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Best Buy Backs CD Copy Impairment
borkus writes: "Chief Operating Officer Allen Lenzmeier of Best Buy, Co, owner of Best Buy Stores and Musicland said that his company would support industry efforts at copyright protection, though he didn't specify any particular technology. Although Best Buy stores sell MP3 players, CD-Burners and tape decks, they aquired Musicland in 2001. According to the article, the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by Internet file swapping. As a major retailer of both electronics AND music, Best Buy could have a huge impact on the future format of music player hardware as well as software."
Guess I'll be taking my business elsewhere then. Mediaplay here I come.
Will these bastards stop at nothing to suck out our souls?
And if people can't use CDR's for writing CD's then they are going to notice a far greater drop in profits than those caused by file-swapping systems.
Not like it's going to matter what site they take. They make money either way.
-makoffee
All best buy has to do now is play up the CDs as being some sort of "Compact Disc+" ("Get your favorite albums, as well as a FREE copy of the album on MP3") and people will adopt it quickly. I'm guessing that only a very small percentage of us care about the actual loss of rights when it comes to copy protection - if best buy provides the teeming masses with a replacement, they'll eat it up.
Okay.. I'm going to say something snarly here. Have they actually given serious thought to the possibility that the reason sales are down is because the fanatical followers of bubblegum pop have started to grow up?
Probably not.
This is a supply/demand issue. It's quite possible that the listening audience demand has dropped because the supply is drek.
Well, so much for buying anything from then again.. Although it used to be fun to go in there and hose the machines. "Turn on the fun" - As long as your fun is firstly approved by the MPAA, the RIAA, and the DMCA. Oh, and Sen. Hollings, natch.
Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow...
BestBuy was just eliminating a competitor when they bought Musicland. They were already one of the largest sellers of cd's in 2001. The real issue behind this is that BestBuy owns a record label (can't remember the name, Red Line Records?) and as such they are indirectly member of the RIAA.
That nearly everything released by the industry was total crap marketed towards middle school kids without jobs.
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Geez... Instead of assuming that the loses are because of us evil consumers, they should look at the feeble economy. People who are scared they might not have jobs (or actually don't have jobs) usually don't run right out and get the latest treasures from N'Sync and Britney. Survival is more of a concern.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
I'll get my stuff off the net from people who don't assume that I'm a criminal.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Just like Circuit City had a huge impact on the way we watch DVDs.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
When is the media distribution business going to figure out how demand-sided markets work? Let the consumer decide how we want our music/video/whatever and we will be happy to pay a fair-market-value for it.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Umm, source, please? IIRC, when Napster was in business, sales of music went up.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
that supports their business model, though i'm not sure i trust the motives after the aquisition of musicland. i worked at a sam goody's long ago, and making the sale was drilled into my brain the very first day. they are concerned about profits (hey, it's a retailer, they should be) but they are also hyper-protective of a distribution model that should be part of a channel, not the whole damn thing. having people come in and get a sales pitch and buy a cd or 20 is all well and good, but i think there's an increasing number of people buying online - and i bet it's not from best buy or musicland as much as it is cdnow and amazon (http://eastbay.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/20 01/07/23/daily5.html)
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
This reminds me of a hilarious study I read about in college... Several pigeons were put into identical boxes that would spit out a food pellet once every minute. Within a few minutes one pigeon was hopping up and down constantly, the second was continually spinning, and another wouldn't stop bobbing his head... It turns out that they were assuming that whatever action they were doing when the food first was dispensed was causing the food to be released, so they would continue to do it indefinitely to keep the food coming! If A is happening, then it MUST be a result of B....
so... yeah... um.. it must be the file trading!
They only blame them self for the use of swaping techonlgy bacause people don't want to pay $30 for a CD.
Has Best Buy given any thought at all to the possibility that CD sales dropped because people lost their jobs after 9-11? I know here in Washington state, the economy has tanked rather thoroughly, and many people just don't have the free ca$h left to pay for overpriced CDs. When you spend all your time pounding pavement, looking for any job that'll let you make house payments, there's little time or energy left over to be swapping MP3s.
Lemon curry?
Well OBVIOUSLY the general state of the economy couldn't be at all responsible for the drop in sales, it MUST be online piracy!
If things keep going way of not being able to rip mix and burn cds as a function of the pc or drive. a few years down the road everyone will have an older box just for burning and ripping and mixing while they use there brandnew 8.gighz box for everything else...
No surpise, really, considering that Best Buy and the RIAA are both on the retail side of things. What I find interesting is that both sectors care little for the artist or the listener... boiling down their influence on music to making it shiny and flashy.
Sooner or later, musicians and audiophiles will have enough technology to bypass all this ridulousness. Let's just hope it doesn't end up being illegal for me to buy listening rights to a song directly from whoever wrote and recorded it!
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Excuse me? 10% drop in music sales over the past year? Lets be a little level headed here and realise that the economy hasn't been that stellar for the past bit and I can see a 10% drop in the purchasing of Compact Discs that cost $15-$25 a piece.
Lets also put this into context. How many people are on GNUtella or Kazza? Well, on GNUtella it is hard to tell due to how the system works, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was in the 50,000 - 100,000 range. KaZaA is probably at a similar level. How many people out there listen to CDs they buy legitimately? I am sure there are more people with legit CDs than those who have burned MP3s or OGG Vorbis files on to CD-ROMS.
Utter bullshit.
if I'm not mistaken, CD sales were up during the peak of Napster, and now they are down during the year Napster was shut down. coincidence?
no matter how much we bitch around here at slashdot. The entertainment industry is very big and therefore has the power to get laws made. /. would know object that
Most people here at
the financial losses due to fileswapping aren't too big. They are right, but this is only the beginning. Movie swapping has already started and with more and more broadband access available this will become standard, too. In some years the industry will be REALLY hurt and so they take preventive action now.
It's probably better to make sure that the copy protection can be implemented on open source systems than fight windmills like Don Quichote.
You are the dot in slashdot !
I can only speak for our household, but the amount of new music we bought went way down when we moved to a new apartment that DIDN'T have high-speed bandwidth. We used to spend probably $100 a month on new CDs because we were able to sample them by downloading tracks, burning them to CD, and taking them with us on road trips. If we weren't sick of the music by the end of the trip, we'd buy the CD. I'd be surprised if we have spent $100 this YEAR on new CDs, and I think we have purchased one CD by a band we hadn't heard of prior to when we moved seven months ago. We used to buy music by a new-to-us band about once a month.
We mostly buy used because we're not spending $15-20 for a CD that might suck. What am I supposed to do, buy a CD because the cover art looks nifty?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Was caused by internet piracy then because people were discovering all sorts of new music they had never heard and were rushing out to purchase CD's of the good stuff...
Right?
Right?
oh no no no, that was brilliant marketing on the part of RIAA and besides it would've been... uh...28% growth, yeah, 30% even if it hadn't been for those EVIL CHEATING INTERNET PIRACY SCUM who are STEALING money away from these poor starving artsts they represent!
Courtney Love: I want the money you owe me!
RIAA: Shut up! Oh Mr. Clintttooonnnnn... would you mind signing this bill into law that says musicians are really contractors to us and don't really deserve any money for their creations except for an hourly wage, but extend copyright law so we can sell the same disc at 1500% mark-up for 100 years? Thaaanksss... Oh, here's some money for your wife's campaign...
I was going to buy some CDs today. I usually shop at Best Buy. Now I wouldn't be going to Best Buy even if they have the best price. I want value for my purchasing dollar. Limiting my future choices is not value. I didn't buy an iPod to have Best Buy dictate how I use it in the future.
Don't let companies pull this garbage. Don't buy from them. Best Buy just screwed themselves permanently with me. It will be very hard for them to dictate to customers if they don't have any.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Analysts expect downloading of Internet music files to lead to another year of declining sales after U.S. music shipments slumped 10.3 percent in 2001.
Which was in no way affected by the recession we're still seeing in many states. The reason why they only dropped 10% is because of internet advertizement.
Suddenly "Best Buys" just became "Worst Buys" :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
To me it's sort of like Oracle pushing the national demographic database idea, or for that matter many anti-privacy politicians (e.g., the U.S. atty. general, et al) pushing new laws limiting freedoms.
Certainly there's some grain of truth or value in the reasoning they give, but they make the issue (pick whichever one you like) look much simpler than it really is...
What I'm wondering is if any of these new copy protected cds will have any sort of notice on them, of if Best Buy is going to just start throwing them in with the rest unmarked. I would at least like to know if I'm not going to be able to use it in my computer. I'm just hoping that they don't start tossing them in and try to eradicate the old ones in the shelf. Only time will tell I guess....
ahh, the egg in the basket..
Does these copy protect CDs specify on the package what hardware they play on or what hardware they DO NOT work on? Product description laws? What about fair use laws? Does these products infringe these laws? I dont know about laws in the US, but in Europe, WE HAVE GOOD LAWS for protecting consumers.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
I wonder if BestBuy thought of this response? Should we call for a boycott of BestBuy? Anyone think this is practical?
I remember back when Napster being shut down was a hot button issue rather than history, sales were up 6% across the board.
Regardless of that, I think the main issue is you can only recycle things so many times before it deteriorates into nothing. Go buy an original VHS tape, copy it, then copy that copy, and then copy it one or two more times for good measure. It'll be so warped by then it's a waste of a tape.
Same thing with this music. Notice that sales for Britney Spears' new album are much lower than her previous efforts. Why? Not because 14 year old girls are pirating it, but because if you've got 1, you've got them all, fundamentally.
Perhaps people are just sick and tired of 20 year old musicians singing about love and relationships(pop), who has the most expensive car and who's the biggest "playa" (rap), being angry for the sake of being angry (nu-metal), and claiming to be unique when everyone dresses the same with let's say, a red baseball hat on backwards (rock).
Perhaps sales are diminished not because of new technologies, but because of lack of creativity. The entertainment industry is in such a horrible state and has been stagnating as such. It's just bad timing for technology that as movies and music gets worse, technology progresses at the same fashion, leaving a perfect scapegoat to use as an excuse to wonder why the public is buying the excrement they dish out.
The RIAA mindset is that their industry is immune to downturns in the economy unlike the other commercial endeavors in North America. Add that to the blatant homogenization of what's being sold as popular music, and the reason for the 10% downturn should be quite obvious. (I'm surprised it's not more.) Maybe I'm getting old and starting to sound like somebody's grandpa (I'm not that old yet), but all the stuff that gets put out by Vivendi/Universal, Sony, Bertelsmann, Virgin, et. al. sounds like everything else. Remember the day when being in a band meant you could play a musical instrument? Now all a popular music act has to do is hire a union member choreographer, learn to lip sync, and hire a costume designer. It has very little to do with the music. Those of us who are wise enough to recognize this have reduced our mainstream CD purchasing dramatically. Has Best Buy ever sold any CD's manufactured by someone other than any of the big four I've mentioned? Next time you're in Best Buy, try finding a CD on the Putamayo label, just as an illustration of my point. Remember folks, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Another corporate sucker. Yeah, the sales for music where down 2001 because of file swapping, the lack of it as the people who used to be on napster had to find an alternative, which took time. Oh, well, I guess I'll only still buy the stuff off of them that they sell for less than they paid for it the day after Thanksgiving.
A thought: Bestbuy suit bitching about mp3's, and the Best Buys I know of are well known for people being able to lift and just walk out the door with CD's. Go figure.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
All this is pointless anyway. Think about it - what's the best copyright protection they've come out with? CDs you can't play on your computer? Those are gonna be REALLY popular. And anyway, if you can play the CD at all, you will be able to copy it. It might take a little more work, but still not too hard.
Perhaps a polite notice that what they're doing is very, very wrong would be appropriate. The EFF has already asked its member to mail a thank you note to Gateway. Best Buy has an address to send "general comments" to. I believe I'll be sending them a piece of my mind on this issue quite soon.
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
Hmmm, my immediate reaction is to do what all good consumers should do, choose not to shop with the conglomerates.
But where do I go? I guess it'll have to be those boutique music stores that charge too much for CDs because they've been pushed to the brink by the retailing conglomerates.
I guess to make a comparison with conservation and "green"-like options for energy, etc., it's gonna cost a little more to do what I believe. It certainly does no good to say you're not going to shop at Best Buy then turn around and go to Wal-Mart, Amazon, B&N, and the like. They all have something that pushes me away.
We're going to have to rate companies to help us find the least of the evils when we shop.
Cheap-cds.com and alldirect.com is where it's at.
The past two CDs I've wanted were not available in any stores I looked at. I went to over 10 Goddamn stores looking for them, but it was nothing but effort in vein. I asked FYE about the CD and they special ordered it for me. How much when all was said and done? $23.99. Fuck you. I then ordered it online for $13.
Let's see. I can either buy a CD cheaper and have it guaranteed to be there or waste my time going store to store to hope someone has it to rip me off. Decisions, decisions.
tar zxvf bag.tar.gz ; cd bag ; mv $feline
Everything worth getting is already available in MP3 format..And nothing thats currently being put out by the recording industry is worth listening to. It would be a far easier endeavor for the industry to understand and deal with the past two sentences than it would be to write endless piles of additional legislation and licensing agreements.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Best Buy lost me as customer many years ago.
Maybe their sales drop is that they can not sell goods. They have no knowledge of the product other than reading the computer printed labels.
So if no knowledge is in the local store -- then internet shopping is way to go. Same lack of knowledge, but NO TAXES.
That's why I keep the old 486 around... :) ... well, that and I can't even give it away...
I don't buy CD's for $18. Costs for CD's have been going up and up, even as production costs drop (due to economies of scale) ... even several years ago, the cost of manufacturing a CD was less than tape or vinyl.
More hearsay: wasn't there an unbiased study that showed music sales UP, even during the rein of Napster?
Media Play is more expensive.
The same CD at Media Play is about $3 more. That's not just CDs, but movies too. Hell, probably everything. Media Play is, however, much better when it comes to stock. They carry a much wider variety, whereas Best Buy has a larger stock of popular items (100 copies of a radio band in BB and 30 in MP).
I'll chalk up this assinine logic to politics.
Just guessing, maybe they'll put up big signs saying 'this cd will not play in a computer ' and refuse to take back returns.
Now I feel sick because I recently bought something from Best Buy. Never again. Nor will I let anyone I know shop there. Screw em! Bastards!
Don't just boycott the bastards.... take 2 minutes and go to their website and give them a note telling them you're no longer a customer.... AND WHY.
It'll make much more of an impact.
When it comes down to it Best Buy is simply a retail outlet for electronic goods. If they don't carry what people want they will go out of business.
.. but in the long term a 'cripple ware' solution will only cripple the consumers trust in what they are buying.
.. maybe they wont buy 5 CD's /month anymore .. but if they don't trust you they may not buy anything.
Sure they like copy protection because in the SHORT TERM it may mean that new music will be less available online
Losing that trust is loosing a customer
...that the 10% decrease in sales could be because consumers have finally realized what SHITTY PIECES OF CRAP THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SELLS?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I don't believe the statistics. It was circumstantial because of the economy. I know for a fact that when Napster was around I was buying a lot of music that I normally would have. Something I also noticed about my friend's music spending habits as well. But with cry babies like Lars Ulrich :-(.... those days are over. Sigh... as if Metallica had to start eating TV dinners because of Napster. I won't speak for the masses as this is something you will all have to decide for yourselves. As much as I hate to because I like Best Buy. I will boycott Best Buy when / if they put this in place. If I buy a CD I have the right IMHO to convert it to MP3 if I want to. I can fit a lot more MP3's on a portable player than their antiquated format. It's not my fault they don't want to adjust with the times.
Best Buy lost a lot of my money (I still buy some movies here and there because I don't have a choice really) from me when I would walk up ready to buy something but needed some help to get it and was ignored. In 2001, I seriously must have spent a good $3,000 at Best Buy, but since I'm a kid, I'm ignored. I could walk up with a wad of $100s in my hand, ready to buy no questions asked, but I get ignored for some middle aged man who's doing nothing but window shopping for the same item.
I've decided that from this point on I will no longer purchase brand new CD's .... my motives were sincere and they always have been, support the artist. But I've come to realize there are greater issues at hand, therefore I am shifting my efforts to pirating music, 100%.
I dont feel guilty about the direction I've decided to take. My position will soon be justified by the levy Canada's parliament will be placing on digital storage. If my tax dollars are going to be routed to a private organization like the RIAA then I've paid my bill as far as piracy goes, thank you very much.
thank you, long time cd purchaser, now a pirate/criminal/felon or whatever were called under these new rules.
Well, it doesn't matter because I stopped shopping at Best Buy because of their policy of checking your receipt at the door even though you just purchased your item only a few feet away! If they assume all their customers are thieves, they just won't get my business! This latest news item about 'Worst Buy' doesn't surprise me in the least.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm a techie. When I want music I find the mp3 and add it to my collection. I own hundreds of CDs... from a few years ago. I haven't bought a CD in ages. There is no technical need to do so. My father is a computer newbie. When he wants music even he finds the mp3 version. Same goes for my sisters. The only person in my family that still buys CDs is my brother. He likes music stores and like having "real" CDs.
.iso?
There is no doubt in my mind that mp3's are destroying potential CD sales.
There is also no doubt in my mind that the RIAA is fighting the mp3 threat in the wrong way. They are hurting people that buy CDs! They are tartgeting their own customers! Rather than fighting the format, or better yet, positioning themselves to control the format they actually think that CD sales will improve with more restrictive CDs.
Its hilarious.
The VPs and Money-mongers are so wildly out of touch with their customers that they are willing to cripple their own product to control the situation.
How about monthly mp3 download subscriptions? I'd pay $10 a month to get a mp3 version of new releases as they happen.
How about cheaper CDs. $9 with more content. Better yet, include the mp3's on the CD itself. Or treat the CD as a license to download the mp3 version... no ripping/searching required.
How about a website where I can create my own CD complitation and have it mailed to me... or download the
How about some friggin creativity...
The RIAA and the music industry is sitting on a vast pile of money-potential and THEY DON'T EVEN SEE IT. They are so stuck "in the box" that they can't imagine that there is any other way of capitalizing on their investments.
I hope that someone in the "industry" wakes up and smells the cash. I'm willing to fork over a ton of $$ to get music, I simply don't want $15 CDs anymore. They're bulky, prone to scratches and a poor "investment" for my entertainment dollar. Give me access to clean, high-bitrate mp3's (no crippleware, special players, ads, and other BS) and I'll for over serious cash.
I would love to know how they figured it was EXACTLY because of file swapping?
I would also like to know in general what the other industries have been doing in the poor ecomony. I imagine MANY groups felt a 10% decrease in sales.
This appears to be one of those numbers that gets repeated so much soon people will think it was true! Soon noone will remember where that number came from and will just quote it. It will be a dead issue and people will think it is true. to quote the Fountainhead You cannot fight a dead issue.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
They blame a 10% sales slump on piracy, when you can't swing a dead cat without hearing that we've been in a moderately serious recession? Who are they kidding?
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
"[Best Buy] said it is looking to team up with record labels and technology groups to devise ways to prevent wholesale copying of CDs without antagonizing customers. "
We've already been antagonized, and in us they have an adversary for the rest of their grasping, niggardly lives.
Thank you very much, jackasses, for not referring to us as "consumers."
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
I bought a $120 5 disc CD player there back in the day. They wanted $40 for a 3 year warantee. I'm not going to spend 1/3rd of the cost of an item on a warrantee. And the reasoning behind why you need one is a joke. "We recommend you get the laser cleaned at least once a year". This is not a Goddamn car with complex mechanics and 1000 things that can go wrong. That's like saying "We recommend you get a new engine for your car every year because there is a possibility of 1% wear and tear".
Count me also. I have a couple hundred cds seating on my shelves. I'll start ripping today.
Perhaps if sales keep decreasing steadily they won't be able to fight the battle against technology OR put out sub-par music.
Ya, any artist who stops making music just because they can't make a truckload of money on it is an artist who's music is probably shit anyway. People have been making music for thousands of years and I hate to break it to Mr. Best Buy, but people are going to continue to make it for thousands more; regardless of the state of copyright protection and music sales.
If anything the people who are just in the business to make money will be the first to exit once the money dries up. Good riddence! Perhaps then real artists will begin to get some of the recognition they deserve.
Here's the thing. We'd all like to be able to buy music on-line. The RIAA probably even wants to sell us music on-line (There are at least hypothetical situations in which the RIAA would embrace online sales of music. Their current hypotheticals may be technologically, legally, and/or economically unsound, but they exist). But how is that ever going to help Best-Buy? Their entire business, as far as music sales go, is based on getting physical copies of CDs from a manufacturer to you.
Online downloads, legal and pirated alike, ruin that business model, so Best Buy naturally feels that it's in their best interests to oppose anything that lets you acquire music on a non-physical medium.
It seems unlikely that there's room for a middleman like Best Buy in online distribution of music. If you were able to purchase and download music direcly from an artist's or label's website, why would you want to pay Best Buy extra money on top of that? Best Buy probably feels they have a lot more to lose than the record companies do.
What the hell is Best Buy?
This is coming from industries that complain about major profit losts due to piracy and a few days later gloat they've made more money now than in the past 50 years.
I'm looking in your general direction, Grandpa Valenti.
They'd like to accuse people they're criminals all the time!! And these sort of things distance people from buying anything.
I was with my friend in best buy looking at cell phone stuff. Some teenager girl worker comes up and asks if she could help us, we said no we're just looking around. Then she looked all mad and she was staring at us we did not understand why. Then she forcefully asked, so what kind of cell phone do you have?? So my friend said he had a Nokia 5180. I had one too, hidden in my pocket, but it was like none of her business anyways, so I kept quiet. We got what we wanted but we sat there for a minute confused still on why she asked the question. And she was still standing there watching us, so we're like, okay lets go. We go pay for the thing and at the same time she goes and talks to two guys by the exit. When we were done paying, ready to walk out, The two guys stop me. They asked if they could search me, I was like why?? My friend said just cooperate. But I insisted why? They asked do you have a certain cell phone. I said MY CELL PHONE? I showed them. They were like okay... but still asked to search me, and of course they found I wasn't stealing anything. So somehow the girl saw I had a cell phone but thought I was stealing it. And they were all airheads.
And so I wasn't ready on ever going back there. I don't think I ever have. So if a store adopts a policy acting people are all theives (aka add copy protection) if they buy CDs, of course they're gonna get a drop in sells.
I wish I would have read this yesterday. I picked up a spool of blank cdr from best buy. Well I guess I'll just use them to copy these cd's
According to the article, the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by Internet file swapping.
Interesting...just yesterday, my friend George Scriban posted a piece on his (for lack of a better phrase) obsessively Big Content focused blog that, among other things, charts CD unit sales against average per-unit price. His data indicates that CD sales slow during periods when per-unit price increases...periods such as the year 2001, when the average price of a CD increased by about 62 cents.
He doesn't indicate the specific source for his data (I don't think he does, anyway), and I haven't gotten around to asking him yet. If he sees his server load getting out of hand, he may check to see what's going on, find this reference, and post some more information on the topic... =)
For your daily dose of irony, note also that George correlates the most dramatic increase in volume of CD sales to "cut-throat price competition" involving discount retailers such as Best Buy.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
"the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by crappy bands playing the same shit you heard in 2000. No innovation or new styles were introduced which was believed to have led to the decline. The Celine Dion cd was also alleged to be a major contributor"
I live in a town where there are half a dozen good alternatives to Best Buy. If they think I'm a pirate, they don't deserve my money.
Boycott.
