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Then, according to this article, his album was the second most played CD according to Gracenote before it even came out, since people got their hands on pirated copies. This goes a teeny tiny bit against what the music industry is saying, it doesn't seem to be hurting Eminem's bank account.

And, even though everyone in the industry seems to be complaining about how bootleg copies of his CD are hurting sales, early predictions will still put him on top of this week's Billboard 200 with over 300,000 albums sold. And since SoundScan tallies sales from Monday thru Sunday, this CD has only one legitimate day of sales to reach that level (minus the usual street date violations -- the album has been in the hands of the record stores since at least last Friday). This article focuses on some early sales reports.

And, even though everyone in the industry seems to be complaining about how bootleg copies of his CD are hurting sales, early predictions will still put him on top of this week's Billboard 200 with over 300,000 albums sold. And since SoundScan tallies sales from Monday thru Sunday, this CD has only one legitimate day of sales to reach that level (minus the usual street date violations -- the album has been in the hands of the record stores since at least last Friday). This article focuses on some early sales reports.

There's an obvious reason for blank CD's outselling recorded ones:

The blank ones sound better than the recorded ones.

Okay, I work for Musicland and I do have a few things to say regarding this particular story.

Yes, there is a slump in the sales of music. There is a reason for it though. It can be illustrated very easily by one of our regular customers. This particular regular customer is a collector/hobbyist. He collects _any_ single that hits the Billboard Top 100 chart. It doesn't matter if he thinks that the song is a crap, if it charts, he buys it (in that exact version). For that past several years there has been a decline in the actual number of singles being released by record companies that are from any "quality" artists. See the billboard top 100. How many of the top 100 singles actually have a single out? Not many. A quick glance reveals that around 35 of the 50 listed "singles" have no single associated with them. They are album tracks. Of the remainder of the tracks with singles, how many of them are actually released in CD single format and how many are on 12" or 7" vinyl? Not many are on CD. So what does our customer have as an option?

* He can buy the album, but that's prohibitively expensive for a hobbyist.

* He can buy the imported version of the single, since other countries seem to be able to sell singles okay and not hurt their record sales, but not the US.

* He can buy a compilation cd that has the track on it, along with several other duplicates of songs he was able to pick up as singles, thus wasting his money.

* He can download it from the net.

Guess which one he has started using? He would like to buy the singles, but they just aren't there.

He's just like a majority of the shoppers who come to our Sam Goody. They want the one particular song, not the entire album. If they hear several songs from the album that they like, then they'll be more likely to buy the album.

If the record industry doesn't recognize this fact relatively soon, they will have no choice but copy protection on their cd's, since they aren't giving people what they want (isn't that a rule in business?).

Best Buy is not a bad company. It is trying to look out for itself even if it looks like the left hand is not communicating with the right (eg copy protection v mp3 players and cd-r sales). It's purchase of Musicland (which consists of Mediaplay, Suncoast, On Cue, and Sam Goody) was to help represent itself in smaller markets that couldn't support Best Buys. It almost immediately started changing inventories in a lot of the stores to basically make them mini-best buy stores.

Who hasnt seen slump. Slump is everywhere, and what do they really expect, to be immune.

They are immune. A quick look at the Billboard 200 shows a count of 111 million albums at least sold (within the last year, give or take). I did this by simply counting the albums that had reached [multi]platinum status. This doesn't count gold records, or the number of albums sold since hitting a platinum milestone, or the sales of albums that didn't hit gold or platinum yet. So let's add a couple more million sales just for fun. That takes us to 113 million sales at around USD$10 apiece...over 1 billion USD. Yeah, those poor guys are in SUCH a slump. I guess they won't be able to buy any more Bentleys or Ferraris for their videos this year...

In that same vein, those in the US (or even outside) that have access to MTV -- watch and episode of the show "Cribs" and tell me if these people are hurting for money or in a slump.

The record industry wants you to think there's a slump, that there are lost sales to digital pirates and amoral teenagers. Without such FUD, they wouldn't be able to force services such as this on the unsuspecting public.

greg

"the biggest selling album in the USA for 2001 was the Beatles"

OMFG, you're right.

True but I'll bet that more students are in the demographic group that buy the most music. Look at the top 20 Albums out right now and tell me if students aaren't the main ones supporting these groups.

The basic issue is intellectual property rights, and how this applies to the artists who perform the music, and the record companies who market it. I'm not seeing much discussion about here, so I thought I'd do some research and post some more background.

The interesting thing to me is that recording artists and the record companies have vastly different opinions about the availability of music on the internet.

In general, artists would like to be able to sell their own music on the web -- however, they do want that music to be sold, not given away or stolen.

Artists who don't have labels are free to put their own stuff out there for download. They also have the ability to sell it on personally-made CDs or other media, although at this time they have no way to safeguard this media once it gets into someone else's hands.

Artists who are signed to a record company want to be able to market their music on the internet without going through their record companies (therefore getting the proceeds themselves, and not giving the record companies their 'cut'), presumably because the record companies are predatory. Predatory aspects of the record companies, for example, are a large part of Courtney Love's and LeAnn Rimes' opinions (below).

