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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.""
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.
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
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 ?
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.
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?
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"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
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.
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.
So why are casettes cheaper than CDs?
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.
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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.
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 Pollock"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}}
s/bjectivity/objectivity/
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Got bush? (fixed)
Want Root?
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.
Want Root?
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.
Want Root?
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
Want Root?
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
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.
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
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)
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
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.
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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.
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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.)
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 $8 + S&H, the artist gets half of that, the rest going to duplication of the CD and of the box art.
Will I retire or break 10K?
...as seeing Leftists trot out the Laffer curve to argue for reduced CD prices. So, let's get this straight: When Ronald Reagan and the Republicans argue that reducing taxes will increase revenue, it's voodoo economics. When the anti-IP crowd and Napster pirates argue that reducing CD prices will increase sales it's common sense. Yeah, right.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
People say that they still buy music or even more than before because of napster, to make napster look good... some actually do, yes, but most not.
RIAA says napster hurts their sales, but they don't do much about it exept whine and sue. And did the price for a cd change since 10 years? not really.
Solution? why would someone go thru all the trouble of downloading mp3s, and burn them on a cd that 25% of the players out there won't be able to read?, why wouldn't you see that 4 years ago and now it's like the new Thing? 4 years ago it wasn't worth it to do that because the price of the cd was way too expensive (and one could argue that mp3 were a bit more rare to find). If you'd trop the price of a CD to 4-5$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.
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
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
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.
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
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!
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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?
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.
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 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.
--
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?"