The final AACS license also addresses one of the most frequents complaints small studios and replicators had about Blu-ray: the license fees. As summarized in a note by Sonic Solutions, AACS fees have dropped for all content holders, but the biggest savings are for first-time and low-volume publishers.
These are the fees and how they change:
AACS Content Provider Agreement Fee: this is the fee that a studio or content holder must pay to become an AACS Content Provider. It used to be $3,000 up front. Now it is payable in annual $500 increments, and the Content Provider can terminate its agreement at any time. This one change makes it possible for first-time and low volume content holders to get going with BD with a much lower start-up investment and at affordable per-title costs.
Content Certificate and Order Fulfilment Fee: this fee is for each glass master produced. It has dropped from $1,300 per title to $500 per title.
Media fee: this fee is applied for each disc replicated, and it stays unchanged at $0.04 per disc.
For example, the AACS costs for a first-time Blu-ray Disc publisher (for a run of 2,000 copies) has dropped from $4,380 (3,000 + 1,300 + 0.04 * 2,000) to just $1,080 (500 + 500 + 0.04 * 2,000), that is to say, a saving of over 75%.
For a publisher that has already been publishing on BD and hence has already paid his Content Provider Agreement Fee, the fees to publish a run of 2,000 units have dropped from $1,380 to just $580.
