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Music Industry Staggers While Film Industry Blooms
GLX writes "The LA Times is running an article that explores the idea that while piracy has been the (supposed) bane of the music industry, it has yet to be felt in the video industry..." "Yet to be felt" might be too strong, but DVD sales are booming, and don't seem to be much crimped by illegal copying.
...name Funky Dory the "best unknown band"...
no, wait... that was Chris Anstey.
and I'll say it again. The music industry isn't worried about illegal copying for the current market conditions - they're concerned about the future.
At the moment, someone downloads a song, and if they like it, they go out and buy the album. In the future, someone would download a song, and if they like it, download the rest of the album because broadband is normalised.
I'd take a DVD over a DivX any day. I like the extra features on them and the quality is noticeably better.
MP3s offer the same quality (almost) as CDs and the music industry has no extra offerings on their discs except a bunch of songs that you haven't heard on the radio, usually with good reason.
hmmmm, bandwidth?
A music CD ripped to MP3 typically takes somewhere around 60 to 100 megs of space, with individual tracks averaging around 5 megs each--and can be downloaded separately. A movie of good-length typically takes around 600-700 megs in DivX ;-) format, currently the most popular "moviez" format. This cannot be downloaded and subsequently enjoyed in chunks.
Pirating movies takes a substantially higher amount of bandwidth per movie than small-time MP3 warezing, and the bulk of the music industry's loss comes from the high amount of 'small-time" MP3 pirating.
Slashdot does not condone piracy of music, videos, or software. The above information is presented for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as approval of any illegal action.
Slashdot's Attorney
The reason the film industry is booming and the music industry is declining is because video files take longer to download.
Give it a few years when everyone has a 10Gbps connection and I predict the collapse of both industries.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
IMHO, there is very little difference between mp3 and CD quality. Yes, there are differences, and audiophiles will point this out every time. But the fact is, most users don't care.
Now DVD's vs DIVX. Not only can the quality suck (artifacts all the time), but the sound can be totally out of sync, which is really really annoying. Plus, unlike mp3 CD's which can be played in just about any new CD player, DIVX does not play in standalone DVD players without hacking the hardware.
But, this could change...
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
I'm really tired of stories like/similiar to this. Everytime I see one, I have to think of something I once saw another slashdotter say...
Anyone who knows anything about statistical analysis knows that the results of a wide-scale advancement (ex. movie piracy) will not start to show up properly (read: without major bias) until about five years. Only then can you actually start to analyse what's happened to the industry.
That being said, I still don't think that movie piracy will have much of an impact. Even my uncle knows that the movie quality is crap, and if he really wanted to see it he would see it in a [home, real] theatre.
"How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
There's a difference between earning $100M in the box office, and *spending* $100M to make radio stations and Top 40 charts play music that doesn't have public appeal behind it.
"Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
And therein lies the problem.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I suspect a reason for this is the rather poor quality of most 'moviez' out there. A lot of people tend to see movies (and listen to music) as soon as it comes out, but while music is immediately available in a digital format, movies are not. Often you have to wait until some pirate gets ahold of the DVD version and rips it to get a halfway-decent file. Thus it's not anywhere near as easy to simulate the experience of going to a movie on your computer (compared to purchasing an audio CD).
Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp. are preparing to sue individual song swappers... I'm curious how this will be done.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
It's good to know that some media in general has a good head on its shoulders. Frankly I couldn't care less if the music industry crumbled (It won't). In fact who here would give a damn if tomorrow the three top music suppliers went bankrupt? Not many of us thats for sure.
I'd bet piracy has NOTHING to do with the music industry not doing so well. The movie industry has been makeing lots of great movies lately - the music industry are mostly trying so sell that pop shit (you know the music that goes 'dunk,dunk,dunk,dunk,dunk'). The so called artists are mearly copying eachothers, sampling, copying and stealing. Maybe it's time for a change. Just my 2 cents worth.
When the CD soundtrack costs as much as the DVD withe the movie and more, that explains a LOT.
DVD movie prices are going down, and consumers feel they have value. They don't feel the same way about overpriced CD's.
Wouldn't the fact that movies can be rented make a huge difference in pirating?
With a CD, you can't rent it at a low cost to see if you like it. With a movie, however, for just a few dollars you can enjoy the movie, and if you want to, purchase it without fear of wasting your money.
I just pooped your party.
Oh, I'm pretty damn sure that piracy is the bane of the music industry.
It's just that they sell truck loads of absolute rubbish to 14 year old Britany Fans/N-Sync/Backstreet Boys/etc who don't go and download their music.
This is what makes up a very good proportion of the vast amount of money they make.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
One thing that may (hopefully) come of this is further growth in the Video Music DVD. I, for one, won't buy movies b/c I *never* want to watch a movie twice. Certainly not every day. But, I've got 20 or so Music DVDs (Bluegrass, Jazz, etc). These have the replayability of a CD but are much more engrossing. I have yet to sell one back to a used trader... I like them so well. I'm hoping to see more and more inventive DVDs in this field.
But I just don't bother. I generally get my DVDs cheap enough, that its worth it to me. The quality is much better, and I'm a sucker for special features, like Director Commentaries, and shit like that. I still download a bootleg of a soon to be released flick (ie still in theaters) but thats really about it. CDs on the other hand, you get 99.9% of the use, with 1% of the cost, whats the point? A movie costs the studio $100 million, I can buy it for $17. A Record that cost maybe $1 million in studio time is $20 at the Mall. That makes SO much sense...
Film "PIRACY" is just as rife on the net as music "PIRACY", a few are put off by the increased size but belive me even dial up users can download a movie given a decent news server with a retention of a least a week.
However maybe the execs in the movie business are a little saner! I mean in the music industry they probably count someone thinking about buying an album and then not as a sale lost to "PIRACY". Maybe the movie execs realise that not even pirated copy is a lost sale (in fact not even 50% of them are lost sales, probably higher)
OTOH maybe people prefer to buy films as they are more of a FIXED place commodity, that is you watch them on your tv, where as CDs cripple music buy tying them down to using them in a place where a player is.
What I mean is music is more using on a computer than a movie. I mean you can't WORK and watch a film, whereas you can work and listen to music (though your boss might dissagree)
Carrot007.
+----------------- | What is the question!
I'm impressed that no one mentioned the fact that I can get the new Collector's Edition of "The Evil Dead", complete with 4 hours of extras and a special "Necronomicon cover" for ~$20, while Britney Spears most recent 65 minutes of suck costs about the same?
El riesgo vive siempre!
... people might buy more of it.
Get off the "pirate" crap, the music is shit (and overpriced, esp in USA, thanks to your protective trade policies), and thats the real reason nobody is buying much of it.
Large corporations (the real pirates) making carbon copies of the latest plastic fad, trying to guide the public tastes, and mostly just getting it plain wrong.
The only guy I know who copies stuff all the time, copies movies just as much as music. And I can't imagine him with a sword cutting your legs off - some pirate.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
i think that once dvd burners become reasonably priced and easy to use (and standardized) there will be a surge in dvd copying.
