Business News Education & Events Labels & Publishers Retail

In The City: Drop album prices to a pound, former major chief says

By | Published on Friday 15 October 2010

A former boss of Warner Music UK reckons the record industry should slash digital music, or at least that’s what he said during a keynote session at In The City yesterday. 

According to the BBC, former Warner chief Rob Dickins, at In The City for an ‘in conversation’ event with REM manager Bertis Downs, said that if record labels slashed download prices so that an album cost a pound, rather than the current £5-8, they’d sell much more music overall. His thoughts echo other albeit isolated voices in the music business, some of whom have suggested that the long since shut down allofmp3.com, the rogue Russian download store that sold MP3s of chart hits for just pennies a piece, actually had the right business model. 

According to the Beeb, Dickins said: “What we need is a revolution. What we’ve got is an erosion. If record labels made the decision to charge much less, fans would not think twice about buying an album on impulse and the resulting sales boost would make up for the price drop, he predicted”. 

But BBC reporter Ian Youngs found that not everyone at In The City agreed with Dickins’ radical proposal, with N-Dubz manager dubbing it a “totally ridiculous suggestion”.

Meanwhile CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke, who was apparently loitering around the ITC lobby, remarked: “It is a gamble. Once you’ve slashed the price of an album you can’t really go back. It’s a big risk and the record companies will resist it. But Rob’s not alone, outside the record companies, in saying perhaps that is the future”.

You can read the full BBC report at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11547279

READ MORE ABOUT: |