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Canadian Recording Industry Claims Drop in Sales
tyrann98 writes: "The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian record industry has experienced a 6.4% drop in CDs and cassettes overall (not singles) in the last year - plus a 7% drop in the first four months of this year. They don't know who is to blame, but they have their fingers pointed at you guessed it: Napster. Canadians are one of the world's most connected societies (mainly due to cheap high speed Internet access) and may reflect the direction the Internet is headed. "And indeed they are. Canadians have embraced the practice of downloading songs from the Internet faster and more intensely than most other countries. The surveys show nearly six in 10 of those between the ages of 18 and 34 go to their computers rather than a record shop to acquire songs. There are as many as five million Napster users who sign on to the Web site an average 6.3 days a month. It's about twice the reach the Web site has in the United States.""
Isn't that just because Celine Dion retired?
Since you can't find anything on Napster now, it would follow that sales would go up. If not, they can't prove anything; remember, the economy started floundering at about the same time.
It seems like the record companies have the impression that they *deserve* a certain amount of money, or a certain number of sales. But if their business model becomes outdated and they don't do anything to keep up we should keep handing them our money for nothing.
When the record industry is capable of offering a service that I think is worth my money, I will give it to them. Until then, I'll steal whatever music I like and I'll support the artists directly when they come into town on tour.
But when Napster started getting attacked, and started getting shut down, I said "fuck it". I'm not going to buy CDs anymore. Not until I have a choice about the way I can listen to and choose my music to buy.
Napster allowed me to introduce myself to new artists. It went something like this.
1. Hear a song on the radio. I like it.
2. Go home, download it and a few others from the same band on Napster.
3. Am I still listening to the song(s) after a week? Go buy the CD. Maybe buy one or two more from the same artist.
Now the process goes something more like this.
1. Hear a song on the radio. I like it.
2. Curse under my breath about the RIAA controlling the way I listen to music.
3. Say "fuck it!" out loud.
4. Don't buy anymore music. Hell, don't even go to the music store anymore. I've stopped listening for the artists names of the songs I like. What's the point?
I think we need to take widespread action against the RIAA. We need to stop buying music period. We need to individually petition all RIAA artists to joining Napster friendly labels. We need to encourage diversity in distribution and income models that allow us, the listeners, to control how we listen to music.
Don't make any mistake. This is the most visible battle to date in a new war over our freedoms. If we lose, the brief blossoming flower of new forms of musical expression will be crushed. But if we win, the future will be for all of us.
Stop buying CDs from RIAA affiliated artists. Donate them money, encourage them to leave their labels. Buy from anti-RIAA labels. Encourage new forms of distribution that give you more freedom, not less.
Yes , sales are down due to Nap et al.
But also becuase:
Economy has slowed
-There is still lots of good music but not as much
as there used to be.
-An aging pop buys less music when they were teens
and used to music to define who they were.
-Music is too expensive.
-Music is more commericial turns people off.
Yeah, just like with sports, people look at the
star "artists" as overpaid greedo they can no
longer relate to.
Along a similar line, the whole napster thing has
driven home the reality that it isn't all about
the music, it 's about the money.
This sours people on the Industry and the Artist.
Sorry- Metallican you can never be cool again.
Not that you have for a long, long time.
Finally, back to this , once again.
Music is too FUCKING expensive.
You could sell more music at lesser price and make
the same or more, plus get all the goodwill you
have lost.
Never mind , Naptster.
You have no idea at how many people aren't buying
music because it costs too much.
Grab a clue, music execs.
Time to get off the Gravy train and
get back on the Music Express... before it's
too late. for you.... not for us
Get Rid of the label and... Cost of Cds $2.15 -- Marketing and Promotion $1.99 -- Royalties to artist and songwriter $1.08 -- Producing Record $0.01 -- Online distribtion $2.00 -- Little extra for royalties ----- $7.23 I'd be willing to pay that.
By having blank media arbitrarily taxed to "compensate" media companies who may or may not have "lost" sales since someone copied a song (or movie) to the taxed media, the media companies - anyone of them who receive money from this tax - have unequivocally given up their right to enforce copyright with respect to anyone who has copied a song or movie to the "taxed" media. What the tax doesn't address is that people can make copies of media they own -- taxing fair use is one reason this is arbitrary. Nor does it come to grips with people using the taxed media to make their own works. Can I go and get a refund somewhere on the tax I paid if I haven't made an infringing use of the media? No. So the tax stifles my _creation_ of a work & over-reaches by yielding compensation to a pool of creators who may or may not have one of their works on my media. When a government decides to presume guilt (on behalf of record companies), expect the innocent accused to not respect the laws. They (the people of Canada & the U.S. subject to these arbitrary taxes) have nothing to lose by breaking them at this point. We've already paid for it.
I'm just waiting for the book publishing industry to realize they can get a paper tax passed.
In the article, a professor at U of T sums up the problem with this quote: "The commodity is overpriced, the product is really inconsistent in terms of quality. It's no wonder that people are looking for alternatives."
A couple of paragraphs later, the recording industry boasts that the industry has "the ideas and the energy" to overcome this challenge. His most prominent ideas? "He wants better marketing of national sales charts, perhaps even something on television. He foresees better CD package design so kids will want to own the album."
Hop on the cluetrain, my friend. These two-bit marketing ideas don't address the real problems, articulated above.
Until the industry addresses its shortfalls in quality and pricing (which are, IMHO, inherent in its prized distribution model), people are not going to be motivated to buy music, right or wrong.
Unlike many products, the only advantage you gain from buying CDs at a store is instant gratification. Looking at the cover doesn't tell you anythhing, and you can't usually listen to the CDs in the store anyway.
CDs should still be cheaper, but people complaining about $20 CDs are just being stupid in their shopping. Music is a commodity item, and retail stores are entirely superfluous middle-men that you should cut out.
The other aspect is that at a retail store you are subject to the marketing influence of the retailers and the labels. Your subjective opinion of what's Good Music probably doesn't match with what they want you to buy. By buying music online you won't ever not buy a CD simply because it's not popular enough to get on the shelves. Actually finding a non-mainstream band that you like is still a struggle, but then some people get off on that.
My High School economics teacher performed a cute experiment to determine the best price to set for your product and make the most money at it. The term was "market price".
Anyway, the teacher took a survey of the class as to how many CDs they would buy per month if set at a certain price. Obviously, people would dozens if they were a dollar apiece, and significantly less if they were $40 apiece. You graph this, and select the price where # of units sold times price is the highest sum of all of the other samples.
So, what's the target price for 16-18 year old high school students in New York City? About $8.
Why are CDs so expensive you ask? Because teenagers aren't the target market. Adults are. If every teenager in the country stops buying CDs, they'll raise the price for adults who are probably much less net savvy (ie, less inclined to Napster) to compensate.
If Napster consumes their Adult market too, they'd either raise their prices even more to try to capture whatever's left of the non-net market, or cut them sharply to make them more appealing to the general public. I might just warez a CD if it costs $20, but it doesn't seem worth the effort for $5.
Can they set their prices to $5 and make a profit? Of course they can. They may have to tweak their business model a bit (uh oh, we can only blow 5 million on "promotion" instead of 10), but I wouldn't cry for them.
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean people won't stop doing it. May as well legalize it and try to make money at it. :)
Can anyone tell me why the U.S. trade office hasn't retaliated for Shania Twain?
:)
hawk
*shudder*
No, it doesn't That doesn't even guarantee that revenue will increase (which depends upon elasticity). THe correct move is potentially in either direction.
>And these people have business degrees??
Maybe they've taken microeconomics . . .
hawk
1) Waylon Jennings, I've always been crazy--probably the only one I"ve ever heard that I'd pay $20 for anyway. I have the vianl, but . .
2) Bobby Bare, THe Winner. Another of the best albums of all time.
3) Tex Ritter, Blood on the saddle. CD Connection has something with this title, but it's a 4 cd, $100 collection--which probably also means it has the wrong cut of Blood on the Saddle. The good one is great; the other sucks. I f you play the original cut at 45, a) it's still slow, b) his voice is still deep.
hawk, who buys very little music (but would spend about $50/month at $8/cd or $8/LP) [and won't buy cassettes]
>$2.15 -- Marketing and Promotion
>$1.08 -- Signing act/Producing Record
These are all manipulated costs with huge profit margins built in to them. This is the same kind of accounting that lets almost all movies being classified as losing money--such as _Coming to America._ On that one, Art Buchwald won the royalties litigation finding the "accounting" used to be a sham.
hawk
If you choose to acquire your recordings in a manner that does not involve buying another brand new licence from the publisher, the record label is losing out more than the artist. To choose not to support this sort of travesty is not at all "unprincipaled".
When you buy an album from your favorite band you are contributing more towards their oppression than you are towards their pocketbook.
Avoiding paying anything to the RIAA is the most principled thing you can do in this situation. Petty "theft" is a relatively minor issue in comparison.
My avoidance method of choice is used media. It's suitable while making the position of armchair pontifs such as yourself seem absurd.
Enjoy your poorly reasoned ethics.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There's nothing miraculous about it. CD's simply aren't that expensive. You could produce your own in small lots and still undercut the big labels that have "economy of scale" going for them.
The music industry is in an unenviable position. The informed buyer is very aware of just how little value goes into the production of the actual media as well as how little compensation goes to the creative talent behind the music.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The value of the "content" is at most $1. That is what the creative talent gets out of your $16 CD purchase. Any real production cost of that music is being taken out of the musicians 'cut'.
As far as games go: in some markets 50K units sold would be considered a remarkable success. In music, that would be considered a pathetic flop. The two are simply not comparable. Your personal example is irrelevant.
...carts are expensive, this is why most consoles don't use them anymore.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Then run things like a business. It's not my job to pay for a label's seduction of a bunch of young kids through absurd excess.
These are songs. All you need to create one is a warm body. Even an instrument is optional. Everything else is of disputable value to the "production" process.
The real dollar cost of creativity is near zero. When it costs any more than this in practice then the labels are at fault themselves.
60 minutes of music does not require 18 months of studio time.
A pop album is NOTHING like a motion picture. The logistics of the two are no where near comparable.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just how much studio time is wasted on losers?
Just how much ad space is wasted on losers?
If labels are busy subsizing failures, then there should be some really famous failures out there. Where arethe "Waterworld"s of the pop music industry?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The United States Constitution.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Steal a bike, no more bike.
'Steal' a song, the song remains.
The wrongess of theft is derived from the fact you are depriving someone else of something. This deprivation is obvious and non-disputable. Any 'harm' derived from copying that bike (or a song) is highly disputable and a different sort of harm altogether.
