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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.
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.
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.
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
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
... 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 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.
So, what you're saying is that Offspring didn't pay attention to the contract they signed and then, when they wanted to do something that the contract didn't allow, they were "opressed by 'The Man'"?
Hmm... is the industry at fault for protecting what they own or are the Offspring at fault for giving up "their music" when it was convienent for them to do so to make money and then decide to complain when they'd rather be the "cool" band who gives away music?
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?
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
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 **IA may be guilty of inventing scapegoats, but that doesn't mean the antis should too.
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
If music CDs were like AOL CDs, music stores would give them away like candy. Then, when you got home, you'd only be able to do anything with it as long as you paid $19.95/month. And since it's online authentication, you wouldn't be able to listen to them in the car. In short, you're really comparing two completely different things here.
Or to put it another way, if an AOL CD is really equivalent to a music CD, you don't need music CDs. You can just get free AOL CDs instead, and rock on to the groovy sound of "You've got mail!"
Besides, the price of music CDs has nothing to do with the physical medium. It costs money to produce the information on a music CD. The information on a music CD has value to many people. The physical CD is just a way of getting around the problem of transferring that information. In short, it's the information that has the value -- you'd think that out of everyone, Slashdotters would understand this.
(And yes, I'm well aware of the "information wants to be free" argument. Without supporting or condemning that philosophy, it doesn't change the facts above -- whether it's a fully GPL'd Linux distribution or a commercial, shrink-wrapped game, it still costs money to produce and has value to the users.)
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 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
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
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.
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.
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.
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!"
While I agree with your points in your earlier posts about taste being subjective and people buying what they like, there is still the issue of what the vast majority of people ever get to hear. This, I take it, is what you mean by having a monopoly on the distribution of music.
So much marketing is put behind pop superstars. Images of success, beauty, and wealth are invoked in music videos, cross-promotions and even the music itself. Like much of what drives consumerism, people buy into an image or brand as much as they buy the product itself.
I find it shame that a lot of beautiful and/or important music remains unheard by many people because it can't be tied into a huge marketing campaign.
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot