Heh.. right and ability are two different things..

Roger, it's rather simple and obvious that some people do not understand the value of intellectual property and how to account for the ongoing development costs of non-tangible property such as "software." This is nothing new. But for the newbies out there, IP and "software" are just about the bread and butter of the entire technological industry. It doesn't matter if you make calculators, graphics processors or routers.

The fact is that you have to pay for the creativity and "time" of the skilled minds that so many want to take for granted.

And if you think that's bullocks, then do some research into how much a few other non-material types charge for their knowledge (ie. lawyers)

Bruno

In reply to:

---

The fact is that you have to pay for the creativity and "time" of the skilled minds that so many want to take for granted.

---

How come so many people don't feel this way about the music on their players

I'd say an overwhelming majority of people on this board have ripped all or very nearly all of their own music to put on their empegs. I have maybe 5 songs that i've downloaded on my empeg... for which i will make no excuses.. =]

And how do you come to such a conclusion?? Show me.

I see many more questions on this BBS about ripping CDs than about downloading music with Limewire or Morpheus?
--Andrew

I agree I have read more questions about ripping than downloading. but when I have read messages or references to people downloading music I didn't see a reaction anything like there was to this thread. it is just pretty much ignored.

I think I got a couple people pissed off when I said it wasn't 'worth' $1500. I did not mean that it didn't cost that much to manufacture. I simply meant is it worth $1500 for the general public to buy one. But good point, msaeger.

Wow, this has been a pretty crazy thread. Although I am also pretty new to this board, let me note a few things.

I am a programmer, and I can honesly tell you hardware is more "free" at my company than programming. We generally just pass hardware along at cost so we get paid for our programming.

This really is a player with features you'll never be able to find anywhere else: Other car stereo manufacturers will never include half (not even half really) of the features we get. I don't know that you can even buy an equalizer like the one on this unit.

I am sure that the Empeg team could not have kept the unit from being EOL'd, but I do wonder why SB never advertised that I saw (I never saw the unit in Crutchfield). I don't know if more advertising $ could have kept the line producing, but I can't tell you how many broken hearts I have seen after I showed friends my unit and then told them it was discontinued. I told them they could still get them on E-bay, but most of them needed time to save up money. I'm just glad I got mine when I did.

I can also say I have paid the record companies every penny for all of the music on my empeg. While I think this may not universally be the case, I am absolutely positive that the record industry has made more money because of the empeg because we are all buying and listening to more music.

The music on my player comes from the 500 CDs sitting on my shelves. I assume your comment was directed to someone else specifically?

I will continue to buy music to rip and put on my empeg. I don't have much interest in downloading for anything but preview purposes - and really more to tide me over until I can actually get the album (most of the artists I listen to I can safely buy without having listened to a single track of the new album beforehand).

I do have about 1GB of downloaded music on my empeg right now. Most are probably remixes of tracks I have on bought discs. Stuff that I more than likely would not be able to find in stores. And of course some older tracks that I'll have to research and dig to find sources for - not everything is available on eBay at all times (many things have long-since been deleted from catalogs).

Bruno

Same here. Most of the downloaded tracks that are on my Empeg are tracks that can't be found in stores anymore. Or sometimes you'll find them on a compilation CD, but I'm not prepared to buy an entire (or double) CD for ONE song I like.

More than 80% of the songs that are on my Empeg are songs I've ripped/encoded myself from my own CD/vinyl collection. The remaining 20% I would've bought, if that was still possible.

Just keep in mind that "worth" is a very personal thing. Far too many factors outside even whimsical fancy weigh in as well - geography, income, career/job, etc.

If you want to break it down to statistics and numbers then you can do that as well, but then you're looking at the "worth" to SONICblue. Figure how much it costs them to produce the hardware, stock it, move it, etc. How much they pay to the people that are involved with stocking and moving it. How much they had to pay to acquire empeg. The salaries of the empeg employees (we'll ignore the rest of SB for now) and their benefits packages. Then packaging costs, insurance (most people forget about insurance - I'm not talking about shipping insurance), operational costs for the electronic ordering system... Now how many players have been sold? Care to take guesses how much the players are actually "worth" now?

Since the product has been EOL'd, it is safe to say that the empeg retail business was NOT "worth" it to SONICblue.

When the empeg was selling at $999 for a 10GB model there were other solutions available at a lesser price. Each with their own trade-offs and amount of aftermarket modification and work that needed to be done. Some with development work needed by the consumer (DIY things like the PJRC). At the empeg price drop to $699 I can honestly say that it wasn't "worth" it to get a PJRC for $150 considering all the work I'd still have to do with it.