The movie industry would be blind not to look at what is taking a bite out of record sales and not see that coming.
well i seem to be useless at finding wired articles that i've read in print on their web site; but a few months ago they had on the cover "is this man a pirate? are you?" and it was all about our hollywood accusing silicon valley of promoting piracy yadda yadda
.rant.sorry :P
and naturally they went on to say that internet-based piracy was costing them billions of dollars. now this article says its not even an issue.
it would be really great to have an independant advisory panel who analysed and reported REAL statistics (and took into account social movements etc and CRAP ALBUMS FILL OF FILLER!) so one would be able to have an objective analysis on this.
i'm so bored of reading conflicting articles on this whole piracy issue...
"The dissing of CDs
Is this how corporate america talks now?
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
Music piracy has been going on en masse for several years. Video piracy is newer. It's just a matter of time and technology . . .
I have bought much more music because of downloading mp3's from the internet
The reasoning is simple. DVD is much better than any bootleg. They can, for now, get away with charging what they will. Moreover, the cost of DVDs is actually much more reasonable than the cost of a CD.
For whatever reason, the music industry still doesn't understand that there is no beating a penny-pinching college student (or adult). It's not that people WANT to steal, but there is apparently enough people find the cost outrageous enough to rationalize it.
Yes, you can make the argument, it is the music industries "right" to set the price they feel appropriate. However, the record industry is a pseudo-monopoly and there is nothing to check the monopoly. There is no competition, there is no real good alternative. Something has to give: either monopoly or the copyright.
More of my critical thoughts.
Well I'm sat at my desk at work surrounded by about a dozen CDs by artists I'd never have discovered if it weren't for online mp3 file swapping. Online music has reignited my interest in music generally, and I'm spending more cash in the music stores as a result.
On the otherhand, I guess my willingness to fork out money is mainly due to the quality of 128kbps mp3s being sufficiently poor that I am prepared to go out and buy the original music. Once the average bandwidth and storage capacity of the home user's PC starts to increase such that the quality differential between your average online music file and the original CD recording disappears, then I reckon I'll no longer bother with record stores and online music retailers.
Presumably in the future, this is going to be a much bigger problem for the movie industry. Currently, very few people have the storage capacity and bandwidth for the swapping of movie files to have a significant impact on the industry, but give it a few more years and your average net punter will have sufficient capacity and patience to wait an hour or two to download a DVD quality video file. I wonder what will happen to DVD sales then...
I've used ftp's reget command to get my .iso fix in the past. Why wouldn't that work for those 700 meg movies?
It's that simple..... I got computers right-left and center.. I'm considering making one of them my PVR, but having a simple CD/DVD player that I could just pop in a burned CD-R into would be so much simpler, for good and for bad. But I suppose hardware MPEG4 decoding is coming (the card for PC is already here) so I suppose there's only a matter of time before a standalone player incorporates it, well that is if anyone dares...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Would you rather pay $20+ for a half hour of music (when was the last time you bought a CD that was actually near 74 mins?) or pay that same $20 or so to buy a 2 hour DVD that also has extras? That's what I thought. DVDs are actually worth the money they cost, while CDs are grossly inflated. IMHO of course.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Music CD: $15
Video DVD: $22
Do the math!
Hollywood made more money the Memorial Day weekend of 2002 than at any other previous time. Piracy is no threat to them. People who watch pirated movies on their computer are just sneak previewing, and will go to a theater. People who buy pirate DVDs at the flea market for fewer than ten dollars won't pay full retail for legit ones. People who do pay full retail for legit ones wouldn't be caught dead in a flea market or with DVDs from one. When you boil it all down, piracy is a non-issue. Shutting it down would not get Hollywood or the recording industry any richer. They are wasting their resources fighting it, and would waste our resources if Congress gives them tax money to combat piracy. This is all true of the recording industry as well. They are not interested in anything but protecting their power over artists.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Scares me and intrigues me at the same time...
People are overlooking one of the biggest factors here: convenience.
Divx simply doesn't have the number of features that DVD has. One of the reasons that DVDs have been such a success is that there's the ability to get to wherever you want on a disc instantly (something that was unheard of in VHS). People truly are lazy creatures and things like instant rewinds (which admittedly DiVX also has) and scene selection (which last I checked it didn't) are important and need to be factored in.
The other part of things is that by nature, humans are collectors. They like to aquire their DVDs for their movie collection. DiVX doesn't have that same collectibility as the store bought official DVD. With music, you have the problem that if you buy the disc to feed that collectibility need, you still have a disc with one or two songs that you like (maybe a few more if it's an extraordinary disc) and a bunch of "to be skipped" tracks. Personally I'd rather make my own disc. Oh, and don't say that people can burn from their CDs to make custom CDs of their own because while they can (and the average slashdotter might), the average person is too lazy to go that extra mile.
DVD's generally are priced pretty good compared to CD's. I spend an average of $12 for each new DVD. I have found some for $6. Most these DVD's come loaded with extras and multi-disc sets. CD's are priced way too high, with no extra's. I usually get my CD's from a used CD store. $18.00 for a new CD is outrageous.
Of course maybe the DVD industry has not been able to get together and fix prices like the CD industry.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I actually wonder how studies quantify piracy, whether in audio, video or even software, and whether the figures they come with are accurate at all (well I bet Microsoft has quite some adequate figures since the introduction of Windows Update, at least).
I rather think (like probably many people) that the so-called piracy in the audio field is just no piracy at all. Audio CDs don't sell that much because they're damn too expensive ($20 is not nothing). In comparison, the price of DVDs offer a far greater bang for your buck. Even apart from the data storage capacity (which avg user doesn't give a <beep> about anyway), with DVD you get audio AND video, and a longer piece of it. Not to mention interactive features. DVDs have a much greater price/"performance" ratio than audio CDs.
The disappearance of Napster, imho, has also hurt the music industry by some margin. The avg user, him again, certainly knew how to use Napster, whereas ripping MP3s to a CDR is quite of a challenge even today. It was such a great way to discover new music. Then he would go buy the CDs that interested him. I used it this way myself. In fact I used it so much that I bought 7 CDs in 2 months, more than ever before (ratio speaking) in my lifetime.
Now there is no such possibility. I have to go to the CD store and pray that the vendor agreed to let me listen to the darn CD that I noticed due to the artists' names on the cover. And frankly it does feel uncomfortable to lend the CD back and say "sorry, I don't take it". That's just a lost sale for the vendor as the plastic cover has been removed. But hey, $20...
I wonder how much they account people buying music from underground indie bands - I suspect none. The independant music scene is quite large and there are many bands who make a very good living without signing to the majors (Fugazi, NOFX, and Superchunk [who I saw last night at a sold-out show at the Roseland] come to mind). Maybe the population is getting sick of the cheese-filled fluff that the Music Industry shoves down our throats. There aren't many major label acts that I would spend my money on out there. I wonder if you accounted for all of the independant music fans' buying habits how much it would change the numbers.
Sound waves should be free!
Dvd's have been around for what, about 4 years? Anyone find the back to the future dvd yet? No. But many other movies out of the past and present are coming to dvd. Music has been on cd for at least 10 years.