The record companies not only want to prevent 'their' CDs from showing up on morpheus, etc, they also want to prevent recording artists from putting other tracks onto the web for sale or for free. If artists could do this outside of their contracts, the record companies would of course lose money and customers.

Therefore, record companies want to prevent their CDs from being ripped or copied (hence this article), AND they want to prevent their artists from getting around their contracts by selling directly to consumers.

All in all, I think the record companies are RIGHT to try to keep their product from being pirated. However, not only is this basically impossible, but the MEANS they are going about it is going to cause a huge backlash and only hurt the record companies and the artists further.

Here's some more info:

From Intellectual Property Is an Oxymoron:

"There's an important difference between authors and publishers that the current intellectual property system ignores. Authors still perform a valuable service by creating intellectual property. Publishers perform an increasingly useless service, copying information that individuals who own computers connected by the Internet can copy on their own...

"...Publishers have become useless middlemen rendered obsolete by digital technology. The laws of supply and demand are driving their profit margins to zero... Notably, nearly 30 states are now suing the top record labels alleging CD price fixing."

Some artists' opinions:

Courtney Love: "Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major label recording contracts. " (from her speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York on May 16, as quoted on Salon.com.)

Business Week, writing about the Recording Artists Coalition (RAC) testimony at a Senate hearing in April:

"Musical artists represented by RAC want to be able to sell their music on the Internet without going through the bureaucracy of record labels. While many artists supported the copyright-infringement lawsuit the RIAA brought against Napster, they now want labels to aggressively award licensing deals to legitimate independent music Web sites in addition to the labels' own online services. That's something that isn't happening as fast as artists hoped."

a variety of artists at a Senate hearing in September, including Courtney Love, Don Henley, and LeAnn Rimes.

Alanis Morrissette (from Billboard.com): "'Artists today are not being given a chance to experience the normal ebbs and flows that result in an artist's evolution.'

"In Morissette's opinion, the Internet at one time offered great promise. Such companies as MP3.com and Napster, she said, 'offered a link between artists and audiences and was a way for less-established artists to have a forum to reach those who will be touched by their art.' Now, she said, those same companies have been 'litigated, vilified, and ultimately consolidated to the point where these opportunities [don't exist].' "Pointing to Napster's relationship with Bertelsmann, and the acquisition of MP3.com and Emusic by Vivendi Universal, Morissette said that the Internet has become 'a bottleneck for creativity,' because the media conglomerates are attempting to apply traditional, profit-oriented business models to the new medium."

Then, I make a physical copy of my hard-drive using some handy-dandy sector-copying tools that don't run under Windows. Onto a brand new 80G hard drive. Which I then sell to someone for the cost of the hard drive plus a small fraction of the cost I paid for the music. Repeat a million times.

Granted, I live on Sealand and eat only cans of beans for food, and have all sorts of friends I stay in touch with via my shortwave radio... I mean, sure - it's still ILLEGAL - but it's technically POSSIBLE.

Morons should be punished. And these guys are standing in line. The only thing that protects them from my proposal is that it's inconvenient to reinstall Windows. TYPICALLY people don't want to throw away their files with a new install. But the problem is that nothing prevents the files from being PHYSICALLY COPIED. And as long as the system doesn't protect itself further, these guys are screwed.

They'd have to 1) Register me with a unique ID in their system. 2) Encrypt each file authorized for me with my unique ID. 3) Authorize me to use the file, via the internet, EVERY time I wanted to use the file. Sounds like they're not doing any of those things. Sounds like they're nowhere NEAR as secure as they pretend.

The article itself quotes Bruce Schneier beautifully, "Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet."

• cannot be easier to use than Napster, Gnutella or whatever comes after them.

• cannot compete with them cost wise because the songs on them are free

• cannot prevent people from simple taking their content and giving it away for free like people do with Napster (just for fun once I tagged a music file with my initials to see how many people would copy it after having it up on Napster for a month, currently I get at least 50 hits anytime I search for it).

I find it interesting that both Metallica's and Dr Dre's lawsuits are stemming from the same attorney, Howard King. Especially when there seems to be no other connections between the artists.

I also find it interesting that the same attorney has led artists into similar grey area IP fights before, such as the Temptations suit against one of their own vocalists use of the Temptations name.

Is it more likely that the artists are seeking out King for his expertise in such matters, or that he is selling artists on the idea of suing for what they perceive themselves to be entitled to?

------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

We don't need to boycott InTouch because we weren't going to buy their product in the first place.
InTouch is suing because they say Amazon violated patents on this device. From what I can tell it is a set-top box that allows one to listen to samples of music on InTouch's website. This settop box is completely useless given that most CD store sites allow you to listen to previews of music in MP3 or Real Audio format (heck Billboard let's you do that), so there is probably zero demand for their product. The device is the biggest case of shortsighted thinking I've ever seen in my life, because all it does is play music samples from off InTouch's site. Once online music previews became popular the device became obsolete but instead of coming up with a new product or a new use for the device the company wants to sue everyone that provides online music samples meaning we all have to buy their stupid settop box if they win or websites will have to pay licensing costs. This is definitely the most frivolous web patent yet.