The "right to profit" from something has never been to my knowledge something that any of the liberty espousing cultures have ever advocated. Many things can undermind your "right to profit" including the perfect replacability that should exist in a free market.
Will you demand that Testament be jailed next? Perhaps we should just put Metallica in jail for trying to steal Soundgarden's image.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The news media could easily portray something that was clearly self-defense as if it were some sort of "ambush" or other form of "murder". If you are unwilling to question, it becomes remarkably easier.
"murder" != to kill. The legal definition of murder requires more than that. Law and morality are not as simple as you would like to paint them.
Why don't you be a human about it.
Actually use that grey matter for something besides being a mediocre smartass.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The tax was previously 5.2, but as of Jan 1, 2001 it's 21.
I hate when this hapens. I post a coment hoping for a discusion and instead get moderated to +5 insightful without any replies.
This sucks even more when you remember that the slashed over 200 points off my carma when the limit was created and I havn't been below 46 since.
I.e. Carma means nothing.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Around here you have studios sprouting like mushrooms. Any DJ with a moderately successful single can build one and many do. We have the same IP laws as the US but vary rarely bother to enforce them.
This isn't about Napster and pear to peer either. It's about dance mixes. Essentially you have a cassette produced by taping the output at a party or nightclub. This is marketed as a mix by selector Bar or sound system Foo. The actual artists are not mentioned and most people can't keep track of who is involved. I.e. It's not uncommon to have parts of 20 songs on the same rhythm played in a 6 minute period. that's just a few seconds each.
How dose this affect artistes? They do not make 1% of what the major hit makers do in the US. In dead they make far more than 1%. At 2.7 Million Jamaica has 1% of America's population (pending the census which starts this summer). BTW: "jedi as religion" probably won't work in a country with less than 1% Atheist and Agnostic combined.
You see people even buy large volumes of Vinyl still. We make copies of everything. We pirate music like there was no tomorrow. the end result is that the typical Jamaican spends a whole lot of money in music shops buying original songs.
we also tend to judge music on it's own merit. This way Steven Segal's Reggae album (Yes, The actor) is a monumental flop. We like the guy (despite "Marked for Death") and give him good reason to love coming here but troth be told his singing isn't that good and his songs don't sell.
By contrast Buju Banton had a number one hit before anyone knew or cared who he was. All this without any real marketing.
What's the point? If the Music industry in North America was as deep in the society as it is in Jamaica more people would take the time to randomly listen to vast numbers of new artists. Publishers would be less able to actually make people buy pore songs and little independents who produce good stuff would have a chance.
the problem is Americans (and Canadians too) mostly just buy what the marketing people tell them to buy and when money isn't available they pirate it. here we pirate everything and then buy the stuff we actually like.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I really don't see how Napster could be harming anything anymore. I mean, jeez, there's hardly any music on Napster any more! :)
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Maybe, but I'd guess the record companies can spell 'losing' correctly.
The only person more brain dead that the writer was the moron who uttered the phrase: ""It's an opportunity to redefine our feature"
People who even talk like that deserve to have someone change their minds, with a cinder block.
If you're too devoid of critical throught processes to realize that you're an idiol. you ought to be begging people for spare change.
But instead you become record industry exec who wouldn't know talent if it ripped open your scrotum with its bare teeth.
I really hate these gormless twirps, (in case you couldn't tell.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I've often speculated about this, and when I ask legal experts, they all sort of shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, of course that's illegal." I'm not convinced.
The way the law is written, it relies on the purposes for which you have made the copies of the music:
The problem with such an approach is that the courts are usually careful about ascribing motive. If you can plausibly make the argument that the purpose of your ogg/mp3 encoding of the music was for your own enjoyment, but that you also happened to put it in a network-accessible area of your computer, no-one could argue that you'd contravened subsection 2 unless they were saying that you didn't really intend to listen to the recordings in question. All you need do is prove that you have listened to said recordings, and you'd be protected.
In the long run, of course, the music industry would likely get that provision changed some. But I don't think a suitably neutral court is likely to read in the extended meaning of the legislation (of course, the Supreme Court of Canada is anything bit suitably neutral, and might read in anything at all. But that's the fault of the composition of the court, and not exactly relevant).
Lie with numbers! Fun for the whole family.
is 13 and it took her all of about 5 minutes after we got our cable modem to download and install Napster and start building her song collection. Every time we turn around we're running out of hard drive space....
*sing* I'm a karma whore and I'm okay....
I work all night and I post all day
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Stop overlooking the facts to preserve your method of piracy.
His method of piracy seems to be purchasing CDs after he has previewed the songs on them. How is that piracy?
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Man, where are you shopping? In Stockholm a new release used to be 189 SEK and is now 199 SEK. That's 20 USD!
And yes, I have stopped buying CDs. I can't say I use Napster that much, I just go a lot more on recommendations from friends, whereas I used to buy stuff I hadn't heard much about. Sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad. Now I just don't risk it. I am just far more selective.
As someone else said, most of us don't have to buy CDs. It is a luxury, just it is becomming more and more of a luxury now.
He actually became an evangelist. Yep. I've seen him a few times on late-night TV.
He's starting to release albums/singles again, though.
Anyway, here's a url to a little blurb about his rebirth.
http://www.connectionmagazine.org/mchammer.htm
-gleam
this
Where the cost of a USD 17 comes from:
Cost of CDs
$6.23 -- Retail Markup
$3.34 -- Company Overhead, Distribution, and Shipping
$2.15 -- Marketing and Promotion
$1.99 -- Royalties to artist and songwriter
$1.08 -- Signing act/Producing Record
$0.85 -- Co-op advertising and discounts to retailers
$0.75 -- Pressing album and printing booklet
$0.59 -- Profit to label
This is all via Billboard Magazine (and CNN)
It should be noted that the Label makes the least money (the RIAA members) and the retail stores make the most (Coconuts, Sam Goody, CDNow)
Anyway.
-gleam
this
Sorry to dissapoint you, but you better lock your bicycle... at least in sweden.
Hmm... there's not many toll roads in Sweden. Actually I don't think I ever seen one.
If CD's were CAD$ 10 like they should be, I'd be buying/ordering them continuously to update my collection, after all, it is better quality than mp3.
For the reasons you said, I don't bother. I don't work so I can spend 20 minutes wages per CD.... 10 would be okay!
Most are unaware. The tax is *miniscule* especially on cd-r, only a nickel a piece. A canadian nickel at that.
The article had it right; we're well connected, and cd's are higher priced in Canada than the US in the first place, plus the economy isn't as on fire, so there is less money in general (that's not a complaint, btw...).
Anyone who thinks napster hasn't affected cd sales is nuts. I can think of a lot of people (me?) who *never* buy music anymore. Granted, I don't use napster or it's brethren, but mp3 in general. I can't bring myself to drive across town, look for something interesting (or order something I want) for much more than I should have to possibly pay, and will proabbly only listen to twice anyway, when I can go over to the wireless laptop sitting on my coffee table and have it in seconds.
As for the tax.. I share teh sentiment that we should not make concessions for 'imaginary' losses.
That's sweet, I'd love to buy a computer from MC hammer!
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I think they're trying to prove a correlation between two variables which may not be related.
I would also look for a couple more factors to correlate against, such as the economy and/or disposable income.
I could make another assertion that would be just as valid as their claim: "Since napster came out, crime has gone down". This is also just as valid of an assertion, because the economy is usually related to the crime rate.
I'll bet if you plotted record sales vs. nasdaq you'd find a better correlation.
THe record companies have tried to making selling used CDs illegal.
Next time they might succeed.
Or it could just be that they're feeling the effects of the economic downturn like ever other goddamn company on the planet.
Oh no, CD's are so reasonably priced that they're going to be the last thing people cut back on! Hell, I'd cut back on food before I cut back on mailing my pay checks to the record labels!
So why are casettes cheaper than CDs?
...
Yes folks, the money made in the music industry is shared between all artists, not in royalties, but in up front advances and signing bonuses.
I agree 100%, that's the way it is right now, no question.
I'm asking (with the self-interest/greed disclaimer from the previous message intact) whether that's the way it SHOULD be? If we (meaning the fans) reduce the crap-subsidy, does that mean we'll get more non-crap from artists, and find more non-crappy artists? I think so, but I'm biased as hell.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
I suspect, though, that we will begin to see artists circumventing the recording industry
I sure hope so, but it's tough to find one that will try my idea. Even Courtney Love, who is allegedly annoyed at her record company, has not responded to my pleas. I'd prefer not to discuss payola (nobody would ever use my fine favorite currency for anything nefarious!) but I know it still happens.
Part of this could be due to contractual obligations inherent in the standard RIAA type contracts, though, since I'm talking about explicitly taking the RIAA 5 and their cut out of the picture, which probably sounds bad if that cut sends you on regular trips to Scores...
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
In my (repeatedly-expressed, I know) opinion, the fans' & artists' interests DO NOT coincide anymore with the huge corporations. Courtney Love, who is now suing her label, has written about this, as have others. Apparently, for that $15 CD, the band gets a very small slice of the pie (less than a buck in the end, I hear, though I'm far from the music business). The rest goes for things like "trips to Scores," to use Courtney's terms. (Scores is a NYC area strip clup.)
The solution, IMNSHO, is a tipjar model. Use my currency (blatant self-interest noted, go ahead and mod me down -1, greedy) or another currency to do a micropayment to the artist/band DIRECTLY! Even if everyone doesn't pay, and they won't, and even if there are some crooks, and there will be, you can make an OK living in a job with tips, and it might just be a better model than what's currently offered musicians by the monolithic RIAA quintopoly. I've been ranting about this solution since CFP99, where I was totally ignored because it's more fun to shout and argue than it is to look at solutions that directly connect artists to fans. Will this make everything easy for artists? No, of course not. You're likely only to get tips for non-crappy stuff, and the days of bundling your shit with the good songs are over, but overall it's going to help artists to directly connect with their fans, and even with our fees (yes, we like to eat) my solution is cheap, since it doesn't send me to Scores (unfortunately).
Any slashdot reader who wants to try e-gold should send me an account number for a small spend. Thanks for listening.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
I looked into this in depth at one time, and since you've so kindly quoted the section of the act, it basically amounted to:
80(1)(a) - You can borrow a CD and make a copy of it for yourself, legally.
80(2)(b) - You cannot make a copy of a CD (your own or borrowed) and give it to a friend.
As I understand it, it would be acceptable for your friend to come over and make his/her own copy using your equipment. Further, using my original qualification, downloading music of any sort over the internet is unprosecutable in Canada. Distributing it (sharing files in Napster) is another matter.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Of course, it's to the record industry's advantage to speak of doom and gloom - this is a tired political response to get the artists and retailers and government to support this "important" industry in their "time of need". This has been part of their business model since the advent of the cassette.
