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The Music Business and the Internet
Lots of people sent in links to stories about the music industry holding a press conference and claiming that people are copying music rather than buying it (see their press release if you like). But there are some alternative points of view too: a study at the University of Buffalo claims that music sharing may cut down on superstars and promote new music. The New Republic has a story about a band that released their album on the Net six months before CDs were available, and is now wondering whether fans will buy more, less, or about the same number of aluminum and plastic circles. And a nice chart I saw a few days ago compares CD sales vs. price over the last several years and suggests that price-fixing by the recording industry may play a part in slowing sales.
Go to your local pub or club tonight, drop some coins in a busker's guitar case, wrap a piece of waxed paper around a comb to make your own kazoo - whatever you can do to create and support music on your local level has got to be better than supporting the Machine.
except the way that the media is encoded or controlled. There's still way too much money in it for the 'superstars' to stop them producing the same old shyte we hear every day.
Ya, know. I am kinda sick and tired of people from the music industry complaining about the rampant copying of music over the internet. I think that if they had any intelligence they would use this to their advantage. Like promoting up and coming stars and reinforcing old ones. First, they have to realize that they cannot stop it. So, why don't they use it to make money? I think places like MP3.com have the right idea. Give the person a healthy sample of the music and that would encourage them to buy more. Instead of embracing the internet, the music industry is afraid of it and that is only going to hurt them.
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
They are taking a slow economy and making into another reason for to attack the use of MP3's any thing related.
5% ba
As in everything, there are always ups and downs, such is life. If it were 25%-50%, i can see that there was an issues but 5%, maybe they need to make better music, lower prices, or stop their complaining. Not get up on their soapbox and scream-"they did it"
If we refuse to be flexible, we are in effect opting out of the game of life. The world moves on without us.
You know, it's hard to have sympathy for an industry which has killed most of the real talent from getting into the popular market (with a few exceptions) ... and then it gouges the consumer with strong-arm tactics at the record stores in order to keep prices up.
For Pete's sake, CD's are still more expensive than tape cassettes. It's not about cost of manufacturing -- it's about gouging the consumer.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
While I support buying records of bands I like I know full well that they don't get much of the money I pay. Therefore if I like a band a lot I'll go see them in concert and buy their cds there. They get much more of the money from cd sales at concerts, plus they get your ticket money and support. This works out for the betterment of everyone except the record companies, but who cares about them anyways.
ahh, the egg in the basket..
There's a lack of quality music in the stores right now, or else I'd be buying some. What do we have now? Not much, but at least this boy band thing is over...
Don't they realise that they have slumps just like every other industry, not to mention we aren't in the best economic situation.
Just becuase this cycle happened the same time Napster etc etc got big....
Let's go back to the 80-90's when copying cassette tapes became popular.
People download music because CD's are over-priced.
The record companies lose money so start charging more for CD's
People download even more music.
This circle is set to continue unless record companies start pricing CD's realistically. If AOL/Compuserv/Freeserve can give away CD's in shops and with hardware then why do i have to pay £20 for a music CD?
For about $20, you could have 60 minutes of audio content or several hours of interactive video content.
My Blog Sucks.
At some point, the recording industry is going to have to realize that they have things BACKWARDS. Now, artists tour to increase and promote album sales. In the future, it's going to have to be the other way around -- artists will put out albums to promote and support their tours. Go see a band live, then buy a copy of the performance you just saw on your way out.
If the RIAA would actually use the internet to drive sales, many, many people would put down money for MP3s.
I would be willing to give about 10 cents per MegaByte for professional, complete MP3s. Barring that there is NO Copy Restrictions.
If the RIAA would stop worrying about people sharing the MP3s and actually become a supplier for what people want, they would make tons of money. They are in the position to capitalize on this, but they are too busy worrying about losing some sort of "control" they have over music.
P2P set us up the bomb!
There is no logic in allowing free distribution of MP3s unless we overthrow the capitalistic system and create the socialistic world. In this world, the musicians would be paid by the State and music would be freely available to the masses. Therefore, I take the popularity of MP3s as the first sign of a revolution.
Or maybe not. Maybe downloading MP3s is just another selfish act, not an actual protest against the unfair system.
By the way, if you call yourself liberalistic, you should not slam this comment as "socialistic propaganda". Freedom of Speech does also mean that people have enough respect to listen.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
According to the UK national news, although there is a general downturn in CD sales globally, in the UK sales are up over 5% !
It might be something to do with a country's cultural background as to whether you buy or download for free.
No sharp objects, I'm a programmer!
The record industry doesn't have that many options. The best one seems to me to start giving away the virtual (i.e. the actual songs) and sell the material (i.e. nice hard to break cases, quality booklets or even books). The special edition Kid A from Radiohead is a good example of a CD you want to buy (if you like Radiohead, that is).
This, combined to other non-downloadable merchandise (t-shirts, posters, etc.) and -- of course -- live performances, should enable musicians to keep making a living while preventing customer alienation (which you'd imagine would be the "prime directive" for the industry -- not so). As for big-time, multi-million producers, well...we have no moral or legal obligation to keep them multi-millionnaires. Just because an industry is well-established doesn't mean it has to be preserved by law -- especially when it alienates customers, infringes on their constitutional rights and goes against technological development.
Reminder: find a new sig
I remember when The Offspring wanted to release a hit song from, I believe, Americana, in MP3 form, before the CD was available in stores. Their music; their right. Right?
Unfortunately, since Congress made music work-for-hire, the recording company had the right to keep them from doing what they wanted with their own music.
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
The study from the University of Buffalo is nice, but neither fair play nor the promotion of new music is the goal of the RIAA. Like any sufficiently entrenched business, their goal is the acquisition of profit - in this case, by creating a saleable commodity out of what was once-upon-a-time free intellectual property.
The short form of this entire story is "same shit, different day". The RIAA whines about downloads; Studies show this doesn't harm musicians; People go right on downloading. In other news, the earth is round.
... would have to change. So should the music industry.
They should have to become leaner and more focused on quality and price instead of just driving legislation.
I understand that the music industry wants to keep their stranglehold, where they can charge pretty much what they want.
There is a strong competition on furniture, electronics, computing etc.. so why not in this industry as well?
The whole napster/gnutella/whatever issue is just a wakeup-call from the consumers that they are sick of price-fixing and control-freakish behaviour from RIAA and their members.
Instead of just listening to the industry, legislators should let the music-sharing force the industry onto a new path.
What the consumers want is pretty clear:
1. We want to be able to buy a lot more music. Price has to go down.
2. We want more control over how we get the music and what music we want (no longer having to buy an album with 13 shitty songs, just to have 2 good ones.
3. We want a much more innovative and competive industry.
If the music industry can't satisfy my wishes but the file sharing networks can, what do you expect me to do?
Mr Berman also noted that for the first time since 1966, the top selling album in the US in 2001 - Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park - had sold less than five million copies, while the IFPI estimated that some four million copies had been downloaded from the internet.
Hey, if the Lincon Biskut is the best the music industry can do in terms of product than they deserve to go out of business.
If you say that compared to a year ago file sharing is up by X% and sales are down by Y%, then that doe not tell you if that X% caused or contributed to that Y%, if Y would have been larger without the grass roots marketing effect of file sharing, or something else entirely. A single data point (or pair of data points in a time series) doesn't provide you with enough information to reach the kinds of conclusions people on both sides of this debate are pushing.
But then, this isn't science, it's politics and money, so everyone involved has a huge incentive to twist the facts to support their position.
- Internet music sharing was rampant in the UK (probably partly attributable to increased availability of broadband) and
- CD sales in the UK rose 4% (NB: vinyl sales rose by even more; go figure), contrary to a downward trend everywhere else
Hrm, let me see...Unfortunately, this information didn't make it through to their web site, as far as I could see...
In my country, ie india A blank CD costs approx 30 cents adn a blank casette 1$, however a recored CD of a big band costs 12$ and the casette of the same album costs 3$. It is ridiclous, its like saying "{We want to screw you, so please let us do so with a smile}"
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Now P2P, CD burners and general disillusionment with megacorporations (ala Microsoft) has kill -4'ed this system. They are clamouring to the old way of functioning, despite the fact they have just been TERM'ed. With the rejection of the CDBTTTPATDDBDPTT the record industry has lost their last hope. They're just going to have to live with way less than 50% of their historic turnover within time, or switch to the only truly copy-protected music which is live performances and new music (artist improvisation) eg. Madonna in a skimpy wimpy tenee wenee litt-le bikini.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
"Music sharing may cut down on superstars and promote new music" is not something the industry wants to hear. Sales of music by superstars are predictable and that's what the entertainment industry loves about stars-- that's why the pay at the high end is asymptotic in music, movies, etc. And that's why the industry tries to create stars.
I wrote about one of the first digital custom music systems (Personics) for Rolling Stone in the mid-80s, and even back then, the industry feared technology because it might break their stranglehold on distribution. They've long been using copyright law to prevent any technology that would broaden distribution and therefore create broader choice in music.
Hmmm...
We are in the middle of a recession. Sales in almost everything are going down.
Before recession, sales in CDs were going up even though music downloads were huge.
Now sales are down.
Oh yes, it must be because of music downloads.
Absolutely! NOT!
These people have no shame with their self centered lies!
With the rampant use of home recording equipment by many bands to make promos, and the fact that many artists now produce their own videos and production CDs, is there any movement underway to make sure that no matter what encryption scheme (no pun intended) is used to verify CDs from the major labels, that there will still exist hardware that only plays CDs without the encryption scheme.
A local band that makes a CD to be sold at shows should NEVER have to pay extra for the RIAA's ideals.
And imagine, CD players at a store, some with the RIAA Inside! sticker and some without, and then the music economy would change even more and companies would learn how to make money off of bands that sell CDs via the internet and often give away from MP3 downloads...oh wait, some companies and bands are already doing that!
The reason I download my music versus buy it is because..
o The last time I went, I couldn't find the CD I was looking for. However, they did have several hundred copies of a Britney Spears CD and pair of Reebok sneakers in a glass case.
o Their selection consisted almost entirely of rap, hip-hop, and other sonic diarrhea. My tastes in music extend a little further than incessant warbling up and down the scales and complaining to a drumbeat.
o They wanted to sell me candy, magazines, coffee, soda, biscotti, bottled water, bumper stickers, incense, candles, videocasettes, and DVDs of movies nobody wanted to see in the theaters to begin with. Not what I came in there for, an album.
o Even if I were to have found the CD I was looking for, I would have had to shell out nearly twice as much money as I would have 10 years ago FOR THE SAME CD. Apparently, it costs the shop alot of money to keep those Reebok sneakers in a glass case. Probably air-conditioned.
o The store expected me to give my money to a guy wearing lipstick wearing earrings. In his face.
o Some marketing bozo decided that putting anything other than rap and "best of" albums on the shelves was a good idea.
o I cant burn my own CDs at the shop, with the music I want on it, and nothing else.
Need I go on?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I remember the first wilco cd, because my buy-3 cd's-a-week friend had it. It wasn't bad but not my taste.
I'll probly check out their new offering in mp3 format to see if i like it and inform my friends that "that cd is great, you should pick it up" even if i dont like it.
Bands seem to only get cash from concerts so if wilco ever comes to town I'll buy a ticket wheater i have the time to go or not.
thirsty*i^2
"Ya I finished that last week, it just doesn't work"
RECESSION! RECESSION! RECESSION! RECESSION!"
