The same is true for the music industry. It should be securing the rights to release all the titles in all the back catalogs as quickly as it can - thoughtlessly, automatically, and at industrial scale. (This is one of those rare moments where the world needs more lawyers, not fewer.) So too for videogames. Retro gaming, including simulators of classic game consoles that run on modern PCs, is a growing phenomenon driven by the nostalgia of the first joystick generation. Game publishers could release every title as a 99-cent download three years after its release - no support, no guarantees, no packaging. 音乐界也应该如法炮制。业内公司应该设法获得版权以便能够尽快地发行那些不再流行的音乐，并把这变成一个机械的、自动的、大规模生产的流程。（这是为数不多的希望这个世界上能多有几个律师的时候。）游戏业也是一样。怀旧游戏，包括那些在现代个人电脑上运行的经典老游戏的模拟版，由于第一代游戏迷的怀旧情节而日渐风靡。每个游戏出版三年后，游戏发行商都应该以99美分的价格让玩家下载--无需提供技术支持、质量保证和产品包装。
All this, of course, applies equally to books. Already, we're seeing a blurring of the line between in and out of print. Amazon and other networks of used booksellers have made it almost as easy to find and buy a second-hand book as it is a new one. By divorcing bookselling from geography, these networks create a liquid market at low volume, dramatically increasing both their own business and the overall demand for used books. Combine that with the rapidly dropping costs of print-on-demand technologies and it's clear why any book should always be available. Indeed, it is a fair bet that children today will grow up never knowing the meaning of out of print. 所有这些策略无疑对图书也适用。我们看到绝版书和正在销售的书之间的界限已经越来越模糊。Amazon和其他旧书销售网络使得买一本二手书和买新书一样容易。由于图书销售不再受地理限制，这些旧书销售网络创造出了一个流动市场来销售需求量很小的图书。这极大地扩大了它们自己的生意，同时极大地增加了整个市场对旧书的需求。加上越来越便宜的“按需求打印”的出版技术，无需过多解释为什么每本书都应该能买到已经成为可能。事实上，今天的孩子们非常有可能不知道绝版 书是什么意思了。
Rule 2: Cut the price in half. Now lower it. 规则2：比半价还要更便宜
Thanks to the success of Apple's iTunes, we now have a standard price for a downloaded track: 99 cents. But is it the right one? 苹果iTunes的成功使我们以每首99美分的标准价格下载音乐。但这个价格合理么？
Ask the labels and they'll tell you it's too low: Even though 99 cents per track works out to about the same price as a CD, most consumers just buy a track or two from an album online, rather than the full CD. In effect, online music has seen a return to the singles-driven business of the 1950s. So from a label perspective, consumers should pay more for the privilege of purchasing � la carte to compensate for the lost album revenue. 问问唱片公司，他们会说这过分便宜了！虽然每首99美分的价格和现在一张CD上平均每首歌的价格差不多，但大多数消费者只买一张专辑中的一两首歌，而不是整张CD。事实上，网上音乐销售业正在出现向50年代单曲商业模式的回归。所以从唱片公司的角度，消费者应该为他们获得“点歌”的权利而多付些钱，这样才能弥补唱片公司未能销售整张专辑的损失。
Ask consumers, on the other hand, and they'll tell you that 99 cents is too high. It is, for starters, 99 cents more than Kazaa. But piracy aside, 99 cents violates our innate sense of economic justice: If it clearly costs less for a record label to deliver a song online, with no packaging, manufacturing, distribution, or shelf space overheads, why shouldn't the price be less, too? 但另一方面，如果问问消费者，他们会说99美分还是贵。首先，99美分显然比从Kazaa （一个P2P网络）上免费下载贵。但除此之外，99美分在经济学角度也讲不通：很明显，通过网络下载音乐，唱片公司的费用远远低于99美分。没有包装、生产CD、分销、存货的费用，单曲的价格为什么不能更便宜呢？
Surprisingly enough, there's been little good economic analysis on what the right price for online music should be. The main reason for this is that pricing isn't set by the market today but by the record label demi-cartel. Record companies charge a wholesale price of around 65 cents per track, leaving little room for price experimentation by the retailers. 令人惊讶的是，有关什么是音乐下载合理价格的出色的经济分析非常少见。主要原因在于这个价格目前不是由市场决定的，而是由唱片公司的“准卡特尔（译者：决定市场价格等的行业联盟）”决定的。唱片公司给单曲制定了一个65美分的批发价格。这使得零售商尝试不同价格的空间变得很小。
That wholesale price is set to roughly match the price of CDs, to avoid dreaded "channel conflict." The labels fear that if they price online music lower, their CD retailers (still the vast majority of the business) will revolt or, more likely, go out of business even more quickly than they already are. In either case, it would be a serious disruption of the status quo, which terrifies the already spooked record companies. No wonder they're doing price calculations with an eye on the downsides in their traditional CD business rather than the upside in their new online business. 这个批发价格大致和CD上每只单曲的平均价格吻合。目的在于避免唱片公司惧怕看到的“渠道冲突”。唱片公司担心如果音乐下载的价格过低，仍旧占有 市场主导地位的CD零售商会造反，或者出现另一种更可能的情况，就是加速CD零售商的死亡。不管哪种情况，都会把当前的音乐市场搅得更乱，使已经惶惶然的唱片公司更加不可终日。无疑，他们在制定价格时考虑的是走下坡路的传统的CD零售业，而不是蒸蒸日上的音乐下载的销售方式。
