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Napster Spurs CD Sales; Gets Sued Again Anyway
hammy writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald is running this story about the results of a survey demonstrating that users of music downloading programs (ala Napster etc) actually buy more music. I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to any of the Slashdot crowd but it's nice to see a formal survey that supports our intuition. Makes many of the RIAA arguments ring a little hollow." Meanwhile, Napster is being sued yet again. That's gratitude for you.
Personally, the number of CDs I've bought has
gone down since I started using Napster. Why
should I pay out good money when I've got the
music already?
Of course, this _is_ almost completely hit-and-run tactics and has been since around 1990: release, go multiplatinum within a year, discard, repeat. It hugely drives RIAA label sales, but it doesn't make any new artist careers. Britney Spears is the Warrant ('Cherry Pie') of 2001. Warrant went double platinum back in '91 with that- and in ten years has not added another platinum to that total. TEN years with no further sales, after double platinum in the first year. The only difference between that and Britney is that these days, sales are up so much that Britney goes _13_ platinums in the same time period... and then, nothing, when they tire of her or when she starts demanding a career, or gets too old (say, 20...).
It's sick. But it sure as hell sells a lot of records. There is no way to sanely argue that sales are down.
I'm currently studying longterm sales in the music business, and here's the deal: the bands being sought after to sell beer and things (Bob Seger, et al), are the A-List of twenty years ago.
Around ten years ago, the music business shifted to all-out A-List promotion rather than any attempt at career building. This is when you began to see bands that came out, did double platinum in less than a year, and then _vanished_. I don't mean broke up- the record remains in the catalog whether the band's still around or not, but when the record industry does this, they do incredible volume for a very brief time and when they stop promoting, NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ANY MORE.
Beer companies don't want to use bands like that to sell beer, either. They want Bob Seger or Brooce- catalog sellers from at least 20 years ago.
What the A-List artists are these days is processed stuff- 'N Sync etc. The RIAA _can't_ lose control of artists like that, because history shows that when the RIAA quits pushing that kind of act, the sales STOP. With real bands, the sales continue- sometimes in a big way, for what's called a 'catalog killer' album. There are no such albums being made these days, and that's intentional.
This is because dealing with always new and inexperienced artists means no nasty skepticism about deal terms, no griping about contracts, no questions about what's recoupable expenses: using only new inexperienced artists means they can be contractually hosed, wrung out until all the money is squeezed out, and then dropped. If the RIAA labels had to maintain careers they wouldn't earn as much relative to the artist because the artist would develop savvy and clout and ability to negotiate contracts. The RIAA needs _virgin_ artists with no savvy or clout in order to get away with the margins it needs to survive.
It needs these margins because it's viciously squeezed by rack jobbers and independent promotion- both of which have been consolidating, bigtime. The RIAA doesn't _keep_ its money- it's gotta pay a LOT of 'protection' to independent promotion, which controls radio. It's gotta bribe people to get CDs placed in Wal-Mart, when there's only 2 slots available and they're being viciously fought over. You can see why the RIAA doesn't dare allow genuine careers to develop- it needs puppet artists to manipulate and discard. They come cheaper.
The trouble is, once you quit pulling the strings, the puppet artists collapse, and sales completely stop. When you pick an act and a single and a video specifically because it's horrible enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and then you dump lots of it on the market, you can move a lot of units to half-interested people- then when you have to rely on the value of the material for back catalog sales, the sales absolutely fall off a cliff because nobody really wants to hear it- it's fake.
And this is shown by the tendency of commercial music (the beer manufacturers and so on) to want guys like Bob Seger in preference to fake A-List pop stars that have sold three times as many records as Seger ever did. They know that the fake stuff will stop selling the instant the RIAA label stops pushing- and they need more appeal than that, to sell beer. They know that the RIAA is operating on a 'push' basis and can't or won't invest in developing artists that people _want_ to hear.
And THAT is what the RIAA is so scared of.
Do the math: it's all a matter of public record. You can get the information online, about sales of platinum and gold albums, and look at the sales curves before and after 1990. That seems to be roughly the dividing point.