Very true. Interestingly their own stats seem to show it's the impact of the recession, saying that England, one of the few places not impacted by it, saw sales rise. There were earlier statements in other places where they said that CD sales were down for the first time since a drop that had occured 10 yrs ago. Guess what. That was a recession too. It sure goes to prove, anybody can take stats and make them say what they want. I'd guess they'd say the drop in sales 10 yrs ago due to ? (Guess they'd better think up a new excuse.) In my case, my purchases of CD's are down to nil. Not the recession, and I've never had napster or other file sharing on my computers. I simply won't pay obscene prices to buy what I consider crap. (Though someone's study could as easily, and rightfully so, indicate that a small n %age drop in prices would spur a n% increase in sales. Did they ever consider the raping of the customer to be one reason they don't sell as well?
So OK, if you want to make the RIAA look stupid(er), go pick up Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot CD. This is the one that the band actually relesed for free on the Net when their old label dropped them six months ago. Now they've been picked back up and the album is getting raves. Wilco's a good band, and if you don't like their music, just go buy it out of spite!
Let's face it. Creating superstars offers a higher return rate on investment for record companies. Having to continually push new artists can be expensive, so profit projections are much harder predict. I for one would love to see an environment where new and established artists are encouraged to continually challenge themselves and push their own creative limits. Unlike all the BS corporate pop out there. God forebid musicians work to remain fresh and new after they've made their first million.
At the time the record companies started squawking, the US was headed into a recession. Things like food, clothes, and rent became priority over Nsync CDs. As unemployement rises (look at Fingerhut!) buying CDs is a rediculous way to spend the money I don't have.
Since the dawn of Napster, it was obvious that the record companies can't stop file sharing. As bandwidth increases, CDRs get cheaper, and prerecorded CDs get more expensive, new ways of ripping and sharing files will stay far ahead of the record companies and legislation.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
As long as the RIAA continues to treat music like product instead of art, and bands as corporate chess pieces instead of artists, nothing will change. Some fans will rebel, some will complain, but most will just keep taking it up the ass.
Thank you.
Some people may have come across Baen's Free Library where complete electroic versions of books can be downloaded for free. Eric Flint posted an article yesterday that shows that if anything his sales increased rather than decreased after some of his books were made available as free downloads. The url for the article is
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm
Kithran
Another factor, I believe, in the "slowing" (read: anything less than 10% year to year growth) sales of the Music companies has been their deliberate decision to abandon the "Single" in CD format, reducing the choice a person has when they hear a single song that they like to A) Buy the entire CD at $18+ for the known 4 minutes of good music and take a chance on the rest or B) oh wait, there is no other valid 'choice' as defined by the RIAA.
.. that is 7-inch records with one song on each side (Memo to 13-year old 'l33t doods': this is where the terms "A-Side" and "B-Side" came from). In fact, I bought about 250 7-inch singles a year. At $1.99 each, I could affort to take a chance on music I wasn't 100% sure about.
I wish I had the link to a recent online news story I read which talked with the industry reps who discussed their decision to abandon Singles as they felt it was cutting into their album sales.
It seems to me that they believe that when a consumer can't get just the muisc they want a la carte, they would be willing to buy a whole lot of extra music to get it. In this situation what they should be selling is the single in downloadable and usable (read MP3) form for a small price. (Memo to Record industry: charging $7.99 for one song when there is no physical cost of goods and encoding it in a format that users can't play on their iPod/Rio/Empeg/Nomad/Archos/Etc isn't going to fool very many consumers).
I can recall back in the late '80, I used to buy a lot of "45's"
In the early '90's the record companies moved to put out Singles, both 7-inch (2 songs) and 12-inch (3+ songs/Remixes) in CD format. I even bought some of those 3-inch CD-Singles in mini-longboxes (remember those).
Selection of CD singles in the USA, at least at the retail level, seemed to peak in mid '90s and has really diminished in the past 5 years.
However, this situation seems to be confined mostly to US retail. Amazon is good source for CD singles, and in Europe the format is much more popular, so ironically sources like Amazon.uk are great for getting singles to popular songs in the USA.
So this is where the availability of single song MP3 files, available for download, could be doing damage... entirely because they are filling a nitch and need that consumers have, but the labels have abandoned. A lot of those people who download probably would be good customers to buy a cheap CD single, if it was available and had the content they wanted.
Music sharing does not hurt music. It hurts the music business.
It does not hurt the artist. It hurts the pop star, the producer and the sleazy lawyers (hi, Hillary!), but not the artist.
You know, there was a time when artists (and athletes, and scientists and whatnot) did not aspire to earn billions of dollars and live on crack. There was a time (I'm really dating myself here) when they just loved their art (sport, discipline) and considered themselves lucky to just make a living doing it. Not millions of dollars. A living.
Greed is the bane of our time.
The End Records: If it's metal, these guys probably have it, and cheaper than Amazon, CDnow -- or FYE. >^..^
Consumers are concerned that the recording industry has begun copying music instead of making it.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The **IA may be guilty of inventing scapegoats, but that doesn't mean the antis should too.
My favorite part of the article may be the quote from Jorgen Larsen about the possibility of more copy-protected CD's in the future: "Because of the incredibly low number of consumer complaints we've received, I would say that on most major pop releases we would put in place copy protection." Of course, he's referring to More Music from The Fast and The Furious... someone should tell the poor man that this doesn't qualify as a "major pop release."
I'd be amused if they tried copy protection on, say, the next Britney Spears endeavor... I bet they'd get a few complaints (check out some of the Amazon reviews of Fast&Furious to read some fantastic "This won't play on any of my 4 stereos" tales)
Personally, I'd love to see the source of all these figures. They love to quote the percentages left and right but I fail to see the source material that backs these claims.
:)
And on another note, it seems that for every "good thing" mentioned in the article, they quickly mentioned piracy and copying. Surely there are other factors at action here, say the recession or perhaps even lack of new material or interesting artists (not all of course), and lets not forget the recession...or did I mention that already?
The RIAA is simply trying to spook new legislation into existence by pointing at their new boogyman; Peer to Peer file sharing. Pretty soon we won't be allowed to tell our friends about new artists that we like; they'll have to be notified by the recording companies' advertising only, less we risk being prosecuted by the RIAA for some sort of "information sharing".
G
... but they're also ignoring many other facets to this problem, so they're an easy target right now.
Look at the demographics that the RIAA has typically concentrated on -- teenagers. All the new stuff coming out these days is focused on the 12-16 year old crowd. How much money does this crowd realistically have? And how technically savvy are they? And how well-formed are their ethics?
That's the meat of the problem. It's not that everyone is stealing music (because everyone is not). It's that the main demographic of the RIAA is stealing music because they're just a bunch of kids who love music, who don't have any money, who have an abundeance of free time, who know how to do it, and who don't understand that what they're doing is wrong.
Here's where the RIAA needs to pull its head out of its butt. The solution to the problem is fairly easy:
1) Market to a different demographic -- perhaps people who actually have a source of revenue. Older people like music too. Stop making product that no one likes except people who only like to steal it. And change your ways so that some money actually goes to the artists so that the thiefs will actually feel bad that they're depriving their favorite band of money.
2) Develop new music for different demographics, and diversify the portfolios, especially what gets played on the radio. Since all I can hear on the radio is music marketed to 12-16 year olds, I've stopped listening to the radio and subsequently I don't buy many CD's anymore -- not because I don't like music, but because I don't like the crap that I'm being force-fed.
3) Ease up on the internet audio front. It is in the RIAA's best interest to allow webcasting of music because it is essentially FREE ADVERTISING! When song gets played to an audience, this is the only way that the audience will decide whether they like the music. I don't buy music because I've read about it -- I buy it because I've heard it, usually more than once.
Now the RIAA still does have a problem with the teenagers downloading music for free. I think it's within their rights to go after the big guns -- Napster, Kaaza, Morpheus, etc. Their problem is that they are absolutely obsessed with Timmy who e-mails a song to Bobby via IM. They have to realize that they can't stop that, and that a certain amount of that person-to-person trading is OK and probably sells albums.
And everyone else needs to realize that wholesale and widespread music trading is just plain wrong. I don't care about this "it's for the good of society" argument. I don't see music traders volunteering at homeless shelters. Those arguments are convenient excuses to get free music. Get used to the fact that in order to get music to keep, you're going to have to buy it. Put some effort into making that reality fit with the technology, rather than trying to fight it, because there is no way that you're going to be able to always get whatever music you want for free. The economics of that situation are impossible.
Ralph
a lot of people on here bitch that they want to just buy songs they like rather than the entire album. Now how do you know you like these songs before you buy the album? you here what they have released on the radio- what the music industry decides they want you to like. I don't see how [esp. /.'ers] anyone can put up with that. but anyway, you just want to buy what you have heard on the radio and like. Well, isn't that kind of closed minded? you're not willing to listen to the rest of the artists' music? Also, albums most times aren't just a selection of songs thrown together. The sons deal with the same period of time, the same emotions, the same feelings that the band had been going through at that point. Take Pinkerton from weezer. I'm sure Cuomo had a lot more songs in his repetoire at that point, but chose these songs for a reason. The entire album can be an artform, not just the individual song.
Ask anyone who makes a lot of mix cd's and takes pride in them. It's not just what songs are on your cd, but the mood they put you in, how they relate to eachother, etc. Noone wants a bunch of cd's that they're going to listen to one or two tracks and skip around a bit, then switch it for another one.
Pink Floyd's The Wall is an excellent example of a well written *album*. The entire album deals with the same subject, has the same moods, more or less, and conveys the same message. Most people [if they don't despise Pink Floyd] can sit down and listen to this entire album without having to complain. Some can even listen multiple times in a row.
Rubber Soul from the Beatles is another great example. Another would be Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death from the Dead Kennedys. As well is Clarity from Jimmy Eat World. Or Mer de Nom from A Perfect Circle. Or Clumsy from Our Lady Peace. The trick is to find a band that is trying to make a good album, not just a couple hit songs.
Basically, people make albums for a reason. If you don't like albums, then you can pick up singles or listen to the radio. If that isn't good enough for you, then you obviously want the entire album. And if you don't like the band enough to buy their album fine, download it. But if you claim to be a fan of a band and all you have are mp3's and you haven't helped to support them in any way shape or form for their art [yes they do get a little money from cd purchases], i don't want to hear you claim to be a fan of them. If you truly were a fan, let alone supporting them, you'd want to have their Cover Art, the actual cd, maybe even Vinyl. Don't tell me that having a burnt cd is the same thing because it's not. I have thousands of mp3's, but I own 75% of them on cd or vinyl anyway. Why? because I like the band.
"Lots of people sent in links to stories about the music industry holding a press conference and claiming that people are copying music rather than buying it..."
/. to rant about RIAA/MPAA/whatever, but until Joe Music-Lover finally says enough, I am not gonna buy your crap anymore. We have seen progress in this area (music sales are down) but it isn't enough. I believe there is still a huge misconception out there that once an artist has a single hit (one-hit wonder, etc.,) the general public believes the artist gets rich and life is good for them. Often, as we all know, this isn't the case. Only long time recording stars seem to be able to leverage their selling power to even the table with the Record Industry. Of course, then we have the slippery slope syndrome. An artist wants their music to get out there so badly, they sign their frigging rights away to the studios. And, you can't exactly negotiate these things, cause the studios are so powerful, if you don't agree to their terms, you don't get the frigging contract. the only solution I can think of would be for artists to open their own studio. (And a lot have) If you don't like their terms, don't play on their field. Of course, the consumer still gets ripped off. Sorry, went off on a tangent. Anyhow, back to the point.
Too bad the main stream doesn't seem to get all sides of the issues. Sure, it's one thing for a site like
This whole article can be summed up in a few sentences:
We (the recording industry) were making a butt-load of money off of people. Sales are down, and we blame the internet and Piracy. (my favorite word, has NOTHING to do with stealing music, and everything to do with boarding a ship with intent to harm or pillage, but I digress yet again). To keep our extremely rich share holders happy, we are going to have an all out campaign to kill music on the internet and have it GO BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS(TM)
Sent from your iPad.