There's no question to that a $1500 product will not fly in mobile car audio. Not at the consumer level anyway (and that just happens to be the only market to move this type of product into - I don't know how many military contracts you're going to get for an in-dash MP3 product for example, or airline deals, or any other niche, etc..) But this goes beyond a simple question of "worth" - so this whole thread is pretty much based on material that ends up being inflammatory simply because of the way it's written and because some people aren't looking at the much larger picture.

Now, can we all just make sure SB sell out of all their magically re-appearing stock? Send a message to them and everyone else, that in-car mobile jukeboxes are a very hot ticket. Let the marketing people figure out how they want to position their future products.

Bruno

it was not directed at you sorry if you thought it was

yah right, i throw my thread out there and get flamed 19 ways from friday.. and most of it was by empeg employees.. all i did was state my opinion, just like this guy. when you have pisse doff customers, calling them stupid, telling them not to put their foot in their mouth, telling them to RTFF, and so forth is hardly appropriate. In fact i would say that some specific members of this board have been WAY out of line from a professional role with the tone they have taken with people that invested a lot of money within a product developed by THEIR company.

Little hint guys, don't bite the hand that feeds.

I think alot of people underestimate exactly how much money it costs to develop something. Working in a software shop, I'm just now realizing how much it costs; it's expensive.

-mark

I think our labor rates are around $118/hr or so for software developers. We buy hardware like its going out of style, but software we take seriously.

At least, thats what I've seen. I'm not a manager though, just a lab rat

The answer is programming. It's free- it only takes time and creativity (assuming you have the knowhow). Some suggestions:

Surely you jest.

Nearly two years ago (see here) Rob V. said there was more than eight man-years of development time in the player software. That was when the empeg was a little over a year into its development. So it would not be unreasonable to guess that by now there are at least 15 man-years of development time in the software. If you figure a talented programmer (and the guys@empeg are among the most talented in the world -- this is why the SoB group bought them!) is worth, say, $75,000 per year you have $1.1 million in direct salary software expense. And it would not be unreasonable to guess that direct salary expense is perhaps a third of what it really cost to develop the software -- after all, those programmers worked in a building that cost rent, utilities, taxes, etc. They used hardware that had to be purchased and upgraded. Somewhere along the line were the expenses that the employer contributes (don't know how England works, but there must be some equivalent to social security taxes, health insurance, etc.) So figure over $3 million in software expenses over the years.

Hey, guess what -- they sold 3,000 players. $3 million divided by 3,000 players comes to about $1000 per player just for the software.

That programming is NOT free.


[OT]
Now, factor in that most of those 3,000 players sold for less than $400.. That even at the reduced price of $699 (less than the cost of the hardware alone) the players were not selling. We can complain, criticize, and castigate Sonic Blue all we want -- but the EOL decision was absolutely and completely inevitable.

Unquestionably the empeg was and still is the best product of its type in the world. Unfortunately the market niche that can afford the very best is too small to be commercially viable.
[/OT]

tanstaafl.

The answer is programming. It's free- it only takes time and creativity (assuming you have the knowhow).

OK, I thought you were serious untill I read the last two of your suggestions. Just in case I will put here a part of my intended response:

Guys@empeg, all professional programmers on the board, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison will doubtlessly greet the news that programming is free!

Speaking of Ferarri: comparing it to empeg is not fair. Empeg is an order of magnitude better than the next guy (at double the price - originally). The only area where Ferarri (or any other 'supercar') holds the same or better price/performance ratio as 'ordinary' sports cars is the owner's ego. $300000 supercar is not six times better (in terms of performance and fun to drive) than $50000 'ordinary' sports car; more realistic figure would be perhaps 30% or 50%. With 'supercars' we are deep into area of dimminishing returns; empeg is far from that. Each cent of almost $2000 I paid is covered by features, ease of use, expandability... Of course, it does not mean I did not have troubles scrapping together those $2000

So, empeg is not simply Ferarri of MP3 players, it is Ferarri at the price of stock Corvette (or recently second-hand Yugo ).

And this guy wants GPS for free.

And the funny thing is, he will probably get it (thanks to empeg's original decision to go with an open platform and the number of top-notch hackers who considered empeg worth those $1500).

I agree. I would be glad to have ANY classic sports car. But I can't think of any other car mp3 player I would want.

Again, as I said before, saying that empeg costs $1500 to produce and sell, that it is worth $1500, and that I can afford it at $1500 are three totally different things. I could just barely afford it, but I never thought it was not worth it.