But what if the record labels stopped playing defense? A brave new look at the economics of music would calculate what it really costs to simply put a song on an iTunes server and adjust pricing accordingly. The results are surprising. 如果唱片公司放弃抵抗会发生什么呢？大胆地猜测一下新音乐经济中把一首歌上载到iTunes 服务器的费用以及依此而定的价格到底如何？结果是惊人的。
Take away the unnecessary costs of the retail channel - CD manufacturing, distribution, and retail overheads. That leaves the costs of finding, making, and marketing music. Keep them as they are, to ensure that the people on the creative and label side of the business make as much as they currently do. For a popular album that sells 300,000 copies, the creative costs work out to about $7.50 per disc, or around 60 cents a track. Add to that the actual cost of delivering music online, which is mostly the cost of building and maintaining the online service rather than the negligible storage and bandwidth costs. Current price tag: around 17 cents a track. By this calculation, hit music is overpriced by 25 percent online - it should cost just 79 cents a track, reflecting the savings of digital delivery. 零售环节不必要的花费都可以省掉，如制造CD，分销和零售。剩下的是发现、制作音乐和市场营销的费用。假定这些费用不变，从而保证音乐创作者和唱片公司获得的利益也不发生变化。对于一张销量30万张的专辑，每张CD音乐创作的费用约为7.5美元，折算到每首曲目约为60美分。下载音乐的服务所需要的开发和维护费用约为每首曲目17美分，而存储和带宽的费用几乎可以忽略不计。按照上述计算，当前流行曲目下载的价格比合理的价格要贵了25%。合理价格应该是79 美分，这反映了用数字方式传播音乐节省的费用。
Putting channel conflict aside for the moment, if the incremental cost of making content that was originally produced for physical distribution available online is low, the price should be, too. Price according to digital costs, not physical ones. 暂不考虑“渠道冲突”的问题，如果通过网络传播音乐的边际费用比以实物为物理依托（CD）传播音乐的边际费用低，那么网上下载音乐的价格也应当便宜。数字化的费用，而不是物理的花费决定价格。
Putting channel conflict aside for the moment, if the incremental cost of making content that was originally produced for physical distribution available online is low, the price should be, too. Price according to digital costs, not physical ones. 这些消费者的福音对音乐产业也是有益无害的。薄利自然造成多销。去年Rhapsody进行了一次有关需求弹性的试验。试验结果指出销量的增加非常显著。在试验期间，Rhapsody给用户提供了三种单曲价格，99、79、49美分。尽管49美分已经低到99美分原价的一半，但销量却是原来的三倍。
Since the record companies still charged 65 cents a track - and Rhapsody paid another 8 cents per track to the copyright-holding publishers - Rhapsody lost money on that experiment (but, as the old joke goes, made it up in volume). Yet much of the content on the Long Tail is older material that has already made back its money (or been written off for failing to do so): music from bands that had little record company investment and was thus cheap to make, or live recordings, remixes, and other material that came at low cost. 唱片公司每首单曲的费用还是65美分，Rhapsody额外每首曲目还要付给版权拥有者8美分，所以这个试验是赔钱的。(不过，正如那句老式玩笑，赔本赚吆喝。) 但长尾经济中可销售的大量产品是那些已经把本赚回来了的老内容，还有些是被认定赔本已经被划销了的。又比如由接受唱片公司很少投资的乐队用低廉的费用创作的音乐，以及其他实况录音、老歌翻唱等等。
Such "misses" cost less to make available than hits, so why not charge even less for them? Imagine if prices declined the further you went down the Tail, with popularity (the market) effectively dictating pricing. All it would take is for the labels to lower the wholesale price for the vast majority of their content not in heavy rotation; even a two- or three-tiered pricing structure could work wonders. And because so much of that content is not available in record stores, the risk of channel conflict is greatly diminished. The lesson: Pull consumers down the tail with lower prices. 这些非主流音乐的制作成本比流行作品还要更低。那为什么不能更便宜地卖给消费者呢？想像一下，沿着长尾曲线向末端移动的产品越来越便宜。实际上，是流行程度（也就是市场）在决定价格。只要唱片公司把那些销量不是很大的单曲的批发价降低些，比如提供一个两三种价位的价格模式，情况就会大大改观。而由于上述的大部分内容在传统的音乐零售店根本找不到，也就不大会出现“渠道冲突”的风险了。我们学到这样一点：用低价格把消费者引向长尾末端。