A little while ago, printing was banned in most of the modern world. This was because the good prople of the church knew that only they could speek the word of the gospal, and though that printed material may allow the devil to creep into the system.
As good church going citisens, RIAA feer this evil creeping into music, via the file sharing networks as we all should.
So by putting in legistation we can kill of the heritics that use file sharing networks.
Without the RIAA we would all burn in hell.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Thanks for the tip on the "Amazon is good source for CD singles". I, for one, have taken to buying greatest hits CDs lately due to the fact that I do not want to pay $16-$18 for a CD with only 1 or 2 good songs. Of course, for new material, I have to wait a long time for the greatest hits CD.
If this could work for DVD's... I'd imagine it could work equally well for CD's, as the production costs of both are relatively similar and low!
Instead of getting them at new $$$. Support you local used music store. You may have to wait a while to get what you want but you can get the music for 1/3 to 1/4 the price of new.
Seems the best way to have the sound and screw the Machine.
Chris
Was 25 years too early. What a shame.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
...CD's are over-priced.
Are they?
I'm not trying to troll here, but are CD's really overpriced? Or do you just think that they are?
The recording companies has costs. Promotions, gifts to radiostations and mtv to get their music played, pay the artists, pushing new bands, own administration, distribution of CD's etc etc.
Is there somewhere some statistics on where the money goes? Somewhat accurate and detailed statistics would be very nice.
But perhaps the record companies don't want you to see that because it would prove that the CD's really are over-priced.
.haeger
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
"You have an entire generation of people thinking content should be available for free, and that's just not a sustainable long-term business model for the labels," said Hank Forsyth, media analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
Its called radio!
Hell, we've got an entire industry that thinks people should like what they are told to, THAT's not a "sustainable long-term business model".
You can't take the sky from me...
I do believe (please correct me if im dead wrong here) that the recording industry gets a percentage of CD-R sales. If this is true, then what right do they have to complain? Again, please correct me if im wrong.
Do you honestly think the head of the RIAA cares what the consumer or the musicians want? Their only concern is end line profits. CD single sales taking away from full cd sales....make them buy the whole thing.
Nothing about this is for the enjoyment of the consumer, just the increase in profits of the RIAA...so no one there will even care what we think. They will throw more money at legislation to get it to where they can put people in jail for not doing things thier way. Which is buying a separate cd for each device you want to us it in. If they really believe in the bs they are telling everyone then I should be able to go to my local music store with all my old vinal records and trade them in for cd's at minimal cost. But so far if I want a cd version of something I have on record then I have to pay full price for it.
So if I'm paying for content why do I keep having to pay for format also.
I just won't buy thier cd's anymore. I have over 400 audio cd's...I'll buy from the smaller lables, but not the big ones any more. There are about 6 cd's I'd like to have, but I'm not paying them $15 a piece for what cost them less than a $1 or two to make. The artist wouldn't get the money, so I'm not really hurting them. But I'll live without them before I buy something that I can't use. Right now I only have 1 audio cd player...a portable one. I listen to all my music ripped and on the computer. So if they protect it and I can't play it on the computer then it becomes worthless.
Ok, don't ranting...
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
There is something wrong with pricing when a soundtrack on CD costs more than the film on video.
The clear path for us, the consumers, is to buy as much downloadable music as possible...
I am a Karma Library.
How about a real FYI eye-opener Music Industry?
I went through all my music and thought about bands I liked over the last 10 years. Has the music industry ever thought that there is alot of bad music out there that isn't worth purchasing? Perhaps these bands CD's aren't worth the $12, maybe I think they are worth $6 or $3 for a new band. RIAA and Music listen to me and the rest of the consumers, give us something worth buying and we may buy it.
-NM
Actually I hear that concerts for most bands (save the large arena filling tours) are a break even business: most of it goes to promotion, the facility, and other costs. Much like the movie theater business.
But like you said most of the money is made in merchandise. That is why paying 20 bucks for a t-shirt from a band you really dig isn't a bad thing. Sure the shirt is shit, but most of the money is going into their pocket.
Of course musicians getting screwed over by the industry isn't anything new: Del the Funky Homosapien and Future Development, J-Live and the whole of his catalogue. Ask anyone in the underground of any scene who spent some time at a major.
Steve Albini (seminal musician [Big Black, Shelac] and producer [In Utero and a thousand other things]) wrote a GREAT article a couple years ago on the state of the industry.
Of course the GZA/Genius summed it up perfectly on "Protect Ya Neck": Who's your A&R?/A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar?
Artists gripes with the industry extend beyond genre class or race.
(A suggestion for aspiring groups: one nice thing Corrosion of Conformity did was, at their shows, you could buy their CD signed by all members of the band. The things sold like hot cakes and now I have their last two LPs signed... sweet)
What is music when you despise all sound?
Since when is any industry guaranteed a constant increase in sales? Looking at the chart at Scriban it's quite obvious that sales have increased in every year (with 1997 being the exception). Sure record sales dropped last year, but they still had their third biggest year (at least as far back as 1992 which is where the chart ends).
So sales peaked, so what? One year's drop does not indicate a long-term trend. The RIAA acts as though they are entitled to constantly growing sales every year no matter what they do. And they're all too eager to blame others (file-sharing in particular) for any drop while praising themselves for any increase.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I thought music can not be bought? Buying implies that you can do with it whatever you want - rent it, copy it, etc. If anyone in the music business is listening (and I seriously doubt that): A dollar is to high a price for the right to listen to one song 1) alone, 2) only on one type of device, 3) for a limited time (no backups, no transfer to new media types).
hot grits, flaming toasted ms, Linux is the shiznet, and comander taco's moma smells of compost.
Good post, I especially agree with the last paragraph. Also, older songs which I'm sure are still copywrited are unavailable in stores. It's nice to download a old MP3 for you parents, and I don't like much new music either.
Maybe the RIAA shoudl try to please consumers, offer "mix stations" inside music stores with huge databases of songs, which you can put on your cd for a high price of $20. We all know they'd still be making a fortune. I still think it's completely legal to do that same kind of thing at home though.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The recording industry spends millions on market research, they know that file sharing services are not cutting into their sales. Many people have pointed out that they either download a song and then buy the CD or they download a song that is not available on CD. It's just easier to attack MP3 and file sharing under the flag of copyright violations.
What they are really trying to prevent is the trend for new and unreleased bands going to the internet and releasing their music instead of signing their soul away to a record company. When the record company gains all rights to a new bands music they don't just make money off CDs. They also make money off selling the songs to advertisers and gaining royalties for years. If all the bands started publishing themselves on the internet through MP3.com or their own website it would mean the end of the recording industry and that is what they are trying to prevent.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Baen might complain if all their books were downloadable. In case you didn't notice, they normally made available only put the first one or two books in each series, and since the books have dependencies -- for instance, readers who want a long, coherent story line pretty much have to read a series in order, rather than out of order or jumping betweeen series -- it generates more sales for them.
The same model doesn't translate well to music, at least when albums usually aren't dependent on each other and when much of the content is conveniently already digitized and online for free instead of just a little to whet your appetite.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I know I haven't bought a single new CD since Napster was shut down. As soon as the big labels offer fast, secure servers where I can download a superb, unrestricted MP3 from their library - a purchase that entitles me to a PDF of liner notes, lyrics, a printable CD cover etc, then we can talk. In the meantime, I guess I'm a 'pirate', but I'm not really happy about it.
I have bought more cd's since mp3's came along than I ever did before them. If I like an song that I acquire on mp3, then I usually go out an buy the CD that it came from. If I don't like it, I delete it. There have also been several times in which I wasn't sure of the artist or title of a particular song and have used mp3 searches to find out, then went out and bought the CD. Usually, the biggest stumbling block for me is the price. I refuse to pay more than $15 for a CD and won't pay that much unless I really really want it.
The other reason to buy CD's: They don't go away when your hard drive fails without a backup. This happened to me recently, and though it took a while, I was able to reproduce my mp3 collection from my CD's.
It isn't about the money. It is about the control. That is why we are spoon-fed music. That is why songs are played to DEATH before the next one is released. It is also why I haven't bought a new CD in a couple of years, and I am not a big downloader. I shop in used CD stores, the recording industry doesn't get any of that money. Am I depriving the artists? Nope. The record companies are. They need to get screwed, so they will revolt against the people who are screwing them, and hint hint - it isn't the customers who are stealing their money.
Part of the problem is that we are consumers, not customers. We are taught to consume things. It isn't about listening to music, it is about hoarding music. I have more CDs now than I need, and I know a lot of people have more than me. If I never bought a new CD again, I would have enough music to last me a long time. I have some CDs that I listened to once or twice.
Bottom line, it is just music. We don't NEED it. The record industry needs to realize that it isn't something we need to survive, it is entertainment. If they piss on us long enough, we will reject them because of it. I know I already have.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This site [newpatron.com] will solve all of the issues with the digital music revolution.
I downloaded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and like it, so I am going to cash in my yahoo points (I buy lots of stuff on yahoo shopping for work) and get the album when it comes out. Of course the mp3s I downloaded are only 96bit, and are full of static :).
Would I buy the album if the mp3s were 320bit? Probably, but I might just save my money to see Wilco if they come to town. Would I buy the album if I thought it was bad? Probably not.
While Wilco IS one of the bands that I would buy a new album from without ever having heard it, I would be much more likely today to download some or all of the songs before making a purchasing decision. Occasionaly even bands I like put out crap albums.
What I would like to see is labels and artists put up all of their music that is no longer being printed for download. I would happily pay $4-5 to download mp3s, oggs, etc. of an out of print Alejandro Escovedo album. That is money the label and artist would never see if I spent $25 buying the album from somebody on Ebay.
Argh, replying to myself. But one more important point:
It's Baen putting online only books that are published by Baen. They'd be well within their rights to complain if somebody else did it to their books, even if it benefits Baen, because it's Baen's right to do so assuming the authors transferred full rights as would normally happen.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
As someone who deals heavily with the music industry I think one part of the problem is the huge marketing infrastructure, which represents a huge chunk of the cost of CDs.
While I have no figures to support my claims it's amazing the ammount of people that are required to put out a record through a major label. You have publicists, freebies and junkets for reviewers, marketting, managers, advertising etc that all needs to be paid for. Then as you get bigger generally more money is spent on these things so at the end of day the band gets very little of the cut.
The record industry is by no means stable, people are being made redundant all time, and with a system like this where the costs of putting out a record are enormous it's days of hype and marketting are probably numbered.
aus.music.scrapbook
Somewhat in connection with the Amazon vs. Authors story regarding used books sales, I'm rather surprised that the RIAA hasn't yet determined that Amazon is cutting too deeply into their profit margin when they sell used CD's... I'll be watching Slashdot for this inevitable suit.
... and determined that Murder stimulates evolution in the human species.
That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, though.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
My last CD purchase was on ebay where I picked up a CD for $4.25. There is just no way I am going to pay $15+ (Or whatever they cost now) for a new CD. They want too much and I am not even sure if I can get it on my ipod.
/. reader who still doesn't know better than to use Windows Media Player.
Of course price fixing is a major problem. So is the RIAA's attitude. How many sales are they losing because we hate them for what they are doing? I wonder, the RIAA used to make Rock bands (like Motley Crue) popular (and succesful) by portraying them as Satanic and generating tons of publicity. Do you suppose they believe that if they portray themselves as Evil, then they too will have their success enhanced? I guess they can't be blamed for saying "It worked for a no-talent hack like Marilyn Manson, why can't it work for us?"
On another note. I now use a Mac to manage all of my mp3s. I had windows briefly but when I upgraded my PC and moved my hard drive (with OS intact) to the new computer, WMP told me that the songs came from different hardware and that I could not play them. I lost everything! I will never use Windows again. Sorry for the unrelated rant but their might be some
Linux would be nice but I cannot get my ensoniq sound card to work with my Redhat 7.2. linux to the desktop still has some work ahead.
The reason electronic books have not harmed physical book sales is a much different argument than the music thing.
The reason e-books have not harmed book sales is because nobody wants to stare at a computer screen for hours reading a book, forgetting where they left off and having trouble following the scrolling as they go. People still want a set of pages they can physically touch. It's been like that for hundreds of years, and I know I don't find reading a book on a computer relaxing AT ALL after I've been staring at it for 10 hours at work already.
The music all ends up in the same medium most of the time; namely a CD. So the delivery mechanism is the same. Not so with e-books. Hence the apple and oranges comparison.
--- witty signature
The CD format is so flawed that even semi-careful handling ruins it in in a couple of years, and the industry has to love that! My entire collection of Sugar albums is unusable just due to wear. No warrenty, no return, no exchange. No lifetime license to the music purchased. They keep saying that we don't buy music... They are absolutely right! We only rent it! They offer no value with the product that they sell. Shouldn't we buy the music instead of a platter of metal and plastic? On the street we are there with with money in our hands to watch artists perform for a couple of hours, again we lease the entertainment! We rip the CD to a file that can be easily lost or corrupted... again no warranty no license. In other words they rent us "Air", to bad it smells like sulfur, tastes like methane, and has no "creative" life sustaining qualities.
How is it that people buy copies of TV series after they've appeared on TV.
People could just record off the TV and keep their own copy. In the USA it might be argued that adverts encourage people to buy an uninterrupted copy, but here in the UK these Videos and DVDs sell despite a large number of them being shown on the bbc without interruption.
Series like Buffy, Star Trek, Farscape are all aimed at the same audiance that are supposedly pirating music.
It seems that people want to own their own "original" copy, so even if they first listen to mp3 they will still buy the CD.
Bravo.
I have many times heard a song I liked on the radio, and gone to good lengths to identify that song and the artist. I live in MA, and I called a "urban" gospel radio station in SC to get a song title when I could only sing a lyric or two of it (Thanks, guys).
The algorithm for getting a single in the last five years was this.
1) Hear song on radio. Like it. Get info.
2) Go to record store. Search for single. Find R&B, hip-hop, ghetto-blastaz; all songs from very recently.
3) Ask person behind counter for single.
4) Listen to how they only recieved a handful of the singles, they are sold out, and the companies that release the single only produce a small amount anyway and Never Makes Them Again.
5) Go to other record store. Rinse. Repeat.
I can buy singles at Walgreen's (pharmacy), but nothing near what I want. My musical tastes are all over the map (hence the gospel music), but I also listen to top-40 and other popular music.
Here's an idea. The CD singles, when priced at about $3.99 to $5.99, weren't too attractive compared to a $11-$13 CD, back a few years ago. For double the price, I get five to ten times the songs. So I could see that the singles may not have been very popular.
Now, CD's go for $15-$20, and I would think that a $1.99-$2.99 CD single would sell well. But the RIAA sees not a customer that bought $2.99, but a sale that they lost of $20. In that perspective, no wonder they only made a few, and then stopped entirely.
Considering that P2P downloading is about getting the "singles" (How many people have downloaded an entirely album, every song? Be honest.), and that I would download a song and burn it myself at 25 to 50 cents a pop, it just seems like the RIAA has become inflexible.
Different businesses have different business models. Some businesses adapt to change and make it work. Some create new markets ("Why would someone make a shipping company? Isn't that what the Post Office is for?"), and some change markets.
The RIAA is trying to stick with what worked in the past. Too bad it has a virtual monopoly on music in the US, otherwise another company could make a new market and make the marketplace better.
I can recall back in the late '80, I used to buy a lot of "45's" .. that is 7-inch records with one song on each side (Memo to 13-year old 'l33t doods': this is where the terms "A-Side" and "B-Side" came from).
And with the advent of the Turntable as Instrument you somehow think that we know less about vinyl than you? Not to be aggressive (which that first sentence is, I can see) but the development of modern Hip-hop/Electronica/Jungle/2-step/etc DJ/Turntalbist culture the vinyl LP is probably more important now than it has been since the advent of the tape cassette.
But then I'm seeing a large anti-hip-hop/rap vibe on this site... probably from a deep lack of understanding about "those people's" music. I'm sorry but todays music is not what is shown on MTV, VH-1, BET (or, hell, even MTV2 and MM for that matter). Todays music is a solid steel mongrel of a thousand ethnic styles that cultivates old and ancient tastes with the new.
What is music when you despise all sound?
"Celine Dion's album was fitted with copyright protection"
...
It's about time the music industry took steps to protect us from Celine. Preventing these discs from being played in so many CD players may be one of the smartest things they've ever done. I applaud their efforts to keep such crap from making it's way onto the Internet.
But seriously, I think it is high time that these powerful corporations start looking at the ever present "bottom line." I could easily, much more so than scouring P2P services, go to the record store and buy an album (if there were any I wanted to actually own). But the last time I checked, the average CD was about $18. I don't have a degree in business or ecomomics but I have been able to distill my budget down to two very important categories: things I need and things I don't need.
Things I need: food, shelter, warmth, etc
Things I don't need: $18 CD's.
It's really very simple, if the music industry wants to compete with the tidal wave of "piracy" that has come about b/c of this digital "revolution" then perhaps they need to do what I did and figure out what is important to them. I can't imagine for a minute that I'm going to run out and start patronizing an industry that has done nothing for the past two years but go to war on alienating their bread and butter by hiking prices and cavalierly snubbing their nose at honest, paying customers. I don't buy CD's, not b/c I can get the music online, I don't buy CD's b/c they're expensive, the new offerings are almost unilaterally bad and most importantly, the industry behind all of this has presented itself as nothing more than a large, evil, greedy monopoly absolutely bent upon parting people from their hard earned money by any means. Perhaps some will rise up and cry "capitalism" but to me it's just "stupid" particularly when their methods are so incredibly transparent.
What they fail to remember is that we all still have a choice. We can choose to purchase new music or we can go without. The mere presence of a product does not necessitate anything other the the mere presence of a product, period. I don't have to buy anything, especially if I don't need it. Over the past four years, I've purchased all of maybe two CD's, one from an independent label. I would think they would have started getting the message (as well as remembering the rules of supply and demand) but apparently costly legal bills, invasive and largely useless protection technology and price gouging are the smart ways to run a business.
I wish I had the link to a recent online news story I read which talked with the industry reps who discussed their decision to abandon Singles as they felt it was cutting into their album sales.
As it happens, our good friend George "Big Content" Scriban (source of the sales vs. price link in the original story) has also posted some information on the decline in availability of singles. George provides links to a variety of sources for the story.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Rules of profit maximization in the modern recording industry:
1. You are what you listen to, just as you are what you drink and what you wear; you are the car you drive and stuff you buy. You must buy what everyone else buys to be accepted. People who choose not to buy are strange and suspicious; marginalize them at all times. Their politics must be repressed.
2. You must buy this thing NOW. You must subscribe to the illusion that you 'got it first'. Buying things later is not acceptable. You must buy when demand is highest and supply is limited.
3. You must believe and support the supposed American ideals of 'freedom of choice' and 'rugged individualism'. But then, you must buy what we tell you to buy and you must eat at McDonald's. You must drive a sport-utility vehicle.
4. We will use modern streamlined methods of industrial manufacturing, production and marketing; but at all times you must refer to our products as 'art', and the manufacturers as 'artists'. Our right to produce these products must always be protected; however, your rights to use the products or criticize them must be limited sharply. We do not wish for you to use the product, or even to enjoy the product - we only want you to buy it.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Really depends where you live...
Here in Israel we pay about 80 NIS (which is about $16) for a CD - and it's not even import taxes (those CD's are manufactured here under a license from the record companies) while making a CD costs about $0.5 (with plastic envelope and a leaf that goes $2) - don't even ask what the singer gets from it...
Hetz (Heunique)
I don't think Wilco's decision to release the album on the internet is going to be an indicator of an online release's ability to sell well.
Wilco is a VERY GOOD band that has an almost "Cult" Status to it. The fans will buy it to support them, but anyone who hasn't heard of them probably won't download it or buy it.
Wilco is virtually the American Radiohead in terms of creativity, direction, and vision. The Woody Guthrie collabrations with Billy Bragg are part of what did this. Reprise is full of morons (look for Neil Young to get the boot next) - and the collective outcry when Wilco was released was hilarious.
I just wouldn't take this as a sign of how all things will go. Wilco will easily sell in the same category of about 500,000 - but I don't think the online prerelease will have much to do with it.
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Me: "Miss Rosen, please repeat after me.
RECESSION! RECESSION! RECESSION! RECESSION!"
The problem is that there really wasn't a recession last year, which is defined by two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. The overall US economy grew 2% last year, and consumer spending was up even more. The part of the US economy that was down was business spending, which was apparently due mostly to a work-off of overly large inventories. Businesses clearly are not the major consumers of music CD's.
The decline in CD sales last year is not attributable to macro economic factors.
One of the new business models that Jay Berman, Chairman and CEO of IFPI, did not cover in this press release is what I consider to be, by far, the most effective to halt the illegal trade of music: Bad Artists.
As long as the recording industry continues down the path of promotion truly horrible music, they will succeed in reducing the amount of pirated music that is exchanged.
If you live in the SE US... The Immaculate Fix
The Skullies
Elohsa
Middleground
Showbread
"Yesterday and Today Records in Rockville, MD "
They're really great community people who DO NOT make a fortune at this. They do it because they love to do it.
The great Linus said in his book, "Just for fun" that when you have a monopoly on a way to bring in water and start charging a crap load for it, someone else is going to invent a newer and cheaper way to bring that water in without having to use yours. Same thing is happening here. CDs were first priced high with a fixed rate because the industry needed to pay for their new equipment. Well, now they still kept the prices high. We all know that. But look at DVDs. They have dropped to around 10 to 20 bucks for old to newest dvds. That's a full fledged movie on them bad boys! Not just some crummy toons. That's why I have embraced paying for my DVDs but haven't bought a CD ever! They definetly need to drop the prices! They doubled them when their production cost dropped by over half! Now they're just peeved that they can't mantain there strangle hold on the market. It's just funny that according the "the market" a new music albumn which cost the recording artist a few grand (at most!) should cost as much as a DVD of a multimillion dollar budgeted film such as Lord of the Rings.
I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I don't understand. I don't know what SACD stands for, so I'm not sure what those two prices you're comparing are. It seems you're saying that this album costs 25 pounds, so what is the "CD" price you're comparing to?
By the way, the name of the album discussed in the thread you linked to is "A New Day Has Come," so I'm not sure if you're looking at the correct price. Here in Canada, new releases are often a couple of bucks cheaper than older works ("All The Way" was released in 1999), though I have no idea if that's the case in the UK.
Clarification would be appreciated.
thanks to the entire industry...we may not all HAVE local stores!!!
in my city we JUST got one within the past year or so... but for the majority of my life the best place to get music was either wal-mart or the vynil exchange(which sells burned cds claiming they are real for high prices...but they have a kickass record collection!)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The point is that most other book publishers use the same arguments that the music industry are using with regards to online copying, insisting on encripted, closed system for distribution etc. however here is a case where those arguements are prooved false with figures to back up those claims.
Yes some of these books are early books in series, others are stand alone books or even entire series. Indeed of the two books where detailed figures are given one (Mother of Demons) is (IIRC) a stand alone novel and the other (1632) was originally planned as a stand alone novel and a sequel has only now been produced due to demand.
Kithran
Well looks like some people are asking for folks to put there money where there mouths are. From this article "Jeff Gerhardt, host of "The Linux Show," and Doc Searls, senior editor of the Linux Journal, are forming a lobbying group called GeekPAC that would try to convince lawmakers to consider developers when they draft laws concerning technology."
