[advocacy] Re: ogg vorbis

[Daniel James]

> I run a small label in London.
> What level of interest are you getting in yr format?

It's not my format, I just use it!

The number of artists and labels using the format appears to be 
increasing steadily, and there is a new hardware player coming out 
now with Vorbis support - the Neuros:

http://www.neurosaudio.com/

I think it's still early days for Vorbis, but - ignoring technical 
quality and artistic freedom issues - from a label's point of view 
it's one way to hedge your bets on formats.

It doesn't cost you anything to support (beyond the few minutes it 
takes to make the files from a CD) so if MP3 or WMA starts getting 
really expensive to use in future, then it would useful to have a 
Vorbis infrastructure already in place. For the time being I think 
most labels supporting Vorbis will supply MP3 as an alternative on 
their download pages.

I think one thing that could force a large-scale move to Vorbis by 
indpendent labels would be if the owners of MP3 started sending out 
lawyer's letters demanding unpaid royalties stretching back several 
years.

There is currently an exemption from MP3 royalties for labels with 
less than US $100,000 annual turnover, but that could change in 
future of course. And if you're employing a couple of staff you could 
easily go over that amount - it might only represent about 10,000 CD 
sales a year, which isn't exactly massive for a label with several 
bands or artists.

The current royalty is 2% of revenue with an annual minimum of US 
$2000 for MP3, or 3% and $3000 minimum for MP3PRO. Of course, if they 
manage to wipe out all other formats, or Microsoft wins the formats 
battle, we'll have to pay whatever they want in future to stay in the 
game. If nothing else, that's a good reason to support a true free 
music format. 

Cheers

Daniel
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