Now here's the clincher. Music now-a-days just sounds like carbon copies of everything. Remember bands like Bush, Motley Crue, Metallica (before they sold out), Rob Base, Run DMC and the likes? Today's day and age seems more of a rehash of everything that's already been done. Why buy crappy music much less rip it?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I'm tired of hearing how piracy is hurting cd sales. The problem is people not feeling that the artist is being compensated for their work and that record companies set the price of cd's too high. Dvd's are a good value and that is why they are selling well.
Something that people have to realize is that movies come out in movie theaters first and make big $$$. Then they come out on DVD and it is just a bonus for the studios.
Music doesn't have that initial money from a movie theater type situation. I think that is why the record companies are more scared and more affected by piracy.
(Although, I feel that CDs are overpriced and DVDs have much more value per $)
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
That's hurting so much.
Maybe, just maybe , it has something to do with that a DVD costs almost the same as a CD these days...
Wassup all my homies in accounting? Biggidy biggidy, da Ceee Eeee Ohhhhhh-baby is in da house!
Profits is down. Shiiiitt!
Also figure into your analysis this: I can go to a variety of places, say Hollywood or Blockbuster and RENT the movie for a very reasonable price. How many places will let you do that with an audio CD?
Most places get pissed off if you OPEN the goddamn thing.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
65 minutes of Britney Spears sucking?
I'd buy that.
This must be where the music industry is going wrong...
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
This appears to be more of a function of consumer dollars shifting to something that IS coming out with new and good material.
The music industry has been so stagnant that new material worth the gas to drive to the store is rare. There are GOOD movies on DVD that people want to watch. They can claim piracy is killing them but until they wake up and realize that they have to market stuff the record sales are going to fall.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
CDs are overpriced - agreed. But so are DVDs.
New CDs cost 20-25 euros, video DVDs and games cost about twice. You can listen to a good CD hundreds of times, while most DVDs get boring after a few viewings (doesn't necessarily go for video games, though most of them suck IMHO).
I personally do not consider DVDs good value for money. (Most) current DVD players cannot record, the discs are expensive and their quality is also overated. Therefore, a lot should change before I'd consider trashing my good'ol crappy VHS.
I think it would be fair to say that the reason a lot of people chose to pay for a movie is because it provides a bigger experience than a music CD. You get the video, the sound, but mainly, you care about the experience, and about the emotions evoked by the movie. I would have to say that most people chose to buy movies because they feel that they are worth the money, which is not the case for CDs. They don't draw you in as much, not to mention that you probably like about two or three songs off it anyway. Most people don't buy a DVD to watch a quarter of it.
The bulk of the music industry's loss comes from the fact that the offer sucks.
/downloading/, let alone buying.
Or to put it different way: for most of the music worth listening, the only two ways to get it are mail order over the Net, or download. And unfortunately, the mail order is not a real option: it involves hassle, and wait, and having a credit card (not standard for your typical target audience). For the music that you can buy in a shop, well... ugh. Most of it isn't worth
--
I refuse to use
Pink Floyd and the Beatles continue to sell well 20-30 years after their release.
Don't blame teenie boppers only for a large number of sales.
There is a very simple line of logic industry leaders seem to forget. People will often spend more money on things they enjoy then something they don't.
The sad fact is, the quality of main stream music has continued to fall, and yet the industry seems to continue to put greater and greater restrictions into what can enter into the market.
The quality of movies seems to fluctuate, but at the very least, one can say that every year we get quite a few movies that are highly entertaining. This is despite the fact that the market already has quite a few restrictions as to what can enter.
Simple solution? Stop making music that is'nt entertaining, start charging prices that are out of sync with the quality of the product.
The Internet is generally stupid
Here's a quick explanation from a consumer.
The music industry sucks. It's putting out crap. I don't wanna buy it, and my wife is satisfied with her EZRock radio station. If they find me another Nirvana, I'll buy it. If Floyd puts out another album, I'll buy it. I have Ozzy's entire collection and haven't been disappointed thus far. Same with NIN, Manson, Type O Negative and Rammstein.
But the stuff the record industry FOCUSES ON is absolute swill shot from the ass of disco. Screw it.
On the other hand, movies are a family affair. Everyone goes to the movies WITH SOMEONE, which doubles the sales right there. And you get to see mucho naked babes and bad guys' heads getting chopped off, which is what we Americans want to see.
For me, piracy doesn't even enter into it. I've left my Cable running all night to download a Gentoo ISO, I'm sure I could leave it running to snag a movie if I wanted. But I don't. I can buy a DVD for less than I can buy a CD now.
Zooberman
There simply is just much more value in movie than a song. I can pay 5 dollars to go see a movie in a theater and know that my money goes to a quality product or at least something that I want to see.
The music industry is so messed up they should seriously reeavaluate their strategies. CD's should cost less than DVD's. When the soundtrack costs more than the movie, there's a problem. Unlike the movie industry, 1 company (clear crap channel) controls almost all the radio stations and forces the studios to payola them off for individual songs that marketers feel would help them sell their product. Consumers will only tolerate the same bland music for so long. What is "alternative" alternative to?
Also, Hilary Rosen's pack of jackbooted thug lawyers pursuing schorched earth lawsuits againt anyone with a new technology idea is not going to win them customers. For crying out loud new cds that are "copy protected" dont even play in a lot of players!
She honestly can't stop someone from recording a song off the radio and digitizing it. She can't stop technology any better than Count Dracula can stop the sun from rising. Doesnt she want her industry to make more money? Napster and the like are free promotion, free from the bondage of Clear Channel! She should be tickled pink that there is as much interest in her music instead of movies or reading a book. But no, I bet Randy Michaels and Lowery Mays bitchslapped her into suing everyone. How big is the crack habit of those two guys?
Is DVD copying potentially a bad thing? Yes. How can it be mitigated? Keep consumers happy with low prices and quality movies. That alone will steer away a large quantity of the sheep who will glady pay to be entertained and not have to think about how they will do it. It's the path of least resistance.
Also, put away the lawyers and lobbyists and just make the damn movies and music to entertain us. Do that to the way the consumer wants and you will earn some of my money.
If not, as a slashdotter and a technology maven, I will spend time and energy to either piss you off or just ignore you entirely.
I think it is important to realize that MP3 technology languished for many years before it all of a sudden mushroomed into the juggernaut is today (in fact I believe the original technology originated in 1988, but you would have to check me on that). Why? 1.) Mp3's are most commonly played in the background, while doing other things on a computer. For a long time, MP3's were computationally intensive enough that they were annoying to use on anything less than a pentium II. 2.) Cd burners-- CD burners made it effortless to get an exact duplicate of the music, and MP3's did not take off until burners became prevalent and everyone had one, or at least knew someone that did. 3.) Hard drive space. Back in the day of 1 gig hard drives, it was very easy to fill up your disk w/ a menial number of songs, and buying more disk space to house music files just wasnt cost effective. 4.) THE BIGGIE--BANDWIDTH. Until cable modems came around, and college kids had lan/t1 access, no one wanted to wait 8 hours to listen to a 3 minute song. Ok, now what is the point of this exercise? Replace all of the words MP3 and song, with DVD and MOVIE. We are in a similar position w/ dvd/movies that we were in with mp3/songs right before they ballooned in popularity. For movies to become as pirated as music, we are going to need huge bandwidth upgrades, which I do not see happening any time soon. However, Hard disk space, DVD burners, and Processor speeds are improving every day, and I bet you the age of movie pirating will soon be upon us.