Says they are calling on developers and tech supporters to open their wallets to fight the colossal lobbying attempts of companies such as Disney.
I couldn't agree more. All I ever listen to anymore is National Public Radio or an occasional oldies station. The music is good, the music is creative, and the music was not created on the demand of money-hungry executives (unless, in the case of classical music, you want to count Emperor Joseph II of Austria, whom comissioned Mozart).
No statement is true, not even this one.
REM has reportedly the second largest recording contact in the planet with Warner Bros records. They're good friends with Wilco, who were dropped from Warners when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn't "commercial" enough. Some quotes from recent interviews with REM. Only posting because it shows in some ways that one of the biggest bands on the planet (which they, along with U2 are), doesn't give a shit what the RIAA says:
...Really (looking surprised)?
"MS: Well the industry as we've known it is dead. Gravitational shift, complete upheaval and extinction. It makes way for the stuff I just mentioned, and kind of settles the "art versus commerce" dilemma. Where it will go from here I can't say, but it is certainly exciting to watch." - Michael Stipe
"MW: What are your thoughts on the Napster issue and free music over the internet, because it really annoys me.
MS: I'm fine with it..
MW:
MS: I like anything that shakes up the status quo, and in the entertainment industry, not just music, file sharing has certainly done that. We'll see where it goes from here. I have a few ideas of where it's headed."
- MS = Michael Stipe, MW = a country singer from Atlanta.
"Q: How do you feel about people trading R.E.M.'s music for free over the internet?
A: People that are looking for live & rare tracks online, well, that doesn't bother me at all. People that are too cheap to buy the CD's and decide to get them for free (online), well, I personally would feel bad about doing that. I feel like I would be taking something from someone, and I don't believe in that. When you break it down it's stealing, and there's no other way to look at it."
- Mike Mills
And of course the Yogurt man, Peter Buck talking about Wilco and the industry as a whole:
"ERK: Well, you have to look at the music industry right now. Its not conducive to artists like R.E.M., Wilco or anybody with remote talent (laugh).
PB: You know, that's the thing. Warners has been in chaos in America for five years and, you know, I just think they might have dropped the ball a bit this year, and not just for us either. That Eric Clapton record sure disappeared pretty quick.
ERK: Seems like every record they put out disappears...
PB: Linkin Park is the only thing that sold. You know, there are new people coming into Warners this week and next week, and people will probably get fired. It's a constantly changing company and we feel that, well, we have a commitment to them. They have done great jobs for us outside of the United States, and in America, who knows what went on. I certainly wouldn't point my finger at anyone.
ERK: The state of the American music industry, I think, is in a huge flux right now. Grant Lee Phillips is getting more promo for Mobilize than you did for Reveal, and you're on Warners and he's on Rounder. There is something not right with Warners.
PB: Yeah, well, put this into perspective. Aimee Mann sold a quarter of a million of her records out of her apartment with a guy helping her mailing it out. And Warner Bros sold 330,000 of our record in the States, with all the might of Warner Bros behind it. I love the Aimee Mann record, but I don't think there is a huge amount of quality difference between the two. I think her record is really great, she deserved it.
ERK: I've been following the whole debacle since Grant left WBR.
PB: Now, with Wilco gone too, what is happening is that these record companies are doing these huge conglomerations and essentially what they then do is drop half their acts. So instead of having what used to be 8 record companies with 60 acts, it's gotten to 3 record companies with 15 acts.
ERK: Then you have people like Rounder picking up what's left.
PB: When you consider, it doesn't make business sense to drop someone like Wilco, who makes the record company money. They are recouped, they don't owe Warners any money, they make records inexpensively and tour their asses off. They make critically acclaimed records, and sell half a million world wide. And there is always the chance with those guys that Jeff is going to turn out a Top 20 single that will blow one of their records wide open and sell eight million copies. You know, when I heard that they got dropped, I just thought it was the most insane thing I had ever heard. One of the things we signed with Warners about and we were so excited about was catalog, you know, people like Randy Newman for 25 years. Those records are in print. They held onto some really great artists and that is disappearing, and disappearing everywhere, not just Warner Brothers. There is no such thing as signing someone and they do great work and they back them. Now it's, you get one record and you're out.
ERK: Do you think there will be a resurgence or upheaval in the music industry like 91?
PLB: What I think is going to happen is that the major record companies, and they are in this position, where they are run by accountants and promo people who don't know about music. So they're just imitating each other. The promo people go, "We've got to have a boy band" and the accountants go, "We need to sell a few more records."
ERK: I think that is causing a huge thing for record labels. Websites have eliminated the need for distribution deals for some artists.
PB: When you're talking about Destiny's Child, where you can sell 10,000,000 more records if you get the right video and promotional push, that is when you need a major label. If you're talking about someone who is playing...a smaller artist, there almost is no need for a record company. Essentially, I think a lot of things are going to go through MP3, the net. You know, the play music I put up for free. Have you downloaded it?
ERK: Yeah, it was great!
PB: It was something that I wanted to put out there. It was only 7 minutes long. I trimmed it down to what I liked the best. I wanted it out there and didn't want to press it, choose a cover, a title, charge people. Essentially, I just wanted it out there. I'm into the idea of spreading things in that way. Eventually, I'd love to download whole concerts that way."
. . . I'm beginning to hate more these idiot posters who insist that the reason that CD sales are going down is because of the industry's focus on hip-hop, boy bands, and Britney Spears. These are the same people who get fanatical about capitalism and Ayn Rand in other contexts, yet they can't see that there is a huge market for teen pop music. You're not all of a sudden "deeper" than some Jive Records exec because you listen to Sting, morons. If you want to attack the RIAA, do it because they're being stupid about intellectual property, not because you don't like the music they produce--there's always indie and local music, you know.
I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners. - Berke Breathed
I have to pay upwards of $40 US per cd to listen to these artists, because they are not popular here in the US. They are signed and release their CDs in Japan and Europe...Not in the US.
My exposure to Dream Theater pushed me to find other prog rock bands, which let me to the IRC, mainly #mp3_metal on Undernet.
I have downloaded 100+ Gigs of music, a lot of which pretty much suck hard, but artists like Nightwish and Edenbridge are just what I was looking for.
Yes, i have quite the mp3 collection, but I also have quite the Cd collection, finding sites like impulsemusic.com where I can actually FIND these artists's CDs, but of course at a price.
What the hell is the point? Well, these artists, aren't "boy bands", they dont play rap/metal, and they're actually quite talented, so the music industry buries them, ignores them and never gives the audience a chance to hear them. So, my downloading Mp3s has, if nothing else, turned me on to a whole different area of music, that I would have never heard otherwise. Radio is a joke, record stores are more interested in stocking shit on their shelves than variety...
So yeah, I will continue to download Mp3s (and buy the CDs of the artists i LIKE if I can find them for under $40 a pop. I do NOT like having crap music shoved down my throat, I am not sheep, I want to listen to what I like, not radio fodder or what's playing on eMpTyVee.
Just my 2cents =/
One has to wonder when the music industry is ever going to just shut the fuck up and get with the program. How long do they think they can fool people into believing that their lack of success is due to the "evil" of others while they continue to repeatedly deny reality and make really bad business decisions. Enough already.
.
The press release from the IFPI says in part,
So, in other words, 65% of the people in the U.S. who download the most music off the 'Net either:
So overall it appears as though downloads might not be to blame for cutting into sales. One would want to know, for example, how much more and how much less these subgroups bought, and whether they were heavy music buyers before.
This is a rather clumsy blunder in a press release intended (apparently) to scare the music industry and raise sympathy for their plight among their friends in government. A minority of the heaviest users of a new technology are buying less. Hard to feel sorry for the industry.
Since the music downloading situation is, relatively speaking, new, we need to use analogies.
Imagine I have a magic genie. By crossing her arms, she can make a delicious meal appear.
Do I tell her not to, because I am concerned about local restaurants?
I buy most of my CDs off ebay, I can get them for about $6-10 (including shipping) which to me is pretty good prices compared to retail. $15+ for a cd is just too much.
What is a fair price for a cd?
1. Music is life, it's immeasurable
2. I am happy with the current price
3. Cut the price in half
4. $3
5. $1
6. FREE
7. charge it to CowboyNeal
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
oliverthered burbled,
Bull. The first book printed in the West with movable type was the Gutenberg Bible. You may have heard of it. It was a Catholic Bible. The Protestants for their part had no reason to ban the printing press, as it was far too handy a tool for mass production of broadsheets and books.
http://www.moby.com/cms/viewdiary.asp?Diary_ID=635 &ViewType=Next
Once again, my M.O. actually benefits the record industry, but they don't know it or care. I have Wilco's album, and I have every intention of heading to Tower monday night and picking it up at midnight (it helps to have Tower half a mile from my apt).
I buy a lot of CDs, and with very few exceptions, I download some or all of them first. I'm not going to drop $15 on a CD I may or may not like. This practice has expanded my musical tastes extensively, an expansion in purchasing that probably would never have happened without mp3s. The music industry needs to learn not to abuse its customers, because we're fed up with it.
Their sales suck because nobody's buying Britney albums anymore, and they're in between trends. They have to learn to reinvent themselves! Actually, Wilco has some good advice for the music industry (from "War on War", off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot):
You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
If you wanna be alive
In the past, artists needed the promotion power of major labels in order to make money peforming live and/touring. Now, with the internet, any kid in his garage can set up a website for his band, record his band directly to mp3 to his computer and distribute it. There are plenty of music websites to review the material and spread the word about a great band. Then with the demand grows, the band can tour and make money *on their own*. Most people know that artists never made much money on CD sales anyway. I know it's true because my band is doing it right now. We recorded an album with our own cash and have sold several hundred copies via the internet(despite the fact that our MP3s are freely available). That has created the demand and now we tour the southeast US regularly. It's not great money but it's enough and it's fun. Another good example is the band Dredg. Their indie album sold thousands of copies on the internet(MP3s also freely available). They have a real cool indie alt-rock sound, comparitive to Radiohead(for lack of a better comparison)but they are in no way a radio band. The record labels don't like that a band can make it on their own these days, and many bands are making it on their own. I love it. Sure I don't buy major label CDs anymore. It's because the artists suck. I buy plenty of independent artist CD's, and I spend lots of money going to see these local bands. It's the way it's going to work from now on.
If you wanted to buy a painting, would you want it straight from Picasso's hands, or would you rather have Picasso paint it, give it to a producer who messes it all up, and packages it, and then sells it to you for a huge markup? Duh! Get it straight from the artist.
This made me laugh:
"We have the right to protect our exisitng business, and we have a moral duty to protect our artists and songwriters," said Mr Larsen."
Talk about hypocritical/double standard/load of horsecrap. Don't most artists make something ludicrous like a fraction of a penny per disc sold unless they have a renegotiated contract (after some success on previous albums which they got paid jack for)?
My take is that as long as the RIAA doesn't give a shit about the artists, I won't give a shit about the RIAA.
Music artists will work with freelance sound engineers and production people who have studio space and equipment, or who can rent such space. They will sell the content on the web, and in kiosks. Their cash outlay will be minimal, and they will be able to reach any size audience. These kiosks will burn CDs for the consumer, or the web based consumers will recieve files (and freesoftware) to burn the CD's themselves, or keep them in digital form.
This change in music, and book publishing will occur for many reasons. Two of which are:
1) Reduce costs, increase profits. With no brick and mortars, or large company overhead, sales people, marketing (you could freelance this too), costs are lower.