I personally never buy CDs. Its too much of a hassle. I just listened to the radio before napster etc came along. Now I download music on a regular basis. When the industry finally does start to selling DECENT music online, they will have more customers like me since we are already in tune to downloading music online. I still wont buy it if it is $20 a record, however.
The RIAA, BestBuy and others continue to make two, essential false assumptions about the music industry.
- The decline in sales has nothing to do with the content being produced by the music industry.
Sorry, try again. Many, many people who download songs end up buying the albums, however there is a severe lack of anything new or remotely innovative in popular music, right now. Record companies are STILL placing all their bets on Teen Pop, Metal, Rap and a stunning number of bands who have decided to get Eddie Vedder impersonators as their vocalists. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but really, the catagories I mentioned are the sum total of 99.9% of the music industry right now.
If people don't buy CDs, the record company mentality goes, it must be because of something wrong with the customer. They are unwilling to admit that they have alltogether tightened the reigns on the industry to the point where it is being choked. Radio playlists across the country are exactly the same, paid for by corprate moolah (indirectly, of course) and some DJs are not even permitted to play ANY songs of their own choosinig.
MTV has descended to the point where you get one, single video show per day and that's it. (if you are lucky)
TRL is a pressure cooker for sales. Videos are premiered on the show and since that is for many the only exposure to videos they have, they simply vote for the video they have been spoonfed. The result is a never-changing block of videos that are fed to the masses in a trickle so the minimum amount of variety can be used to gain the maximum amount of exposure for an "artist". This extremly tightly focused enviornment is used to force an artist on as many impressionable people as once, and give them few other musical options.
Now, for the second false assumption:
- That BestBuy, and any company that supports such measures will ever receive my business again.
I've spent thousands upon thousands at particular stores or products by particualr companies over many years. However, their business practices mean that my disposible income will cease to flow into their cash registers.
And I'm not alone.
The music industry has shown their utter contempt for me and I see no reason to give them a dime of my money any longer. I would like to support the artists I like, but even buying a CD now means risking buying crippled media. It doesn't matter WHY I would want to use a non-copy prevented CD, I'm sure it would surprise them that I would be doing nothing remotely illegal, just keeping one CD in the car and a couple of MP3s in my playlist.
But they don't care, and therefore, neither do I.
There are countless others like me now, and there are more all the time. I really hope the record industry likes what they've done.
You reap what you sow, and believe me, the record company better count it's blessings that a 10% drop in sales is all they have to deal with right now.
It's going to get much worse, and their strong-arm tactics are the only reason why.
As an avid music fan who lives effectively between the US and Europe, let me put my two cents in.
I think there are numerous factors going into this. Does illegal copying affect sales? Sure! I have friends who think that it's perfectly ok to go hunt after music online because they can't find in a store here in Finland. Or better yet, one person will have the original and the rest will copy it. I rant and rave about IP laws, and get stared at.
On the other hand, I've noticed that a LOT of people upon reaching their 20's just couldn't care less about downloading the music. Most of the people I see downloading now are those teen pop trash fans. So that is probably hurting sales to some degree.
However, I'm the kind of person who is perfectly willing to buy good music. I'll buy good releases, but I won't rush to get them the instant they come out. The problem for me is being aware of what's good out there. There's too much hype about the latest teen sensations and no enough real coverage of good music.
Conscientiously, I've decided to not necessarily rush out and buy big-label records. I'll often get them used. I will buy small-label records at retail, as they're less likely to abuse artists.
Lastly, hey, the future ain't looking as bright as in the middle of the dot-com bubble. I incurred plenty of debt then and so did a lot of other people. With the joys of interest and shaky jobs, I reckon that quite a few others are working hard to pay of debts quickly and save some money for the anticipated 'rainy day'.
Suggestion for recording industry? Put something worthwhile in the CDs for the kiddies who download all the time so they might buy that bubble-gum pop crap, and find some quality artists that you don't abuse and let them get some press coverage.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
The 10% drop has something to do with the sharp
decline in music quality over the past few years?
Come on, I'm getting tired of all these
one-hit boy bands and 16 year-old pop stars.
Give me something worth buying, and I will.
I remember I bought a CD once. Morbid Angel's "Formulas" actually. I got in the car, opened it up. Jewel case inside was smashed, and the CD was scratched up. I go back into the store to ask for a new CD. Keep in mind this is minutes after I bought it. The girl said I couldn't, and I said "I bought this minutes ago. The CD is damaged. I didn't ask for a new CD, just a replacement". She got the manager, who was apprehensive at best.
Even if I did go into my car, pirate it super fast (this was like, 3-4 years ago btw. No 40x burners existed), why would I want to return it for the same damn thing?
It seems anyone who sells anything nowadays just assumes you're trying to screw them.
Best Buy.
I guesss I won't be able to get my new burner and blank CD's from your store today, right?
Doesn't matter with all the choices out there I'll take my personal and business hardware/software purchases elsewhere even if I need to pay a bit more. Heck I have 2 CompUSA's, Staples, OfficeMax, Circuit City, Fry's, 7 or 8 little guys computer shops and more within 15 miles not to mention the ability to sit on my fat ass and order online. With all that in the last year I've spent over 2G's at your Scottsdale AZ store, no more and I will influence friends and family to stop shopping there.
BTW BestBuy I purchased 0.00 Music CD's this year. I all ready own most of the music I like and the new CRAP you sell is not worth the plastic its wrapped in. Not to mention what music I do buy I try to get from the artist. Kinda f@#ks your biz model eh?
So, was the decline in auto sales last year due to piracy? How about decline in real estate sales? Piracy? Durable goods? Airline travel? Must have been piracy!
Good glub, do any of these idiots understand we were in a recession, and the *entire* economy was in the pits? That CDs are a highly discretionary item, far down the list from things such as food and rent?
A 10% dip sounds like their business did really well, in comparison to other areas of the economy -- I'm sure companies such as Cisco and JDS Uniphase would be deliriously happy had their sales for last year only dropped 10%.
This is offensive in so many ways, it seems like a shame to let facts enter into the equation, but...
1. Much of the copying the RIAA complains about is completely legal under the Home Recording Act. As such, it isn't piracy at all.
2. It is amazing that the record industry seems to think it has a right to be immune to the economy. 2001 was a year of massive layoffs and dot.com implosion. IT workers, people who ordinarily have the kind of discretionary income to support large CD collections were especially hard-hit.
3. Napster, the largest and most visible source for swapped files spent much of 2001 under an injunction that severely hobbled it. If anything, 2001 should have brought less so-called piracy than 2000.
4. C'mon now. Weren't boy bands and teeny-girls starting to grow a little stale in 2001? To generate sales, you gotta deliver product worth buying.
But, the biggest kicker of all:
2. The RIAA very politely posts sales figures for the last ten years on its web site. Some interesting nuggets:
Total CD volume in 2000 (a year with Napster in full force, by the way) were the highest level in history and nearly 3 times the level of 1991.
However, from 1991-2000, sales of cassettes dropped off about 80%,
Sales of vinyl LPs continued their slide into oblivion, at about 45% of the 1991 levels.
Sales of CDs increased every single year except for 1997, covering all of the years in which Napster was unencumbered by injunctions. Sales rebounded to record high levels in 1998, by the way, hitting new records in 1999 and 2000.
One more thing: 2001 mid-year volume, in a recession, was 397.9 units. That may be 22.7 units lower than the same period in 2000, but it is 1.1 units higher than in 1999. In fact, those recession-year statistics represent the SECOND HIGHEST volume from 1991 to the present.
I'll bet a lot of businesses would have been thrilled to book their second-best year in history during 2001.
We (as a community) need to do the following:
.ogg and .mp3 formats (we will not support Windows Media anything!)
.ogg files en masse (it doesn't have to do it quickly, just so long as I don't have to do each track one at a time!).
1) Develop cool, affordable, and portable Ogg Vorbis hardware that ONLY plays files in
2) Develop software that will batch convert your entire MP3 collection to
3) Set up a service like AudioGalaxy (or sign a deal with to license their service) that trades and deals only in Ogg Vorbis files.
This way the Gov't can do anything they want to get people to stop using MP3's and start using secure, protected formats like Windows Media Player or Liquid Audio. However, the rest of us will continue to listen to, and trade Ogg Vorbis files for free! Why hasn't this format taken off? Why is everyone so reluctant to get behind it and ditch their current MP3s?
When all is said and done, music is still a luxury product. Even if Best Buy changed its policy, the fact would still remain the large labels are still shoving copy protection down our throats.
Know what? Screw them. Go support other artists. There is plenty of great music out there not published by the big labels (indie music, for example- and you can feel better knowing you are funding musicians when you buy their cds, and that you are not funding the purchase of DMCA-type laws.) Yeah, even if all the
slashdot!=valid HTML
The thing that people like these need to realize, is that people in this world will find a way. If the copy protection is software based, someone will crack it. If it is a hardware based, there will be some kinda of mod chip for your cd drive being sold on Lik Sang
I've never once pirated music. However, I play most of my music CDs on a computer. If they continue to implement "play prevention" schemes into CDs, I will be forced to pirate any music I want to be able to play it on my computer.
-- Will program for bandwidth
And according to computer nerds, the 10% decrease was caused mostly by shitty music and (hopefully) a realization of the sliminess of the recording industry.
Who's to say they're right and we're wrong? eh? EH? They're just pointing a finger at their favorite target to give it negative publicity. Hell, we don't even KNOW that there was a 10% drop in sales (in fact, the way liberals like to think, it could be a 10% drop in the increase of music sales!)
From the article:
They admit themselves that a "dearth of new blockbuster albums" is a potential cause. There you have it.
They're still trying to cut grass with a chainsaw though - it's too late to stop music sharing with laws. That only works against concentrated, organized operations. The Internet is anarchy - everyone is doing everything in a different way for a different reason from a different place.
Eventually the recording industry will see that they can't win this way and will have to work with it instead of against it. I guess the fact that they haven't figured it out by now (especially after going through the same thing with things like VCRs way back when) just shows how much they're unable to adapt. The recording industry's inflexibility in a situation like this could truly be an Achilles' Heel for them.
I think the most important thing to note is that they believe that they are powerful enough to manipulate the American legal and justice systems to tightly regulate the daily lives of U.S. citizens. I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but how many of you are willing to let that happen? Yeah, that's what I thought.
To get back on topic, I wonder what Best Buy's motivation for this move was? Were they pressured by the recording industry, or were they just trying to align themselves with the winning side to avoid prosecution if/when things start to get ugly with the recording industry's attempts to embed copy-protection measures into consumer devices?
(on a final note: oh my GOD! 10 PERCENT from BILLIONS of dollars! somebody call the fucking WAABULANCE!)
P.S. Sorry if I was a little incoherent, but I prepared some excuses for you:
- This post is comprised of random, spontaneous thoughts strung together by sheer force of will
- I like to move things around a lot so that they make more sense to me
- I just woke up
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Don't shop there. Better yet, buy your copy protected CD's there, and when they sound like crap in your computer, dvd-rom based dvd player, or anything else that will choke on it, take it back and demand your money back. By being the RIAA's face to the customers, they get to directly feel what happens from moving in lockstep with them.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I don't buy new CDs, preferring instead to shop at the local discount CD store. However, I do buy video and audio equipment, as well as consumables, rechargable batteries, etc.
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As of now, Best Buy is no longer on my list of vendors to buy from, and I recommend that everyone do the same, and make it clear why (see mime encoded graphics at end of this post.) We'll see how much of an impact they can make on the rest of the industry when THEY GO OUT OF BUSINESS. Their margins aren't that great - a 10% drop in sales would hurt them seriously.
Small boycott image:
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or any other MIME reading software. Mpack/munpack is available
via anonymous FTP in ftp.andrew.cmu.edu:pub/mpack/
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Big Boycot Image:
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..if stores like Wal-Mart & MediaPlay don't back these "damaged" goods, Best Buy could go quietly the way of the Dodo. I see one hell of an ad-campaign for thier competitors.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
a 10% drop in sales is obviously due to internet file swapping! the economics downturn of 2001 could not possibly effect music sales! you're crazy for thinking music sales wouldn't go UP when people go unemployed!
