Slashdot Mirror
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."
Yeah, here it is -- Redline Entertainment.
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.
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.
In times of a recession entertainment is generally the first thing people stop spending money on.
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%.
>>>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.
Hope this helps!
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
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....
I've heard this said many, many times, and yet it's just completely untrue. I'm convinced that nobody here actually follows current pop music.
Here are the current top 10 Billboard artists:
Ashanti
Celine Dion
Tweet
Compilation: Now 9
Soundtrack: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
R. Kelly & Jay-Z
Avant
Soundtrack: Scorpion King
Pink
Of that, what's bubblegum? Now 9 might include some, I don't know, though I think those CDs tend to be high on lite-rock. Pink incorporates quite a bit of dance-pop, but this album at least certainly isn't pure bubblegum. Most of the popular music currently is actually hip-hop/rap/soul/R the rest is nu-metal (Scorpion King), adult contemporary dreck (Dion), or wonderful roots music (O Brother). Now, I'm not claiming that all, or indeed much, of this chart is wonderful (I think I already demonstrated my hatred of Celine, for instance) but it sure ain't bubblegum, and some of it is decent and innovative. And, needless to say, there's tons of music which is being released every day on major and indie labels -- and much of it is great. (The Billboard Top Ten has rarely been a haven for the kind of music that critics and music snobs like, anyway.)