I have learned from my experiences with I-pod that most people are willing to pay 1 to 3 dollars for downloadable content, wether it being an MP3 or a little game or application. With these kinds of prices people are happy and don't bother with downloading illegal content. Stuff above $5 barely gets any downloads, or it must be of extreme quallity games.

Yamaha styles ar $7, which is obviously to much compared to the proven I-phone price level.

Next to that the new organ and choir expansions cost $200 for 20 instruments and 10 styles. this pricing is way over the top and is just like asking everyone to just get the illegal coppies from the web.


Now this is not only Yamaha but all producers of software and/or media. People are mostly not prepared to pay those huge prices for software and/or media anymore. Tough the I-phone has proven how much people are prepared to pay.

Espescially with software i would be happier to sell 10 styles a $1 then selling 1 style a $7. The I-phone has proven that people spend more money if prices are low then when the stuff is expensive. And the extra cost for downloadable software are almost non excistent.

So the whole buiseness model of these expensive Yamaha styles has been taken over by time .... and I-phone proves it.

So would you buy much more styles online if they where much cheaper?

How many I-phone users are there compared to arranger keyboard players?



[This message has been edited by Taike (edited 04-05-2010).]

That does not matter....

Its still the same math....
Either at a price of $7 where 5% of all users buy that style
Or at a price of $1 where 50% of all users buy that styles.

Almost noboddy will buy the expansion pack at $200 where at $20 almost everyone would buy that expansion pack....

So who makes more money and happier cistomers?

"Elasticity of demand" could certainly come into play with downloaded styles. I don't know that anyone could say whether much lower prices would work unless they tried it. As for me, I think it would. Would I pay $1 for a good style? In a heartbeat. I'd buy them regularly. $7? That's a stretch. Then again, I'm not programming styles and don't have any firsthand knowledge of the economics of style programming.

Sure it matters.

There's a reason why there's haute couture, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Rolex, $200 haircuts, 3-star restaurants, etc.

Even at $1 apiece styles would still be illegally copied. What style creator would even bother?

[This message has been edited by Taike (edited 04-05-2010).]

"Elasticity of Demand"...well played! Someone else remembers college economics.

Certainly applicable here.


Russ

iPhone and iTunes use PROTECTED content. They can afford to sell an app at a few dollars, or a tune at 99�, because you CAN'T copy them (or at least, only a few times for your own use, then they self-lock).

Until arrangers start to protect the content, the styles get swapped around like baseball cards. So, do you want to sell a style at $10 or a style at $1? Because, after you sell that first style, that purchaser is going to share it with all THEIR friends, and then they are going to share it with THEIR friends. One way, you make $10, the other, $1...

I believe it is time to return to a 21st century version of ROM only styles. Back in the day, when you bought an arranger, the styles in it were ROM styles, and you COULDN'T copy them. If you wanted those styles, you HAD to buy that arranger... Good for the manufacturers, good for us (because they made enough money from them to keep making new models). Some of these older arrangers had card slots you could buy ROM cards with more styles on them. And, to be fair, because these styles were uncopyable, they brought out quite a lot (comparatively) of new styles in between model releases. Because they MADE MONEY.

Fast forward to today, and the RAM styles are copied and swapped, converted, etc., the day the arranger comes out. Let's face it, how many MORE S900 users would spring for an S910, if they COULDN'T get the S910 styles converted for their older arranger?

I believe for the health of the industry (you might have noticed the death of several arranger companies lately), it is time that we had style copy protection once again. It is a fairly easy thing to 'key' a piece of software to the hardware it is loaded onto, and this is what the industry needs to do if quality styles are ever going to be made in the numbers they USED to be. The style making industry is a tiny handful of really talented guys. They make truly excellent styles for the arrangers when they come out. But after that, it's pretty much 'see you later'...

Unless we are willing to give up something in the way of our ability to STEAL people's styles (I'm sorry, but there really isn't any other way to look at this), what possible reason would a talented, first rate style maker have for actually making any MORE styles and selling them to us? He pretty much knows that we are going to steal them from the first guy that makes them available...

It's tough enough making a living as a musician, but then add in that we seem to be all TOO willing to actually steal from each other, given half a chance, and you really can't blame these guys for throwing their hands up and walking away from the job until a manufacturer hires them again to make the NEXT batch of ROM (RAM, really) styles for the NEXT arranger in the series. And sadly, that appears to be on an at least three year cycle.

