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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.
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..
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?
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.
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
... 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?
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}"
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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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?
"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.
there was a poll not too long ago which asked high school football players what they believed they would be doing. ALMOST ALL of them said they believed they would be playing in the NFL. even though, statistically speaking, ALMOST NONE of them would be.
"statistics are for somebody else. not me. i can't be a statistic."
-rp
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
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.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
This isn't hypocrisy, this is the free market economy in operation.
:-)
Think about it - the whole point of the free market is that the cost of goods and services will reach the level that people are willing to pay for them. If more and more people are downloading, copying or otherwise getting their music for free, it appears that the market is saying that music is overpriced. Thus, the price should fall to a level which people are prepared to pay. (Note that there is no guarantee that this level is not zero)
By outlawing the methods by which people obtain music for free, you are in effect attempting to artificially keep the price of music higher than the market wants it to be, thus making the market less free.
Incidently, your comment about free speech is wrong. Freedom of speech guarantees just that - the freedom to say whatever you want. It does not, and should not, guarantee you an audience. In other words, you should have the freedom to speak, and I should have the freedom not to listen. I should also have the freedom to make whatever comments about what you say that I like, including calling it socialist propaganda
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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
I do not call myself liberalistic. I usually describe myself with word you might actually find in a dictionary.
However, I will still not slam this comment as "socialistic propaganda". Instead, I shall slam it as "incoherent troll".
--
E_NOSIG
"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.
I really see this situation as capitalism at work. With the ~$20 "fixed" price point not all the buyers getting satisfied(you could argue most are not), and a black market of sorts has opened up.
Downloading mp3's and writing them to cd is not free. It takes hardware, blanks, and TIME. What the record industry should be doing is figuring out ways to get these people to actually buy the cds. I am not sure how much profit is in each cd sold, so I don't know what is the absolute lowest they can go. BUT, if I could buy cds for around $7-$10, I would buy many more to just see if I like them.
"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...
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.
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.
Don't confuse moralism, idealism and economy. You are being moralistic and confusing it with idealism. The irony is that this a simple economic problem of value adding. Any sound business model is based on adding value to something and subsequently charging for the resulting product.
Most of the cost represented by the price of 20$ for a cd is not related to the music creation process (i.e. the artist's work). Instead it is related to the production, marketing & distribution of plastic discs containing the music. Napster has 'reliefed' the record industry of these tasks so the record industry is no longer adding any value to their products. Given this reality, our capitalistic system is simply functioning properly and the only result can be that either the record company finds a new way of adding value to their product or will simply die.
The record industry has managed to slow this process by price fixing, seeking legal protection, persuading politicians to adapt the law when that didn't work, trying to persuade hardware manufacturers to adapt their products and many other tricks. However, they have so far failed to add value to their product and have even started to remove value from their products (e.g. the celine dion cd that makes your pc crash).
It's as simple as this. Because the record industry is no longer adding value they are losing market share.
Consider the invention of book printing. Before book printing, clerics would spent months or even years manually copying books. The resulting volumes were expensive. Then book printing was invented and greatly reduced the cost of creating a copy. This probably killed the market for hand copied books. Is that bad? Is that evil? No it's a simple case of no longer adding value. Just like hand copying books is no longer a good business model, creating little plastic discs with music on them has also become a waste of time.
Jilles
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.
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.
I do believe (please correct me if im dead wrong here) that the recording industry gets a percentage of CD-R sales.
You are mostly wrong. The music industry does not get a cut of ordinary CD-R sales. They do get a piece of the action from music CD sales, which are probably a tiny fraction of the overall CD-R sales.
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
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.
Except that in a free market economy, if the price that "people are prepared to pay" for an item falls below the cost of production, then nobody will produce the item. The cost of production of something like a Britney single is quite high - the technology which makes it sound like she can sing, video production etc (in fact chart singles rarely make money). If nobody will pay for it, then nobody will produce it (hallelujah!).
This may seem like a Good Thing when it comes to the talentless, manufactured chart acts today, but ultimately it will affect everyone. Can bands like Radiohead really make enough money touring to pay for making "free" records? There is a cost.