Aren't most of these in the public domain anyway? How can MediaBay sue for "copyright" infringement when they sell public domain radio programs?
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think this is a much bigger problem than just the CD sales. If people have control over what they listen to, when they listen to it, then radio has to do something drastic to get people to listen to the advertisments.
Just my humble opinion.
My modem's only got 11 speeds! Where do you get one of these 33 speed modems?? I want one!! The geekiness of having 33 speeds, compared to a puny 11, would be incredible, even if the modem itself could only be running at 9600, from his description.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
However, 10 CDs at 400MB/CD (raw audio) would be about 4 GB. It would even take days to download one CD over a modem. Three cheers for mp3 compression, eh?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
They already did. Even in Canada
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Ever since I could download MP3 files and burn them to cd, I have never bought another cd. I know this is true of many friends as well. Some of the local cd shops have closed down in the city. No one goes in there anymore. There is no point in buying music if I can get it for free. Right or wrong, I really don't care one way or another. I do know by the laws of the land as they are right now I am doing something wrong. But I don't care. I get free music and don't waste money on CDs anymore. And I don't use napster anymore because they are blocking some things I want. So I use one of the other 2359278435923845908345 sharing programs out there and I can ALWAYS get what I want. Never had a problem. The RIAA has lost big time. :)
IRNI
About 2 months ago I saw a group I liked on a Nationally televised show (name withheld to protect the guilty from pro-napster nastygrams). I subsequently hit Napster and downloaded several tracks. I liked 'em, so I found the groups website and found they were playing locally. I purposefully held off on purchasing the CDs so that I could get them at the local gig-ensuring more profit for the group. I also bought a shirt and brought 4 people with me. End result, the group grossed well over $100 between tix and merch. And were it not for the tracks on Napster, the whole thing would've been dead before it started.
After the gig, the members of the group came out and mingled with the audience. I mentioned to one of the members that our presence was due to Napster, she made a comment about Napster being evil. I followed up with an email to the group, specifically outlining precisely what happened and how much they made directly due to Napster. They just don't get it. They're too caught up in the concept that it's a violation of copyright to grok the fact that they are benefiting from it. The irrational fear that they are losing money is totally blinding them to the reality of the situation. You can lead a horse to water...
It's all about progress. Some people embrace it and thrive, others fear it and try to stop it. They seldom succeed, and often damage themselves in the process-although many never even figure this out.
Regards,
ehintz
How to lie with statistics.
1) Choose a specific attribute.
2) Select two groups of people with that attribute.
3) Miraculously produce statistics correlating first group with second group.
People who download music are more likely to enjoy music than people who don't download music. People who buy CDs are more likely to enjoy music than people who don't buy CDs. Making the assertion that people who download music or more likely to buy CDs is asinine. Don't insult my intelligence. Even my PHP could have figured that one out!
People who buy dog food are more likely to take their dogs on walks in the park than people who don't buy dog food. BFD!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
But, about a year ago I stopped buying CDs completely. I've also stopped buying DVDs and going to the movies -- mostly. It's hard, and I don't enjoy it. But, what I hate more than the loss of my music and my movies is putting more money in the coffers of the greedy RIAA and MPAA.
I appreciate wanting to protect your property, and appreciate wanting to make money from your intellectual property. But, I can't condone what they are doing to our culture (holding works in perpetual copyright so that if they ever become public domain, there won't be a copy or a way to distribute any more) and their strongarm tactics in a court of law.
-------------------------------------------------
My wife and I have been sharing large numbers of songs via Napster and several other file sharing programs. The flow of songs continues undiminished, but tragically the flow of accompanying information has stopped. The most important part of Napster was the chat. I'd see people getting an obscure artist, and message them. Or they'd be so happy to find a particular song and they want to know where I had first heard of this. I developed several good friends from Napster, talking about music. But most importantly, we'd talk about similar artists to the one downloaded. "Oh, you like A? You're going to LOVE B!" In this way, my wife and I have introduced hundreds of people to hundreds of artists...and doubtless sold many, many CDs. (We've never had complete albums if they were currently available.)