-Kevin
way back before we had napster there was this thing called usenet.. there is still such a beast. there large files are broken up into smaller rar archives (normally in 10 and 15 meg chunks). in the last year or so par has creaped up. basically the people packing up the rar archive make a par archive of 'n' files that are the same size as the rar archive. if the rar archive is incomplete it can be recovered using the par archive. the par archive can be used to reconstruct the missing rar files.. up to 'n' of them.
so it's fairly easy to get movies and almost any other information split into useful chunks. alot of movies come with previews so you can see the quality of the movie befor you download the whole thing. you could probably argue that people havn't discovered usenet, but you can get movies just as conveniently using pan or agent.
-- john
Its all about the artwork and packaging. The artwork and packaging is worth more on a dvd than on a audio cd. There is more emotion with a dvd, unless you're a HUGE fan of a band.
When you buy a DVD, you usually get higher quality output, less volatile / damage-prone media, and the quality won't crap out with extended use. In addition, you usually get a bunch of extras / goodies tossed in, such as interviews, Easter eggs and deleted scenes. Plus, you're able to rent a DVD first if you don't wanna buy it outright, sample the goods, and then decide if it's worth it to buy it.
With music CDs, you can't conveniently sample the music before you buy it. Or maybe you can, if you go to a Virgin MegaStore and stand at one of those kiosks for 90mins, but that's not for me. Music CDs don't have any *bonus* features beyond what you hear on the radio, and it's rare when you ever hear more than a single song or two on the radio, to give you an idea of whether the price of the CD is worth the quality of the entire album.
So am I surprised that the music industry is faltering at a time when video is booming? No. Piracy does and will continue to happen -- you can bitch about it, or you can improve your legit product and/or change your business model to make it more attractive.
Do I have a good solution for how the music industry can solve its woes? Nope. But I don't feel sorry for them -- they've been dragging their feet for decades, exploiting the lack of choice of musical options by jacking prices way up for shoddy, over-produced sound. And they continue to do it......... and so, I continue to pirate most of my music and only buy those items I deem worthy of my hard-earned greenery.
I'd suspect (though I have no proof) that a significant factor here is that a good number of people do most of their music listening on their computer (at work or otherwise). This is certainly true for me. Thus the mp3 format is so popular. Small files that sound good. And they're easily accessible right at your desk.
A movie is a totally different experience. I will always choose to watch a movie on my 27" tv rather than a smaller (even 19" is too small) computer monitor. Screen size is important. And in addition to that my couch is more comfortable and my stereo speakers are better than my computer speakers. Why on earth would I watch movies on my computer? (OK, maybe while travelling but that's a different environment anyway.)
Not to mention what others have already brought up: Divx quality is noticeably lower than DVD quality, while mp3s can and do approach CD quality.
There. Those are my pre-coffee thoughts on the matter.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
I would think one of the major differences in the movie versus music debate would be that you can rent movies.
Sure, this doesn't mean any difference at all to the high tech computer user who would be willing to download anything. However, for the average layman who isn't sure about a movie, it can be picked up for rent at the local video store for relatively cheap. Especially if you go in with a few friends for a cheap night of entertainment.
Compare this with music CD's. If you aren't sure about an album, you have very limited choices. You can buy it and hope it isn't horrible, you can not buy it, and finally, you can download it. In all cases, the price is either non existant, or at least 14 dollars (US).
Take for example, a CD. $20. Now, all DVD's (whether you buy them in store or on a place like Amazon) are, at the most, $20. Old classics, such as Airplane! and the like, can be had at some places used for as little as $6. The quality of the product is higher, and the price is right. As long as Hollywood can keep putting out some decent movies, the same fate that befell the music industry should not happen.
Some points:
- The Divx format is getting better all the time - it is currently far better than VHS, for a 1 disk per movie rip. 2 Disk per movie films are generally of very high quality. Not DVD quality, but not far off.
- Broadband is slowly getting cheaper and more prevalent. Within a few years I can't really imagine more than 10% of the net using dial-up.
- Some p2p apps are VERY good. Edonkey, for example, pretty much maxes out my 1024 downstream when a new release comes out. It's relatively simple to get working - about as painless as Napster was.
- People are slowly getting DivX capability in their living room, be it through a PC connected to the TV, a DreamCast or no doubt fairly soon a ps2/xbox.
- The releases are coming thick and fast. Especially if you dont live in the US. dvd rips are often out before the film is in theatres here in the UK.
- CD burners and Blank CDs are ridiculously cheap.
Put that lot together and I'd say the movie industry should be pretty worried.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
"How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
Lots_of_money_made != good_movie
Heck, by Urie's logic Phantom Menace was good. *shudder* ugh. Jar-Jar. */shudder*
What it all really comes down to is this: people pirate things because they can. CD Burners are cheap, more people have broadband than ever, and mp3s are only ~5MB each for high quality (192kbps is the "release" standard nowadays) singles.
I personally have bought MORE cds since I began using mp3s way back when (97ish). But, not everyone does this. Also, my taste in music has broadened, but I feel I do save money as a result of mp3s. This is because instead of buying a cd for one single, I can now preview the cds and buy only ones that I really do like.
Now for DVDs. The only thing that I have seen that approaches DVD quality picture is an SVCD rip. These are usually in 3 parts at 700mb per part. 2.1 gigs for a movie. That is only if you're lucky enough to have the "hookups" to get it or find a good warez samaritan. DivX rips CAN be good quality video, but more often then not, they are sub par, especially at fullscreen on the pc (which is at least a few times bigger than normal tv resolution). Now what about the audio? It is encoded in vbr (variable bitrate) mp3 format... there goes all the surround sound and other special features you pay for in a DVD. Personally, I enjoy watching my DVDs on a big TV and through a home theatre sound system, not on a 17" monitor with pixelation.
Call me crazy, but the only reason that DVDs arent being hit as hard is because the technology to copy then conveniently and near-perfectly is not readily available. CDs were around for years before mp3s... just give it a little while and DVDs will fall to the same fate.
With so many ISP's now capping usage and a half decent quality movie going at around 650 megs it's quite obvious why the movie industry isn't getting hit as hard. I am capped at 5GB allowing for less than 8 movies total leaving no room for MP3's and pr0n.
tinfoilmedia
On the other hand, there are very few cds that I like completely. I listen to less than half the songs on 90% of the cds I own. I'd be willing to pay $1 per song in .wav format, but I can't do that for every song I want. And I really don't give a darn for paying $20 for a cd half full of songs I don't like, songs which I think the artist may have recorded only to fill the rest of the cd.
I know not everybody does the same thing that I do, but when CD's first arrived I was eager to replace many of my favorite cassette tapes because of the CD's higher quality and convenience. I wonder if DVD sales aren't for similar reasons. Now that you can get many older movies for less than 10 dollars... I bet many people are just upgrading their collections. Like CD's, that'll probably drop off as people for the most part have what they want and the only thing left to get is new releases.