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
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
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
> The recording companies has costs.
AKA "payola", long illegal in the USA, still done under a pretense of it being something else.
In addition to being illegal, payola is commonly believed to be the major cause of crap being played on the radio.
Add in the problem of having one company own nearly every radio station in the USA, and switching stations between formats at the drop of a hat if they think it will earn them a dollar more next year, and you start getting a picture of an industry that's very, very sick.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
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.
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."
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.
Damn, I never have mod points when I need them. I agree with this wholeheartedly. I've actually stopped downloading music because it's too time consuming and there's no guarantee of quality. I haven't even installed Kazaa or Morpheus since my last rebuild.
I've also NOT started buying CDs again. I've pretty much given up on music for the time being. If there was an official source of reasonably priced, high quality, unprotected MP3s, or even if CDs came down to under $10 each, I would gladly pay for them. Until then, I'll just do without.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
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
and that means that the product was not a viable product.
Music is in no danger of falling below production costs.at the volume that music sells at, the first 100,000 CDs sold covers the cost with many hundreds of thousands more to spare.
now if the price of CDs were to fall to about $10 that first 100,000 CDs would only cover the cost of a 1 million dollor budget (a large budget for any production). but what about the next million CDs sold...well that is free and clear profit. everything past 100k is free and clear profit.
the RIAA is looking to get their profit margins up rather than looking at the big picture and realising that taking a smaller margin will actualy get them more money.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Start buying records. Big, black, beautiful records. You might want to warn your friends, because soon you'll start planning trips to cities in other states, including hotel stays, just for record shopping. You'll start spending weekends "flipping stacks". Beats the shit out of crouching in front of your computer for hours on end, burning worthless CDs. Plus, records are usually
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
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.
It's as simple as this. Because the record industry is no longer adding value they are losing market share.
The convienence of unrestricted MP3 adds more value then any thing I think would come from the RIAA.
Mp3's make up over 75% of my listening time but IMHO they do not come close to the actual CD quality. Each person is different but it boils down to quality vs convienence. I use MP3's primarily on my handheld player, and at any of the networked computers in my house. My car is split between mp3's and audio cds and my home stereo, although capable of mp3 playback via my DVD player or my networked laptop, rarely plays anything but an audio cd. Each one of these locations is fully capable of both audio disk and compressed audio. In my car and home stereo, I have decent equipment and I am listening for the pure enjoyment and prefer the relative quality of the raw uncompressed audio, with everything else, convienence is the main factor. The cd's I purchase are a delicate balance between price and quality of the audio. A change in price or inital quality could swing my habits drastically in the other direction.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
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. For those of you with Morpheus (or anything really), try this experiment. Try searching for an artist who has a song currently on the radio, see if you can get more than just that song from a file trading service. Most likely not. You'll find plenty of hosts that have that "hit single" but barely anyone has any other songs off of the album. It's like MTV is running Morpheus. Which is why I stopped even using the damn thing, I can't make a decision on whether or not the CD is worth my money from that one pre-packaged, homogenized for the masses song.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
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.
The industry at is at fault for being greedy bastards, and the government is a bastard for allowing them to do it. Becuase work for hire is allowed in this situation the artist (and I use the term loosely for the majority of them) is held over a barrel because nearly any publisher will force this on them. I'm not saying they have a right to get paid to play music, but if they want to try, they shouldn't be held back by sickening corporate practices.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
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?
yeah, and i'm sure if you polled them for who could do basic 1st semester calculus, your results would be far far lower. The illusion that hard work and perseverance can make you a star is still rampant and spread wildly by those for whom it benefits (think of the countless girls (and guys) that move to NYC or Hollywood hoping to be a star, and either ending up working as waiters/waitresses, or just moving back home six months later. America, Land of Shattered Dreams and Unattainable Hopes.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
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 [addict.com].
Maybe more important to creation of the music and the live presentation of it, but not to unwashed masses of teens who buy it. Take 100 average teenagers and how many of them actually own a turntable and have vinyl records in their bedroom? Not a huge percentage I would wager.
