to encourage various projects for information / software / works. And it seemed to be so convenient not to pay the copyright holders from some scary offices, but to transfer the music group to your wallet as much as you think is necessary. And these copywriters are not needed ...

    Everything would be so good if it were not for the low consciousness of people. I talked with the creators of several popular resources that have a corresponding page on the site. Quote from Alfina , the creator of the full-bye , fools and roads web comics that have already reached paper-based printing, Fools and Roads, etc.: “I have to go to another job. There’s not enough beer and internet. ”

    So, I hope you enjoyed the article. If where I received the wrong information, or made the wrong conclusions, write.

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