2) Reach even the smallest audience. I might be a musician of really uncommon music. My world-wde audience might be 20,000. A record company/label woudln't sign me because my economies of scale don't scale. But, in the freelance system I might sell my content for 5.00 each. That is 100,000 per year if I produce each year. Take out the fees for the sound engineers time and whomever else helped me, I might make between 40-70k. Hardly starving artist.
i have some friends from india. when they went back i wanted them to get me some music from punjab. i was suprised that cd's cost the same here and there. i wasnt willing to pay that much for the cds and i dont own a tape player. oh well. i'll just have to wait until an indian with a good music collection shows up for gradschool.
-- john
At a recent Virgin Megastore Sale, they were advertising 2 DVDs for $20 (some good, some bad, I bought The Manchurian Candidate and WarGames) or 2 CDs for $25. Less data for more money? Older technology costing more than new? Come again?
That's price gouging, plain and simple (although price gouging usually only refers to necessities), and I won't tolerate it.
Well, nevermind the fact that I can only play those movies in North America . . . one crusade at a time . . .
Do not touch -Willie
In Germany, 18% of 10,000 consumers surveyed said burning CDs resulted in them buying less music ... while 35% of people downloading more than 20 songs per month said they now buy less music as a result.
What about the 82% of germany consumers who bought MORE music because of burning cds? What about the 65 percent of people downloading 20 or more songs a month who bought MORE music as a result?
And how do CD singles fit into the picture? I remember the whole scandal last year about drooping cd sales, only to find in the fine print it was CD singles that were accountable for this statistic, full album sales themselves were either the same or higher. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass... Regardless, you gotta love how people always phrase statistics in a way that suits their view.
Joseph?
..the story was: More music on the CD and much a more expensive production process hence double album prices. Promises were made that should production costs drop then of course album prices would follow...
.nl I recall final LP prices of around USD 9-11 and the uniform CD introduction price of USD 20 (exactly NLG 39.90).
Ha! Production costs did drop dramatically and album prices never followed.
Back in
Sorry I don't know where to obtain independent figures to back this up. Anyone else had/has this perception?
The music industry's "math" -- first begun with consumer reel-to-reel hardware and perpetuated through such media as 8-track, cassette, DAT, mini-disc, CD, DVD and now downloads -- is that every single download equals a lost sale. This is the truly absurd aspect of their argument. They try to make us believe that each and every download represents a lost album sale! Piracy estimates in this regard have ALWAYS been completely misrepresented. MAYBE it could reach as high as 10% of downloads, but I doubt it would even be THAT high. Following their reasoning, the music industry should have died in the '50's with the advent of the consumer reel-to-reel deck. Or in the 60's with 8-tracks, in the 70's with cassettes, in the 80's with DAT and so on and so on. I guess we're doomed to have this discussion every time a new technology ingrains itself into the music industry.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
I was given a cd with 4 ogg albums (well one was a single).
three days later, i owned two of them.
cd sales down because of filesharing?
hardly.
anyway, i dont know about you lot, but im going back to vinly.. lets see them stop me ripping THAT
dms0
used to be Too Much Joy. they have a new album coming out this month which they released initially for free over the internet and recorded using donations via paypal:
. ht ml/1/index.html
http://www.sayhername.com/index.php
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2002-03-27/music
Interesting to note that the recording industry is the only major industry not to blame a drop in sales on the events of September 11th and the ensuing war in Afganistan.
Read Errant Story.
.. eBay. Especially for ones that are out of print (OOP).
Unless it is a particularly collectable and rare CD you can usually find what you want for just a couple bucks on average.
It's called the DOT. Just try to import and license to drive in the US any of the "unfair competition". Nissan Skyline? Ford(UK) Mondeo? Honda Z Turbo? SMART? I could go on and on. US carmakers can and do sell us garbage because they don't need to compete with good cars.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I have more CDs now than I need, and I know a lot of people have more than me.
To be pedantic, nobody "needs" ANY CD's - we could all survive and reproduce in a Pol Pot society where intellectual and creative thought were outlawed and people laboured from dawn to dusk. However, my CD collecton continually grows because I grow as a person. This includes picking up new releases, but also discovering older artists and bands who may have long since disbanded. Did I know 2 years ago how good the Velvet Underground were? Nope. Conversely, I eagerly await an opportunity to buy Microbunny's new album, "hot off the press". If I stop buying CD's, I basically become like my uncle, who has decided that nothing worthwhile has been recorded since 1970. Not so good.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I'd much rather go to Best Buy(or the likes there of) buy a bunch of CR-R's, download someone's CD, then mail the artist $12. That way the "Machine" that is the music business dosen't get jack, which it deserves to get.
In an attempt to reconstruct my late music collection (well over 150 discs, which I still possess the jewel-boxes for, but the actual media for which were stolen in an unfortunate house-burglary which claimed my CD-binder), I've TRIED to download a few albumns in their entirety. For instance, Beck's Mutations consisted almost entirely of good tracks I loved to groove to, and almost every Future Sound of London LP reaches an entire new level of transcendence when listened to holistically, as opposed to a few individual tracks (not that I don't occasionally throw Papua New Guinea or Dead Cities into a mix of singles).
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to re-construct an albumn in this fashion. You end up with a hodge-podge of varying bit-rates, cut off songs, different versions or mixes which may or may not be better (or worse) than the one's you wanted, etc. With the FSOL case, different encoders meant that cutovers between tracks weren't as smooth as in the original albumns. Occasionally, I used to find individuals who encoded an entire albumn on Napster, but since that went away, it's gotten harder (can't search individuals' libraries in Gnutella, for instance).
I've gone back and re-aquired some of my late CDs, generally used from various swap-shops or sites like half.com. I certainly resent paying full price for albumns I already purchased merely because mine were stolen from me. Anyway, the point is, downloading whole albumns isn't rare only because people aren't as interested in doing it...it's also rare because it's a lot harder.
Cut the price in half, with the artists' cut per CD doubling. Then the business might approach "reasonable" and "fair". However, #1 "Music is life, it's immeasurable" is also true. All the more reason for it to be accessible.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Here's a realworld example:
This guy has a bunch of his original songs up on MP3.COM, for all the world to download. So I dragged home four of 'em. Two so-so, one good, one truly compelling. So I got the notion that rather than struggle with my crappy 26k max connexion to hear his other stuff, I'd just buy the album that his wonderful song is on, and hope the rest of its cuts were no worse than what I'd heard already. (After all, most CDs offered on MP3.COM are pretty cheap, $6-$8 or so.)
Then I looked at the guy's prices for his private-studio CDs: $19 each. And decided I'd settle for spending a few nights at MP3.COM, downloading his 128kbit MP3s instead.
I suspect this is a pretty fair example of how downloading MP3s (legal or not) vs the price structure of CDs works for most people.
(An no, I won't say who it was, because I don't think *my* "price threshhold" for CDs should be held against him should someone else like his music $19-per-CD worth.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I used to buy CD's but since they keep getting more and more expensive I don't no more. I guess these greedy people just never have enough money.
My penguin ate my sig
1) Weed out the lousy artists - find something that people will like.
2) Record the music, with the fancy mixers and recording studios so it sounds "right".
3) Distribute the music. With this could be considered promotion.
The real problem here is that the RIAA perform all three functions, but only gets paid at the 3rd step, while the Internet obviates the need for the 3rd step!
Via Gnutella, KaZaA, etc. the method of distribution has largely shifted to the consumer, and people frequently won't pay for something they can do themselves for much cheaper.
Find a way that RIAA, inc. can get paid for 1 and 2 above, and I think we can move on.
And, if you don't think that RIAA is important, and should be disbanded, go to mp3.com and listen to something BESIDES Britney, Nsync, and Pink Floyd. Otherwise, shut up and help figure this out...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I dig it when I come across a good one, but how often does that happen?
NOT!
Hasn't it been demonstrated many times in the past few years that the only artists that are benefitting from the contracts with major record distributors has been those superstars? The smaller, lesser known bands -- the ones that produce the far more interesting music (IMHO) -- get little benefit from deals with the major labels.
And I take ``the recording industry'' to mean the megalabels. CD prices have actually appeared to be decreasing for the music put out by the smaller labels. (But the big music store chains don't seem to be passing those lower prices on to the customers.) I've been seeing prices down in the US$10-$12 range -- sometimes under $10 -- for many CDs put out by small, independent labels. Of course my musical tastes don't run along the lines of an artist who's paid US$30M and told not to let the door hit her in the ass on the way out. So YMMV. Of course, you have to know where to look for these CDs. You won't find them at Best Buy, WalMart, Tower, or any of the other giant chains that the major labels like to sell through. You have to buy most of these CDs over the internet. And we all know just how well the major record labels understand the internet now don't we.
There was an interesting, multipage article in the 4/14 edition of the Chicago Tribune (see ``Rocking Radio's World'' under ``Arts and Entertainment'' at their web site (free registration req'd.) that was describing -- among other things -- the ill-effects of the consolidation of the major radio outlets in the US. It seems that radio listeners are turning elsewhere to hear the music that they want: satellite and the Web. The traditional broadcasters are so concerned about not offending their listeners sensitive ears that they'll program Nsync and Britney Spears clones all day long. One radio exec actually thinks that that's what everyone wants to hear. If memory serves, his comment was ``people only want to hear the hits. I guess that means only the music that the major distributors have decided are to be hits.
I grew up listening to a radio station that converted to a rock format after having been for many years a classical station (Bonus points for the person who identifies this station). Their format for a long time was to have a pair of ``featured artists'' each day. That meant that probably once an hour you'd hear a song by one of the featured artists. I never knew of anyone who complained when the featured artists were, oh, Santana and Stravinsky or the Beatles and Bach. But I do know many people who do not listen to that station any more after its purchase by one of the major radio conglomerates and the format changed to bland, formulaic, hits-only programming. Failure to recognize that their listeners actually like having their ears challenged will -- I can only hope -- be their downfall.
If these folks want to know why music purchases are down, why traditional radio stations aren't being listened to any more all they have to do is ask and listen to the what people are telling them. But I suspect that the music execs are pathologically incapable of doing the latter and it'll take bankrupcy to finally get their attention.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
They blame only piracy and economic downturn for slower sales. I guess we're a bunch of robots programmmed to buy or download a certain number of CD's regardless of the style or quality of the music!
Personally, I don't think I'd ever pay to download music. I want a physical copy. Just let me burn it to ogg. If my hard drive dies, at least I can create the ogg again, but if I pay to download it and the hard drive dies, I'm SOL.
I haven't read through all 200 or so posts, so maybe someone has covered this ground.
Speaking as someone who has worked in the music biz (the wholesale level), and spent more years working in music retail, here are the complexities of the situation you're dealing with:
For anybody who's been in the biz, the idea of collusion on pricing is a given. The problem is, being able to prove it. I've seen enough to leave no doubt in my mind. Do I have enough to prove it in a court of law? I don't know, and I don't have enough money to find out. I also don't have enough faith in the US Witness Protection Program.
The primary cause for the brutal prices at the retail level is simply the business practices of the handful of major players in The Biz. Until their ways of doing business are changed, particularly their accounting practices, nothing good is coming.
When the economy is bad, CD prices go up. When the economy is good, CD prices go up.
And most of it DOES NOT go to the artist. In the early 90s, the Beatles catalog list price went to USD 17.98. If your local record store was buying directly from the label, they were paying around USD 13.00. The (then) three surviving Beatles and Yoko were getting the highest royalty rate of any artist breathing: Each one of them was getting ONE US Dollar per disc.
The rest goes to the label.
The huge monies you see being paid to artists when they sign are not gifts/bonuses. They are ADVANCES. That means they have to be paid back against future royalties.
And the royalty rate is set well in advance. There's no collusion in the fixing of royalty rates, because to have collusion means there is a secret involved.
The artist is also picking up the tab for recording costs, tour support, advertising, and promotion.
Then there's the labels screwing over the retail muisic stores. Open returns aren't allowed anymore. Rather, retailers are allowed to return a small percentage of what they purchase, based on how much they buy.
