The Dollar Rule

The Dollar Rule vs. iTunes

Since we've applied the Dollar Rule to iPods, the next logical thing is to analyze iTunes purchases. At only $0.99 for a song it should be easy to hit DRR of 1.0, right? Just listen to each song for at least an hour. Is that as easy as it sounds? Let's see. Assuming a 4 minute average song length getting your 1 hour worth from a song would require you to listen to it 15 times.

If you bought an album, your price-per-song might be a little lower since buying an album as a whole is $9.99 but you can apply the same Dollar Rule calcluations for the entire album itself. But for simplicity we're just considering individually purchased songs.

So how many songs have you bought from iTunes? 50, 100, 2500? Have you reached a DRR of 1.0 across all your iTunes purchases yet? Luckily iTunes tracks how many times you listen to your music, so estimating how many times you've listened to your music may actually be something you can determine.

Let's analyze an example TV shows from iTunes, like Stargate SG-1:

So a typical hour-long show (an hour if you added back in the 15 minutes of commercials that would normally pad the length for broadcast TV) would only require you to watch it around 3 times to make this a DR-worthy purchase, whether you bought a single episode or a whole season.

Now remember that if you tend to watch your shows with another person, even only part of the time, then you reach your DRR 1.0 mark in just 1-2 viewings. Good reason to share! Same goes for the song analysis too.

For comparison, if you bought a used copy (say from Amazon or eBay, etc.) of the complete 2nd Season for $20, instead of buying new, you'd halve your time to reach a DDR of 1.0, which would be just slight more than a single viewing of the entire season.

So the Dollar Rule isn't saying not to buy the new copy (price for a full season seem to be about the same between iTunes and Amazon), but it might make you think about buying a used copy if you don't think you'll watch the entire season more than once. You may have missed previous seasons while it was on TV and just wanted to catch-up for the next season.

But to think frugally, if you think you're only going to watch it once, then just rent or borrow (library) it if possible. Your DRR for renting (say $12 to rent 3 discs of a full season) is going to be a lot higher (better) than if you bought it. And if you check it out from the library, you can notch up another infinite DRR.

I will only buy a DVD for myself if I know for sure I'm going to watch a movie multiple times. If I tend to watch it everytime it's on TV, then I'm likely to keep watching it on DVD. So these would be titles like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or the Star Wars movies, or most any of the Pixar movies. For kid movies, if the flick is any good at all (and pretty much all the Pixar ones are), repeat viewings are usually not a problem.

Just for some variety, here's another TV show example, this time for South Park:

So I will let you start sifting through your iTunes library to see how well you've been making use of your media.

Me? I've never bought a single item on iTunes. They give out 1 free song each week. Mark it on your calendar! The rest of my music I get from free Internet radio or podcasts, or CD's we own.

 Tags:

• album
• apple
• dollar rule
• itunes
• library
• media
• movies
• music
• shows
• songs
• TV

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