... and Wall Street wouldn't like and stock dips or the possibility of new competition.
The music industry hasn't changed. It's been 20 years since the advent of the CD, and the CD didn't change how their business works. The industry failed to take advantage of new technologies to deliver CD compilations defined by the customer in the store. And the industry failed to take advantage of the advent of the Internet beyond a marketing exercise.
And so now, let's legislate. It can be cheaper to buy some laws than to have lower profits for a couple years while their business model is repaired. The retail chains wouldn't it if the business model excluded them
Clearly, the industry needs to upgrade it's business model - one that has not changed since the introduction of music video - which is, humerously, less "art" and more "marketing vehicle " (despite the MTV Video Awards).
It won't happen. None of the players in the music industry want to lose their profits - not the artists, the labels, or the retailers. And they'll all fight hard to keep their future profits.
Anyone who has logged in on Napster for the past couple months can tell that it's been on a downward slump. For example at this very moment there are 3,921 users sharing 73.646 files (275 gigs) about a year ago it was 4 times that much. I personally used Napster to sample music before I purchased, and now that 'the music' seems tainted I've stopped buying many CDs.
OK.... so, where's the "-1: Can't Distinguish Between Quoted Text and Author's Comments" option?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I believe one of the reasons for the drop in sales is that they are leaving the country.
There isn't a decent online retailer in Canada. Chapters? Took them 4 weeks to ship me a DVD (to ship it, it still hasn't arrived). This is after cancelling the order 3 times arbitrarily, and asking for a photocopy of both my card and statement. No, I didn't provide it. Sam The Record Man? Closed down.
So, I buy stuff from Amazon. They've never flubbed an order, or failed to ship. What does that mean? Yep, my sales don't show up on the counts for Canada. It doesn't mean that I'm not buying, I'm just not buying Canadian.
Jason PollockI think you're confusing copyright with patent. A patent is a limited-time protection, copyright is forever. Ask the estate of Edgar Allen Poe.
I have to agree.
When I was last living in Toronto a year or two ago, the only place I was buying CDs was from used shops, flea markets, and a specialty shop in Oshawa that would actually locate rare/hard-to-find music (something the major chains don't seem to care to do.)
With new CDs running $17CDN at the chains "on sale", plus 15% PST/GST, a typical CD was running just under $20CDN. You could get 3 used CDs for the same price, and the used shops were far more likely to have the old rock, blues, etc. that I was looking for.
Here in the US (Delaware), prices are even worse. I've bought around 20 CDs in the past year, compared to the 10/month that I used to buy when prices were semi-sane. None of those were purchased at the big-label stores -- $20USD for a CD is obscene!
Personally I don't use Napster, because the sound quality of MP3s is terrible. CDs are bad enough with their loss of depth and imaging, but MP3s are usually as flat and lifeless as FM.
DVD-Audio and SACD might address the sound quality issues if the prices come down a bit, but right now the selection and price are keeping me away from that option as well.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Engineers have to get paid for their work of recording the music, and advertising and promotion is very expensive, too."
And how was this different, say, 10, 20, 30 years ago? Cry me a river. I'm sure when cars came around, buggy manufacturers were all saying "Hey, that's not fair...we have *real* expenses, engineers have to get paid! buggy parts aren't cheap you know! we'll have to cut into our marketing budget!".
This looks like normal market forces, and will happen any time a new better technology obsoletes an old one.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Yes, they have sold less records that the previous year. So what ? Just like any product, there are years better than previous ones, and years worse than previous ones.
I don't think that Napster change anything to CD sales. When you get something from Napster, it's just by curiosity. You want to hear what 's last album sounds like. Or listen to old silly goodies just to laugh your ass off. Nothing more. I seriously doubt that a guy who has downloaded a song from napster would have ever bought that song.
Music is not a product like an hair dryer. You buy a record because you love it and because you want to support the artist. You go to see live tours, you tell your friend about that artist because you want to share the pleasure you have listening to him. Napster or any artificial way to steal music will not have any influence on how people love music.
{{.sig}}
Moderators: I can understand moderating me down because you disagree, but "Troll"?? I hardly think so.
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s/bjectivity/objectivity/
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It's just because one of their 20 artists didn't release a record this year...Rush or Bryan Adams? I dunno....
...PS I thought Canada was a Socialist paradise and only evil America had organizations out to kill Napster????
Got Bush
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Got bush? (fixed)
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How many songs do you know with the same titles in them? I know of plenty and when I want to find a song and am unsure of the name, Napster helps my ass out royally making sure not only its the right song, but right person too.
Now how about a twist on this. Say your an American in Europe or vice versa and have little access to the songs you favored in your home town. Why shouldn't you be able to find it on mp3 for your own enjoyment? No one on Napster is making money off anything any way you want to slice the pie.
Now as for the finality to my follow up,, don't tell me how I use Napster since I'm the one who's using it. I make a hefty salary and can afford to buy cd's at will, however I do enjoy being able to look up a song, perhaps preview the entire cd before I buy it. I've never used Napster to record onto cd because it's just plain tacky and gay.
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Just to let you know I'm far from homophobic so if the word gay offends you then maybe you should think about how you read things. I've got plenty of gay friends and I could care a rats ass about their sexuality as long as their comfortable with themselves. So if you took it that way sorry to burst your bubble but your wrong, I'm not a homophobe.
Im from New York City where when we say words like nigga we don't mean a degrading term for blacks. Like when we say "That's my bitch" we're not saying a particular girl is a slut or demeaning woman, its just the way I talk. Don't like it pass it by.
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People sometimes only hear what they want to, never taking the time to look at facts. Logically no one can dispute what I'm saying here because no one can come to my house and see my PC is mp3 free, and my cd racks are full of songs.
It's solely the petty non informative idiots who add comments without actually having a clue. Funniest thing though is when it's done anonymously since it goes to show their lack of actually having any fruitful input, and adds a stable level of "It's hard to believe some people are just so fscking stupid it hurts" to the world.
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Its easy for anyone to point the fingers at Napster when this situation comes into play since news media outlets always depict a single sided view of a Napster user. It seems every single story the refer to users, those interviewed are almost always some sort of unemployed type (mainly young user). As I've stated before, when I use Napster I use it to find a name of a song that I'm unsure before I buy it, or a song someone else mentioned to me, etc., and almost always if I find something I want I purchase it. Look I'm sure there are thousands more who use it with similar intentions, and it's those users you never see interviewed, not because it doesn't exist, but because it doesn't make a juicy story as compared to someone who they pass of as a thief.
Now taking a look at the entire scenario going down, one could also say music sales are down because tech jobs are down, and many people are trying to save in a slumping economy as opposed to spending dot-com-like dollars on music.
If people don't realize how twisted media distorts issues here's my example. About 3 weeks ago some guy emailed me from Yahoo Magazine wanting to do a story about the China/US hax0r war between script kiddies that was overfabricated. Well I was more than happy to speak to him when I saw it, however when I received the phone call the entire interview seemed to go the route of "Well give me some juicy examples of h4x0rs" not the truth about the entire situation. It sort of left a bad taste in my mouth to see that all media really wants to do is sensationalize the issues.
So is Napster to blame here? No. When TDK, Maxell, Sony came out with cassettes companies most likely expressed the same gripes, and as time has shown nothing big came out of it. Now I know not all Napster users are angels in fact I know some do rip and burn mp3's however I would never settle for the quality of an MP3 versus buying a CD since I get the case with information, it sounds clearer, and if I were an artist I would hope someone would extend the same courtesy to me and buy the cd.
Fuck the media
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I can't comment for all Canadians, however I know myself, and many of my friends have severly reduced the number of CD's we've purchased over the last year.
Why? As a statement to the RIAA.
Until last year, I used to purchase an average of 10 cd's a year (pre-Napster era), however over the last 2-3 years the numbers have been much higher with estimates in the 40-50 range. And finally this past year my purchases have totalled a whopping ZERO.
The industry can cry all it wants now, but I refuse to purchase another CD until they "back-off" with the law suits, and I can one again freely download music to sample before I waist my money on something I really didn't want.
The bureaucrats in the Music Industry wonder why sales of FooBar's CDs have dropped? Here is food for thought....
Every weekend Electronic Music is attracting more and more listeners. Just look at the top Shoutcast station...Electronic right?
Many electronic music artists create their music without the aid of big studio investments because we can use a sampler and our minds. Because the production of pop music has been so formulaic people are now seeing through the triteness and are downloading some really creative stuff.
I think some Recording Industry execs see this and want to focus on getting rid of the means for very creative artists to distribute their work. Other execs, those that don't understand creative work, think the world is really listening to FooBar without paying for it and are mad at the means for that "theft" to occur.
Either way, those in power have a lot to lose with the way tastes are changing.
> Can a Canadian shed some light on the technological literacy in their nation?
Everything from kernel development to the illiterate.
If you're asking for a national average, then web surfing, and using application software (i.e. Photoshop) would be there.
Cheers
I'm not in Canada, but I'm also not in the US. I can say the main motive people in this country (Brazil) have to d/l music from the net instead of purchading CDs is availability. Outside the US in general, it's very hard to find the title you want unless it happens to be in the hit parade or it's considered a "classic" (such as Beatles albums). What appeals to people here is the ability to get older stuff, very new stuff or maybe a single appealing track instead of a full CD. I and most of the people I know would be willing to pay a reasonable price to get these, but the recording industry would rather keep the shelves full of sure sellers and then undermine our ability to buy anything else. That's the real issue here. It's the same with books, by the way.
There a difference, something I kinda didn't realize until I actually saw the US and Canadian versions of a CD side by side. Apparently they were different, and the hauled-north US one was twice the price. Granted most of the time the things are exactly the same, and noones the wiser.
And when it comes to singles, they will be expensive. We don't have a singles market in Canada. No one buys them, so they don't sell them. If you really want a Single, it's usually an american import at C$20, or a British one at $35
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
So the RIAA makes 1/4th what the artist makes per CD. However, they make it an ALL artists they have signed. So if you have 4,000 artists total wha make 100,000 a head, that's 400,000,000 they make. The RIAA makes "only" 1/4th of it, about 100 hundred million dollars.
It's a smaller pice of a bigger pie. So it very much balances out, especially when you add the tax on all blank media.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I'm curious does technological literacy mean web surfing? Or does it do deeper into things like ftp, finger, Ssh, etc?
What kind of question is that, eh?
It's NOT a friggin' WEBSITE!
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
.... that there really wasn't alot of *good, worth money* cd's released lately. Think about it, half the songs that are the top of the charts are still from the end of last year. And the ones that they replaced where over 6 months old aswell. IMHO there just isn't enough cd's or even songs being released that are worth the 10 second download, let alot close to $30 after tax.