Gnutella, AudioGalaxy and most of the remaining file sharing apps don't have this chat system. You have no way to use the most valuable part of file sharing, the taste of people whose taste matches your own. You can find what you already know, but you have no way to discover ones you don't.
In their quest to protect their current profits, the RIAA cost themselves many more future sales.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I'm not so hot on the value of the statistics, either, but they at least reveal
And I think your criticism goes to far.
In the first case, I certainly don't buy 100% of the albums from which I download tracks. Of course, many of them aren't available on any album, or any that I can find. Others, I decide after a couple listens I wasn't into it, and usually end up deleting the file to make room, or else JUST NOT LISTENING TO IT. Of course, I could always change my mind later and decide I liked it, in which case I probably would buy it. And frankly, since I think most industry product blows goats, and nothing I like is on the radio, because all radio sucks these days (except WFMU), Napster is (or was) the easiest way for me to check out bands I've heard about from friends. Whenever the music industry is firmly in control of the music scene as a whole, music stinks. 1989 > 1999, in this case. Anyone see the 2001 music awards thing on ABC the other night? Forget Napster, let's just murder the music execs for crimes against humanity. I need Napster, because the industry does a terrible job of connecting me with music I like.
In the second case, I think it's a sad admission if the RIAA labels are hurt in any measurable way by users who decide not to purchase music after hearing it and deciding it's shit. If your customers that unhappy with their purchases, you've got a problem bigger than Napster.
Finally, Napster's changed my buying habits in one important way; I can't think of anything I bought in the last year that I didn't first download from Napster, and buy once it became part of my regular listening. And most of the music that did become part of my regular listening, I eventually bought on CD. Sure, not all, but the only thing Napster's really done is become a more convenient replacement for taping stuff from friends while trying to find a place I can actually buy it or deciding whether its worth buying.
But all in all, you're overlooking the real meaning of this statistic; the vast majority of people do not view mp3s they get from Napster as a replacement for music purchases. Read that 10 times aloud, and tell me that statistic doesn't mean anything to the debate. It's disingenous to claim that they must all be lying.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
...but only because almost everything I like is either an impossible-to-get bootleg, an import, or - worst of all- out of print. So I used Napster to hunt down things that I quite literally would never be able to find otherwise. The radio does NOT play Clock DVA and SPK, thank you- nor will it.
I used to buy CDs by the ream- and was lucky if one, two, or maybe due to some freak chance, three songs on the disk were decent. Fifteen bucks for three tracks doesn't stack up in my mind- I used Napster as a screening process for content quality. It's amusing, the high percentage of albums that are composed largely of filler. Until this changes, I shall continue to thoroughly screen every album prior to purchase- had I bought the latest Fear Factory disk, for example, I would have been out fifteen bucks and sorely disappointed. (If you liked Demanufacture, well... odds are you'll hate Digimortal ) Ten minutes on Napster, pre-filtering, and I knew it was going to be a complete miss, and spent my money on the new Tool album instead.
I'm more than willing to pay for quality music. Too bad the RIAA is criminally unwilling to market it, or allow its exposure to an audience.
Forget radio- twenty minutes of DJ, twenty minutes of loud ads, twenty minutes of the same music that got played in the last hour. As people grow more disatisfied with this kind of treatment, I'm sure we'll se a resurgance of NPR and College Radio. Much like a certain *other* monopoly, the RIAA has music in its pocket and as a consequence, with no one to really compete against, has let the quality slip to truly abysmal levels.
.Net.
With Napster, people have realized that music doesn't have to suck. I ditched my radio shortly after my television, as Britney Spears, Smashmouth, Blink 182 and all sorts of other premanufactured drivel hit the waves and refused to go away. I'm never in the mood for this crap, and I don't like listening to it once an hour- MP3s give me *choice* and the ability to select my audio environment with extreme predjudice.