Blender And Linux Fan
Try watching the movie in sections at the same time. Can't do that.
while some movies might break up into convenient pieces for viewing, most dont. i personally wouldnt want to watch the first 15 minutes of a movie then the minutes
every movie would be like pulp fiction.
really though, for most people who get the bulk of their music from the net, downloading movies is really not that big of a deal. alot of them are students taking advantage of their fast connections at school or friends of people with fast connections.
-- john
1. Most computers don't yet come standard with a DVD Burner, which can really gouge into your average 13-year-old's (or 30 year old slashdork's) budget.
2. Downloading of ripped movies can take hours and hours. Most of these hours could be spent at a JOB where you can make the chump change necessary to purchase a high-quality feature-packed DVD for 15$ or less. Unless of course your one of the said 13-year-olds or illogical slashdorks.
3. Your average desktop comes with all the tools necessary to rip a CD into mp3's or to copy a CD to another CD. The art of creating a DIVX from a DVD is still a little elusive, and such software definitely doesn't already come on your average Dude-You-Got-a-Dell. CD-Burners are infinitely less expensive than a DVD-burner.
Did I miss anything?
While I'm not one to agree with the RIAA/MPAA etc.. could the real issue here be bandwidth?
If you look at what is considered broadband in the domestic market (around 1MBit) and compare that to MP3 size vs DivX etc.. size it might just be that bandwidth and the ability to share hasn't caught up with the movie business yet.
If you take domestic broadband to the 10 or 100 Mbit sort of stage then the situation might change dramatically.
That during times of social stress, such as war and/or poor economic times, the film industry does better.
The reasoning is quite simple. People want to excape the harshness of reality, even if only for the break of 2 hours.
I suspect the record industry wouldn't had noticed any decline, but perhaps even a boost, had they not pissed, moaned,
and called consumers pirates in general (which doesn't help the consumer excape anything).
The two reasons why I haven't bought cds recently are because the quality of music these days is at an all time low, yet the price of cds continues to increase. Go visit riaa.org and read their article about what it costs to make a cd. The main reason they give for cds costing so much is the ever increasing cost of promoting them. They even say that the cost to physically manufacture a cd is dropping. One would wonder if it wouldn't cost so much to promote the music if every new band didn't sound the same, actually had some original talent, and didn't create "new" music by sampling old successful music. I can't remember a time when current music was as lame as it is now. Reeling in the beginnings of a rant, my point is that if the music studios actually spent a little of the promotion money to work on upgrading the talent pool of recording artists, maybe the quality of music would sell them, not the promotion. Quality sells product. Then they wouldn't have to be spending so much on a self promoting product, which in turn would mean they could reduce the price of the cds. Everyone wins.
"The dissing of CDs is just a ridiculous self-justification for stealing the music," Urie says. "I hate to see what's going to happen when DVD burning becomes as prevalent as burning CDs. How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
. ph p
Now wait just a second here. This is just fluff since how can you equate cash flow to how good a movie is?
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/box_office
Look at the stats. Scooby Doo has grossed 100+ million and look at how "good" it is. You can't say that simply because you were able to make a lot of money that the movie is any good at all.
They need to lower music CDs to about $5 a pop if they expect us to buy their CDs now. If I have an extra $20 sitting in my pocket, 10 out of 10 times it's going to a new DVD with scads of goodies and often times the ENTIRE SOUNDTRACK on the dang thing! Or.. I could go buy a music CD for $13-17 .. Uhh yeah.. SURE... No way in heck. RIAA needs to be competitive like the DVD industry is if it wasnt to survive.
is not the reason for this. The reason for this is manyfold:
-people are sick of the same old crap
-prices are staying artificially inflated
-non-RIAA music is seen more frequently as an option (mp3.com et al)
-people who care about freedoms don't want to buy things from the RIAA, Vivendi, et al to fund them
At this point current music for the most part has gotten so bad that i couldnt tell you who's getting airplay these days...broadcast radio lost me as a listener more than a year ago. In hearing what i have in passing people listening to newer things, i haven't regretted that decision one bit. I'd rather explore unknown bands than eat anything they want to feed me. If I make myself a CD-R of MP3s available as free downloads, I'm more apt to end up with something worth listening to the whole thing anyway. Even most good albums you buy from stores have at least one song you won't particularly care for.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Sure sounds like Urie and other record execs have totally lost touch with the public and really doesn't give a crap about what we want and don't want. If that doesn't paint a clear picture of what is wrong with the record industry, nothing else will.
Rather than bitch about how they are loosing money, they could be listening to the public about what they hate and don't like. That knowledge would be beneficial to finding new artists that appeal to those desires. I mean really. You would think any one of the thousands of MBA's working in the music industry would have learned that in school or a few years on the job?
Of course the music industry will probably blame this on the fact that nearly all DVDs are released with copy protection while copy protected CDs have faced stiff opposition and limited releases.
I can see this descrepency in sales being used as a powerful argument for more copy protection on CDs.
Of course overpriced CDs and crappy music arent helping their sales right now either...
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
Doesn't say much about VHS sales.
I'd say a fair percentage will be people re-buying what they already have on VHS.
The fact that the re-released movie will often have a load of extras and 'collectable' packaging and it's the consumers choice to rebuy makes it a valuable retail adition.
Meanwhile the Music Industry trying to lock-down usage with copy-protected CDs that are incompatible with the Compact Disc standard hoping to cash in like DVD and you can't get more out of touch than that...
I'm sorry, I've forgotten what my point was...
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
It's not like the Hollywood studios "get it", either. The reason the DVD format is booming is because it actually delivers reasonably good value at a reasonable price. Most CD's do not. It's also a lot more trivial to rip tunes than it is to rip a movie - and as a playback device the computer today is well-suited to MP3 playback but today is only really a movie playback device for the truly hardcore geek.
Remember, in many cases the record companies _are_ the movie companies (Sony, AOLTW, etc.). It's not like they've seen the light or anything. These are the people who fund the MPAA (MPAA vs. 2600, anyone?). They just got lucky with DVD and hit a consumer sweet spot. For now.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I am an avid punk rock collector. Now with more than 400 compact discs in my collection, I have never bought into the idea that the Internet causes music piracy. I have more than enough bandwidth and burners to download what I want, but purchase the CD to get the liner notes and silk screened art on the compact disc itsself. Did I go buy a CD with the two "Major Tom" songs when I just wanted to hear them once? No, I downloaded them and have since deleted them, but I think the majority of rabid downloaders wouldn't buy compact discs regardless. They are the type that bug people that have purchased the CD in order for them to make a copy.
Now, I also like movies. My DVD collection is not impressive by any means, but I think piracy will be COMPLETELY different in the movie market, so long as the industry keeps in mind value-add. DVD movies can come with so many extras that you wouldn't get if you ripped just the movie. Even with an exact duplicate of the DVD, some movies contain information booklets in the DVD jacket. If you marry the purchase of the content with the need for the packaging, you will end up with less piracy (IMHO).
Click here or here.