Perhaps Swedish music companies are planning to maybe raise prices. But in Canada, CD prices have not gone up. I see mentions of bygone Circuit City $9.99 specials in posts here -- well, Future Shop, a Canadian electronics chain, will be selling the new Radiohead for $9.99 Canadian, which is somewhere around $6.25 US. Standard CD pricing is generally $17-$18 for recent major-label stuff, and $21-22 for older or less mainstream stuff.
I certainly think Napster, or whatever the music service du jour is, is to blame here. Tons of people here have good, high-speed Internet access. (Personally, I pay about USD$27/month for @Home cable, with no bandwidth caps.) CD-R drives are also extremely popular, though from what I've heard the same is true in the US. And I can't think of any other plausible explanations for the drop in sales: it hasn't been a particularly bad year for music, the economy is not suffering, there have been no major changes in music production or retailing. Obviously, Napster (or Napster clones) are to blame. But what can the record companies do in response?
In other words, I have no idea where you got the information you're basic on conclusion on from, but it's completely incorrect, and so is your conclusion.
5% is considered a margin of error in polls and studies. But trust me, if, say, the US's GDP decreased by 5%, economists (who took not only first-year, but also fourth-year economics!) would not be shrugging and saying "it's just the margin of error". Rather, people would be predicting recession and gloom. In business, a 5% -- or rather 7% -- drop in sales is something to take notice of.
Wow. Don't they understand the basics of supply and demand? Regardless of the reason, whether it's Napster or shitty product, if sales are down that means demand is down (if prices have stayed the same). That means to compensate, they should LOWER prices.
And these people have business degrees??
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
The engineering cost, advertising and promotion cost, etc. are all fixed. They are the same amount whether 1000 CDs are sold or 1,000,000.
The only things that are dependent on the number of CDs shipped or sold are the distribution costs and manufacturing costs. In large volumes, both of those are small. What eats up a lot of the money is the cost of advertising, etc. Thus, total sales revenue needs to be maximized (rather than maximizing the price of each CD). If CD prices were lowered, and sales were much greater, the record companies WOULD turn a greater profit, the artists' pitiful pay would be a little better, and so on.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Well the CRIA is pretty much shit out of luck on this one. Maybe if they had come to bat for the consumer when the Copyright Board of Canada blindly instituted a levy to all forms of recordable media, both digital and analog, then formed the formed the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) for the sole purpose of redistributing the collected funds toeligible authors, performers and makers of recorded musical works copied for personal use in Canada.
I primarily use CD's for cheap, backup media - and now I'm forced to pay this levy under the assumption that I'm ripping someone off in the music industry. So now I burn audio CD's to my hearts content - guilt free. And this is completely legal in Canada.
From the CPCC's own FAQ:
Good luck in getting the genie back into the bottle up here in Canada. My audio CD collection has grown more since the levy came into effect than it had in the previous 5 years. Thanks CPCC!-ct
Of course it could just be that everyone just finally realized that Celine Dion sucks. That's pretty much the entirety of the Canadian recording industry, right?
Or it could just be that they're feeling the effects of the economic downturn like ever other goddamn company on the planet.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Add a "Use it or Lose It" clause to copyright protection. If the copyright holder doesn't do a run of the copyrighted material within (Say) three years of the last one, they obviously no longer value the copyright and the copyright should fall back to the public domain. This idea could use a bit of fleshing out, but it should appease The Mouse and eliminate my number 1 bitch about the whole copyright scene as it currently stands: Once a work is no longer valued, it becomes impossible to find and you can't touch it for longer than you'll live. It's solve the problems of companies that still value their copyrights (The Mouse, MS, and Linux groups) and still provide for copyright's original intent, which was to promote art and the masses' access to art.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It couldn't be because there isn't as much QUALITY music being published, could it?
No! It's just GOTTA be the Internet!
$0.02 (CDN)
"...Canadians are one of the world's most connected societies (mainly due to cheap high speed Internet access) and may reflect the direction the Internet is headed." Doesn't it follow that if they're more connected, they're going to order from online sources as well? Maybe that doesn't account for 7%, but I'd be willing to say that it accounts for a good number of cds sold. Amazon.com and CdNow.com should be banned if Napster's gonna be banned.
Note, CD's are normally pressed in the countries they are sold in so export duties can be avoided.
Oh yes, and import CD's that you mention range from $20-30 CDN not $40 US.
A few years ago I was buying Canadian music left and right because there was a ton of great albums released, but lately there has been few new albums, and a lot of those... well... sucked.
Simple rule of business: If you want consumers to purchase your product, you must release product we want to buy.
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
I agree that prices here in Canada are outrageous, but using the argument of artists not getting their fair cut from record companies as an excuse for Napster/Scour/Whatever is absurd. If you don't buy the album, the artists isn't getting his cut, even if it is way to little.
Now, if you were sending the artists a cheque directly, that would be a different story.
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
Well... The telecom industry *IS* the internet. They control the backbones, and every single fibre optic and copper cable that is used it its make-up(at least in North America). Napster is a Good Thing(tm) for the telecom industry in that Napster uses up bandwidth, and the telecom industry is in the business of selling bandwith. Q.E.D.
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
--Clay
Ok, here's a scenario. Say the record companies take cooperative ownership of some of the record store chains. This might seem anticompetitive, but if it's a 'music industry owned' store, it's kinda possible. Well, like Communism works well in most countries, but you see the Ideal World scenario I'm painting here.
Anyway, with that, there's no need to make overmuch profit in those stores. The profits are straight from sales, since there's no middlemen.
Have you guys heard of "ship gold, return platinum?" It goes like this: a sales rep wants their single to go platinum/gold for a new band. They call record stores and say "if you agree to buy all these NSync CDs and hold them for a week, we'll give you a discount on Korn." Korn sells damn well, but isn't a chart success story like NSync. So they buy all the singles, which screws the charts up. Then they ship em all back (ever wonder where those walls of singles go?) and get their cheap Korn CDs, which fly out the window.
If the labels owned the stores, there wouldn't be any need for this. They'd base their music on *actual sales*. You know how everyone bitches about shitty pop music? Well, don't think that charting highly means it's getting sold. It just looks that way. Music would actually get *better* and profits *higher* so decent bands could actually make more money because there'd be no more loss leaders.
Admittedly, this might strangle independent record labels, but I don't shop at major chains anyhow. Might find the independent stores do ok out of it, who knows? Ah, for an Ideal World.
toeslikefingers.com - because
"So, what are your opinions of Plug n Play devices?" "That's why we pray."
toeslikefingers.com - because
No dude, that artist's money includes paying for the recording of the album, which for most bands is more money than they ever make back on sales. If you're a one-hit-wonder boy band, you also had to pay someone to write the music, the royalties to the original artists (let's face it, stuff all of it's new) and the constant clothing accessories etc etc.
Americans wouldn't know him, but you'd be surprised how not rich Jason Donovan is now. And didn't MC Hammer become a computer salesman or something?
toeslikefingers.com - because
"The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian record industry has experienced a 6.4% drop in CDs and cassettes overall (not singles) in the last year."
Who buys cassettes anymore anyways? Why do they tie cassettes and CDs together? Well, to make a story for gullible people of course. Blargh! Give us some REAL numbers, not lies through statistics.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Pay a visit to www.hmv.com for proof. They're actually more expensive than in-store.
You're forgetting the payola that's still rampant in the music industry - pay to play still determines whose discs are played on commercial radio. Get rid of the "independant promoters" who work this deal and CDs can drop another $2-4 each.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
....5 people move out of Canada and the resulting sales drop is enough to launch a lawsuit.
For $160CDN/month ($110 US) I'd get 5 static IPs, and 4meg/1.5meg. Given that it's well provisioned bandwidth, it's almost as good as a colocate. I have a friend who ran a decent sized commercial web site out of his home on the $160 plan -- He needed the static IPs for SSL. Unless you're running a porn server, or a redhat mirror 1.5megabit is good for most small sites.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yeah, and BMWs are really expensive too, and rare where I live, and I want the BMW, so I'll just liberate it from the dealership in the city next time I'm there.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong
There is a whole world of musicians who have not bought into the commercial use of their music. They are "garage bands". They will post their music for you to download and you won't be stealing from anyone. Course, most of them suck, and there is no editorial process to help you find the good ones, but the price and process are both right and that should have some value.
I live in canada for about a month. I know thats not long to know canada extensively but while i was there (thompson, northern manitoba) I think i saw one music store. with a rather limited selection. alot of canada is remote. I'd rather download the songs over a high speed connection than have to wait to go to winnipeg which was an 8 hour drive away from where i had been living and the only large city in manitoba. thompson had a population of 15,000 and that was the third largest city.
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I have lots of sympathy about patent issues. They have broad reaching effects and certainly there are too many trivial patents issued--not just in software, either.
But if you think CDs are three times too expensive, just by 1/3 the number of CDs! You'll survive, believe me. If everybody feels as you do, the prices will come down. All the arguments on Slashdot come down to: I can break the law and they can't stop me, nyah, nyah, so they're wrong to even try.
The government sets the royalty on blank, recordable CDs. They don't have anything to do with the $17 cost of pre-recorded CDs. Those prices are set by record companies and retailers in order to maximize profit.
That's not what I remember. The feds and the states have filed suits against the record companies for trying to fix prices (See http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/q22000/gee200081 0002089.htm. As that item mentions, the feds had their own antitrust action against the record companies.
can drown in a river that averages 12 inches deep.
A look at RIAA sales statistics 1991-1999 reveals that CD sales do not always increase. The data shows growth in the early '90s, but nearly flat sales in the mid '90s, actually decreasing from 96-97.
As a music fan, I attirbute this (pre-Napster craze) trend to the explosion of new, unique bands in the early '90s, followed by a bunch of bland, industry-generated, me-too bands that lacked any originality or edge.
With Napster, record company executives now have a scapegoat for thier ineptness. They want to paint the picture of always increasing sales and profits, else someone surely is tampering illegally with thier industry.
Now consider that retail sales are down in many industries this year, and it looks like the record industry is trying to get a good PR spin on the combination of incompetence and a down market.
MotoMannequin
MotoMannequin
"With all appliances, and means to boot!" - William Shakespeare
Napster has been rendered practically useless to me; I haven't used it in weeks, and I've had little luck with any of the alternatives. Presumably this is the case with other people as well.
Of course they'd also have to realize that the US economy is slowing, which tends to effect the demand for stuff like CDs heavily.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
That's true. Canadians have a much more casual attitude towards ripping off the government or large corporations than Americans do. It's really just a defensive attitude because they know that no matter what they do, they're going to be ripped off even more by their own government.