The RIAA is just like Microsoft in this respect- yes, CD sales are up... because thanks to Napster, people who would otherwise be out of the loop have now heard of the Swamp Terrorists, Birmingham 6, C-tec, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Jethro Tull, and countless other bands and performers.... none of which are RIAA "A list" contrived acts. Thanks to Linux, people are beginning to realize that there's more to computers than Microsoft. The RIAA and M$ are both attacking thier percieved enemies all-out- the RIAA with lawsuit after lawsuit, and M$ with Internet Explorer, Office, and
The A-list of both groups is a mind-numbing pile of post-consumer waste masquerading as This is What You Want, and in both cases, it has been clearly proven that far, far superior alternatives exist. (Independant lables for music, Linux, Unix, BSD and Mac OS X for computers) Yet despite that proof, the hulking monstrosity of fecal matter continues to dominate both industries, simply because for every person that gives a shit (supports indie labels and doesn't run windows), there are fifty who are too ignorant to realize they should.
As long as they own the lawyers and advertising space, we're going to keep losing.
And I'd like to make it clear for me that it's just the opposite. I have actually bought MORE music as a direct result of Napster.
I have not only used it to sample songs to see if I wanted to buy albums I was aware of, but also to discover new artists, and sample their songs. And in the last three months, after losing my DSL access (thank you Northpoint), my music purchases have seriously decreased again, without this method of previewing music and exploring what is available.
I suppose it's still not something the RIAA would be pleased with since quite a few of those purchases have been independent labels outside of the RIAA's realm - but I plan on continuing to focus mainly, if not exclusively, on non-RIAA artists after their wonderful attempt to keep their distribution monopoly.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Exactly! If people don't care about music they're not going to be downloading it, or buying it.
I would say that people who buy more CD's are more likely to use Napster as well.
For those who don't know the gist of it all, the RIAA is also looking into creating its own Napster-like product which is even more hypocritical.
The debate will always continue on whether Napster has a right to do so or not. I say if the RIAA is going after Napster, they should also go after TDK, Maxell, Sony, and all other cassette makers, because gosh darnit for years millions of people have stole by recording music onto cassettes and distributing them.
If I find the article with the relevant information regarding their product I'll post it, hopefully someone else who saw the article which may have been on ZDNet or so will post it for me since I'm working (har har) and not reading
And on that note I intend to sue them since I didn't know these packets would traverse to this network...
Want Root?
3.85 Australian dollars, which is slightly less than US$2. Still seems high to me. I suspect some of them thought they were being asked how much they'd pay to download an entire album. This is a really easy question to totally botch in an opinion survey.
I am currently adding the total seconds of music I have on cd so when I rip it all to a hard drive I will know how much space it will take.
I currently have 71 albums at 212,749 seconds of music. Should I encode all that at 192kbps (which is a respectable rate with good quality sound) it would consume 5.1 Gb of space.
Just thought that would help put things in perspective. 71 albums in 5 gigs at high quality.
It seems people really need a lesson in correlation and causation. Just because two things are correlated (ie they have some link, whether casual or otherwise) doesn't imply causation (that one caused the other). CD sales went up and people used Napster. These things may be related, or they may not be. People who use Napster buy more CDs than other people. This could be caused by them using Napster. It could also be that people who buy more CDs are more likely to use Napster. There are many factors that can affect something like this, and just saying "CD sales went up and a lot of people used Napster, so therefore Napster caused CD sales to go up" doesn't hold any more water than saying "CD sales went up less than they have, and lots of people used Napster, so it must be Napster that is impeeding the growth". There is no proof that the relationship is causal in either direction, because there is no control group that never has seen Napster. There is no way to say with any kind of certainty that Napster has hurt or helped CD sales (not that that will stop either side from trying).
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Statistics show that napster users buy more music. Lets not assume causation though. I'm neutral on whether Napster has a negative impact on music sales or not. But you can just as easily say that the hard core music lovers choose napster, not that it's napster causing them to buy more music.