More likely, sales are down because the economy is not so hot right now and the after effects of 9/11.
Let's face it, a lot of people spent a month or several right after 9/11 in kind of a sunned stupor where the last thing they're probably going to do is rush out and lay out $20 for some pop crap.
The economy has been pretty slow. When people are not gettin raises, are being fired left and right, are seeing their pensions, stocks and 401ks in questionable lights and the world is in general turmoil, superfluous things like spending hundreds of dollars on half a dozen CD's is really unlikely.
I dont want to be forced to pay for copy protection mechanisms in the products I buy. Let's boycott Best Buy. There are enough alternatives. Before going to best buy, think of an alternate place that respects your rights as a consumer and doesnt suspect you their customer of being a criminal.
I dont want to be forced to pay for copy protection mechanisms in the products I buy. I dont want to pay to prevent myself from doing something I dont want to do. I dont steal music. And I dont want copy protections slowing down the performance even if its a sub millisecond load up delay.
I dont want to be forced to pay for copy protection mechanisms in the products I buy. Money speaks louder than actions.
I want to see the same formulas used to come up with 2001's 10% applied to the last decade. Is it a trend? Is it within the normal fluctuations in the market?
And I also want to see how other entertainment industries faired in 2001. Did movie rentals and purchases go down by 10% too, or did they go up? Was consumer spending down, over-all, by 10%? More?
You can't just throw out a random statistic to cover your panic and justify any action you then care to take.
Convince me!
~ Nonsanity
I have no music in my collection from the net. NONE. If I want a CD, I will buy it. But only ONCE and only if I can copy it for my own use.
I have ALL of my music LAME MP3 encoded and I use my SliMP3 to serve that music from Linux to a primarily Linn Audio system. The versatility that comes from this (playlists, constant music, randomization, etc) is *AMAZING*. I will never go back to shuffling pain the arse CDs.
When I want to take a CD in the car, I do not take an original, I take a copy. The originals are too fragile and too expensive to replace for the on-going abuse that results.
They just don't get it.
One of the major copy protection companies - SunnComm - just announced a plan where registered owners of a protected CD can Email tracks to friends in Windows Media format. They call it "PromoPlay": news.com.com
I have *zero* interest in sharing my CDs with other people. So this does nothing for me and I will not buy their CDs.
If I can't do as much with a CD, and if they're using it to thwart copying, they're reducing 'unauthorized copying' of their music. This means they can't possibly b losing as much money due to piracy, right? So make these CD's cheaper! Give me INCENTIVE to buy these instead of giving me incentive to BOYCOTT.
"Derp de derp."
>>>1. Much of the copying the RIAA complains about is completely legal under the Home Recording Act. As such, it isn't piracy at all.
No, the RIAA is complaining about file swapping and album swapping on the internet. This is simply not legal.
>>>2. It is amazing that the record industry seems to think it has a right to be immune to the economy. 2001 was a year of massive layoffs and dot.com implosion. IT workers, people who ordinarily have the kind of discretionary income to support large CD collections were especially hard-hit.
True. The economy did suck, it affected everyone. 10% is still a huge decrease though, so they need to justify it SOMEHOW.
>>>3. Napster, the largest and most visible source for swapped files spent much of 2001 under an injunction that severely hobbled it. If anything, 2001 should have brought less so-called piracy than 2000.
Good point, but there are even more choices for people now in post-napster world.
>>>4. C'mon now. Weren't boy bands and teeny-girls starting to grow a little stale in 2001? To generate sales, you gotta deliver product worth buying.
Yeah, pop music is wretched now. But there are a lot of smaller bands that are getting hurt by the MP3 internet thing. If a good band does not get good sales, they are not going to get signed again. This has to have happened...
File-sharing is the RIAA's scapegoat for bad record sales. Can you blame them though?
Also, this article was a bit of fluff. Who honestly does not support copyright protection? We are all fans of the GPL or BSD liscence here. The Best Buy guy did not say that he supported any current methods, but said that he believes they can work together with the RIAA to come up with a good solution. Hey, more power to them. As long as I can listen to music on my iPod, I'm happy. I support bands, I buy music. I am confident that I will still be able to listen to the music I legally own on a device of my choosing, and I believe stores and artists recognize this fact.
They blame Internet music file-swaping for all of their problems, even when they don't have any. They were complaining a year or two back that file-swapping is going to hurt CD sales - and during that year CD sales were the highest they had ever been in history. Now that sales are down 10%, it is time to point the finger at file-swapping services -- even though any real evidence that exists seems to indicate that the distriubtion of MP3s seems to help CD sales more then it hurts. If people like enough songs from an album, most (honest) people will buy the CD. Additionally, this helps keep album quality high - since consumers now have the power to listen to more than just the radio-singles at ease they can decide if the CD is worth buying or if the only good songs are the two that they play on the radio. File-swapping and Internet technologies, if adopted properly should reduce costs, increase sales, and increase over-all album quality -- the first and the last factors themself with also add to the middle one (increase sales). The RIAA just needs to get with it - they're always so behind on the times. Give them about 3 more years to finally get a clue.
_
WINDOWS USERS CLICK HERE!
I went into best buy the other day,
A big poster in the Computer Department that says:
"I bought my computer at best buy, now I can download music from the internet and put it on a cd to listen in my car" (Or something like that).
Great.
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What percentage of people who buy from bestbuy will even hear of the boycott?
And what percentage of those that do actually give a crap about anything other than saving a dollar or two on their next purchase?
Yes, at least indirectly internet file swapping could be one of the causes, though I don't think for the reasons they mean.
Take me for example. Before MP3's were starting to get big I consistently bought 2-4 cd's a year. I had for years. Now comes MP3's and I could both listen to an album for a few days/weeks before I bought and could listen to unknowns for me. I found out I like some bands with names that had really turned me off before. I started buying 10-15 CD's a year. During this time the sales of cd's was consistently rising so I would be willing to bet I was not the only one.
Next the RIAA/MPAA began an insane journey to not only stop me from getting MP3's (which is thier right to do) but they did it in a way that was going to destroy much of the things that I should/am allowed to do (DMCA and it's ilk). Well, I pretty much said screw them and quit buying.
While of course I am only one person most of my friends have done this and they have "spread the word". I would be willing to bet this is not that uncommon. I still occasionaly buy a cd (back to the 1-2 a year deal) because a few cd's I want something more than an MP3 for quality. Also since much of this has now moved outside of the geek sector (it now no longer takes knowlege of technology to see the effects, my parents fuss about not being able to fast-forward through the FBI warnings) they should start seeing effects like this more often.
Unfortunatly I think this will cause them to get even wilder and give them more evidence to use for congressional battles. It will take an act of congress or the judicial branch (much like the VCR crap they tried way back when) to force them to embrace a new profit strategy. No matter what congress passes it will always be ineffective and some day they'll realize that.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Ah yes, the latest spin term of a diseased industry. These cheap hacks to the CD-DA standards do not protect copyrights, nor can they. Copyright protection is provided by the copyright law, and by the courts, not by some ill-conceived anti-duplication technology.
A more accurate term would be "Backup Prevention".
I suppose you can get them on the technicality of false advertising since what they're doing isn't in the cd spec. Fine, perhaps you'll force them to change their adds and labels on the devices.
Now where's your stance? Of course, I don't care for the precedent but doing stuff to the things they're selling is one thing, doing stuff like the dmca or dbdtpa are another.
3. Napster, the largest and most visible source for swapped files spent much of 2001 under an injunction that severely hobbled it. If anything, 2001 should have brought less so-called piracy than 2000.
Unless the pirates simply switched to Morpheus or Kazaa or Gnutella or were content to listen to their 80 gig collection of ripped music or even legal services such as Internet radio.
Sales of CDs increased every single year except for 1997, covering all of the years in which Napster was unencumbered by injunctions. Sales rebounded to record high levels in 1998, by the way, hitting new records in 1999 and 2000.
One more thing: 2001 mid-year volume, in a recession, was 397.9 units. That may be 22.7 units lower than the same period in 2000, but it is 1.1 units higher than in 1999. In fact, those recession-year statistics represent the SECOND HIGHEST volume from 1991 to the present.
As we all know, statistics can usually be manipulated to say whatever you want. When analyzing statistics, people often neglect to account for the possible effect of lag. Ridiculous claims, such as the assertion that the correlation between the advent of Napster and the increase in sales is in fact a causation, simply defy common sense. What the RIAA realizes is that CD sales are going to drop again this year, and next year. Maybe instead of looking at the first derivative of sales, you should look at the second derivative instead.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
I'm with you. Boycott the RIAA. If they want customers, they have to offer a service that the customer wants. if the customer wants something different, it is the responsibility of the corporation to adapt and offer that. If their solution to your changing needs is to try and outlaw them, well, fine. If you want to fight me, I fight with my wallet. And I vote.
Now that the RIAA treats me like a criminal, and I discovered that they treat their musicians like indentured servants who barely get a penny from CD sales (google search for Courtney Love and RIAA), I no longer care to contribute to their business.
If you want to support the musicians, download their music and send the money for CDs you would have bought directly to them.
Errr... perhaps you should pay more attention. They complain about much more than just that. I'd have to say that by item, that's only a small fraction (but by news articles, that is the one that gets most mention (especially since much of the media is beholden to the *AA types))
True. The economy did suck, it affected everyone. 10% is still a huge decrease though, so they need to justify it SOMEHOW.
How about the change from a booming economy with many people spending beyond their means to a recession (which will have a greater effect on luxury items), combined with a large disaster that has affected many people's luxury item buying habits?
Yes, i consider packaged music to be a luxury item. If nothing else, turn on the radio and listen to that packaged crap for free.
[...] This has to have happened...
When making an argument, it really helps to have facts. Or even hypotheticals with a logical chain of reasoning instead of unbacked claims...
I am confident that I will still be able to listen to the music I legally own on a device of my choosing
You really should have been paying more attention to what the RIAA has been pushing. I think then you wouldn't be so confident.
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Hope this helps!
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
But this "Best Buy" entity, instead of being a good store, decided to meddle with politics. Now it dictates what the customers should buy! This is one efficient way to go out of business. Who do they think they are, The State? God? Where is demand, there is supply, and people will -easily- find the supply, especially when Internet makes it so easy.
This is, I presume, just another step in the life cycle of a company. Companies start young and aggressive, then become middle-aged and conservative, then become old and senile. Then they die. No reward for guessing correctly which step of its life Best Buy is at.
What the hell you looking at this for?
That's such a crock. For the last 12 months, I haven't downloaded any mp3s and I bought 2 cds. In the previous 12 months, when I was heavily downloading mp3s, I bought 14 cds - 10 new artists/4 established artists. Of these 10 new artist, only 2 have recieved any airplay.
Now you decide, are mp3s killing artists?
Funny how Napster dries up and sales dry up..
The question is, what business model could allow a new band with a new sound to say "screw you" to the RIAA and their extortionate contracts, and still come out better off that they would have?
It strikes me that two things really allow the RIAA to maintain their cartel: Their near complete control of radio playlists, and their heavy spending on advertising in teen magazines. Now, there's been a lot of press lately about how streaming internet radio will get squeezed out by the compulsory liscense, but what if.... Turn it around. What if web-radio turned away from the RIAA and all the music they control and stopped begging for the chance to pimp their manufactured crap bands, and instead signed up unknown bands, for whom the chance to be heard across the world is a chance to sell merchandise and CD's, and book gigs at clubs in other cities?
It can be done, after all. The Butthole Surfers and The Ramones survived for years as "underground" bands, and that was with nothing but word of mouth. Certainly that kind of grass-roots, bottom-up system is what the Net does best. And there are signs of it already, how many people listen to "Trance" music on MP3, *legally*? The creators see more people listening to their music as a good thing.