Here's the bottom line on this: The music industry is continuing to inundate us with GARBAGE (not the band) for music. How much more Backstreet Boys, O-Town and Britney can America stand? If it isn't them is a knockoff of them. Remember the end of the 80s? It was the same deal with all the bloody hair bands. Then Nirvana came along and gave us a kick in the ass. That's what music needs now. Otherwise I'll continue to download the songs I want to hear.
Pax Vobiscum
from the article:
(quote starts)
But top music executives, such as Jim Urie, president of Universal Music and Video Distribution, still contend that CDs are a great product.
"The dissing of CDs is just a ridiculous self-justification for stealing the music," Urie says. "I hate to see what's going to happen when DVD burning becomes as prevalent as burning CDs. How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
(quote ends)
What an arrogant fool Urie is. Consumers are not compelled to buy his product : he must give them *what they want*. And he'll never know what they want if he doesn't ask. He appears fixated on the alleged losses caused by Internet Piracy, rather than dealing with the salient facts : that CD album prices rose by, on average, 4.4% in 2001 (RIAA figures), while inflation rose by merely 1.2% (bls.gov). People don't think $18 for a CD is good value! It's as simple as that!
-EvilMagnus
The cost of "developing" the content is far smaller.
A lot of artists can barely get a middle-class income for their efforts - Whereas Hollywood spends millions just to produce the movie.
If CDs sold for $5 and artists got only 25% of that, they'd STILL be making far more money than they do now.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I feel that most music today is cloning past successess. "hey, it worked back in the 80's, lets take a new artist and do it again" The problem probably lies in the narrowing of the music scene. Greed and profithunger has made them too afraid to take a chance so they spend all their PR on established music or clones. Is it a coincidence that new musicians always release a cover of a already known hit at first? Hopfully this will make room for new bold labels since the ones existing doesnt seem to have any balls whatsoever.
HTTP/1.1 400
You can rent a DVD for a couple of bucks. You watch it a couple of times and that's it.
Music is different. You listen to it over and over. Most people don't watch movies dozens (or hundreds) of times.
Not only that but the size of a CD is easy to download compared to one movie.
Piracy DOES hurt sales numbers. How much, How little is the question and a debate that's been waged time and time again here on slashdot so I won't go into it.
However, It is far easier for your average user to download a song via Mp3 then it is to download X movie in X movie format. On top of that the majority of users on the internet are still using Dialup and although a pain an Mp3 download via dialup is feasible... a movie download is not
Well, the most obvious reason I can see, ignoring everything else, is the fact that to get acceptable quality video, a movie is going to take up several gigabytes of disk space. This may not seem like much to the average slashdotter, since we no doubt have our cable modems and 100 gig hard drives, but a lot of consumers are still working with their 4-20 gig hard drives and 56K modems. To these people, the size of these movies are inconceivable and the time it would take to download them is just too long. And DVD burners are still too expensive (and they probably don't let you copy DVDs anyway) to justify purchasing one instead of a legitimate copy of the movie.
Then there are the P2P apps which just aren't reliable enough for consumers to download the entire movie that they want. You can usually get a song with minimal trouble, but try downloading a 1200 megabyte file - they're rare enough that you can't usually download from multiple sources, and there's a really good chance you'll lose the connection anyway.
We've got the technology, but we don't have the critical mass of users with broadband and huge hard drives who also share movies on the same P2P network and leave their computers running all the time. There isn't much point in considering the other reasons people are listing here because the difficulty of digitally pirating movies is enough to eclipse other motivating factors. Although, incidentally, I agree that DVDs are much more worth their price for the quality of the product.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
I was surprised to read in the article that one of the most important reasons that DVDs do so well compared to CDs is that so many extra features are included with DVDs. It makes sense, you can't see this extra stuff any other way -- it's not in the theaters. On the movies that I work on, the compilation of extras for the DVD has gone from being an afterthought to an integral part of the production. As DVD sales become a larger part of the 'box-office' for films, it wouldn't surprise me if the extras became as big a job as the original effects (we're an FX company, and so far the extras have focused on FX).
For some albums, there could be wonderful extras. The VH1 Behind the Music show on the making of the Graceland album, for instance, was absolutely wonderful. It had Paul Simon going through the various elements of each song on the original 24-track tape, describing what each element was, where it came from, and what it was meant to convey. He also talked about the lyrics, in a wonderfully honest and reflective way. I'd be happy (ecstatic, even) to pay $20 for a CD if it came with that kind of stuff.
Unfortunately, much of the pop music today probably doesn't stand up to that kind of in-depth analysis. But these 'extras' might really help distinguish high-quality well-thought-out music from the pap. Well, one can hope.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Nothing that I find surprising in that article, except maybe the fact that DVDs are the same price as CDs in the US, as I don't think that's the case yet in Europe.
Given the choice between 45 min of music, or a film and extras for the same price, there's no surprise a majority of people will go for the DVD.
This might change when DVD burners become more popular, but time and space will still be an issue. Not only will a film encoded in DivX take more space, it will also take longer to download. You can download a film in the time you could download 10 albums. Once again, what do you choose? Another thing is while encoding music to mp3s doesn't take too long, it will take you much longer to encode a film into DivX.
The boom in illegal music downloads can probably be attributed to the democratisation of broadband internet access. To see such a boom in illegal film downloads, faster internet accesses would be needed, and there seems to be a stabilisation at 512kbps for many people. And I can't see many people using their work connections to download full films.
The film industry can probably still feel safe until a large number of people have a T1 connection and a DVD-burner at home.
I agree with what you said.
Think about it: here in the states, the price of album length Compact Discs have reach US$18 per disc--an outrageous price in my opinion! CD's should be priced more like US$10-US$11, which would cut down the incentive to pirate CD's.
Meanwhile, the price of Region 1 DVD's are amazingly cheap: you can get most discs for anywhere between US$15-US$25, and even large sets are reasonably priced for what you get.
With the price of console DVD players dropping under US$100 and with DVD-ROM drives so cheap nowadays, no wonder why DVD's are exploding in popularity.
At the current bandwidth download movies takes to long and the quality is to poor.
It is easy to blame somebody else when you have a problem. When you monopolize an industry and then crank out near clones of the same basic beat and rhythm over and over and over, why should you wonder? Could it be that over-saturation of the market is taking place? Could it be that people think your product sucks? Could be.
Reading all these posts I see that people think the reason that DVDs are not pirated is because of their size and time to take to download.
I don't see it that way at all. Rather I see DVDs offering you alot more for your money than music CDs, to the point where we don't feel like we're being ripped off.
Let's see our options: 20$ for an audio CD or 20$ for a DVD with a movie, audio commentaries, behind the scenes, etc, etc. I think the reason is clear.
of a MAINSTREAM band that is ORIGINAL? I have yet to find many. No originality, no passion, nothing that I want.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Its easy, with the current economy and consumer base, there is more of a market for video then audio these days, so they sell more.
Though not reaming us on DVD's like is done over music CD's doesnt hurt either... that cant be good
for sales either.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Hilary Rosen is the reason the recording industry is suffering. Her abrasive attitude towards consumers and the attempts to seize control over the very way we LISTEN to music has put her and the industry she represents at odd with the average music buyer.