--
Twivel
I am on a pace to purchase about one music CD per three years since the last time that home taping killed music and I don't use music downloading software!!! Somehow the idea that, while the cost basis of music production was halved, the price at the pump should double, as was the case when we rolled over from LPs, didn't sit right with my punker attitude. Its a bit humorous, really, twenty years on, to watch the cost basis shrink by an order of magnitude while the brazen bastards force an annuity model on the peeps. Don't think these guys don't know exactly what they are doing. Once Napster and the rest are dead, watch the proliferation of music downloading software linked to number of replays and your hardware IDs. Fscking fabulous.
Gotta nice pile of vinyl, though. Okay, the refrain from Capital Radio; altogether now!
illegitimii non ingravare
Of course this story isnt about the RIAA at all, it's a about a totally different, unrelated company that sells recordings of old radio show.= \=\=\=\
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
What are we comparing against when we say "more CD's"? If we are saying that these people buy "more CD's than they would have without Napster" then great, it sounds like Napster (and other programs) have a positive impact on people's tendency to buy.
On the other hand, if we are saying that Napster users buy "more CD's than people who don't use Napster" then we haven't really said anything at all. People that are more interested in music would be more likely to both download and buy music than people who aren't interested in music at all.
So, which one are we really proving here?
--
It does, however, show that the napster-using segment is important to the music industry, and if the price of keeping them happy is letting napster thrive, then maybe they should back off a bit.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I don't know anyone who buys more music since napster came out. I know I sure the hell don't.. I have a burner... CDs run all of 10 cents. I'll buy indie albums because they need the money.. thats it.
Surveys are just that... surveys. The magical thing about a survey is... you can lie! I don't trust survey data because I rarely tell the truth when I take them... this may come as a suprise to all the companies that believe my real name is Spanky Twoshoes and my occupation is professional masturbator. -gerbik
- More music
- Less music
- The same amount of music
- Cowboy Neal
- I don't use napster
This poll is hereby released into the public domain.ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
This sort of article shows that the RIAA feels the same way - it's not about money, it's about maintaining their monopoly.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
So does our legal system, but they are still allowed to do so.
Under tightly controlled rules in an attempt to ensure that the adversarial system does not unduly support either side of the case. With the understanding that errors in applying those rules will be sternly handled by a higher level court.
Hardly the same rules that surveys have :-)
along with the RIAA's own data which shows increased CD sales?
It is a fallacy to assume that since overall sales have gone up, that Napster has not suppressed sales below what they would have been otherwise. I'm not supporting the RIAA here, just pointing out a logical fallacy in your argument. Record companies are entitled to try to make the most money they can, as long as they do so within the law not within ethics or morality (which you might hope they would consider anyway), and when someone costs them sales in violation of the law (which is what is (or rather was) at issue with Napster), they are entitled to a redress of their grievances against that party, and perhaps damages. In a civil case, as far as I am aware, incidentally or accidentally helping out the party you have "wronged" is not an affirmative defense, i.e. if you broke the law and the opposing party actually came out ahead, that is not a defense (you still broke the law). Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I may be wrong on this point....
Whether you support Napster or not (I'm actually on the fence), you can't use surveys to bolster your argument. Neither can the RIAA. Surveys are inherently flawed as a scientific method of producing data. Surveys can use misleading questions, slightly unusual definitions, and a host of other methods to twist the results even before they are collated. Even if you have NO agenda, and just honestly want to know the answer to a question, results obtained from surveys are highly suspect, and must be taken with a huge grain of salt.
I have some (small) experience in this area, as I used to do work for a group that wanted information that could only be obtained by asking our patrons questions. After working for months to design a survey with overlapping, interlocking questions so that we could run cross checks on the results, carefully picking wordings, working long into the night to tailor the questions to specifically address the issue we wanted data for, and then administering and analyzing over 3000 responses, we discovered that: what we thought we were very clear in asking was not at all what some of the patrons thought we were asking; that nearly 30% of the survey responses were internally inconsistent as far as we could tell (ask the same factual question two different ways, and obtain two different responses); that even when the data was unambiguous, it was very difficult to understand (interpret) what the answers meant; and many other problems.
