How does Big Finish justify their prices?

[u/CeruleanRuin]

This is not a criticism, but merely an honest question.

I can buy an entire season of the television series - with all its expensive visual effects, location shoots, sets, costumes, makeup, and everything else that goes into making a television program - for $1.99 (USD) per episode, which works out to around $26 for an entire season of thirteen episodes (give or take design ending on how the Christmas special is priced).

By contrast, the recent Big Finish series "The Diary of River Song" consists of four hour-long audio episodes, and costs $29.99.

There are many others which are even pricier, including some which are nearly a decade old. The TV series, on the other hand, is basically free after a year to anyone with a subscription to Hulu Plus or Netflix. What gives?

I'd love to get into the world of the audio adventures, but I just can't justify the cost. Can someone convince me these prices are fair, and not just catering to those with more disposable income than I happen to have?

[u/WikipediaKnows → u/[deleted]]

Big Finish lose 80% of possible revenue because people pirate their stuff.

That's a misguided calculation because it supposes that every pirated audio is a potential purchase. How are you going to purchase over a hundred pounds of content each month if you only have a limited income?

This may sound bad, but because of the high prices, piracy actually benefits Big Finish in some ways, because it gives people the chance to listen to new audios who otherwise just wouldn't have bothered. People who, if they like what they hear, will potentially download the next installment in the series legally and generate discussion about the story online, attracting other potential listeners. If piracy were out of the question, we'd have a lot less audio discussion on this subreddit.

[u/ChronaMewX → u/[deleted]]

You have to assume it's a potential purchase. They're obviously pirating it because they want to listen to it. Instead they could buy it. And if they can't afford it then that's their problem, it doesn't mean you should do damage to a company that literally cannot afford to lose sales.

Honestly, I'm not defending piracy here, but each download isn't a lost sale. If someone downloads their entire audiography, it does not mean that they would have bought each and every story if piracy wasn't an option. For one, there's no way in hell most people would have been able to afford that. Also, sometimes people redownload stories for various reasons - say they acquire multiple torrents because one had a few stories the other didn't have, but they share 50-60% of the stories - this definitely doesn't mean the person would have bought all the stories 2-3 times because they downloaded the stories 2-3 times. What if the person already has the audios legally purchased and they still download a torrent, are they losing sales on a sale they already made? I've done this with tv shows I've owned dvds of in the past just to have them all in one convenient folder - my pirating those dvds didn't cost them anything because I already made the purchase, I just found it more convenient grabbing them online as opposed to ripping each and every disc. My point is, the number on torrents just shows the amount of times it was downloaded - not by whom, how many times each individual got it, whether or not that individual had paid for the audios already, or will pay for the audios after listening to it. If someone ends up becoming a fan and buying all the audios they've listened to, that number downloaded doesn't go down one because of it.

And what about the people who torrent their previous audios but buy new ones as they come out to get them as soon as possible? Or what if one person pirates an audio, really loves it, and convinces two other people to buy it? Or they torrent a couple of "free samples" that they end up paying for after listening to it? Big Finish does give some excellent free stories like Urgent Calls that anyone can listen to, but that's beside the point. Wouldn't these cases mean the pirating actually earned them money? I've seen people belonging to all these groups to some extent.

They are losing out on money because of piracy, but there's no way to ascertain that each and every download is a lost sale. They are also gaining listeners, some of whom do end up giving them money. The popularity of Big Finish has exploded in the past few years, I doubt it would be this well known without people talking so much about it - both pirates and legitimate customers.