Yea, the little memo comment was a bit agressive, but don't take offense 'cause none was meant. Most of the young teens that I've come in to contact around here don't know that much about records - all they've ever had has been CD's and cassettes (which they seem to look down on).
In my experience, saying the term "B-side" to them usually gets me a blank stare. On the 'flip side' though, these kids usually know better than I how to burn a CD with more than 77 minutes of music on it and not wind up with a toasted disk...
.. 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.
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?
Are they?
I'm not trying to troll here, but are CD's really overpriced? Or do you just think that they are?
Assuming that record labels traditionally charge whatever they think the market will bear, I would suggest that, yes, they're overpriced in the US since American CD sales have declined for the past two years running. In other words, the market isn't bearing the price the labels want to charge. On the other hand, prices are probably about right in the UK, which saw about a five percent growth in sales last year, if memory serves.
Which artists are producing music on DVD's? Apparently I missed that one...
Not many new titles have been coming out on DVD yet, though a number of older albums have been remixed for 5.1 over the past year or two. Rhino has a bunch in their catalogue, and I believe that Queen's "A Night at the Opera" was recently released in 5.1.
how is this a 'better' deal than CD's and why would DVD's drive sales of CD's down?
Because the audiences for CDs and DVDs are, if not the same, then similar. Most large music chains also stock a decent-sized DVD selection, and with DVD players and titles so cheap these days, they've clearly made some deep inroads into the marketplace. To look at it another way, the consumer who might have spent $30 a week on CDs two or three years ago now also has a DVD player and is just as likely to split that same $30 between a CD and a DVD.
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.
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
Which artists are producing music on DVD's?
Linkin Park has one that has just come out, or is about to come out. Slipknot has one from their first album. Metallica has at least one, and I'm pretty sure there is a Perl Jam one. These are just ones I remember seeing at Fry's, where they actually had a whole endcap of DVD's from musical artists.
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.
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.
If "everyone" is doing something, then there is a strong case for de-criminalizing whatever that "something" is. If the current recording businessmodel really is so bad that it can't survive a free and unfettered internet then perhaps it needs to be revised.
Now, everyone could put cable operators completely out of business through piracy but they don't. The same is true for computer software. So there is clearly a balance that can be struck between what the market is willing to pay for and what it will just plain "steal".
If the Net hasn't put PC game publishers completely out of business by now, then it won't do the same to record labels.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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
If the product isn't worth purchasing at any price then this will indeed happen. So what? That's what's *supposed* to happen to products which are worthless, or become worthless over time (note the raging demand for buggy whips).
If the product isn't actually worthless then prices will stabilize at what people are willing to pay. That's how a free market works.
Note that I say "that's how a free market works". The U.S. is not a free market, not even close; with corporate welfare and protectionism it's edging more and more towards a loose command-style economy as time goes on (i.e., "you can play at being a free market so long as you stay within this narrowly-defined box, and we decide not to change the rules"). So although a free market would continue to support music (at much lower prices than those demanded by the RIAA) there's no guarantee that the mechanism would work properly in the U.S. economy.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Now how do you know you like these songs before you buy the album?
By downloading them and listening to them. How else? And exactly how is this different from listening to them on the radio? You may be satisfied with a song ripped at 128k, just as you may be satisfied with one taped from the radio; but I sure won't settle for such low quality.
If you truly were a fan, let alone supporting them, you'd want to have their Cover Art, the actual cd, maybe even Vinyl.
Moralistic blathering. I'm not a 'fan' with an aspiration to suck artistic cock as if it were some sort of ethical imperative; I'm a customer. I decide what I want and what I don't want; what the band wants, and what you want, doesn't mean jack in this context.
I want to be sold single tracks because most bands do one or two or three good songs, and really suck - and suck hard - on the majority of their album (of course, *which* bands is a matter of individual taste). I feel no imperative to 'support the band' by buying the dogshit with the diamonds. You can do that, but I have better uses for the money I earn working.
But really, fuck the band. They aren't a religion; they're a goddamned business for all their pretentions at 'artistry'. They don't deserve any special consideration regardless of what their fans think.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
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?
(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
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...
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.
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!"
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).
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You may like my a cappella music