So, you get a batch of styles when the arranger is launched, and then that's pretty much IT, for three years or more... Me, I'd like some new ones a LOT more often than that. I'd like styles in genres that aren't maybe well represented by the Majors' ROM sets. But until the arrangers have a more robust copy protection, we're never going to see this.

IF every single third party and extra factory style used by arranger players resulted in a dollar going to the writer of that style, they'd be making enough money to make doing this constantly a good living for them. But if we keep taking the fruits of their labor, and giving them to each other for free, they make next to no money, and consequently no new styles.

We are the ones in the end hurt the most by doing this, though... Instead of a plethora of quality styles that match the level of our arrangers' ROM styles constantly available, we get ugly 'conversions' from other arranger that rarely hold a candle to the ROM styles, and legacy styles that don't leverage the newer sounds and dynamic capabilities of our new arrangers. And we only get a batch of newer styles every three or four YEARS....

This doesn't make sense.

I'd HAPPILY pay a buck for a new style, on the proviso that it CAN'T leave my keyboard, and I can't copy it and give it to a friend. HE'D be happy to pay the buck, too. So would ALL of you. And that's a LOT of bucks for the style maker. Enough to ensure he WANTS to make a bunch more for us.

But unless those styles are protected, keyed to the arranger itself, SOMEONE will invariably share the style. And that's the end of the money for the style writer.

We are cutting our own throats here, and the arranger industry has given us the knife. It is time to make styles uncopyable, again...

Maybe they should work with subscriptions..

So people that have a $15 a month subscription can download all the content they want... There are much more different ways of making money then selling for a high price..

@Diki
I hate closed systems because they do not allow for user development, espescially in the Yamaha style department there are many user programmed styles that share their work freely over the internet...

No matter what form of protection, users should allways be able to create their own stuff and share it.
Not everyone wants to make money out of the things he creates. They have more joy from sharing their stuff freely.

I think it was in the early 70's that Lowrey brought out an arranger keyboard, that I bought for 2600.00. The two 35 watt amps were 250.00 more. This board had a lot of styles in it but like most, never enough.
Lowrey would bring out a cartridge that looked like an 8 track and about the same size that would have 4 or sometimes 5 new styles on it. It cost 75.00 plus another 6.00 Calif sales tax. They were released on a random basis usually every couple of months and we just couldn't wait to get the next one. You had to get to the dealer as soon as he called you or they were gone. I still have about 20 of them in a drawer and that is another 1500.00 for styles for this keyboard. I still have this keyboard and that pair of amps.
We paid what the the traffic would bear and happy to get them.
Later on as I bought the first Technics Arrangers we bought extra styles for them and from only one company that made them and sold them in the US and the UK only. They were also very expensive but we bought a new crop for each new keyboard that was released and we purchased. We never give it a second thought. Price didn't enter into it.
so you can see how attitudes and times have changed since then.
Bebop

Times have changed indeed...

Nowerdays companies sometimes listen to customers... espescially when customers refuse to buy to expensive tools, and demand lower prices...

seven whole dollars??? Why, even at a minimum wage job, you'd have to put in a whole hour's work to buy a terrific quality style that you will probably use on countless income earning gigs thereafter.
But at least if you go to a movie and buy popcorn and a soda you get to enjoy that for a couple hours and won't see any return on investment.

The maintarget for selling Yamaha Tyros and other "HOME" keyboard arrangers is not gigging musicians, but people playing at their homes.

It's easy to have a computer based system (which is all that arrangers are, these days) differentiate between styles made in their entirety by a user, and a style made from parts of purchased styles. Basically, all it would have to do is 'flag' any style the user makes that includes protected style components, and not allow it to be exported.

You would basically have a system where the style is 'keyed' to your specific hardware, and you can edit it, use it to make other styles, but any style that contains a third party style Part would be 'flagged', and not available on the export function.

Make the parts up yourself, no problem...

And, I'm sorry, but we have ALL seen the prevalent attitude towards styles here. Subscription, outright purchase, inclusion with the purchase of an arranger... everybody considers that, once they have 'bought' their styles, they are theirs to SHARE. And that's where everything falls down.

Only protected styles will remain on a 'one style, one payment' to the creator. I wish it were otherwise, but reading this forum's posts ought to make it obvious what the vast majority think...