This is a "Tipping Point" problem. *One* breakout band that refuses to sign to a label, and makes oodles of money anyway, can bring down the whole edifice, which is what the RIAA is really afraid of, and why they want to kill MP3's and music-sharing as a *concept*. Not just because of piracy, which they know really doesn't cost them any money. But because the whole edifice is based on them being the gatekeeper between the talent and the money.
--Dave Rickey
What confuses me most about this sort of initiative is that from what I can tell, P2P programs are only valuable if you have a broadband connection. It's hardly worth my time and bandwidth to sit around for hours waiting for an album to download, or even to wait 20 minutes or so for a song to download. My girlfriend still has dialup, and she can barely even sustain a viable connection to a P2P network, and so she wants a particular song, she asks me to get it for her and send it directly to her.
Not even addressing the fact that it's debatable that large scale mp3 downloading hurts sales, I think the numbers cited for the amount of people on a given P2P network are misleading, bloated by dialup connections that are barely downloading anything (as compared to the broadband connections). A CD has much better bandwidth than a dialup connection in almost all cases.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Which is my point. The RIAA looks at a one year drop (by the way -- no more severe than 1997) and tries to turn that into rampant piracy killing the music business. There is no basis for that conclusion in their own figures, especially considering factos such as the economy and ordinary fluctuations in taste and compelling product.
To put it in technical terms, using whichever derivative you prefer, the RIAA is passing gas and asking that we not comment on the smell.
The RIAA never reports sales figures.
To do so would raise anti-trust issues. Reporters always get this wrong. The RIAA reports the number of records shipped to stores, not actual sales. Go to their market data page and you will see, it's only shipments, shipments, shipments and not sales.
Record stores don't buy records. If a record doesn't sell, it is sent back and the label/distributor eats the cost. Only if a store sells a record does it pay.
The latest RIAA numbers are deceptive because they factor in the disproportionate drop in singles shipped (~80%). The drop isn't the result of a drop in market demand but rather a conscience decision by the labels to stop shipping music in the singles format! This was done in a sort of bait-and-switch gambit to force consumers to migrate from singles to full albums.
Not only does the slight-of-hand work to trip up lazy reporters, it also works as a good tool to alarm busy senators and representatives.
The real statistic of note in the latest report is that 90% of all units shipped are CDs and their dollar value slipped only 2.7 % from the year prior which is not shocking during an economic downturn.
As an avid music fan who lives effectively between the US and Europe...
You must be a really good swimmer!
When i saw this article, I immediately wrote a note to BB letting them know that they had just lost my business (along with anybody else I could convince) until they decided to stop treating their customers like criminals. Here's the reply I got:
"Thank you for contacting Best Buy about copy protected CDs. I'm Val with
Customer Care.
We apologize for any disappointment caused by copy protection. Copy
protection is a decision made by the label to protect them and their artists
from copyright violation. We encourage you to contact the label directly if
you would like to offer opinions about this practice.
Thank you for sharing your comments with Best Buy. Please don't hesitate to
contact us with any questions or concerns.
Best wishes from Best Buy,
Val and the Customer Care Team
TRACKING NUMBER: A00000970333-00003433404
"
BLAH BLAH BLAH. Decision 'by the labels' huh? It's very different if the labels are trying to push it vs. the labels pushing it AND you helping them. Sorry BB, you've sunk even lower....
According to the article, the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by Internet file swapping
Gee, I guess there's not a chance in hell that the decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by THE ECONOMY GOING INTO A RECESSION, now, could it?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You *know* there's more than enough stupid whiteys out there.
:D
Your solution doesn't address the fundamental copywright/patent issues that piss off the RIAA.
Granted. The format of the music is important. In baseball terms, those who define the format "pitch" to both big business and end consumers.
But it is incredibly naive to think that it setting up an Ogg version of Audiogalaxy, not supporting Win Media files, etc. will solve everything. So you mass convert everything from MP3 to Ogg? What does that fundamentallychange? It may allow us to get around certain hardware restrictions that the government mandates. However, as soon as this Ogg business becomes a (perceived) "threat", we're back to square one.
The article leans towards the idea that the 10.3% loss in sales is due to copying/downloading music off the net. What a crock of shit.
The survey they conducted says that 23% copy/download off the net. So do the math.
23% out of 10.3% does NOT = 10.3%. Their losing alot more profit in something else then "piracy", at least with the given numbers in the article.
I love how they try to pin their "losses" on "piracy" when it could be something else entirely, such as the economy, the fact that their protection schemes suck hard, etc.
Does this make any sense? I'm bad at math, but even this doesn't sound right.
-
"All the Thai food and the Must See TV,
Keeps ya subdued and unable to breathe.
Chase a carrot stick in your Volkswagon Bug.
All the limp dicks and their verility drug.
And the Chinese pugs.
Hey, come on, we're all defanged and declawed.
We're creature comforted.
Don't need anything, we all get what we want.
And we want.
Hey, come on, we're all defanged and declawed,
We're creature comforted.
Don't need anything, no there's nothing at all.
And you're tucked in tight, you sleep alright, and you won't bite.
We're all defanged and declawed.
It's the satellite, and your DVD.
It keeps you inside, it keeps you off of the street.
And the payments: payments keep you alive.
Cell phone nation, it gets one at a time.
America Online.
Yeah.
Like dominoes in neat little rows, you are what you owe.
And it keeps you down in Surround Sound until you drown, We're all defanged and declawed."
-- Local H's take on Corporate America.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
>No, the RIAA is complaining about file swapping and album swapping on the internet. This is simply not legal.
That's what they say and you are entitled to take them at their word. The laws they back, however, strike at all copying, including that which is perfectly legal. That includes the DMCA, which is law, and the CBDTPA, which, for now, is not.
>True. The economy did suck, it affected everyone. 10% is still a huge decrease though, so they need to justify it SOMEHOW.
Actually, the decline in CD sales was only 5.3%, which is actually smaller than the 7.2% decline from 1996-1997.
Other formats, such as cassettes have been declining for years. Cassettes, hardly a prime source for internet piracy due to their rather low-quality anolog recordings, declined 42.9% between 2000 and 2001 midyear marks. Could it be that the legal recording enabled by the Home Recording Act, coupled with auto CD players, portable CD players, etc. is having a bigger on total shipments than "piracy"?
>Yeah, pop music is wretched now.
Fun statistic with regard to quality of product and consumer reaction: Latin CD sales were up 7% in the same period that the overall CD sales went down 5.3%. Might be a lesson in there.
>But there are a lot of smaller bands that are getting hurt by the MP3 internet thing.
I don't doubt it, I just don't how big the impact is. I do not support internet file-swapping and am quite happy that Napster was shut down.
An important note on this topic. Did you notice that Judge Patel (judge in the Napster case) has been far less sympathetic to the music industry of late? She has expressed the belief that the music industry is doing all it can to lock up its own monopoly in digitally downloaded music.
Wonder what that'll do to small bands?
Which is my point. The RIAA looks at a one year drop (by the way -- no more severe than 1997) and tries to turn that into rampant piracy killing the music business. There is no basis for that conclusion in their own figures, especially considering factos such as the economy and ordinary fluctuations in taste and compelling product.
I agree, although I think there is a distinction here. The RIAA is using a weak argument to reach a correct conclusion. They know that, left unregulated, music piracy is going to hurt the industry, even if they are exagerating the immediate effect. Posters on Slashdot are using a weak argument to justify a self-serving (and false) conclusion. Anyone who can say with a straight face that Napster increases CD sales may be fooling themself, but they ain't fooling me.
To put it in technical terms, using whichever derivative you prefer, the RIAA is passing gas and asking that we not comment on the smell.
If they did, in fact, observe that Napster caused the second derivative of CD sales to slump, I doubt that they could express that it terms that the averate person could understand. I personally stopped buying CDs a few years ago, all that is mostly due to the fact that the music I like is very expensive in Canada, but it's free on Internet radio.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
As a major retailer of both electronics AND music, Best Buy could have a huge impact on the future format of music player hardware as well as software."
Yeah, they said that about proprietary DVD formats, too. How many people remember was DIVX used to be, and who financed its development?
Has anyone put together a nice XML Schema schema for albums? It's a hassle to try to piece together tracks of albums one at a time from the net.
... among other things. That makes it impossible, for example, to buy a CD and then get your backup copy of the album on-line.
The data model for MP3 metadata is missing the music domain concept of album and technical concept of object ID
ID3 tags are nice, and CDDB signatures are nice, but they are incomplete.
>They know that, left unregulated, music piracy is going to hurt the industry,
Almost correct. You start from the assumption that piracy is unregulated today, but that isn't true. Copyright law regulates it now. You do recall that Napster has been shut down, don't you? Whether current laws are enough or are too much is the subject for reasonable debate.
OTOH, the RIAAs breathless rants (incorporated quite happily into the "findings" of the Hollings bill, BTW) are being used to support blunderbuss solutions that go far beyond protecting the rights of music publishers and into the realm of trampling the rights of consumers.
your age is showing.
It's common knowledge that that people love the music they grew up with.
Like language music and culture are not learned, but reinvented by each new generation. ( read some good linguistics books, especially concerning the spontaneous generation of sign languages and "creoles" if you don't understand this point.)
You may not appreciate chinese or japanese or rap but most chinese or japanese or rapesians do.
>They know that, left unregulated, music piracy is going to hurt the industry,
Almost correct. You start from the assumption that piracy is unregulated today, but that isn't true. Copyright law regulates it now. You do recall that Napster has been shut down, don't you? Whether current laws are enough or are too much is the subject for reasonable debate.
So you agree with Napster being shut down, then. While a fair number of Slashdot posters think that file "sharing" is wrong, the vast majority of moderators do not, and you will often see posts like "Mozart didn't need copyright" mod'ed up to 4, insightful.
I think that Napster, Kazaa, etc. needed to be shut down immediately. I can't understand how Napster managed to drag out their appeals for so long, and even win an injunction when they didn't have a leg to stand on. I don't know that shutting down the file sharing services would be enough to quell the flood of piracy, but it might.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be opposed to anti-theft technology that allows you to make copies, but prevents you from making copies of copies. Yes, this would require that consumer electronics enforce this regulation, but I don't anticipate that such a limitation would interfere with legitimate use.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
I'm sure the real reason has NOTHING to do with the economy going down the shitter.
Nope. It's all about those damned internet file traders. Doesn't matter that a good lot of them have either lost jobs, are about to lose jobs, or narrowly escaped losing their jobs.
It's all of that internet file trading that dropped sales a staggering 10%. After rising by about that amount every year in recent memory.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
OK, so hundreds of thousands of people were laid off work,
some others had their paychecks trimmed a bit (like me), and the
economy in general went to crap. And the recording industry
says the only possible explanation for a freakin' 10% drop in
sales is internet file swapping? Maybe people just had less money
to spend in 2001, anyone ever think of that?? (Oh yea, the RIAA
doesn't want a believable alternative to piracy to be known...)
Sorry, but considering the recession, the RIAA should be damn
happy their sales only sunk by 10%, and that those of us finding
less money available to spend still managed to buy some CDs at all.
Guess that means don't shop at Best Buy. Which won't be too hard. Good hardware can be found cheaper, and I'd much rather go to a local record store then some big corporate chain.
Big chain stores love to make arangements with record companies. Remember a few years back when they would cut out the dirty words on CDs sent to some big chains and not tell anyone about it?
Music is art. Big business has no place in that world. (P.S., your local record store has a better chance of having that obscure but good CD then Best Buy... they just might be a little short on the latest J-Lo release)
The Internet is generally stupid
I have like 50 CDs in my collection, not much, but its music I like.
:)
What I do have is 4GB of music! I don't really need to hear new stuff. Sometimes the radio in my car or a song at a party will get me back on Kazaa to find more music, but other than that, I dont need more music.
And for all you Britney Spears bashers, she's going to be the Madonna of this generation.
Sorry
In other news today Gateway Computers announced that it will be relocating
all it's Gateway Computer Country stores next to Best Buy stores. When we
asked the Gateway representitive what was behind this strategic move, he
simply said "Moooooooo".
>That's what they say and you are entitled to take them at their word. The laws they back, however, strike at all copying, including that which is perfectly legal. That includes the DMCA, which is law, and the CBDTPA, which, for now, is not.
:) I don't know much about pop music, but from what I gather, it's been a weak year for it...
:)
Well, in my reply I sounded very pro-RIAA... which i am not at all. I just think that in this case, file sharing on the internet that is, they are right.
I was very vocal against the CBDTPA (wrote letters to my represenatives and all that). I am very happy that it is no longer.
I should also clarify, I am confident that as long as consumers are vocal we will not have to fear our rights to listen to music how we choose. I know 60-year old ladies that use iTunes to play all their music, but they don't know how to share files on the interent. A LOT of people would get very upset if "BAD" copyright protection was put in place.
>Fun statistic with regard to quality of product and consumer reaction: Latin CD sales were up 7% in the same period that the overall CD sales went down 5.3%. Might be a lesson in there.
It's a new hot trend?
>I don't doubt it, I just don't how big the impact is. I do not support internet file-swapping and am quite happy that Napster was shut down.
Agreed. I thought the whole "i have a right to steal and help other people steal" argument was incredibly weak.
>An important note on this topic. Did you notice that Judge Patel (judge in the Napster case) has been far less sympathetic to the music industry of late? She has expressed the belief that the music industry is doing all it can to lock up its own monopoly in digitally downloaded music.
No I have not heard this, do you have a link, I would like to read it.
It is a weird situation. The RIAA is evil, and they won the Napster thing (which as said earlier, I believe was the right thing), but now they are going nuts with this, thinking they can control all digital (music) media. It's an interesting thing to follow. I really doubt the Bush administration will do a damn thing about it though. Republicans traditionally don't care about anti-trust very much. Plus look at how he has instructed people to act in the microsoft trial. This doesn't even begin to talk about our economy or our 'war on evil.'
Wow. I'm done ranting now
I look at music copy protection this way:
True: Most new music is targeted at the teeniebopper age group, and is therefore (mostly) unlistenable to other people.
True: There's no point in copy protecting a band no one's heard about. Celine Dion? Sure. Mike Errico? Jude Christodal? Accoustic Junction? Uhhhh...Who?
Therefore: any copy protected disc that hits the market is going to be from a HUGE artist, a HUGE label and be unlistenable.
I know the arguments - it's a stepping stone to universal copy protection, it's a violation of our rights, etc. I agree with all of that. BUT. For now it has less of a (musical) effect, so I prefer to see it as less dire. When they protect (insert favorite indie artist here) I'll throw a fit. But Backstreet? Sell it in a steel case that can't be opened without a blowtorch. I'd prefer ithat kind of protection anyway.
Triv
I'm not 100% sure, but I've heard Microsoft has a large interest in Best Buy, or a controlling interest. Does anyone have accurate data on this?
I did not fail to notice the MSN posters hanging from the roof the last time I was there.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Perhaps it's because we're in the middle of a gigantic recession, the people who used to buy lots of albums (geeks, who were flush with cash) are now unemployed or working for burger king, and because there hasn't been any really good music release since the nineties?
Of course, the RIAA knows exactly why sales are dropping, but they can lie and make up anything they want. Remember, lies, damn lies, and statistics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... that I just signed up for emusic.com. You won't find Britney Spears or the like there, but then again, that may be a good thing depending on your point of view. I've found all sorts of good stuff on there from independent artists, things the RIAA doesn't seem inclined to try and sell. $15 a month is a little steep, but then again, that's cheaper than a single CD with the latest shovel-songs courtesy of the RIAA... And there's a free trial, too. :)
</plug>
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
I love the way that they attribute the drop in sales to MP3's. Couldn't be the tanking of the Economy in 2001, or maybe the price hikes they put on cd's. Nope people should buy the same the same amount of cd's when they don't have a job and the price goes up by 2 bucks, most be those damn Mp3's Just a thought.
Re Patel v. Music Industry arrogance,
t ml
Try this wired article:
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,50625,00.h
I would buy their music if I could get it online via the internet. These are also required:
Then I would be willing to:
I'm sure one of the reasons the CD sales have dipped (aside from the obvious which the music industry wants to play down regarding the economy, which has particularly hit hardest those most knowledgeable about how to share music over the internet), is simply the fact that the music industry has avoided selling music online so far. Of course people pirate music by swapping it online. But if the music industry starts selling it online, that is not going to cause the swapping piracy to increase. No sir, it will go down. Maybe a lot, maybe just a little. But tell me who can't swap music now that will be able to when the option to buy comes along? Instead, many honest people will be willing to buy online and won't have to pirate anymore.
Of course, piracy will never disappear. It's foolish to think it can be eliminated, and futile (and costly) to even try. But once you have genuine availability of all music to all people online, then we'll at least have an honest and accurate figure of what the true level of piracy really is (and not the forced piracy caused by the unavailability of a legitimate means to get music online).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Just bought a CD after hearing some mp3's from the very same soundtrack. Breaking compatiblity with the devices I use to play my music will have a negative impact on my music purchasing. Folks, its always best to vote with your dollars. When their draconian practices finally force them to confront their negative impact on music sales maybe someone will get a clue.
Let me see here. Napster starts up and everyone is talking about music like never before, and there are record *high* music sales. The Record Industry Ass. shuts Napster down, some clones pop-up (Gnutella, FastTrack, etc...) but they don't really focus on music, then there is a tragic terrerist attack to America, the economy just goes down the drain, and then record sales drop. Hmmm, yep, all signs point to file swapping services.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Here is a way to get the attention of Be(a)st Buy's management and show them why crippled product is unprofitable:
.
For those of us with credit cards that have some available credit ( decreasing numbers of us, I'm aware ), go into your nearest Best Buy and do the following:
Pick up an e-machines or other cheap PC. Better yet, look to see if they have a system that is promoted as some kind of 'music system'. Pick up a Rio or some other portable MP3 Player. Pick up a CD player that is based on a PC CD Drive, or a DVD player with CD play capability that uses a PC CD drive inside, such as an Apex DVD player. Pick up the crippled Celine Dion CD. Slap down the plastic and take your purchases home.
At home, open all the boxes, crack the styrofoam padding in the boxes, shed the plastic bags, dogear the instruction manuals, thow away the twist ties, knot the cables, and burn the warranty cards. Then pack everything back into the box. The wrong way.
Next go back to the Best Buy and take everything to the customer service desk. Explain that everything you bought is broken. If a tech wants you to show him, put in the Celiene Dion CD and show him it crashes. Act like a technical dope and do not accept any explanations of why this one CD won't work. Insist on getting a new everything. Complain to the service person. Complain to the sales personnel. Complain to the manager.
Repeat. Repeat again. Then after the third try take everything back and insist that you want your money back, credit it all back to your credit card. If worse comes to worse, you can contact your credit card company within 60 days and dispute any charges Best Buy makes
What Best Buy is left with is a pile of opened merchandise that they have to discard or sell at a loss. Also they will have a bunch of irritated employees. Will they re-order the new Celine Dion crippleware CD? If they make the connection between the hassle you gave them and the crippleware product, I think not. Pretty soon they will get the idea that crippleware = returns = lost revenue and the stores will quit ordering it.
Have fun.
...think that correlation equates causation.
There are lies, damned lies, and STATISTICS!
After what they did with their privacy policy, I think we should direct our hits to Reuters. You're getting the same story; Reuters wrote it and Yahoo got it from them. And they've got less advertising! If we don't like what Yahoo did, why are going to their site (and effectively giving them more advertising money) when an alternate site has the same story?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Back when there were just a handful of channels, it was easy to trace the history of television through the major trends. People had nothing else to watch, so it was easy for something to dominate. Then, with cable and eventually satellite, people had dozens, even hundreds of choices. Suddenly, the major channels could no longer define television culture with major trend starting programs.
The major television stations are still running just fine, but they no longer control the world of television.
Similarly, the filesharing culture now allows people to easily find obscure music. With more things to choose from, less people listen to the biggest thing.
The music industry isn't waiting around for the next big thing. It never has. It used to *make* the next big thing. Right now, it's trying very hard to make another big thing, and failing miserably.
mlylecarlin
Many companies are reporting losses or are announcing that they may not reach expectations - *sarcasm* I suppose that is all because of Internet file swapping too?
Give me a break, I think all things considered a 10% decrease in sales wasn't as bad as should have been expected from the signs in the economy.
Also, if Internet file swapping does have such a negative effect on CD sales then why are record companies creating their own online distribution mechanisms? Presumably to cut out the middle men, in this case the CD retailers. I think the COO at Best Buy may need to take a step back and consider the full implications of his comments!
Right. And like anyone actually told Best Buy why they wern't purchasing CD's.
Personally, it isn't the EASE, CONVINENCE, or the COST that makes p2p downloading of mp3's desireable to me. I do it simply because the RIAA has made such an ass of themselves about the whole thing. I'd prefer a real CD to the haphazard collecting you get on the net. But leaving Bearshare open all day is my little way to protest against the RIAA.
YOU: "Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
It's been 18 seconds since you hit 'reply'!
If this error seems to be incorrect, please provide the following in your report to SourceForge.net:
Browser type
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Whether or not you know your ISP to be using a proxy or some sort of service that gives you an IP that others are using simultaneously.
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* Please choose 'formkeys' for the category!
Thank you."
Me: FUCK OFF AND DIE BITCH!
They don't need to give you an incentive because they own the copyrights to the music.
They have it, they know you want it, and they know that the law is on their side. Unfortuantely the RIAA does not in and of itself have any customers, so it's not technically a monopoly, but it sure feels like one.
It's not just that they treat people like criminals, they tend to act like complete, non-thinking, automaton, assholes. The last time I was there, I went in to buy a refrigerator, washer, and dryer for my new house. My new house was ten miles down the road, but 1/2 mile on the other side of the city line. They told me that I would have to go to the store that serves my city instead, never mind the fact that the other store was 25 miles away from my house. They basically turned away a $1600 sale.
Well Circuit City (they still sold apliances then and was after the Divix crap) was 2 miles further down the road, they agreed to deliver anywhere on MY schedule. Guess who got my money?
My next Slashdot post will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Wouldn't it be ironic if the RIAA was *charging* artists for the increased cost to press a copy impaired disk? After all, why should the RIAA have foot the bill for looking after the artists' interests? Oh boy, wouldn't *that* just be a hoot?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
No, no, no. You don't understand. Copy-restriction technology is a VALUE-ADD all by itself. You should be happy to pay MORE for a disc with such an added feature, not less.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Got nothing to do with it. I've grown up with this crap - and it does suck. Almost all of it.
It Couldnt POSSIBLY be because EVERYONE isnt purchasing as much as tghey were a year ago???
is it that the music industry thinks that they are immune to the fact that we are possibly on the verge of a recession? or in one depending on your own thoughts.
moo.
"They have it, they know you want it, and they know that the law is on their side. "
That's supply and demand. If demand goes down when the CD is restricted, then they MUST lower prices.
We should be trying to get a law passed that makes sure they are marked as 'COPY RESTRICTED'. Who'll pay for them then?
"Derp de derp."
That's what caused the losses There was an article on /. a while ago about how the recording industry lost negative 40 million or some number like that. Profits rose, cd sales went up, all was good.
Then Napster got shut down and look where the recording industry is right now... maby Napster was indeed connected to the rise of profits for the RIAA for the sole reason that it brought music right to the people, into their houses, and music played a part of thier lives... now it takes a back seat to everything else, because the only place you can hear it is on the radio (which sucks)
I hate it when they shoo themselves in the foot. /rant
Oh please, stop trying to justify piracy. You want new music? Go to your local indie record store and buy some CDs, or listen to your favorite college radio station.
The RIAA should put up a site that has a list of every song they own rights to. Then, they should attach a fair price to each of those songs. (say, $.50 or $1 if it's a good song) Then they should have a discount price if I buy a license to the album. Then, what I should be able to do, is compile a list of every song that I have an Mp3 of, add up the price, and I can use PayPal or something like that to pay for it.
We both keep a record of the license, it never expires, and it also covers remixes of each song. This license says I can have that song on any media I choose. I'm an honest guy, treat me like an honest guy and I'll behave like one.
If they charged more for these licenses, then offer me an incentive to share the song with my friends and get them to pay for it. Give me a referall reward. If somebody buys a song and puts me down as a referral, give me a free song license as a reward!
The RIAA could potentially rake in a TON of cash if they do this.
"Derp de derp."
I don't know about other factors, but the Internet might have contributed to the decline of CD sales ... by making it so freakin' easy to buy used CDs. I can go to Half.com and find a zillion used CDs and knock 30% or more off the price if I'm willing to wait 6-8 months. The selection is so huge, I'm practically guaranteed to find any mainstream CD I want. I think 3/4 of the CDs I purchase now are used.
The economic problems in 2001. CDs, movies and so on are luxury items while we like to get new stuff, they certianly aren't essential. This like this are usually some of the first thigns to go in a budget when money gets tight. I know if I lost my job the first thing I'd do is stop buying CDs, movies and software. Sure I like having new music and games but I'm content with what I have, and if money is getting thin it's an easy thing to conserve.
Most people are far more concerned with making house payments and keeping food on the table than having the latest nSync album. Hence, when times get tough people who sell things like this are going to feel the hit worse than those that sell more essential services.
I will never, ever buy anything again from Best Buy. This is were a boycott can work. The RIAA won't notice us, but I'm pretty sure Best Buy will notice that we've gone elsewhere for our games and stuff. I've been getting close to giving up on them anyway, all they seem to be now is a front end for M$ to dump their shit. What's important is to let them know, from the store manager to the COO. I'll be writing letters tonight.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I downloaded the KMFDM's "Urban Monkey Warfare" a couple weeks ago. Couldn't find any other songs online, but I liked this one, so I bought their new CD, titled "Attak."
/.'ers could probably find it interesting/fun... :)
It's a good CD, and I think a lot of
Was it worth $15? For KMFDM, I suppose so. For anyone else? No way...
Point is, if it weren't for the fact that I was able to preview one of the songs on the CD, I most likely wouldn't have bought it at all; in this case, MP3-trading actually **HELPED** pay the artist...
Complain directly to Best Buy here.
. ht ml
Here's what I just sent them.
---
I just read this on Yahoo:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/020409/retail_bestbuy_2
On the whole, I support the RIAA's right to defend its copyrights, but when retailers begin assisting them in crippling the products to suit *their* needs instead of the customer's needs, I take it as a sign that I am not valued. I have spent quite a lot of money at my local Best Buy store. Until you announce a change in this plan, I will not step foot in your stores or your affiliates (which are outlined in the above article.) I do not support these kinds of draconian, corporate measures in response to a fallacious assumption that consumers are stealing and that sales are slumping as a result. Consider the possibility that the recording industry is offering NOTHING compelling worth buying lately. This same thing happened in 1991. Were the consumers to blame for that as well?
I plan two major electronics purchases in the near future. These sales would have possibly gone to Best Buy. I'm not even considering your store now. I am now an EX-customer.
--Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Music these days just plain sucks, first of all, most of the new bands blow, and then the audio engineers master the sound so god damn loud that it loses all it's presense. I don't know about you guys but I don't plan on buying any cds untill I see something actually worth buying.
the millions of people pirating that music would have to disagree..
KCRW, while halfway decent, is nowhere near as good as KXLU. 88.9 FM, out of Loyola Marymount University.
At least you didn't mention KROQ, the new "oldies" station in town. They're still playing the whiny Brit band crap they did 20 years ago. Modern Rock? Naah.
And yeah, Clear Channel should be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes. Plastic music for plastic people.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I really like the thinking you are doing, and I have tremendous respect for you and what you are saying. It's possible you are 100% right. But there are some things that really worry me. Let me play the devil's advocate for a minute. This may sound a little personal, but I hope you will not take it as anything but a cautious response mixed with some thinking out loud.
No, the RIAA is complaining about file swapping and album swapping on the internet. This is simply not legal.
The facts don't seem to support this distinction. Measures such as the one this article is about will do a lot more to stop Home Recording Act style swapping than internet swapping. Once somebody gets the binary and starts sharing it, the binary is oblivious to what kind of protection is on the CDs people are using at home.
> True. The economy did suck, it affected everyone. 10% is still a huge decrease though, so they need to justify it SOMEHOW.
And what better way to justify it than, once again, blame your customers. The RIAA is guilty of misrepresenting correlation for causation. People are being cautious. Consumer spending is way down. Music prices are higher. What do they expect to happen?
Good point, but there are even more choices for people now in post-napster world.
More choices, but not very ones. They don't perform anywhere near the speed and ease of Napster.
Yeah, pop music is wretched now. But there are a lot of smaller bands that are getting hurt by the MP3 internet thing.
To me, it seems like the Britney Spears and MTV-created performers benefit most from a restrictive system. People don't hear much of the smaller bands, and that is even more true when you:
1) Don't hear them on the local radio stations (which play about 10 songs in a continuous loop) and
2) Can't get recordings of them somewhere without shelling out $16 for a CD.
If I discover that I like a band, I will buy the CD. In that sequence.
File-sharing is the RIAA's scapegoat for bad record sales. Can you blame them though?
Their jobs are on the line, and they are constantly fighting congress for more favors. When there are not solid facts to back them up, they have to be to be creative.
Who honestly does not support copyright protection? We are all fans of the GPL or BSD liscence here.
A) Some people honestly don't support copyright protection (granted, GPL and BSD backers are not among these).
B) Many people who do support copyright protection don't support the abuse of copyright powers.
C) As people like the makers of Lindows are finding, the GPL isn't always a rose garden. If you write on top of GPLed code, you have to accept that your code will be shared with anyone who uses your product. But yes, copy protection can often be for the public good.
D) Even if we grant the RIAA every bit of copyright protection they have and more, they could well acting as a trust to abuse the rights of consumers by limiting their access to music. And, by the way, this definitely hurts small artists.
As long as I can listen to music on my iPod, I'm happy.
So if the said protection prevents this (which from what I have read, it sure seems to), wouldn't you oppose it (and Best Buy's sopport thereof)?
I support bands, I buy music. I am confident that I will still be able to listen to the music I legally own on a device of my choosing, and I believe stores and artists recognize this fact.
I really respect your sentiments, but I don't share your optimism about being able to choose the device. If my facts are right, your iPod only connects to a Mac. Copy protected CDs will not work on a computer. Some have special software to allow you to hear the music on a PC, but not a mac, and certainly not to copy it.
Thanks for being patient and reading this. Again, I mean you all respect, and I appreciate your unselfish view of the whole issue--something we consumers and the industry seem to need more of.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
All that needs to happen is to get Sony, Toshiba, etc, the cd-player manufacturers, to use imbedded Linux to power their players.
Suddenly copy-protected CDs woudn't be worth anything, as no new CD players could play them.
Top Three Guaranteed ways to earn unwarranted karma:
~#3~
"MTV (TRL) / VH1(Top20) contribute to the downward spiral the industry is in..."
The last time I checked, Viacom didn't own any record labels. For being such an integral part of the devolution of music, they aren't that attached to it.
~#2~
"... the music industry only offers pre-selected artists... making a mockery of the whole system..."
The record labels can use their marketing muscle to promote the hell out of an artist, but if music listeners (consumers) deem the music to be bad, no amount of marketing can keep said artist in the limelight for too long. Artists may artificially be placed at the top, but without sales & popularity, they don't stick around.
~#1~
"...the music out there today sucks... no wonder music sales aren't stellar anymore..."
Easy to say when you think myopically. Yet, Slashdotters like to mod this kind of trite comment up. Why? I have yet to figure this out. This sort of comment is simply a stab at the mainstream, spoken from someone high upon a perch of musical elitism.
Typical American cheering for the underdog... until the underdog gets too popular. (insert eye-roll here)
Which theft are you talking about, people not paying for music, or the industry stealing from the artists and consumers? I honestly can't tell the difference between good theft and bad theft. Sorry.
A few interesting things to note, here...
Best Buy *does* own its own label, Redline Entertainment. One of their more notable artists is Prince, whose latest CD, Rainbow Children, has gotten incredible billing in Best Buy store signage and in-store TV ads. Why does this matter? If I recall correctly, Prince was something of a proponent of services like Napster while also something of a detractor of the RIAA. His pick of Redline for the new album seems to indicate an opinion that that particular label is more decent than the rest.
Now its parent company is joining up with the fair use rights abusers.
A second thing to note here is that Best Buy is a fairly powerful presence. Their CD and software sales represent something significant both to consumers and professionals. Their recent decision axing Mac software and peripherals gives many developers pause in producing Mac ports for games, simply noting how few consumers will have access to store shelves containing their product without Best Buy support.
The point here being, a giant like Best Buy is setting a standard for fellow retailers. Musicland, Sam Goody, and Suncoast all are part of the Best Buy enterprise and represent a considerable slice of the pie for any consumers. Sure, you can buy your music elsewhere, but with BBY, SG, and ML comprising the easiest sources, where else can we go?
Let's also not forget just how expansionist Best Buy is. They acquire chains and build new stores the way the rest of us shave and eat breakfast each morning. I imagine the latest portion of their retail arm, Canada's Future Shop, will also be supporting "anti-piracy" measures.
Big news, here, folks.
Come up with a copy protection scheme
that accomodates Linux, and fair use,
but limits file swapping of music you don't own or they will do it for you AND get rid
of as much of fair use as they can.
forget about file swaping to anyone but yourself with your own files.
anything else is blah blah.
people didn't but the crap then, they won't now.
Okay, I work for Musicland and I do have a few things to say regarding this particular story.
Yes, there is a slump in the sales of music. There is a reason for it though. It can be illustrated very easily by one of our regular customers. This particular regular customer is a collector/hobbyist. He collects _any_ single that hits the Billboard Top 100 chart. It doesn't matter if he thinks that the song is a crap, if it charts, he buys it (in that exact version). For that past several years there has been a decline in the actual number of singles being released by record companies that are from any "quality" artists. See the billboard top 100. How many of the top 100 singles actually have a single out? Not many. A quick glance reveals that around 35 of the 50 listed "singles" have no single associated with them. They are album tracks. Of the remainder of the tracks with singles, how many of them are actually released in CD single format and how many are on 12" or 7" vinyl? Not many are on CD. So what does our customer have as an option?
* He can buy the album, but that's prohibitively expensive for a hobbyist.
* He can buy the imported version of the single, since other countries seem to be able to sell singles okay and not hurt their record sales, but not the US.
* He can buy a compilation cd that has the track on it, along with several other duplicates of songs he was able to pick up as singles, thus wasting his money.
* He can download it from the net.
Guess which one he has started using? He would like to buy the singles, but they just aren't there.
He's just like a majority of the shoppers who come to our Sam Goody. They want the one particular song, not the entire album. If they hear several songs from the album that they like, then they'll be more likely to buy the album.
If the record industry doesn't recognize this fact relatively soon, they will have no choice but copy protection on their cd's, since they aren't giving people what they want (isn't that a rule in business?).
Best Buy is not a bad company. It is trying to look out for itself even if it looks like the left hand is not communicating with the right (eg copy protection v mp3 players and cd-r sales). It's purchase of Musicland (which consists of Mediaplay, Suncoast, On Cue, and Sam Goody) was to help represent itself in smaller markets that couldn't support Best Buys. It almost immediately started changing inventories in a lot of the stores to basically make them mini-best buy stores.
'According to the article, the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by Internet file swapping.'
Bullshit. The decrease was due to people getting a bad taste in their mouths with the Napster debacle - and the fact that the music industry churns out shittier and shittier music. These morons in the industry have no concept of quality or what people like. They think they know, but their methods of perceiving customer satisfaction are as inaccurate and primitive as they are.
But make no mistake - these are the bozos running in Turbo Bozo Mode that control lives.
perhaps the 10% drop of was because the fvcking economy fell off the fvcking cliff this year? For every year up until this one, music sales increase, specifically in the areas, such as universities, where napster usage was rampant...indicating that music sharing increases cd sales because people can sniff the merchandise and get to like bands before they lay out $15? Which they'd never do without that familiarity?
Torture the data. Torture it well. It'll confess to whatever you want it to.
>The original wav tracks on the cd ALWAYS sound better than anything that has been encoded.
.wav file. If your encoder sucks (and one can assume the RIAA-et al. would have access to the world's best MP3 encoders) that's your fault, or the fault of the mp3's creator, not ours.
>I think many a studio engineer would be kicking themselves for trying to hard to give you a good sounding record that you are then going to listen to in a bastardized form.
For the good of the audio community, read this site thouroghly, please!
The fact (and I mean proven both by double blind test and waveform analysis) is that 256-320 kbit MP3 perfectly* reproduces the same audio you hear from a
* [By perfect I mean so perfect that any imperfections in the mp3 are likely less than 100x that of which most audio equipment itself introduces into music!]
>Go buy the cds and dont whine to everyone about your entertainment dollar. It suited you fine before Napster came out.
What a luddite statement.
Why not just say:
"Go wash in a tin tub outside the fireplace. It suited your father perfectly fine when he was a kid."
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
1) Their sales staff are inept. Well, maybe that's too harsh, they're extremely inexperienced - given that they're mostly 16-18 what can I expect?
2) Their managers are morons. Given that they're over 21, that's not harsh.
3) I don't sign signature capture pads. Ever. If you try to force me to sign one, you lose the sale. Do like Home Depot and print out a friggin slip for me to sign. Best Buy says they have no choice, so I stopped shopping there YEARS ago.
4) Don't try to search my Newton case when I'm leaving the store. I don't steal. I didn't steal. The alarm didn't go off. And your 17 yr old "security guard" is not going on a fishing expedition in my Newton case. When asked if he'd consider searching every woman's purse exiting the store, he didn't have an answer. When he grabbed my arm, I defended myself by grabbing his throat until he couldn't breathe. When the cops came - I filed charges against him. Again, I don't shop at Best Buy.
5) Music is a fucken ripoff. Plain and simple. Everyone knows it. Napster made the news and people suddenly opened their eyes to the scam. Most people will buy something if the price is reasonable. But rip them off, and they'll return the favor. So RIAA - read that chapter in the econ 101 book about "Price Elasticity" - you aren't adjusting the prices to meet the demand, so we're doing it for you. R E D U C E T H E P R I C E S and we'll buy!
6) They've got competition. Competition with lower prices, better selection, shorter lines, better service, more intelligent help. It's called: "THE INTERNET". Why in the hell would I goto a store when I can sit in my underware and either order the CD on the cheap, or download it for free? Oh, and it doesn't have copy protection...
7) They've got copyright protection already - it's called Copyright Law. Deal with it schmucks. Enforce it against people making mass copies of CD's for $1 in Taiwan, or NYC and selling them on the street. But leave me the hell out of it when I want to transfer the song from the CD to my MP3 player in my car - I'm not hurting anyone or stealing anything.
I have a good friend who works for Best Buy corporate. She's hardly in a position to change things, but she may eventually have the ear of someone who can. When I can confirm that Best Buy is actually stocking impaired CDs, I intend to stop shopping there--not just for CDs, but for DVDs, stereo components, computer software, anything they carry. I wish enough other people cared about this issue to show them a real decline in sales that can be directly attributed to this shortsighted decision.
Music is not where they make money. I worked for Best Buy for a few years and got to know how they do their buisness (and networks too ...). CD's and movies (which are all lumped into the Media Dept.) are there to bring people into the store and browse at other items. According to my old manager, Best Buy actually looses some income because of the Media Dept. in theft and in unsold items.
Best Buy makes their money when the music lover checks out the mp3 players and decides to splurge, when the suburban family comes in for a PC, or when the teenage rapper guy comes in for a new sound system.
In a nutshell, Best Buy has always lost money due to CD's, why would they care now?
Listen up you RIAA greedy bastards, my 401k and stocks lost almost 20% this year and it had nothing to do with the internet or file swapping. I buy my music legally; but i'm going to buy less this year because I lost money in the RECESSION!
Music industry CEOs listen up: the internet scapegoat will save your jobs temporarily, but stockholders will eventually figure out that the losses have nothing to do with the internet, and have everything to do with your terrible products and even worse business model.
-ted
it's funny how the people who buy the legit stuff get screwed while the people who rip the music just have a little fun puzzle in finding the newest way of getting the mp3. Makes me not want to buy the stuff when there's less hassle and more privacy online. RIAA 0 Mp3 1
I've never had BB ask for my receipt, although I always expect them to. I got in the habit a long time ago at fry's to just say 'no thanks' and not even slow down for them. Sometimes its the best part of the trip.
What you may not realize is that its well established that at the time of the transaction you own the product, the bag, and the reciept. I BB (or Fry's) wants it they need your permision.
Everybody cites the 'recession' when we have concrete proof that there was NO recession
Most everyone who complains about not being able to copy CDs is doing so because they are annoyed that they may not be able to do it. The fact that Best Buy is willing to support an initiated that may increase their sales is not a horrible thing, it seems to be smart business. If I wrote a story saying that the NFL is going to attempt to block copying of footabll broadcasts, does that mean that everyone is done watching football? I don't think that we can blame the music industry or supporters for attempts at securing their product. I don't think any of us would go to work without getting paid, and I don't think that the music industry should either. I'm also pretty sure that 9 out of every 10 people how said they would never shop at Best Buy again will be there tommorrow...
Very true.
No one is saying anything *new*; you might as well make a "MP3 music sharing rant" generator.
All the posts are variations of the same themes.
Its great being old, all the music from my youth is now so cheap anyway. Example Bob Dylan Biograph is now less than a third of the price it was for the original 7 albums for 3 better quality CD's :-)
Of course anyone is going to protect their creativity (good or not) wherever possible, don't knock them, we would all do the same. either spend the energy trying to earn enough to pay the vastly inflated prices being asked for mediocre music or put the energy into finding ways to get hold of the music without paying.
Its all down to choice!
I have a computer around 99% of the time. I like the CD format, I grew up with records, soft vinyl which sounded like crap after 8 or nine times through, and the improvement with the CD format was and is phenomenal...
But I can't or won't carry around my collection - I can however rip the entire collection to mp3 and have it in endless variety...
So far I have no real interest in downloading free music, but if these morons keep doing all this for my own good, I will.
And didn't CD sales plunge AFTER napster was shut off? Kind of a residual sea change?
And what IS with $ 14.00 average for a CD? I think we could perhaps PRICE these things a bit better?
Let's really return to the old days - self-scratching CDs that become useless and unlistenable after a couple of months so you must re-buy to continue listening... Or not only could we have copy protection we could have the whole CD just expire after a certain date. Won't we all rush to buy THAT! Expiration dates on CDs, like the food dates at the grocery stores. Customers picking through the front ones looking for some better "freshness dates" in the back of the bin. A disclosure label (they won't call it a warning, because after all, it's what YOU the PUBIC demanded@!) that says "This CD is a better product because it would get stale and old if we didn't respond to your demands!" The FDA could get in the picture setting times of expiration for crops of plastic.
Of course, there ARE some CDs that should become unplayable, but I have found a piece of sandpaper, or scissor, or something similar to work just fine without corporate HELP, thank you.
Best Buy is merely spouting the accepted wisdom in the investor community ("CD copying reduces sales") and announcing support for anti-copying technologies in order to assure the investors that the management team is on top of things and deserves their confidence.
It's called CYA. The execs are trying to save their own jobs.
If we walk on by our local Best Buy store, or better still, walk in and complain, then walk out with our wallets firmly in our pockets, they'll get the message soon enough.
I was so pissed off with music industry after napster was closed down / DMCA was introduced, I boycotted all CD purchases from stores. I only buy CDs from bands with websites selling CDs directly. If the profits from CD sales are going to be used to try and destroy our freedoms, then it's immoral to give them money.
Now, I think the crappy music or economic downturn is a more likely cause of declining record sales, but and many people's interest in music slumped after Napster, but I would like to think enough napster users were similarly pissed off to have made a difference. Napster shutdown probably contributed to CD sales decline.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
As this is now death's nail in the coffin for Best Buy when it comes to MY business, I'll just buy used CDs if I buy them at all. If you think about it, NOBODY gets any royalties off of used CDs or DVDs. Only the store owner makes money (which is cool by me). Best Buy has done more to hurt me as a consumer than anyone else out there. I TRIED to buy a $3000 HDTV from them but they were so stupid when it came to the technology and so friggin arogant. I went to TWEETERS instead and they EARNED my 3000 bucks. They answered a half hour of my questions and gave VERY knowledgable remarks. Now a $3000 HDTV from Tweeters is in my living room. Best Buy deserves to lose our business, if not for this crap, then for the lousy way they treat their customers. ON TO FRY'S!
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
We're going to keep seeing this kinda crap until the record labels are put in their grave once and for all. It's not a matter of them adapting to new consumer demand and letting us buy music online or whatever. No matter which way you cut it, they are still middlemen--sucking economic gain from both the consumer and musician. Albums cost way too much and artists aren't being fairly paid. Technlogy has obsoleted the information middle-man altogether. Perhaps what we need are companies devoted to assisting professional independent artists.
I'll remind you that Musicland was acquired shortly after they announced they were switching to using Linux. Best Buy is a Microsoft shop.
Best Buy seems to think that it is a good idea for someone else to control their business. First within their IT services, now through their supplier channels...
I'm sure their internal technical support staff is happy to have increasing activity to prove they need a larger budget. Their customer service staff will also get proof that they need a larger budget when these crippled non-CDs hit customers' equipment.
So maybe this issue is really dead-on-arrival. Tech industry advocates don't like the Hollings bill because they've said it would stifle innovation. That's probably fair to say when framed in the near-term, but maybe there's a lesson from the DVD vs. DivX battle. Consumers just didn't like the limitations of DivX, despite the industry's feeble attempts to market it as an innovative way to provide new convenience. Consumers chose the product with more freedom, even if it propped up an older and "less convenient" business model. If people are educated enough on what these crippled CDs really represent--a limitation of fair use--maybe they'll veto them the way they vetoed DivX. And that education is probably where /.ers can help.
it hurt our economy. Working in the embedded systems industry I saw orders cancelled and employees laid off. But this is true in al industries. People stopped spending money as much after that, it was a period of uncertainty and our fourth quarter last year was the worst one that company has ever had. Sure music sales went down 10% but guess what many other things (from industry to cable subscriptions) went down even more than that. It was a shock to our economy and the music industry should wake up and stop scapegoating the internet for their problems. Furthermore, I'd bet that the growth of MP3 swapping slowd during that period because people were buying less broadband. It doesn't make sense for them to blame something so clearly not the cause...when the economy goes to hell music sales will too, deal with it.
Brian
Public service announcement: don't forget the http:// part of your URL's, friend.
"If demand goes down when the CD is restricted, then they MUST lower prices."
On a side note, isn't that traditional defintion of a monopoly? When they don't have to give into supply and demand?
"On a side note, isn't that traditional defintion of a monopoly? "
It makes you wonder why there isn't more than one organization, doesn't it. I have no idea what's stopping somebody from saying "Well I'm going to sign on some artists and do a web play."
"Derp de derp."