Don't you mean, "Those with real expertise usually move to the United States where they can work on cooler projects and make about three times as much money as they ever would in Canada."?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At first I didn't mind the idea of paying a tax on blank media if it went to supporting the artists; lord knows most would probably make more from the few cents of tax than from most record sales. But upon poking around at the Copyright Act a bit more, it seems that the only provision we are really allowed in Canada is to make copies for personal use (from Copying for Private Use ):
Copying for Private Use
Where no infringement of copyright
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Limitation
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.
1997, c. 24, s. 50.
Subsection 2 paragraph b seems to rather negative about the whole idea of sharing music... Of course, I could be missing an ammendment somewhere, and if so I'd love to have it pointed out!
The labels can do away with these by selling directly to the consumer. Mail-order music subscription services such as Bertelsmann's BMG and Columbia House already do something similar.
If they ever decided to get a Clue and sell their albums online as 192 Kbps Ogg Vorbis secure downloads, they could reduce this to the cost of Akamaized bandwidth.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How many songs do you know with the same titles in them?
Lots. When looking for an artist-title pair, I use Google with a few lyrics. For instance, I heard a song that went "Isn't it time ... falling in love could be your mistake" and a quick Google search turned up "Isn't It Time" by The Babys.
But there has to be a better way to get copies of singles without the "$17 for one good song and get 11 filler songs ABSOLUTELY FREE!" bullshit the RIAA labels pull.
Say your an American in Europe or vice versa and have little access to the songs you favored in your home town. Why shouldn't you be able to find it on mp3 for your own enjoyment?
Because RIAA labels such as AOL have partnered (i.e. stock-swapped) with overseas air shipping companies such as FedEx. "If you want the music, pay for Sony Shipping! Only $40 for 7-day shipping of the entire works of $IMPORT_ARTIST!"
Will I retire or break 10K?
It would be nice if we could convince enough people to operate that way. Then the artist would be paid for their work
See also MP3.com's D.A.M. system. An MP3.com artist makes several albums available, and when a consumer buys an album for USD $8 + S&H, the artist gets half of that, the rest going to duplication of the CD and of the box art.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Okay, here's my thoughts on what's going to happen. I'm sure all kinds of people have said different versions of this, but here it goes anyway.
Arguing that CD sales go up because of Napster just isn't going to hold water for very long. When the process of getting music into my car gets to be easier through the internet than shelling out the $15 or whatever for a CD, I'll be doing it. For some, it already is that way.
What's going to happen is this: CD sales will drop. Recording industry profits will drop. Recording artists profits will drop. Big time rock stars will not be any longer (e.g. Metallica). Instead, microbands will spring up, bands that like to make music rather than make lottery levels of money. People will search for genres of music, instead of bands names.
The recording industry is at least intelligent enough to forsee the first two steps, and they panic. The fact that they fail to forsee any further steps amazes me. If they shifted towards creating online communities to search for music, they score one of the biggest directed marketing audiences in existance. Think about it, they could sell annoying little ads to various companies, marketing to very specific audiences. Kinda like this FUCKING THINKGEEK AD that keeps blinking in my face. Yes, I hate ads as much as the next guy, but I'd rather look at ads for things I might want rather than pay $15 for a CD.
The telecom companies got on with the internet. Why can't RIAA do the same?
Badgers? Badgers! We don't need no stinkin' Badgers!
I ordered my ADSL right after we got the big ice storm when phone lines and hydro lines went down all over the place, and Bell Canada (Sympatico) was still able to come and install it after two weeks. When they came out they determined there was too much line noise on my line for the ADSL installation, so they strung a whole new line (well 20 ft of it from my house to the box) at no cost, and my ADSL works really well to this day!
;)
Thanks Bell
PS. (I just wish they'd have stuck with the 2.2Mbps modems like mine instead of switching to the Alcatel ones... they seem to have a few little problems...)
That's the favourite of the motion picture and recording industry. They seems to be living in the delusion that movies and musics are luxury items that the demand increases when the price increases. They should seriously sort out their thoughts. Bribing the government will get them somewhere but they are sure alienating the consumers now. Anyway, we all know that statistics says what HUMAN want them to say. Anyway, the more logical explanation is the coming recessions. Being luxury goods, people will tend buy less in hard times like now. And they should be glad that it is not a 90% fall like the nasdaq. I dun see nasdaq blaming napster (yet!).
anyway, those RIAA companies exec should get a clue. Their way of distributing musics SUCKS and they should learn from napster not condemning it. People would want to reward other people for their work but only if it is convenient and price is reasonable. By going through the net, they can potentially cut down the price of EACH song by a lot. At the same time, they can potentially earn more by bypassing the middleman! but of course they dun want to offend the retailer blah blah blah all those shit. They dun understand that by going through the web, they can sell much more because if I happen to hear a song on the radio and want to hear the song again, I will feel more incline to make a purchase then. (ask the girls). but if I wait till when I am free to buy it, then I might not want to buy it anymore.
I would also add that I live out in the middle of nowhere, I live on a farm actually, nearest town is over 15 minutes away, the nearest city is an hour away. Yet I have DSL here at the same rates the people in the city pay! Around here things have always seemed to be ahead of thier times as far as technology goes (from a rural standpoint). I guess this is one of the reasons why Canada is the most connected country in the world. I recall hearing that Canada will have high-speed access avaliable to everyone by 2004.
You must be living very close to Bell and the Cable Co.
Actaully my telco is an independant one, it's not Bell. Most of thier customers are in rural areas (it switches back to Bell in the towns) so this would be why we have high speed avaliable in the country. The nice thing about thier DSL as opposed to Bell's (I've used it too) is that they don't use PPPoE, just plain old DHCP (would be even better if it were static IPs though).
...as seeing Leftists trot out the Laffer curve to argue for reduced CD prices. So, let's get this straight: When Ronald Reagan and the Republicans argue that reducing taxes will increase revenue, it's voodoo economics. When the anti-IP crowd and Napster pirates argue that reducing CD prices will increase sales it's common sense. Yeah, right.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I here ya! It's a cold country, my home heating bill is up 128% since this time last year, I was laid off - and they think I'm buying few CDs because of Napster?
(The difference in the heating bill would cover about 5 *expensive* CDs a month!)
I hear auto sales are down, too. Maybe that's Napster's fault, too - all those people using the net instead of driving.
People say that they still buy music or even more than before because of napster, to make napster look good... some actually do, yes, but most not.
RIAA says napster hurts their sales, but they don't do much about it exept whine and sue. And did the price for a cd change since 10 years? not really.
Solution? why would someone go thru all the trouble of downloading mp3s, and burn them on a cd that 25% of the players out there won't be able to read?, why wouldn't you see that 4 years ago and now it's like the new Thing? 4 years ago it wasn't worth it to do that because the price of the cd was way too expensive (and one could argue that mp3 were a bit more rare to find). If you'd trop the price of a CD to 4-5$US, most of the kids would rather buy the album and having the nice cover and all the de lyrics with good packaging than downloading it and having to burn it (exept for custom compilation).
There's 2 issues here... sensibilisation (which you won't get at 13+$ levels) and price. The hell to the people that use "it costs to manufacture" and so on, why do you see classic cds for 4$? why couldn't the mettalica cd be the same price? because it's more popular??? more popular = more sales = more volume = cheaper to mass produce, so the maths don't add up.
While I might not like the people lying that 90% of the people using napster are buying more CDs, I do find the people at the RIAA stubbern and really not opened... imagine if it would be the same thing in the computer industry, things would have moved backward instead of foward. I wonder how many technologies they've blocked that could have been here today, just by acting like that.
Who wouldn't like a service like napster that would do your CDs customly, and ship it to you for 4$ each, and with 10 cd you get free shipping for example? that way the author could be compensated, "napster" could make a profit, and joe nowhere could get known, everybody wins, exept the RIAA.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The Globe article actually lays as much blame on the recording industry as on Napster, pointing out that the industry's pricing and sales tactics (singles albums padded with shite) are largely to blame for consumer's behaviour. All in all, it took a fairly anti-record-industry stance.
Today, this comment is probably going to be moderated down, and that's to bad. But probably not unexpected. Two years ago, this comment wouldn't have been modded down, but two years ago it never would have needed to be posted.
Napster is not a website, it's a separate service that runs on entirely different TCP port. When I saw the words 'website' to describe it in Time magazine, I cringed. But, those people weren't expected to know that the web is different from the internet.
but slashdot was supposed to be different, it was supposed to be 'by geeks, for geeks', and yet, today, what do I see? The word "website" used to refer to the Napster service that you use to download songs from (I realize that napster does, indeed, have a website but that's obviously what the not what the poster was talking about). I mean, WTF? Of course, it wasn't Michael who wrote the words, but tyrann98. But would it have been so fucking hard to change the word 'website' to 'service'. I mean Christ, CmdrTaco mentioned using napster in some of the geeks in space episodes.
I've been becoming more and more disillusioned by slashdot in recent months, but this is the nail in the coffin (for me anyway). I can no longer expect any kind of technical validity from this page.
Ok, I said what I wanted to say. Now mod me down.
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
"but it does have more submarines in the West Edmonton Mall than in the navy."
Yea, and those things are for sale too! They are pretty neat though, I wonder what West Edmonton Mall will trade them for... Maybe after the sale they'll have more Lunar Orbiters than the Canadian Space Agency???
Bork!
I actually dont think its all that clear. The record industry must fight with all means possible, and wether they actually can get Napster closed or not, they can keep the price increase they always planned to make and blame it on Napster.
/Smuffe
They probably make more money on people buying the more expensive records than they lose on Napster download-increases.
I'd like to counter that. I'm living within minutes of Kitchener Waterloo (Ontario) in a semi-rural area and can't even get 56k conexant (or whatever the flavour of the week is... it was once switched 56).
:-)
:-)
Problem is Bell didn't think ahead when it came to phone wiring. Most city folk get DSL because they are close the exchange. A lot of city folk in KW (last time I checked -- Jan. 2001) still can't get DSL because their lines are too long (like me). Basically it seems to me Bell is only going to provide DSL if you are close to the exchange. Past that you can get lost.
A lot of rural people are lucky because they are within a few Ks of the exchange. There's been quite a few of us in my area been bugging Bell to put a remote DSLAM in for us few hundred residents who were wired 15 km from the exchange. It won't ever happen. I'm certain of that now.
Why? I bought all the [expensive!] equipment for satellite internet last month and always, whenever I want high speed, something screws me over. It's been over a month and no peeps from Bell. So I'll say that I won (finally!). But it is a Pyrrhic victory -- I have to pay $55 US + Dial up fees each month for the privelege.