As for music piracy, I think that this board overall supports reasonable mixture of 'musicians have to eat' and fair use. So, guys who admit at having large downloaded MP3 collections were let know that most people here don't look at that favorably (but we generally avoid flame wars). Most people seem to think that mixes one of our members produces could be tolerated as 'fair use', and almost all are very strongly opinoinated concerning RIAA attempts at restricting our right to use CDs we bought as we please.

Well... I dunno if it'll be free, at least the map data will probably cost us, and I would think Kim would want to charge a reasonable fee for all the work he's put into his GPS software. But free would certainly be nice!

I had impression that other (Sven's ?) project is intended to be open sourced (though I won't mind paying a reasonable price for empeg/GPS). Freeware maps seem to be a problem, true....

I am just reading the thread you are refering to, and I don't have impression you were flamed at all. If anything, others (Rob included) were more measured with their choice of words.

If you take a look at the header of this page, you will see it is the unofficial board, making it possible for Hugo, Rob & Co. to participate without having to act as PR people.

Rob (and others) just asked for distinction to be made between horrible Digital River e-store and S|B ordering support and post-sales support being provided by David. Both are second to none, but with different polarity :-) It is really not fair to paint David (and Rob, Hugo and others - it's often Hugo who saves fried players) with the same brush as, IIRC, Tammy from S|B customer care.

Rob also repeated several times that license cost is not what keeps WMA support from our hands (it's obviously M$ 'anti-piracy' nonsense), and asked to be at least aknowledged, it not believed. Not too much, I would say....

Finally, let me note that one of the nice features of this board and its members is that flame wars, as rare as they are, tend to die down quickly and be forgotten.

Cheers!

i see what you are saying, but making a reference to other posts which i never read, well i guess i misinterpreted.. i NEVER READ that wma was not here for any reason, i ever read anything on it...cept a few people asking when and teh response of soon.

the whole thing doesn't really matter i guess.. i think that tech support did a fine job for me when i needed it.. all other aspects though, presales/sales support e-store etc, need a serious overhauling. regardless, i hope rio does succeed, as i said before..

bonzi, how much something is "worth" and how much people can afford are very closely related. Take someone for example working in a sweatshop in Communist China. They may be be the best damn shoemaker an employer could find, yet their only getting paid the equivalent of 50 cents a day, while there is someone in America who can't make shoes half as well making over ten times that amount in one hour. So why is the better employee getting payed less? Because of the situation. They are only 'worth' 50 cents a day because there are numerous other chinese folk willing to take that guys place in a heartbeat, because it's 'relatively' good money to them. Supply and demand.

As for the ferrari analogy, you're only using price/performance for the ferrari. If you were to use the same standards in judging the empeg, that means excluding visuals, sleek look of the player, etc. The main difference that I see is that there are lots of supercars to choose from but only one empeg.

ps- Is there anyone here who would NOT take a GPS for free if offered one? Anyone?

Here Here! Sales is a joke here in the US. They don't know their product and haven't a clue about inventory. I hope they succeed but I hope they improve their front end.

bonzi, how much something is "worth" and how much people can afford are very closely related.

I agree in principle. However, "worth" of the product is judged by other products of the similar kind in the same market. "Affordability" is individual matter. Clearly, product has to be affordable to someone, but given the amount of money spent on absurdly expensive status symbol items that should not be a problem for several thousand empeg units worldwide.

So, empeg was always worth the price for me (I compared it to other expensive audio and computing toys I had or wished to have). However, the first time my number came, I deffered because at that moment I could not afford it. OTOH, even if I could easily afford McLaren F1 or something from Sultan of Brunei garage sale, I would not buy it, because I could get almost as much fun (and much less unwanted attention) for five or ten times less money. For me those supercars are not worth their price, regardless of (theoretical) affordability. Hence my disagreement with comparing empeg to Ferarri:

I dunno. I could have a _LOT_ of fun in a McLaren F1. Well, until I go careening off a cliff I guess

The price drop really lowered the floor here as well, I see.

I guess new members with big egos have difficulty remaining civil when they are told that the answers to their many misconceptions and questions are addressed in the FAQ or in other easily located posts on the BBS.

Here's a tip: as a new member to any BBS, its probably a good idea to read as much as you can and be meek until you're up to speed.

I've not seen any flare ups on this BBS until a few hot-heads picked up players cheap and couldn't understand why traffic doesn't stop to answer their questions.

This is the best resource you've got for the empeg, boys, and its great -- not a good idea to go alienating yourselves so early. Find another BBS if you want to grandstand, flame, etc.

Like I said, its been clear sailing until the price drop lowered the bar.