The majors don't acknowledge deffective CDs. So, retailers often get to eat the cost of those (or the wholsaler, if the retailer isn't big enough to go direct). The majors don't accept returns of product that has been opened. That's why fewer retailers are willing to have a wide variety of music at their listening stations (if they have them at all).
There are plenty more examples I could go on with. Bottom line: The majors screw the wholesaler and retailer, who pass it on to the consumer.
-----
I saw some people comparing prices by including SACD. Not quite the same thing. SACD (and all the other high-end 5" disc audio formats) are more expensive, as is high-end vinyl. The economies of scale are different, so it's not a valid comparison. As an aside, the cost of high-end audio formats are remarkably uniform, and that's comparing CDs to vinyl.
-----
When CDs were launched in 1984, they there was only one price point, and it was USD 16.99. An "A" list LP was selling for about half that. People complained, and the CD prices actually dropped a few dollars. Modes of production have gotten cheaper, and yet the list price of an "A" list CD is USD 18.99. That is in the process of going up to USD 19.99.
Support organized crime: Buy your music from a major label/distributor.
Anonymous Coward? No. Mike Nomad? Yes.
In 2001, DVD sales amounted to $4.7 billion in the U.S. This is the fast-growing medium in history. Is it possible that consumers have a limit to how much they spend on entertainment? Is it conceivable that the drop in CD sales is somehow related to the huge increase in DVD sales? Nah... that theory makes too much sense to be plausible.
has to do with the 90% decline in decent music to purchase. I listened to the radio for the first time in years the other day and quickly remembered why I abandoned it in the first place. I did purchase the new DOWN cd -- and I must say that it almost makes up for the rest of the crap that is out their now days.....I mean mixing rap with rock??? Rap the verse, sing the chorus.....What an evil trick.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
While the intent of downloading music for free might be to tell the RIAA and record companies that they are charging too much for music that's not the message they will pick up on. They'll see that people want the music (it's being downloaded after all) so all they have to do is shut down the ways people get it for free. Then people will start paying again.
They are too dumb to get it. So we have to spell it out for them. Stop buying and stop downloading and they just might pick up on this simple idea: the music they are producing is not worth what they charge. It's not even worth taking for free.
That'll at least tell them the product is flawed. It won't help them fix their methods of distribution but it will send them a loud message that they need to change what they are doing.
Having said that I'll point out that I think most people take music for free due to a willingness to participate in that great American Dream(tm) where you do for yourself regardless of the impact on anyone else.
I mean, it's not a very good form of protest, is it?
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
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Am I missing something? Or are the songs no longer available for download from Wilco's site???
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Ironically enough though, file trading services are turning into corporate radio little by little. The trendy, unwashed masses type songs are the ones that are readily available online. Just like they're the only songs you hear on the radio. So it's difficult to get an idea of how a whole albumn sounds.
One file sharing service that seems to have maintained a low profile (aside from the spyware issues) is Audiogalaxy. It has the widest range of music I've ever seen in p2p. The most obscure bands that have ever released a CD are all there. Bands from non-english speaking countries too. Most of it is sorted into genres. Each artist/band has it's own page with links to pages of other similar bands.
Popular songs that get radio airplay are restricted so you can't download them. That's their concession with the RIAA to prevent from being shut down. In a way, that's a good thing. Because mostly only non-RIAA music is available for download, independant bands will get more exposure. I'm largely unaffected by the blocks on copyrighted RIAA files since I don't want to download those anyway.
If you're worried about spyware, just do what I do (I'm using linux) and create a no-privillege user account to run the audiogalaxy client from. That doesn't prevent them from logging your searches, but then even Google does that.
Okay, so the last ten years has seen a revolution in technology. Specifically, the ability to create, copy, and widely disseminate digital data -- be it music, movies, text, images, whatever.
:)
One side effect of this is that it is now trivially easy for a sizable segment of the world's population (and an even larger proportion of the U.S.'s population) to violate copyright laws by (for example) purchasing music legally, making copies of that music, and disseminating it (illegally) for free to thousands of other people all over the world.
I argue that the primary purpose of law is to impose order upon a society, in a form of natural selection. Societies that lean toward laws and order are more likely to survive than societies that tend toward anarchy and chaos. Laws themselves tend to reflect the moral character of the times they are created in. Laws, like any moral system (or system of controlling behavior) are never absolute or inherent to the fabric of the universe (unless you believe that some god's laws are the "inherent morality" of the universe, but good luck getting me to believe that).
When laws conflict with reality, social stress results. There are those in society who hold the law as (almost?) sacred, and those who (in my opinion, more rightly) see the law as merely the current set of rules we must live under. (Tangent: I was dismayed to see a DEA official state that the DEA "does not want to encourage anything which might lead to a lessening of drug laws" (paraphrased) -- nevermind that the DEA, as a part of the Executive branch of our government, should not have any interest in WHAT the law is, merely in enforcing the CURRENT law, whatever it may be.)
This particular issue of stress has a particular set of industries on one side, and the bulk of the nation's citizens on the other. (I refuse to refer to people as "consumers"; it is demeaning.) Content creation industries -- music companies, film companies, publishing companies, and others who control large numbers of copyrights -- have historically based their entire business model on the idea of scarcity. They could charge money for good like music and books, because those goods could not be easily replicated by individuals. In this respect, books, music, and movies were much like any other product -- cars, power tools, furniture, or even food.
But with the dawn of the Internet and the abilities mentioned above, information like movies, music, and books can be endlessly replicated at almost zero cost by virtually any individual. Hence, the obvious conflict -- many people do not see such copying as "wrong". Why not?
The traditional view of "stealing" or "theft" involves taking an item from someone, such that the person no longer has that item. They have suffered a real, measurable loss in this instance. If I steal your car, your power tools, your furniture, or your food, you no longer have those things. Inversely, if you freely give me those things, you no longer have them to use. But information is different. Nowadays, I can freely give you a COPY of a piece of music, a book, or a movie, and still retain the original. Each of our two copies are indistinguishable -- they are identical and interchangable.
This was vaguely recognized by the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution -- they understood that works (mainly books, at that time) could be bootlegged and sold illegally. They believed that a goverment-granted, and government-enforced temporary monopoly on the right to make money from the production of easily reproducible works, would help the nation, its economy, and its citizens. By giving authors that temporary monopoly, the law would encourage authors to produce more without fear that their work would be profited upon by those who had contributed nothing to it.
This was a fair idea, at the time, and indeed it is still a fair idea today. Unfortunately, the content creation industry has made great efforts toward extending the length of copyright, and if current trends continue, we can expect that no copyright will ever again expire. This obviously goes against the original intent of the copyright provisions, which was to allow authors a chance at fair compensation for their works, in exchange for that work entering the public domain after a certain period. Technically, that is still true, but it is quite obvious that the content creation industry has no intention of letting it continue to be true.
Back to the issue of being able to cheaply replicate any data. The problem here is that since many people do not see copying as theft, they are inclined to believe that the law is wrong and can be ignored. There is obviously a wide variety of views on the subject; some citizens believe in sticking to the letter of the law, while others will do casual copying in certain circumstances, and yet others will massively and freely distribute copyrighted information to anyone who wants it. Even further along are commercial pirates, those who actually try to make money selling copies of copyrighted works.
The content creation industry is generally responding to this widespread "threat" by trying to purchase legislation that specifically preserves their business model. Either they do not want to embrace new technologies and figure out how to profit from them, or they are just lazy, or whatever... but the upshot is that they believe that they have a right to profit, and that it is moral to buy legislation in their favor. Some citizens and government officials believe this as well, and support such legislation, either because they REALLY believe it's wrong, or because they've been bought off by media companies.
Depending on your political views, you may or may not support the idea of direct interference in an industry by the government, for purposes of "saving" that industry. I personally believe the following: A free-market economy is generally a good thing, but if left completely unregulated, it will lead to severe abuse by the most powerful entities in the economy. Certain governmental measures are warranted, in order to prevent such abuse. Rescuing a faltering industry can be warranted, but it depends on the particular instance. If privately owned utility companies (power and water) are faltering and cannot easily be saved by the market, it is acceptable for the government to intervene -- if those companies disappear, millions of citizens may be left without water or power for extended periods of time, which is not acceptable.
However, the content creation industry is not so critical. For one thing, they do not have localized monopolies -- if I live in Westwood (a suburb of Los Angeles), I don't have any option for who provides my water and power. I get it from the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (yes, we make our own power, so no rolling blackouts for us!). If they go under and cannot provide power, then there is no way (aside from moving, which isn't feasible for hundreds of thousands of families to do at once) for me to get water and power until someone replaces the DWP. However, I can get music from numerous companies -- any of the big media conglomerates will have their music available for sale in numerous stores in the area, many of which are owned by different companies. If one (or five, or half) of the music companies goes out of business, I can still get music. Even if all music stores and companies went out of business simultaneously, I would still have all the music I had ALREADY purchased, and could listen to that while new music companies and stores were formed. (Unlike electricity, which you can't really store up in significant quantities.)
Essentially, industries which meet a certain limit of criticality are GENERALLY acceptable targets for government intervention when necessary, but of course that depends on exactly what the situation is. Trying to apply the same rules to everything, all the time, is stupid.
If the content industries can't hack it with their current business models, it will not significantly hurt anything for them to have to adapt -- even if some of them end up going out of business. It makes no sense to attempt to cripple the pace of technology and social development so that a few (relatively small) companies can survive. (By relatively small, I mean, for example, taht General Motors grosses more money in a year than all the music and film companies... COMBINED.)
Well, that's enough rambling for now. Hopefully this will inspire some creative thought in readers.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Downloading music over the internet has gotten me to buy more cds than I'd like to admit. Using Napster, Morpheus, Scour, Audiogalaxy, etc, I've discovered a wealth of great bands that would not have been known to me otherwise.
A big gripe about the music industry is that they do not promote talent as much as image, which is a pity. While a company is busy shoving their newest plastic idol down the throats of the public, an earnest, talented band is being completely under-marketed and unheard by many who could appreciate them.
A while ago (quite a while ago,) a friend sent me a link to an article written by Courtney Love about her opinion of Napster, mp3s, filesharing, etc. I am not really much of a Courtney fan, myself, but I read it anyway. It remains one of my favorite arguments for filesharing today.
Essentially, it said that,
1- Buying a cd does not directly promote the artist. They rarely see the money.
2- mp3 quality is often encoded so that the sound is not as good as what you could buy in the store.
3- If you like a band, you can go out and buy their cd, and now own higher-quality versions of the tracks you already have enjoyed, instead of mediocre rips.
A good example of utilizing the possiblities of mp3 is what quite a few smaller bands do. Rosebud (http://home.mindspring.com/~macnab/) offers lo-fi (but still listenable) full-length versions of the tracks on their cd. On another site (unfortunately, I can't think of the name of the band for the life of me,) they had used streaming audio in such a way that, while on the site, you could listen to all of the group's releases in their entirety.
It's too bad that the RIAA doesn't see the potential of the filesharing phenomenon.
EYE Magazine (Toronto free paper)
;-D
By: JOANNE HUFFA
eye
"Maybe the Internet's the answer," he says. "It's one of the few things that has a bit of the traditional punk to it -- a DIY approach, an accessibility. All those things fit into my idea of what punk's all about."
As for the endless debate about music-sharing sites, Bragg feels trading files is akin to radio and mixed tapes.
"It would be OK if there were lots of little labels trying to make great music," he posits, "but when it's five transnational corporations who can't even deal with Mariah Carey -- Jesus Christ! Never mind the poor artists in Finland. Where are you ever gonna find that Finnish music in your local record store? You ain't. But if you can find someone in Finland to download that music for you, then good luck to you.