>I recall hearing that Canada will have high-speed access avaliable to everyone by 2004.
Bell told me that we'd see everyone wired at the end of this year, and that at the end of last year 90% of Ontario was supposed to be wired.
Are there only about 240 towns and cities between Ontario and Quebec? Because that's all there could possibly be if I was to believe Bell. But, of course, I don't. They can't even keep my phone line clear of noise, never mind keep their ads free of it.
>Around here things have always seemed to be ahead of thier times as far as technology goes (from a rural standpoint).
You must be living very close to Bell and the Cable Co. then. Fortunately Canada's cable companies got on the bandwagon quickly -- and helped Canada become the high-speed to the desktop nation it is. I don't think I'd say that about Bell, unless you consider the high speed fiber only huge corporations and universities can touch counts...
Now, please note, this only applies to Ontario and Quebec. If you live outside of there you don't have Bell (I'm told) so perhaps this is why you have a better experience to report?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
>Now Bell offers sattellite based internet access but the service is so bad that it's an insult that they're even offering it...
You should check out their new pricing then. It'll make you puke and gouge your eyeballs out at the same time! Let's assume your ISP costs $20 a month (because you pay for that on top of these fees).
- $22.50 per gigabyte (5x more expensive than getting an 80 GB HDD shipped to you with the info you want). After 4 GB the price is a comfortable $100 per gigabyte (26x more than the HDD).
Let's put that into terms that are more shocking: Every email with a picture attached to it will cost you the price of a postage stamp.
- or, $50 per month for limited "unlimited" access limited by their their FAP, 10 connections, and 60 hours (wow, if that's unlimited I can sell you an unlimited ticket to Canada's wonderland really cheap...)
I'm not making this pricing up people! Check it for yourself if you think $100/GB is extreme: http://www.expressvu.ca/en/serviceplans.html
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Is it possible that instead of it being Napster's fault that it could be because of the recent layoffs that Canada has been expereincing? The US isn't the only country being hit by increasing numbers of layoffs. Combine that with an increase in price, and entertainment dollars are really being hurt!
I mean, last year, RIAA had a study which showed that album sales in 60+ stores located near colleges and universities had drops in record sales. Is Napster to blame? Possibly. But they also forgot to mention that the average price of a CD had increased while the income students do make hadn't increased. I think it's reasonable to say that the increase may have caused sales to drop off. I'm no economist, but I do know that when you increase prices without a corresponding increase in income, demand drops off...
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
However, the U.S. government did (at least if I remeber corectly) pass legislation to make mass market retailers (Wal-Mart, Circuit City) unable to sell CDs for the low,low prices they once did... Because the music industry and regular record shops didn't want the public getting used to those low, low prices.
Right now, in my state at least, I do not know about the rest of the US, is trying to pass similar laws so that Sam's and other retailers can't undercut regular gas stations.
I remeber this being big news a few years ago... It's sucks too, because you used to be able to get CDs at Circuit City for $9.99 that were $15.99 elsewhere... No longer.
Manufacturing is not the only cost, my friend. Some artists may take a year (or more!) to make an album. Granted, that's not all hardcore 40 hours a week work.
And yet, the artists probably only recieve 1% of the money from their album... if that (unless they are a megastar who has the power to renegotiate their contracts).
A lot of 18-20 year old kids who get signed to these deals don't really understand the business enough to know they are getting screwed. They just think "Wow, they like us!". Some guys from my town got a deal with MCA, got locked into all sorts of crazy contracts, etc, etc... For them it didn't really matter, because they all decided they hated each other after the first tour anyway, but if they had decided to go on as a band, they would be locked in to a 3 or 5 album contract. And probably still owe money.
Josh Sisk
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure laws were passed saying these mass market retailers couldn't lower their prices beyond a certain level. Because it would put the regular record stores out of business.
I'm not sure if I'm remebering it right, but the stores don't offer the same prices they used to, I know that for sure.
I think that's true, but I wonder how much they could really cut the cost of CDs. Everyone knows that CDs are cheaper to manufacture than cassettes
There you go. Cassettes cost like $8.99 and they are profitable. CDs cost less to make, but cost nearly twice as much? There's a problem there.
Plus, I think people misunderstand exactly how many hits and flops there are in the music industry. Not every CD makes the $0.59 for the label, it's an average for all CDs. According to the RIAA, there are 27000 new releases each year, which the big record companies release 7000. From those 7000 new releases each year, only 10% are profitable. All the rest break-even or lose money. Those 10% of CDs that are profitable, and sometimes very profitable, pay the labels and the support newer acts.
However, if you do get this to work, I say the first targets should be anyone using cell phones in the car, while driving.
Sure, because cell phones are far more distracting than taking a flying metal AOL CD in the face.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
That and the fact the Canada isn't getting that great of a deal. The USA has the most to benifit (from mexico). The canadian consumer has accepted an (inflated) price for CD's, when nafta takes effect, prices will not drop, but the recording industry's profits will rise.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
What I want to know, is how much of this is due to the "tax" on blank media? How many people, seeing this tax, now feel they have paid for the privilege to download the music?
as for us Canucks downloading more mp3s, when you factor in CDs that cost about $25 or more after taxes, downloading your music collection suddenly appears a LOT more appealing.
as for calling us 'immoral' or whatnot for 'stealing' music, ask the Industry what happened to their promise of lowering CD prices? and how about giving the artists a fair percentage of the profits?
they can kiss my northern butt for all i care.
"unfortunately i just knocked over a box of lucky charms cereal and now there's irony all over my floor." -bobby
The massive drop in the stock portfolio, now could it? naaaaa, that would be too easy. It's all Napster's fault. Yep, that's it. It's all them wiley college students, for the love of god, TRADING music! Couldn't have been all those high-tech layoffs now either. Nope, it's, yep you guessed it, Napster's fault. Used to be they went after people for copyright infringement that SOLD bootleg music for a PROFIT. Not any more. The very act of giving now has become illegal. Imagine that, you can't even GIVE music to somebody. Now if that isn't messed up, I don't know what is... great spirit help us all....
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
That same CD, upon coming to Canada, gets marked as an "Import" and suddenly becomes $40CDN (~$25+ USD). Add to that our amazing 15% sales tax (Ontario), and they're wondering why we choose to download music from the net, as opposed to paying OUTRAGEOUS prices for it?
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
I'm not sure about Canadians being more tech literate but out governments have played active roles in promoting tech literacy. I think this has helped the spread broadband connections and internet connectivity in general. When I bought a PC 4 or 5 years ago my province (NB) refunded the tax portion of the purchace. Also broadband connections such as ADSL are much less of a headache to obtain than they are (AFAIK) in the US - I ordered mine from my telco, only one company to deal with, and 4 days later was hooked up without any problems - and I live in a small community (10000 pop.).
We have seen a 5 % drop in sales, it must be Napsters fault, so we must raise the price to compensate for the loss.
This is absurd.. why do they think people care to search and download music from the net ? Because its expensive! Here (.se), a full cd costs something like 170 SEK, (17 USD). If the raise the price more, its even more profitable to download the music, and they have to raise prices even more.
If a CD cost like 5 USD, i doubt piracy would be an issue anylonger. Napster didnt create the need, the need created napster !
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
I used to buy lots of CDs, and to be honest, it is not the prices that have caused me to stop buying them, but the tactics of the RIAA and company. Only a small percentage of the price of a CD goes to the artist. A much higher percentage goes to the RIAA's lawyers so they can use it to assault all manner of freedoms on the internet.
When they stop the stupid lawsuits, I'll go back to buying CDs. Somehow I think it is more likely they will start lobbying for a Canadian version of the DMCA, though :-(
--
Without getting into the idea of whether or not Canadians "steal" more the Americans, I must say that I've been very impressed with my connections to their P2P clients. The internet definitely seems (from my point of view as an American) better understood in general. Can a Canadian shed some light on the technological literacy in their nation? I'm curious does technological literacy mean web surfing? Or does it do deeper into things like ftp, finger, Ssh, etc?
It can't possibly be the manufacturing cost!
$0.75 -- Pressing album and printing booklet
if anything, manufacturing casettes may cost more -- but where's the $4-$6 difference found in the retail stores?
Hey when I suddenly feel like getting a song album, I go directly to the artists websites. I expect to be able to buy the whole album in mp3 format and listen to it right away but nope, you have either to buy it from a store or wait for shipping.
So do I really have a choice?
The total is being dragged down by the headlong decline in cassette sales, which began long before Napster came along.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
-deane
Here's some background, useful for Canadians and non-Candians alike...
In Canada, March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."
You may want to look at the Goverment of Canada Copyright Board backgrounder (see point 2, specifically) and allowance for private-use copying.
This is one reason why (for first-generation, private-use copies) Canada is a better place to use P2P than the United States.
The movie studios make NO money off of rentals. First Sale Doctrine applies and Blockbuster buys the copies and can rent them out as often as they like without paying anything more back.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
It used to be that when I heard a song on the radio (SONG mind you, not ALBUM) I would have to go out and spend about $15 + tax (about $17.25) if I wanted to hear that song again. 90% to 95% of the time, that song was the only thing worth listening to on the album.
Now when I hear a song I like, I download the MP3 and listen to it several times. I then go to CDNow and find the rest of the tracks on the album. I then go back to Napster/Gnutella and sample these tracks to see if there are more songs I like. If there are, I happily buy the CD. Why bother buying the album? Because if I like the music, there is no bloody way in hell I will accept MP3 quality; despite what everyone says, MP3 sucks mightily. Not only do I want CD quality in the music I like, I'm now looking into SACD and DVD-Audio. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that if the music is good enough for our libraries and oft-repeated listening, we want and need the highest quality recording possible.
MP3 (or any other compression scheme out there or coming) will NEVER be adequate. MP3 is only good enough for casual home/car listening -- e.g. background music -- and I think radio stations have more to fear from MP3 than record companies or artists. And this will remain true until we're all wired up with T3 equivalent lines and we start trading full quality audio tracks from the net (but don't hold your breath).
besides being -1 troll,
I would say you have no idea about good music,
beyon $5 speakers that came with your computer.
When you invest into pair of 500$+ speakers,
and 400$+ Amp, like HK or NAD, listening to
MP3s would be the last thing you would want to
do. Even CDs aren't as great, for same reasons.
You will cringe to artifacting that average 96 - 160kbps will put out. Thats why DVD audio is
presently making inroads into audio enthusiast
scene. However recording companies couldn't give
more crack about what people want, think or care.
Downloading more songs from napster will not
hurt RIAA in way of piracy, but that of mindshare.
RIAA using Napster and opionated people like you
to stomp out the new field for up and coming
companies that will change the future of music
distribution, with their lawyers and then, say
that only they are that equipped to deal with
internet music distribution.