Surveys to answer the question "Does napster encourage or suppress music sales?" will never produce a valid, reliable answer. There are just too many variables. The only way to answer that question for sure is to take a representative cross section of Napster, non-Napster, and former-Napster users, and analyze their music buying behavior before and after the introduction of the Napster service, and correct the results for economic growth, socio-economic status, locale, and many other factors. And then, you MIGHT be able to say something statistically valid. MIGHT.
The survey claims that 86% of respondents claim to have downloaded free music online. What this immediately suggests is that almost none of those polled were non-internet users, which isn't terribly surprising as it seems the poll itself took place online. Why his this pertinent? Because it offers no comparison between traditional music buyers and those influenced by Napster. None of this is made terribly clear in actual writing, though.
Furthermore, both the article and poll itself identify that those polled were "music fans." What about those millions of casual Napster users who aren't "fans" to a significant degree that they would both download music files AND do the right thing and purchase the CDs?
"86% of all respondents said that they HAD purchased a CD album as a direct result of downloading free tracks from it."... so they've purchased "a" CD? I know very few people who've downloaded only music from a single CD while using Napster. A better question may ask respondents whether they purchase CDs for the MAJORITY of the music that they download online.
Heck, even the question as to whether music downloads have stopped users from purchasing CDs is silly. Napster doesn't stop people from purchasing, it merely offers another option.
Worst of all, this poll conflicts with almost every other poll discussing online purchasing trends, particularly among internet users under the age of 18 (which make up a good portion of those polled). While I do feel it's reasonable to blame those organizing the poll for the wording of some questions, they can't be blamed for not adjusting their results to adequately account for outside factors, which are almost always required with online polls. All I know is that there are countless other polls and surveys, performed by more reliable sources for the most part, that conflict what one may be assumed from face value analysis of this poll. Maybe if they'd offered some interpretation of their own along with the poll results, and some analysis of sources of error, I'd be more accepting.
Oh, and the article's HTML title mispells "dowqnload." Maybe that plays some roll in my misunderstanding, heh.
It's very hard to stem the tide of the flow. MS is the only one in a postion to change the tide of the flow to pay to listen. The current flow is MP3 which is unrestricted. It will be a very hard sell to get people to toss the RIO and in dash MP3 player to switch to a closed format. Watch out for the Windows Media Format. With a player on every Windows machine, it may create a big enough opening for a new tide of music for sale to flood the market. Real audio and Liquid Audio have tried it but couldn't become big enough to be the defacto standard. Too much stuff was pay and couldn't compete in the face of free. They didn't provice enough hasle free, legal, free, content to become an established standard. This could make an end run past MP3. RIAA would love MP3's have the same fate as the 8 track tape.
The truth shall set you free!
A lot of assumptions are being made here. Assume I don't care about music in any form. I wouldn't be on napster or buy CD's. Assume I love all the music I can get and try. I would buy CD's and log in to Napster. Does that prove I buy more CD's because I log in to Napster? RIAA can't prove either way Napster causes more or less CD's to be sold. They do however assume a song downloaded is a song not bought but taken anyway. This distinctive lack of a KerChing is upsetting them.
The truth shall set you free!
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe I am overlooking something obvious here, but why doesn't Napster simply relocate their operation to another country? Surely there is somewhere in the world they could operate from.
I want to make it clear, and I want to say with no ambiguity or doubt, that I have not bought a single CD since I started stealing music from Napster. Not one. So therefore I have to say, speaking totally for myself, that Napster has caused me to buy less music. I also want to go on the record as saying that I believe it is stealing. I am a thief.
Yours,
Bob
All the best,
--Bob
It's nice to see our intuition quantified, with regard to Napster use and CD sales, but to address the previous posters' comment about cause and effect, Napster allows users exposure to new music they would not have been exposed to otherwise (and would never have even considered buying for the simple reason that they didn't know about it). This suggests an alternative reason for the RIAA suit. Because these organizations determine residuals paid to artists based on Radio Airtime, the popularity of Napsterand other such services would cause those payments to become more skiewed than they already are. This would threaten the vary existance of the RIAA and other such organizations, because if the membership felt they were not being served (read: paid) fairly, the organization would fall apart completely. Cornered animals fight back even more firecely when you're swinging a spiked clup over their head. As I suggested, these organizations use outdated techniques to measure listenership, and pay those residuals as described in this extremely good essay. Napster threatened to bring this to light and expose it to scrutiny.