To make a long story short, copy protection, distrust, and the crackdown on MP3s has lead to alienation of the most IMPORTANT aspect of the music industry.... the ones paying cash to listen to the music. The RIAA has nobody to blame but themselves.
A good movie will still make $100,000,000 if it's re-released 5 years down the road.
(without any tarting up), no matter how many people own pirate coppies.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
personally ive seen movies (600 mb) fly off the internet in 2 hours almost real time--kazaa lite and cable...a 19 inch monitor is a small tv...am i missing something or isnt pirated video on demand pretty much here now? im quite sure its possible to put down the remote control and download an endless amount of content such that you would never need to use cable or network television in their native formats again. the only things keeping it from going mainstream, if you dont think its there already, are the technical savvy needed to view content, the lack of ubiquitous broadband, and the fact that hollywood hasnt publicized its bitches about piracy in quite the same mannner as the record industry.
Aside from the fact that there's not good way to have an enjoyable experience with a downloaded unauthorized copy of a movie right now, there one difference that throws off this whole comparison.
The quality of video available to the public is increasing, and the prices are decreasing.
The quality of music (both the audio quality and the quality of the product) is decreasing, while the price is increasing.
As an aside, has anyone noticed how the variety of music available in music stores has decreased tremendously lately? It's almost impossible to find something specific if it wasn't a top 40 hit in the last 30 years.
The most valid, and largely overlooked, point of the article is this, IMO: music CD's still cost 17 or 18 USD each, as do DVD's.
.mp3 or .ogg, and of course sharing comes about. This will probably happen to DVD's once a lossy format comes out that gives 90% of the quality for 10% of the size, or the next jump in available bandwidth occurs. Until then, the movie industry can just sit back and think "not our problem."
When CD's came out, as my roommate points out, they cost more than tapes because they were a new technology. After time, they said, the price of cd's would actually be less than that of tapes. This has not happened, obviously.
The amount of content in a DVD, not just bytes, is higher. I get visuals as well as audio. And they expect me to spend the same amount of money for just the audio?
Then we look at the lossy format of
Somehow, methinks that "accounting discrepancies" hurt the company more than some Gnutella junkies.
I think that the file size of an mp3/ogg is the factor which makes them so lucrative to download, conversely, I won't touch a movie file even though I have DSL @512Mbps.
.avi movie that was smaller than about 1GB!
:)
Also, I have friends who have never touched a computer buying one just to download music, but they aren't movie buffs, and it's too much hassle to download a movie for three days, rather than just waiting for the VHS/DVD.
Finally, you can listen to mp3's almost anywhere now, but even 300MB movie files suck on my monitor... I haven't seen a high quality
That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it
"...I'll need guns" --Chow Yun-Fat in 'Replacement Killers'
DivX movies cannot be played on a standard player as of yet so there really is little comparison. Mp3 on the other hand can be played on all sorts of portable devices or burned to an audio CD. DVDr's Exist and images can me downloaded at 4.7 GB a pop. THere really is no point. Once there is a DivX player then the industry could be screwed because DivX releases as with Mp3's are usually available weeks or even months in advance.
...the music industry is hurting right now is because nobody wants to listen to or purchase the rubbish they're putting on store shelves these days. Only when there is a revival of real musicians who write and sing their own songs, and play their own instruments, will there ever be a boost in music recording sales.
Compound that problem with the next one: The next wave of new musicians who do happen to be able to write and perform hit-quality songs have seen time and time again how pretty much all music artists have always been collectively burned by the history of half a century of organized crime running the major record companies and so now will take their music to indie labels to sell, so the "music industry" (i.e., the majors) is SOL once again, since they've soiled their own bed, now they're gonna have to sleep in it.
The way I see it, I can buy a DVD that gives me a 2 hour movie, hours of behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, alternate versions, multiple commentary, languages, subtitles, easter eggs, DVD-ROM features, background information on the cast, crew, etc, etc, etc.. All of this in unique cases, layouts, booklets, etc.. And how much does it cost me? As little as $15 (CDN), and rarely more than $35. What does a CD cost me, which has MAYBE 50 minutes of music on it, if I'm lucky a creative set of liner notes, and a "secret" track tacked on at the end? Anywhere from $10-$30.
I was never a BIG CD buyer to begin with, but over the past 5 years I've bought maybe 4 or 5 CDs total, because NOTHING out there interests me, not because I'm a rampantly pirating. I've been shoring up my jazz collection mostly, which involves a lot of Coltrane, Getz, Peterson, Powell, and the like, nothing new. Just about everything out there is made to be enjoyable for a couple months of casual listening and then you're sick of it. When someone like Alicia Keyes is touted as a "piano prodigy" I want to be sick. The fact is that the recording industry is offering us nothing worthwhile.
To compare music to movies is an apples and oranges situation. One utilizes one of our senses and is often limited in what it's capable of offering as a bonus (the odd enhanced CD notwhithstanding), the other is being thought of while main production is occuring. Filmmakers look towards the DVD market now so that NO scenes get thrown out, interviews and commentaries are lined up in contracts, and the consumer gets something worthwhile. I don't feel bad about being short $30 for a double-disc DVD of a movie I can watch time and again and still say "Hey, I haven't checked out the commentary of the visual effects supervisor."
In short, DVDs cater to their market far, FAR better than CDs do. That's why one market is exploding and the other is dying. Piracy plays such a small role. I know just as many people who download DiVX movies as mp3s.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Fark's over there, this is slashdot.
"It's not that people WANT to steal, but there is apparently enough people find the cost outrageous enough to rationalize it."
You are talking about copying/downloading, correct? Not stealing CD's? If so, stop using the word "theft" for something (copying) that never is theft.
"However, the record industry is a pseudo-monopoly and there is nothing to check the monopoly. There is no competition, there is no real good alternative"
Not in the real world. Any music store I go to there are locally-produced CDs, the price of which has little to do with what WEA and the big guys want.
If we're strictly talking about value/dollar and leaving out any politics, mainstream DVD releases are a much better deal than mainstream CD releases. Many people have pointed out why already. This is not to say that I feel comfortable buying either at the moment.
Independant music will continue to have CDs which are full of varied songs of good quality. It will continue to cost less than mainstream music, and will continue to be composed of artists and labels who are mainly concerned with getting their music heard.
Are there bad bands on indpendant labels? Oh, yes. But try this: visit http://www.cmj.com. Try to find a local college radio station (a real college station, not one that just rebroadcasts NPR and isn't even run by students [coughJHUcough]) and tune in. Whether you like world music, electronic, hip hop, jazz, rock, punk, folk, or whatever, I'm sure that you can find several independant artists to your liking.
There are still major label releases worth buying; the recent albums by Gorillaz ("G-sides") and Badly Drawn Boy ("About a Boy") really stand out (and these get played on college radio, too). Radiohead and Tool have never let me down. But, _in_general_, if you want more for your money, try to find some independant artists that you like. It costs less to see them live, too.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
DvD rips are usually available weeks or even months in advance and they are of very good quality. DivX movies are better than VHS quality. I watch alot of DivX because I can and it's easier than renting from Blockbuster. The movie "Dangerous Life of Alter Boys" has been out as a DVDrip for a few weeks and it just started to play in the local theater. It's also easier to obtain foreign films.