The fact of the matter is they have screwed up and
put some major karma against themselves by
propogating such steps. I will see them being
overly controlling on the net, when they enter the
markets, and will be identified as a cancer growth
and will be routed around it.
plus not enough of DVD audio tracks. Really CDs are terrible when you get decent speakers, only thing compares is studio high speed 4 track tape.
There needs to be more DVD audio. Like hell we
are going to get that from industry that sells us
20$ cds that were to make:
.2c for media
.5c for distribution
.50c to advertising, promotions
.10-3$ to artist
with DVD audio being studio quality, like heck they are going to release much. Besides media cost might just kill their executives.
Blame Canada. Actually blame the RIAA. When Napster went into business CD sales spiked, the rampant trading of sound files generated increased interest in new and old music. When the RIAA's case against Napster became public CD sales dropped, do the math. CD sales dropped, because Napster users started boycotting the RIAA, not because the could get the music for free, but because they were offended by the RIAAs tactics. Unfortunately the Napster community has no public spokesperson to get their message out, so only the RIAAs version of the facts is made public. In the long run, everyone will lose.
Aritsts also earn money on touring and airplay. Same thing.
because there was a SERIOUS lack of quality music this year, not to mention a lack of any complete CD's (by this I mean a CD that you actually want to own for more than one song). Your damned right that I'm just gonna download that one song if it is the only song worthwhile on the whole CD.
and to those who wonder why I simply say...
Anyone who has knowledge of microeconomics knows the very reason why Napster became popular: the cartel pricing of the major record companies.
Think about it: here in the USA, the average price for an album-length CD is US$14-US$18 at the retail level from a brick and mortar store, and US$11-US$15 from an online store such as Amazon and CDNow. Given that high level of pricing, there is lots of economic incentive for people to find a way to undercut this level of pricing.
That incentive led to Napster, which could offer music at a much lower price--namely free.
Now, if the record companies had been pricing their album-length CD's at around US$8-$10 per disc, then the economic incentive to find a way to get the music at a lower price would be much, much lower.
To explain why the record companies are going after Napster to protect themselves, we have to understand some economics.
Under a cartel situation, companies producing similiar goods all agree to a similar price, which means price will be kept at a high level. The problem with cartels is that there is economic incentive for each member of the cartel or an outside force to undercut the cartel, which can cause chaos to the supposed stability of the cartel pricing model due to price undercutting.
Let's apply this to the situation between the RIAA and Napster. The member companies of the RIAA have more or less agreed to a guaranteed minimum price for an album-length Compact Disc (about US$12-US$18 depending on where you buy it). However, because the price floor is set so high, anything that can drastically undercut this will cause chaos. That was exactly what happened when Napster arrived on the scene: it allowed people to get music from the major record companies without shelling out the high price for the album-length audio CD, namely free.
Unfortunately, Napster is being eliminated when the record companies fought back by charging Napster with violating both the 1976 Copyright Act and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This has made Napster no longer the venue for customers to undercut the record companies. Alas, the genie is out of the bottle: there are now multiple services on the Internet that has taken over from that Napster pioneered.
It will be very interesting to see in the very end how the entire situation is settled in both the economic sense and legal sense.
But most economists will probably ask how the numbers were arrived at. Numbers ment for accountants are usaully accurate, while numbers for press release are usually finessed a little.
One only needs to watch any of the market watch shows to see this.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
After years of growth they complain when sales growth is not as large as the year before. The record companies need to relize at some point the twelve year girls can only by so many pop albums and angry teenage boys get bored of the same rap/rock sound.
Growth and increasing profits are not a right. A free economy raises and falls. Maybe all those MBA's should take take first year economics over again.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
heh....fiddling with you radio dial is 8 times more likely to get you into a wreck than a cell phone...here is the link...
e w& record=204
http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=vi
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
blame Celine Dion...
Just like time, this is all relative. Canadians may see a 6.4% drop in sales, but with the exchange rate, Americans see it as a 4.8% drop.
This figure gets even lower as you approach the speed of light.
Am I boycotting CD's, meaning going without something I need/want as a protest? Nah. If there's a specific CD that I want, then I'll buy it. But I no longer browse cd's in record stores and buy them just to find stuff to listen to. So I buy 2 or 3 cd's a year now, instead of 2 or 3 a month. There's other ways I can spend the time. The same goes for DVD's--though actually I pretty much refuse to buy new DVD's, though I have a few used ones.
Sorry RIAA and Hollywood, I just don't need your product.
Heck my actions probably haven't even affected the HMV, I'm just one person. I do know of a bunch of friends and colleagues who have similar attitudes. The average consumer couldn't care less about lawsuits and such.
My motivation is to spite the record industries. Not the price of CDs, not the current standard of music, not the music stores, but RIAA/MPAA barging in and makes choices for me without consulting me. Kind of like the government actually, except without the appearance of elected officials.
Like most people here I work hard for my money, and I don't my money directly hitting corporations/organizations who I stronly disagree with.
You can scorn and think that I'm "all pumped up on /." but I can truthfully answer by saying that's not the case. I use Win2K for heaven's sake! ;>
I'm just one person, but my money still talks the language they understand. Plus if I can non-instrusively tell my family, friends, and colleagues about the lawsuits and hurt their business in the long run, so be it.
Hooky1963
POKE 53281,1 POKE 53280,0
Their lawsuits and their paranoia has rubbed me the wrong way. So I personally send the companies a message that they will hear, by not buying their products.
I've never used napster but I have fished for mp3s on the web when I wanted to hear a song. In the past I'd shell the $20 (CDN) for a CD even just for one song. Now I can't be bothered.
I do respect artists and I still buy CDs of music that I think is worth it. But I will never again buy a CD unless I really want it. Or a DVD for that matter.
Now I just rent from blockbuster if I really want to see a movie, instead of considering buying it. Or grab a MP3 from the actual artist's site. I even let my friends borrow my CDs/DVDs and make copies or VCDs. We have some sort borrowing-circle going on. All I care now is affecting the record/movie companies' business.
Companies have to realize that consumers will only take so much and they start walking away.
I was a legitimate and good customer for CDs and I've stopped because the bullish antics of the RIAA. Hell, I'm Canadian, isn't the RIAA an "American" organization which affects my choices?
Hooky1963
POKE 53281,1 POKE 53280,0
Now, I can't speak for other Canadians, of course. But...
While there are some 'established' acts (all around since the early 90s) that I'm still buying CDs from (recent examples include Radiohead and Tool), I haven't been able to find a genuinely new band on a Major Label that I like.
All the new bands (i.e. LESS THAN FIVE YEARS OLD) that I've been listening to have been either on indie labels or producing CD-Rs in the basement. Everybody else seems to suck.
And it's not that I'm cheap. I regularly spend over $40 Canadian (not including taxes) on Current 93 import CDs, because that's how much they cost, arrrgh. (I am cheap when I can get away with it, though - used CD stores are my friend.)
I actually felt a little guilty when I bought the new Tool, though, because they're still RIAA. Guys, you don't need them. CD-Rs in the basement. Tool would still sell tons of albums. It's not like the industry ever supported them anyway. (Think Opiate.)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Well, that is really what is to be expected. You ask the "Recording Industry".
:-). And through that way, teach what is right and wrong. These days everyone gets the lesson that if you want to get music fast, its on the internet, it is free and it is(was) on Napster.
q: So what are your sales now.
a: They are going down, a lot!
q: What do you think is the reason, Napster?
a: Hell no. We don't mind loosing control in fact we believe that us not having control is boosting sales. If it was not for Napster, we are quite sure that we would suffer even worse.
Their major problem is that they won't settle for less than total control.
What they need in terms of selling music over the internet is not total control with perfect encryption.
They need a product where the music is copy protected in a way where people can't copy it, and here's the important part. without knowing that they are doing something "wrong". Like downloading a program to break the copylock.
Now, that won't stop people from copying but you are sure that everyone know that what they are about to do is wrong(slap on the hand:-)).
So if they now would provide me with a site where I could download all(!) the music I wanted for a price, so I could play it on my pc, put it on my Sony Network Walkman etc. I would be happy to pay for it.
But they would need to get it right, I don't want to have to surf between 10 different record companies sites to figure out where the group i want to hear, is signed so that I could get the songs that I want. It needs to be on one site(will never happen)
When the site has been created, you could make a system where parents made a account for their children where they could use a fixed amount of money each month since they don't have credit cards
The record industry needs to get on the waggon and show that they are living in the same world as everybody else.
May I close with a statement that I am quite sure that has been said in a boardroom here and there:
I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.
--------
5 bucks? That's not much. Remember you are paying for content, not for the price of the media. Of course it's cheap to make the actual CDs, but what about the music? Manufacturing is not the only cost, my friend. Some artists may take a year (or more!) to make an album. Granted, that's not all hardcore 40 hours a week work.
At my company, we just finished an RPG for Gameboy Color. It will probably sell for $30. I wish we could sell it for more though, considering the amount of time/work/energy it took to make. As is, we'll probably break even on expenses. Did you know the cost of producing a cartridge is less than $1? That's just the manufacturing cost. When you start piling on the expenses (employees, outsources, publishers, middlemen) it gets out of control.
You never know, some of these CDs you speak of may actually be worth much more than 17 dollars. Our game is worth well over $30, I can tell you that much.
-Justin
51% of all canadian households are on the internet, thats way more then any other country.
I hope the music industry suffers 100% drop in sales.
I also hope that no-one buys another film DVD, ever again.
That would serve them right for trying to take away freedom on our computers. it would also reduce their financial capacity for instituting lawyer attacks on open source software.
Personally, I would like to see vermin like Steve Heckler bankrupt, homeless and living as a down-and-out.
There are basically two types of blanks you can get: 1) Regular Blank CDs. 2) Royalty-Paid Blank CDs. The only reason why you'd want the second type is if you have a low-end CD-Duplicator component unit for your stereo. They won't use the regular blanks. Of course the high end component burners will be fine.
Whenever Canadian CD-R taxes go up, the royalty paid blanks get more expensive, but the regular ones that everyone buys stay cheap. I'm thinking that this benefits the CD-R makers because their sales stay high with cheap products. Serisouly, it costs about CAD$65 (US$43) for a 100-spindle! Is the technology sector pulling a fast one on the Canadian government? I hope so!
Hmmm...Napter does well, CD sales do well. Napster is emasculated, CD sales begin to slip. Now, I realize one cannot prove causation from this, but if they are going to use the "Napster is to blame" game, then they should work it both ways and realize that by their logic, when Napster is rocking their sales improve.