With regard to MediaBay, the afore mentioned survey results do not refute their argument, since they are making a detailed and precise argument rather than the wild generalizations made by the RIAA. Aside from the extremely ambiguous copyright status if the content they claim ownership of, they seem to have a decent case, as much as it pains me to say so.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Of course napster users tend to buy more CD's. I'm a napster user and I bought 100 of the little buggers today, to burn my MP3's :p
This is not a Fugazi
the same amount of music (which happens to be almost no purchases) i hav almost always copied my music from friends! For me napster was a real convinience!!!
lets say 10 tracks apiece with 5 meg size with 10 cds, thats 500 megs. Maybe he meant some super high quality mp3s? I think perhaps the point was missed that noone buys 3GB drives anymore, and most people don't care about the difference between CD quality and mp3 128kbps quality...
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
Who gives a shit if poor ol' Napster is getting another bitch-slap? The stats "proving" Napster spurs more CD purchases are simply ridiculous. There is no way anyone is going to prove any causal relationship between CD sales and Napster (good or bad) - even if such a relationship exists.
Bottom-line... Napster and its users (that includes the 6 songs I downloaded) are absolutely all about stealing music. Period. This geek media fascination with the new, reformed Napster is becoming a sad and pathetic spectacle of denial. And before anyone flames me, the Napster debate is NOT in the same universe of 'fair use' laws.
There...I feel better now.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Yes, sales are up among napster users. But which sales? How are the sales of major labels versus independent labels? Prior to napster, the RIAA pretty much controlled the entire process by means of controlling play time on radio. Which, as this article noted, is unbelievably corrupt. But with P2P, people don't have to listen to the radio - they just search for the song they want to hear and get it immediately, no commercials, no filler, and browse to your heart's content. Grass roots publicity suddenly becomes much easier, there is no cost in time or money to listen to a song once. The trouble with Napster, then, is it puts the big labels on an even playing field with the indy labels, and could thereby suck some of their business away.
More importantly, if you can do almost as well with an indy or even your own label, why the hell would you want to go with a big one? The big labels could still control the manufactured stars, but all the real talent would stay away from them. In other words, the big labels would lose not just consumers but artists as well.
Furthermore, the recording industry clearly doesn't want any competition when it comes to digital distribution. They're not opposed to P2P distribution per se, just that they aren't getting paid for it. If they can sell by the song (or even pay-per-play) they can charge amounts equal to or more than it would take to buy the whole CD without even having the overhead of shipping the physical product.
cryptochrome---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Is it possible for Napster to enter these things as evidence that, far from being "contributory infringers" (or whatever the legal mumbo-jumbo word is), they are in fact "contributory salespeople"?
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Come on, this survey was awful. Take the time to read the story and understand the questions posed in the survey. The survey in no way showed that CD sales were "spurred" by downloading MP3's. People were merely asked whether or not they would buy music after downloading it.
And if you read on to the end of the story, you'll see that the guy writing the story has no idea what he's talking about...
a quote from the story - "Seriously, how many people are prepared to spend several days - because that's how long it wil take on 33 speed modem - downloading a whole album and then listening to inferior sound quality; additionally, how many people have hard drives with the hundreds of gigabytes of memory required to store more than a few dozen CDs? About 10-12 CDs worth will completely use up the memory of a 3GB hard drive."
I think that says it all right there... 3GB for 10 albums in MP3 format? I don't think so.
I support Napster, free downloading, etc... but this "Scientific Survery" was garbage.