"It would be great if I was selling millions of records in Canada and people were swapping my files. You wouldn't hear me complaining about it. There's nothing worse than rich people whinging -- those poor, poor fuckers in Metallica."
rotfl
Blah Blah SMACK!!!! You clearly missed the point on that one, knuth! Im sure oliverthered knows all about Johann Gutenberg, that wonderful invention called the press, and that of course the first thing that ol' Johann printed was the bible! Who doesn't know that? I doubt that you really studied much in school. If you had you would probably remember that the first printed bible was actually an act of defiance against the repressive church. Maybe *I* am the one rambling aimlessly. Or maybe *you* should take a step back and take a look at the big picture before posting such inane drizzle. Your facts are right on on, but so are oliverthered's. You know not enough for the words that you speak and those you denounce. post---> /dev/rediculous
All those years ago when I was young, home taping was the only way to get cool music. In Toronto, I would hear some really cool stuff on the spirit of radio cfny (102.1), and a friend would tape it for me. I would either tape over, or buy the bands music. Same diff with Napster/Usenet, if they are good, they get my money.
The misic Industry is pumping out some real crap these days, now they are paying for it. I have a hard time feeling sorry for these jerks who are trying to force rehashed garbage on the buying public.
Internet or no internet, the music industry would be in serious trouble anyway. If a company has a bad product, no one will buy. Dont blame the internet on your troubles.
If the music industry is as sophisticated as any other big business (and you've got to believe so, given the profits they crank out), They've got plenty of people whose sole responsibility is forecasting sales/profit curves and the like.
I'm sure they determined long ago the multiplier for $ spent in marketing hype : CD price charged. And think about it, although we grumbled, before Napster and other peer-to-peer networks came up, most of us bit the bullet and paid.
Now that we have more options for free (as in not purchased) music, all the finance-geek-spreadsheet-models are out the window. What did they do? Panic, cry foul, legal action, yadda yadda.
If/Once they find a way to make $$ on p2p, they'll be able to plug it into their financial models and things will calm down again.
[digression]
Salon.com has an article today about how game companies have shared code to allow game mods, and how it's helped grow their business. Record companies should take note.
[/digression]
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Downloading entire albums can be diffucult, however I managed to find entire albums of a bunch of Pink Floyd music online. These were the entire album in a single mp3 file 35-75MB in size.
At least part of the music industry doesn't have its head in the sand.
Any time a mention is made of the RIAA we always get the young, incredibly arrogant dillweeds - no doubt still in college and therefore infallible - who blithely go about condemning pop as 'crap' music and telling everyone that if they had any taste at all they'd listen to 'alternative bands'. These same little boys also wear baseball caps backwards and think that this somehow makes them look cool (rather than just too damned stupid to figure out which way the cap actually goes).
Something you little egomaniacs need to know before you pull your dicks out of shorts and start playing with yourselves here:
- music is a matter of taste. As in, I've got mine and you've got yours. It isn't an "I've got taste and you don't affair", no matter how bloated your ego is. If you think otherwise you need meds, and lots of them.
- consider the possibility that alternative bands aren't popular is because *most people think they suck*. This is a more likely explanation than the idea that you have better taste than everyone else, or that you're smarter. Odds are that half of the people out there have better taste than you, and are smarter than you.
- the music you listen to says little about your character, abilities, mores, or ideals. Listening to alternative bands doesn't make you any more enlightened than believing in crystal power does. Claiming otherwise just makes you look dumb, although this is probably an accurate assessment of your intellect if you do so.
- popular music isn't popular because the RIAA brainwashes people into liking it. This is just another ego argument (i.e., "i'm superior and therefore immune to brainwashing, while the rest of you are a bunch of sheep"). Popular music is popular because *alot of people like it*. Deal with it.
I'm probably too late here but man am I sick of those little college boys blathering on with their stock lines "popular music sucks anyways!" or "support local bands and stop buying cds!". Enough already. Try acting like an asshole in a novel way for once; your lines are tired and old and rapidly becoming pathetic.
My rant for the day.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
.... title says it all
The best way to show the record industry just how stupid they are is to vote with our pocketbooks. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is supposed to come out April 23... how would the RIAA react if it acheived record (no pun intended) first week sales, after being available for free on the internet for 6 months? (Note: I beleive the the tracks they put up on the internet were raw recordings from the studio sessions, not the final mixes that are going onto the CD. So the strategy does make sense -- if you likely the raw tracks, the final product will be even better!)
(How many people have downloaded an entirely album, every song? Be honest.)
(raises hand) I have! I downloaded the Footloose & Top Gun soundtracks a few months ago when I was organizing my media. I still have a box full of cassette tapes and ran across these two soundtracks, which were two of my favorites back in the 80s, and I wanted the MP3s. So, I downloaded them. Even went so far as to grab a jpg of the album cover from cdnow and store it with my new MP3s.
I don't feel a bit guilty about it and no scum sucking bottom feeding RIAA bastard child is going to change that.
I have to admit though, it was painful and time consuming. Would have been easier to just buy the CD, but I didn't want to pay for something I already owned.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
There still are lots of musicians who make music just for the love of music. A significant number of these people call themselves "bluegrass musicians". In general there are many forms of American Roots Music (we're the great melting pot, remember?) and very few of many great musicians keeping the wonderful traditions alive are getting rich.
Pay at most 10 for an album, of which the artists make at least 2 .
Um, why should the artist, who does 99% of the work, get less per album than the distributor who simply puts it on trucks and ships it out the door? Switch those numbers around and I'll join you!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Sales might have had something to do with a global recession, or perhaps other significant events?
The only plausible account is the devastation of Napster. Prior to the Eleventh Circuit decision destroying Napster at the peak of its popularity and success, and flying in the face of the best year the music intustry ever had -- arguably because of massive "try and buy" conduct of an excited marketplace, the RIAA killed the entire rush -- reduced music sharing to a techie corner, and thereby killed one of the best business models for selling music to come in years.
Cause and effect? They killed Napster, now they are losing sales...
Does the downturn in cassette sales reflect the impending obsolescence of cassettes? Is the downward turn in singles sales possibly related to the fact that buying the entire CD costs a couple of dollars more than purchasing a single? Did album sales drop because people were out of work and couldn't justify spending the markups on music last year? The Recording Industry has been gouging consumers and artists since before Elvis signed his first contract, and now that there is easier free distribution (not like anyone ever made a mix tape for their friends before this...), they're taking advantage of incredibly flawed laws to impose their will on the consumer. Whatever.
you do realise he's talking about a CD he *BOUGHT* legally ?
In 30 years he will have the CD still. The issue is making copies of tracks for personal use: in his car, in his PDA and on his PC.
Bitter and proud of it.
When it comes to file sharing up, music sales down, I think we can pretty much assume that those nerds are to blame.
FILE SHARING HAS HURT LUXURY CAR SALES!
It can be shown that as file sharing has increased, the numbers of super-high end luxury cars has fallen. Since these two things happened in the same time period, they MUST BE linked!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Assuming the RIAA is actaully telling the truth for a change and CD sales actually are dropping, then it's for one or all of the following reasons:
1 - Price fixing - CD prices getting higher
2 - Promoting BS bands - Pushing bands with little or no talent (ie Limp Bizkit, Staind, Puddle of Mud, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc.)
3 - "Copy Protection" - By trying to prevent people from copying music onto their computers, all they've really done is pissed off a bunch of fans resulting in boycotts and CD returns.
I say screw the RIAA. From now on I'm gonna download all my CDs and pay directly to the artist using fairtunes.com (no i'm not affiliated with them).
My spoon is too big.
How can a plastic disk sell for so much? Well it certainly doesn't cost that much to make, so lets go down a level, it must be mastered - mixed and tweaked by an engineer.. oh, no sorry, that can't be right, because in all the 'behind the scenes' shows i've seen, the producer sticks it all in 'Cool Edit' and plays around a bit. Ok, so what about recording. Studios are full of expensive equipment and they charge by the hour. Oh, but today's albums can be all recorded in 1 or 2 takes because the artists are so hopeless that another try won't make a difference. Alright what about the artists, i mean, surely they cost a bit? well, actually no. Now-days, all bands and singers are 'found' by TV shows called Pop-Idol, Pop-Stars, or Making the Band. The shows can be made on the cheap with a rented out hall and a couple of cameras. You can drag them out for weeks by eliminating potentials with audience votes. And the grand final on its own can generate enough advertising revenue to feed a small 3rd world country.
So where does all this money go? well, cocaine. This expensive drug can be sure to set you back a bit, and we all know how much those big execs love to snort. So the real pigs here aren't in fact the executives/producers whatnot, they themselves are victims of overpricing. Its actually the drug dealers who are making all the money, and the reason is monopoly. Yes, because drugs such as coke are outlawed in most countries, very few people are willing to take the risk and sell them. And, those that do take big risks. This allows them to charge almost as much as they like for their merchandise, and in a free-market, this is simply not on.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
There may be a decline in music sales because of digital piracy, but it doesn't explain the huge drop in sales that we see right now. The explanation offered by the music industry is too simple. There is no single cause.
1.) Practically every business - not just the music business - is reporting slow sales in the last year and/or the year before. People aren't as easy with their money as they were two years ago. In case you haven't heard the news: This is a recession right now.
2.) I find it scary that the music industry has one target market, only: 10 to 21 year olds. I'm 30 and I haven't found a compelling reason buying an album since almost five years. I bought less than 1 album/year since that time. Come on - I'm not that old and my music taste used to be called "mainstream". Yet the music in the charts right now does not appeal to me and my buddies. I don't "like" music anymore. I don't care about the stars being hyped these days.
3.) The music and film industry have both been very successful in hurting their own image. I didn't care about them some five years ago, now I detest their actions and decisions. And even my non-geek friends who don't care at all about DMCA etc. have become suspicious. The public is more and more wary of these industries, it seems, and has lost the respect for their public figures (the spokesmen) and most of all their employees (the artists).
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
Considering these I don't think Record Industry will achieve anything, at least in my case, by introducing more copy protected CDs.
(note: I, too, believe record companies gouge consumers, that they're evil, etc.)
here's a scenario: say, file sharing catches on and tens of millions of people share music instead of buying it. the younger generation, for whom file sharing has almost always existed, say, just
and, say, we're just seeing the leading edge of this trend. note, for the scientists in the crowd who are going to claim that they buy *more* music because of sharing instead of *less* -- you don't have a control. and hey, be honest anyway. who are you kidding?
nobody here talks about the other scenario where everyone loses. music industry crashes (yay!). tens of thousands of potential artists lose inspiration because financial incentive disappears (oops). music becomes something you can only see in a club.
recorded music as shareware. something for 13 year-olds and those with day jobs.
The price/volume problem you describe is certainly well known in microeconomic. But you even admit that it's very difficult to figure out the best pricing point esp. if you have competitions that dynamically adjust their prices. For instance, you wouldn't want to trigger a price war, so you'd be careful how you adjust your prices.
The truth is, neither you nor the record company, knows if their net profit will go up if they drop their prices. There is no way to be certain that the increased volume will make up for the decreased margin. Thus, this microeconomic 'fact' is useless in the current discussion.
The same argument applies to the you tax example. Supply sider claim that lowering taxes will stimulate economic activites so that the volume makes up for the lower tax rates. However, there is no theoretical certainty to this and scant empirical evidence. Worse yet, this argument depends on an entire macroeconomic loop which is contingent on a panoply of factors with uncertainties magnitudes larger than the microeconomic case. This Laffer Curve theory is indeed 'laff-able'.
The other obscene thing is that, if when the record pressures your government to impose CD levies, they will use the inflated CD price as the basis for calculating how much they "lose" every time someone buys a blank CD.
The more money they get from levies, the more incentive they will have to boost their "price". They'll blame the declining sales on piracy of course, and demand an ever greater levy on blank CD's.
Those are just a few of the economic errors that plague CD levies.