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Private Essayist
I'd like to see them name me one record store that will accept CD's with the shirnk wrap off for a refund.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I was one of the first to hop on the Napster bandwagon back when there was regularly less than a gig of mp3s available and a good 6 months before even the alternative papers caught on to it. Since then I have not purchased a CD from a music store for close to two years (minus a Miles Davis Box set).
Will I ever purchase another CD again? Not if I can help it! It's all swell to say that people who use Napster go out and buy more CDs, but we are only fooling ourselves and trying to fool the industry at the same time by saying this. The reality of the situation is that some people may be buying a few more CDs, but in general most people are slowly replacing their CD collections entirely with MP3s, eventually cutting out the record store entirely. Maybe today I can only find a few songs from the latest album, but as things progress it will become easier to find those missing tracks, thus removing any need whatsoever for going to the record store.
Think I'm exagerating? A quick poll of my friends shows that on average they all have at least 5000mp3s in their collection...try bucking a trend like that!
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Damn straight! Download 2 CDs a month and the money you save is enough to pay for your High Speed connection.
Personaly I wouldn't recommend Morpheus but rather the superb WinMX.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Its more likely due to Celine Dion and Sarah McLaughlin being on hiatus than Napster! :-)
theres also Audiogalaxy. theres an easy to use windows client AND a linux binary only daemon, which works, but is clunky to set up. it's still centralized like Napster, but it's definetly the place to go for mp3s now a days (has anyone TRIED the official napster servers lately? can't find anything good.. )
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
what do you mean, people getting music for free means they don't pay for it?!?!
There was an Independent American Music Label, (don't know the name, I doubt it is RiAA affilated), but, the head of the company wanted to sue every Napster user for pirating Music. It was thrown out of court due to lack of evidence, I will post the link as soon as I find it, but it is interesting to note that these idiots are widespread.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
You can't find anything on it anymore, not even obscure music, because the filters are set to filter just about every song that the RIAA likes or any song that has a title which remotely resembles a RIAA title.
A good working alternative to Napster is KaZaA.
Do you like German cars?
I haven't paid more then 20 dollars with taxes in so long, where are you shopping? Jonathan
My long term goal is to make a "disc-gun" like the kind you had as a kid that would fling the disc out. Given that the metal content of the disc itself is just sprayed on aluminum in most cases there isn't much for creating something magnetic -- directly. However you might be able to get something to superconduct in order to fling it like a rail gun ;)
Otherwise, some combination of air-cushion (like and air-hockey table concept) could work -- start by spinning the CD up and then kick it out!
the whole apparatus could be mounted on the back of a pickup truck for "urban-assault" -- i think i'm seeing a weapon for Unreal or Quake!
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
Although it may be statistically correct that Canada has embraced the world of online music sharing more than anywhere else... is this article in any way surprising on a global scale? It is really just more of the same EMI (etc) whinging about the plummiting profits. The Internet has stolen business from a multitude of industries and thats just how it is. We should stop reading articles like this and ignore the hole ongoing musical "controvesy" by not even buying into it or trying to fight back and get on with doing what we do best... pull in as much music as we can! Im with Canada!
Australianus Geekus
It is only a matter of time. Eventually the stratigy of threats and lawyers will not win .. "All the kings horses, and all the kings men, couldnt put the riaa back together again"
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Canadians can copy music they own to a blank medium, like an audiocassette or videocassette. So long as it's for personal enjoyment, copying is legal. Copyright owners - the record companies - receive a portion of the proceeds from blank media sales.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
the best thing to do is head on over to www.emusic.com where you can download your mp3's on a subscription basis where the artist's get paid directly. Now this only applies to a few major label and mostly indie label releases. If you are into new school punk, head over. Quit buying commercial shit all together.
Ever since I discovered mp3's (even before the Napster days) I have not only stopped buying CD's completely, but I've also NOT gone inside a record store again. I used to love going to Tower Records with my girlfriend. Now we just download them on the net, share them, and burn them to CD.
Oh yeah by the way, ever since I discovered my bank was getting too greedy with their exhorbitant fees I've been going around robbing banks too. Napster fans you guys wanna go rob a bank with me some time since we all are using the same type of logic here?
* Disclaimer - The last paragraph was a figment of my imagination only. The first one though is true.
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Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?
eTrade SUCKS
Where do you get this? I would like to see some proof. Right now it looks more like this is the way you would want it to me, but not the way it is.
That should read: "would want it to BE", of course.
Why is 'copying music' with Napster (nice try) so very different from stealing a bike? Bands (e.g. Metallica) have made it clear that do not like it when their work is copied through Napster. Who are you deny them their rights?
Of course everyone copies something sometimes, we all exchanged cassette tapes with one another and now we burn cdrom's and use(d) Napster. But to act as if that should be legalized without any real argumentation is a different story. That's like legalizing exam fraud because it worked so good for you once, and the teachers are assholes.
If what you imply is true, namely that Slashdot is the bastion of the GPL, this community would be in a very sorry state. But I know its not true, there are enough readers who do not without any real consideration see the GPL as the one and only true free software license. Free software has it's merits (I wrote a paper about it which is online on my site, unfortunately its only available in Dutch), but the GPL is only one of the many free licences under which software can be distributed.
I have the impression that a lot of Slashdot readers condemn the music industry because of their own hidden agenda: the possibility to freeload as much mp3 as they can (gives another meaning to Gates' quote "information at your fingertips"). Of course cd prices are (too) high, but that doesn't legalize copyright violations. Defending such a thing only shows the sad state of your argumention, which is really close to non-existent.
I wrote a response to this but it never showed up. Checking whether this works..
Anyway, it was about toll roads which I saw on my Swedish holidays. You were expected to pay by putting money in a can yourself (no one was there to check things). A bad person could skip the payment or steal the can. Appearently it worked because we saw several of these toll systems (the last time I went to sweden was about 8 years ago, I think).
In the Netherlands, up to 10 or 20 years ago you could buy fruits and vegetables along the road by taking it from crates and paying the right amount (which was written down on blackboards). There was no person to sell it. Eventually this didn't work anymore, which I think is a shame.
Like you care what I want, but... Remember when they told us that soon we'd be able to go to the music store and pick 15 songs and they'd smack them onto a CD and give it to us right then? That's what I want, and I don't think I'm the only one. That's the only reason I use Napster, anyway. I like making mix CDs, but I don't want to buy a whole album just to get Girlfriend in a Coma and then a whole other album to get Under my Thumb. I know a lot of people say this, but if I could just legally BUY those goddamn songs one at a time from the record companies, I would. Even if there was some sort of brutal encryption to prevent me from giving it away, I wouldn't care because that other guy can spend $2 on the song if he wants it. I also think that if the RIAA companies provided this service themselves, they'd have a much better legal and moral footing to fight things like Napster and Gnutella and all their siblings. Imagine RIAA saying, "We try to make our music available on the web for a fair price, but then people steal it," instead of saying, "We're trying to force people to buy $15+ CDs to get the one hit that Generic Band has, but instead evil anarchists just GIVE IT AWAY!"
Today is a good day to die. They all are, though.
I make shit money
The sales taxes here are killing me
Movies are too expensive
CD's are too expensive
The music sucks
The record industry has gradually been basing more of their business model on *the big hit*. One hit wonders that would previously have sold many albums, are now seen for what they are and the public is savvy. They know the album is shit, the just want the disposable song of the week. Napster happened along at just the time that this disposable music/video travesty is at it's height.
Sales are down because the whole economy is in a recession, and gas prices have skyrocketed. Dont fucken tell me that Napster is to blame when I have no disposable income. Fuck CD's, I need to pay the rent.
The retail store gets $17 gross income.
Close enough, though.
I question the relevancy of this breakdown. If they really only cleared $0.59 per CD, they'd add a buck to the price and probably double their profit after the slight decrease in sales it would cause.
More likely, they make something close to the store's markup (in cleared profit) on real hits from undervalued artists (which they hope for with every release, of course, but rarely get), such that doubling their profit/CD would increase the price to $25 or more, sharply reducing their sales (which hurts a lot worse than just not getting the "profit"). At those prices, the break-evens might lose money and the moderate losers might not sell at all.
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I purchase almost every CD that I like. But I haven't purchased as much within the last year as I have in previous years. Why? Because most of the music coming out today sucks. I was at Best Buy the other day and they have a section where they have all the top CD's on display. I like a lot of music but I was only liked maybe 1 or 2 CDs that were on display. It's the music I tell ya. I think the music industy would love to regulate the entire internet. If they get their way they will.
Actually, I read somewhere else that Napster-users buy more CDs than the average person... Could it be that this is just some crazy Canadian phenomenon?
"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." -Wittgenstein
....Whenever sales of CD's drop, it's automatically Napsters fault? If I remember correctly, record-sales have been at a record-level recently. But RIAA and their henchmen think that it doesn't prove a thing. But when sales of CD's drop 0,0003%, they start shouting "See! We were right! Napster is hurting our business!"
Oh please!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob
There is a little flamewar a few threads up where someone replying to this post says that
You have forgotten that murder has been an abhorrent act for thousands of years--long before the invention of the media. This whole Napster issue is much more complex. With Napster-like software and PayPal-like software, the world doesn't need to give billions of dollars each year to the leeches in the recording industry. The media, of course, sides with the industry and particularly the industry's trade association: the RIAA. Don't forget that a CD is a medium, a newspaper is a medium, a television news station is a medium, and that the plural of medium is media. Got it? Now explore Who Owns What, courtesy of Columbia University, so that you can find out why Big Media has such an incentive to show only one side of the story--their side.There is an appropriate quote, from Wilson I think: "A journalist's job is not to tell the truth. A journalist's job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers."
Here are a few issues that Big Media chooses to ignore in order to do their jobs:
To further disillusion you, I am providing this link to interesting stories that Big Media censors by under-reporting. Most of these stories are important in the grand scheme of things. Putting these stories on the front page would be detrimental to Big Media's primary goal, which of course is to maximize their shareholders' profit. Bookmark the link and come back to it next year to see what you missed in 2001.
To summarize, the recording industry is no longer needed. Because America is a banana republic, yet with a much more esoteric manner of palm-greasing than your typical banana republic known as "campaign contributions", the industry is not giving its dying breath. Instead it is struggling by any means necessary to outlast its timely demise. Judging by the support in this sid, I think their means are working.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Hate to be the guy bashing the use of Napster, but...
While walking up Yonge Street (downtown Toronto) yesterday, I walked past a place that rents out computer/internet time. There was a big poster in the front window with the Napster logo on it. Below the poster was another large sign which said "MAKE YOUR OWN CD's. 5.99"
I'm not sure if this is happening all over. I am pretty sure this is not legal, or at least more illegal than doing the same at home.