I just bought a CD which I had completely downloaded in MP3 format (through gnutella), and was very impressed with. So I would answer to the survey that, yes, I would buy a CD that I downloaded music from. But on the other hand, I probably would have bought a CD at that time anyway, so gnutella downloads simply helped me make that decision. I'm certainly glad I bought the CD since there is so much more to hear that doesn't come through on MP3's 128 kbps quality. I'm not a raving audiophile, but I'm not deaf either. Somewhere inbetween. :-)
But will gnutella/Napster cause me to buy more music than I would ordinarilly? Maybe -- it allows me to sample a larger diversity of music, which might get me to buy CDs I wouldn't buy ordinarilly and thus inspire more of an appetite for music. Or, maybe I'll just find out that the CDs I've been considering really don't sound as good as I hoped. I think the former scenario is more likely, but I honestly don't know the answer, even for myself!
So this should make it obvious that any kind of survey like this one is not going to disclose any truth about whether or not Napster is helping the music industry. Also the major source of bias in a survey like this is: Who's choosing to take this survey? It's obviously people who are familliar with Napster, as the first statistic showed. It's probably also people who think Napster is good, and want to "prove" it. So even if the survey questions were insightful it still wouldn't mean anything.
I also hated the comments about the music industry needing to be more selective, supporting only a couple dozen artists! I agree with the general conclusion that the music industry should be worried about things other than Napster, but I think the music industry is much too limiting rather than permissive, way too comercial and concerned only with the bottom line.
I think the best music is the stuff that would never be released as a single. The bad songs are the ones that you instantly like the first time you hear them, and get tired of quickly. These get airplay because the execs are listening only for that instantly-appealing hook. The good songs are the ones that take some time to grow on you. These are stamped out by the industry as much as possible.
- One in three women will be sexually assaulted.
- You are 8 times more likely to shoot someone you know than an unknown intruder in your home.
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for Napster all-the-way, but we should really beware of media-generated statistics like this.Translation: 1-in-3 will get drunk and have consentual sex, then regret it and decide that she was raped. Mike Tyson was a victim of one such woman. Additionally, you take the number of incidents and divide by the number of women - NOT ACCOUNTING for the fact that a lot of these women are habitually dating abusive guys.. they're the low-lifes you see on COPS every week. 1-in-3 my ass...
Translation: Yes it's true, (and guess what Einstein,) usually the person who is assaulting or robbing you IS somebody that you know - an ex-boyfriend, or a former friend or relative who has a problem with you and won't leave you alone. Such people SHOULD be shot.
The 99 year old gay men of the world who make less than ten thousand dollars a year, enjoy cooking, skateboarding, and fencing, and would NOT like to be notified of any exciting new offers. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
The RIAA has attacked every new technology from day 1. We all remember cassettes. They did the same with CDs - ever wonder why computer CDRs are 1/8th the cost of "Music" CDRs, and why they don't work in standalone burners? The "Music" CDR is nothing more than a regular CDR with data encoded on it. The standalone burner sees this data and allows you to record on the disc. The extra cost you pay to buy these "special" CDRs goes right into the RIAA's pockets. In essence, they assume you will pirate music and are extracting a fine from you based on that assumption.
Personally, I refuse to pay $17.99 + tax for a CD that has maybe 2 or 3 good songs on it. CDs should cost less than tapes: the media costs less to produce and the data is worth the same regardless of the format. Yet they're still $8 more than the same album on tape. The whole thing just screams "rip-off", and I haven't bought a CD in years for this reason alone. Instead, I download the one-hit-wonders, listen to them for a couple of weeks, and move on to the next one. I've yet to download an entire album - it's too darn much work to find every song perfectly encoded.
I'd be willing to pay a small monthly fee - $5 or so, but certainly not more than $10 - for a service full of high quality music and unlimited downloads. IMHO, considering the fact that CD sales continued to rise greatly last year in spite of Napster, I think the RIAA could add a ton of money to their bank accounts with such a system - and hopefully give some of that to the artists. I'd never pay for a peer-to-peer system like Napster, though. Too hard to find high quality encodings, and why should the RIAA profit over the use of our bandwidth?
As for this survey, it's obviously flawed, as are most surveys. I never did understand why anyone thinks they can interview a few thousand people and call it good, considering there are billions of us. If they interviewed a few million, the data might be a little more valid.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig