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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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
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.
Nobody wants to offer this service because the record companies make more money doing what they do now: namely, packaging one or two hit songs onto an $18 disc and convincing consumers to buy two or more per month. Do the math and you'll see why they don't like the idea of a $10 or even $20 subscription-- at least, one that gives you a large number of new releases that don't expire.
The problem is, for them to make money selling CDs online, they'd have to charge much higher prices than what you propose, just to keep their revenue flat. People don't want to pay what the record companies would have to charge, especially with all of the free alternatives out there.
What we're seeing is a classic example of executive punting. Whether they realize it or not, the label executives have put their business on a course of nearly guaranteed disaster. Their customers will hate them, those affected by draconian copyright legislation will hate them, and in the end it will all fail. However, no executive wants to be the guy who embraced online music at a reasonable price, and consequently reduced earnings by 30-50% over the golden-goose CD model. They'd never work again. (I've heard various industry professionals acknowledge the gist of this argument in private, though few yet acknowledge the contention that sharing-prevention efforts are doomed to failure.)
In other words, any exec who does the long-term intelligent thing for the industry, namely putting its long-term survival over short-term profits, would be destroying his or her career. So it won't happen, and the idiots will get high-paying jobs elsewhere while the recording industry suffers the fallout of those short-sighted decisions.
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."
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 agree 100%. I'm boycotting a lot of companies on this priciple. The problem isn't the boycott itself (very few companies really sell anything that I NEED, other than say the grocery store). The problem is keeping track of who I'm not buying from and why. A really cool website would be one that tracked companies that have come down on one side or another, so people could keep a handle on who the assholes are, and who the consumer-friendly companies are.
Extend the concept a bit, and you could allow users to create a profile where they track who they specifically are boycotting. Then every so often, the website could email that companys' marketing department and say:
"Dear Best Buy:
Your policy of supporting the RIAA has resulted in xxxx consumers boycotting your store. blah blah blah"
and then attach any personal "messages" from the consumers in the boycott...
Man, what a cool way to make a difference. I wish I had the time.