The same goes for Mp3. Full versions of albums are typically out at least a week before the reatil hits the store, however some albums are out many months early. Radio HEad's Amnesiac was out 2+ monhts aerly and Recently Frank Blacks 2 new Cds due out in mid August have been out in the scene since May 1st.
There are only two words that need to be said to explain why the music industry is tanking (if it is indeed, which I doubt):
American Idol
"Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
Ok, being out of touch is one thing. But openly saying that he doesn't care about his customers, just how much money he makes? It makes me sick that a person like this can be taken seriously. I know American business is all screwed up, but when people can actively ignore the desires of the customers and expect to prosper, ugh, something needs to be fixed.
And for that matter, how can anybody not realize that satisfying customers IS a way of making more money?
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
Actually, there is a format where the quality is almost as good as dvd, SVCD. It a much larger format then divx, a svcd of a movie is usually 2-3 cds and if encoded correctly, the quality can be very close to that of the dvd. Unlike divx, it doesn't require large system resources to play, it'll run perfectly on a pentium 133 with 4 meg video ram. It can also include menus and extras like dvds, but from what I hear is a pain to encode.
From my experience, it has become a very popular format, when people are given the option of d/l a 2-3 cd svcd or 1 cd divx, they usually choose the svcd.
Maybe it's because the film industry adds geniune value to their DVD's, thus enticing consumers to buy them. The music industry is just adding to the price of CD's, without adding value.
If CD's cost as much here (in Canada) as they do in the US, I probably wouldn't buy many at all. But since I can buy them here at about CDN$15 a pop (that's about US $10), I buy maybe 4 or 5 a month.
It's all simple economics - higher prices mean lower demand. The record industry isn't stupid; they know that. They have used it to their advantage recently, by increasing prices to *decrease* sales quite intentionally. That way, they can argue, "Look! sales are down. It's those pirates and their MP3's. We need legislation... boo hoo, whine whine".
I never understood why people make DivX rips of their DVDs for backup purposes. The loss of features and quality (as you're are technically transcoding) in the conversion process seems to far out weigh the convenience of not getting out of your chair to find that DVD disc.
What "features" are you talking about? The FBI warnings and other crap you are not allowed to fast forward through? The menu systems that freeze if you click the wrong sequence of buttons? The Foreign language soundracks I don't understand? "Special" features that are not compatable with my machine?
I specifically remember the moment I knew I would have problems with DVDs. I wanted to watch the DVD of "office space", but when I put it in my machine, I saw a screen that looked exactly like a computer desktop with a download progress-bar.
Annoyed, I tried to fast-forward, but I couldn't. The bar inched across the screen, making disk-drive noises, but just before it was finished the computer "crashed" and displayed a message that said "press enter to continue". After freaking out for a minute, I realized there was actually an enter button on my remote, so I pushed it. That took me to the main menu.
A harmless joke, right? Well, in this case, yes. But it made me realize that when I put a DVD in my machine, I am giving up control to the author of the DVD. He can tell me when I can fast forward or not, and he can put any other arbitrary barriers to watching the movie he wants. Once I became sensitive to the issue, I have noticed hundreds of little examples of this phenomenon. The possibilities are endless, and I shudder to think what will happen when the big corporations really start taking advantage of them.
When I rip a DVD, I am taking back control. I choose the track, I rip it, and then I can do anything the hell I want with it, just like I could with VHS. If the makers of DVDs were not so fixated on taking control of my "viewing experience", maybe I would just go with the flow... but they have already gone too far, and they are only planning on going farther.
That's why you nimnertz!!!! For like 1 whole dollar more I can get the whole fucking concert in home theater sound vs. the audio CD.
The whole music industry is run by retarded drunken monkeys and they deserve nothing short of flaming death.
The last time there was a major war happening that the states were involved with, I am willing to bet people went out to see more movies than bought music! (That includes sheet music sales since that was the more popular form of "distributing" music back then)
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
because my options to sample movies before buying them still exist. Back during P2P's heyday (Napster, Morpheus, etc) I would discover new music and bands and then go out and buy all their cds. When my access to these were blocked at school, I no longer "discovered" music for myself and nothing on the little amount of radio I actually listened to actually interested me ("oddly" enough there seemed to be only 15 songs on that station.) I hsven't bought a CD in over a year (and haven't d/l an mp3 in that long too, so its not pirating that has caused my personal drop in music buying.) However, as my access to P2P programs declined, I gained access to DIVX movies and tv shows and anime. Now when I see a movie I really like, I go and buy the higher quality DVD. Yet I doubt the RIAA or the MPAA will ever realize this.
Interesting sig, but "overseas" can correctly refer to pretty much any other country. Suppose you visit Brazil...is that overseas? It is connected by land to the United States after all.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
The movie is 2 hours of audio + video, with production costs running into the millions. The CD is maybe 1 hour of audio (15 minutes of good stuff diluted with 45 minutes of filler), with a production budget that is a tiny fraction of what the movie costs to produce. The blank media & burning cost of the DVD is probably 5x the cost of the CD. I'm ignoring the promotional costs of both because the hype machine runs at full blast for both anyway.
There is at least 10x the amount of data on a DVD compared the CD. At $22, it's just not worth finding a way to download & store all those gigabytes. If you can rent the movie for $5 at Blockbuster, it's not even worth considering the piracy alternatives. On the other hand, saving $14 by waiting 10 minutes to download & store 30 megabytes (for 15 minutes of audio)is a much more attractive proposition.
In my unscientific little survey, the CD price is roughly 65% of the DVD price. For 15 usable minutes of audio??? Which can be easily ripped, burned, and shared??? This would be like the bicycle industry pricing the average bike at $5000 and then wondering why (a) nobody is buying bikes, (b) motorcycles are selling just fine at $8000, and (c) there are these patent-infringing criminals who copy our designs and make bikes for themselves with parts from Home Depot. We must stop the criminals because they are killing our business!
Emulate the orignal (uncrippled) Napster. Collect $5/month from every customer for unlimited MP3 transfers. Watch the piracy problem disappear. It's that simple. My current budget for CDs is $0, which would increase to $60/year under this arrangement. RIAA, it's your choice: do you want me to pay you $60 or $0 per year? Hint: If you choose $0 you will have a revenue problem.
The audio piracy problem exists only beause the recording industry's business model encourages it. The DVD industry survives because the prices are not so high as to encourage the pirates, and there are low-cost rentals to make sure they get some money from all potential customers. On the other hand, the audio industry sells only complete albums at inflated prices, without meaningful low-cost options for those who pass up the chance to buy the whole enchilada at full list price. These idiots will soon be getting 100% of nothing, which is precisely what they deserve. If there was an economic category for the Darwin awards, the RIAA would get my nomination.
DVD Movie: usually over 3 hours of audio and video
The movie itself (widescreen and fullscreen)
The movie with a directors commentary
Isolated score
Trailers
Deleted scenes
Outtakes
Music videos
"The Making Of" Featurettes and Documentaries
Actor bios
Production photos and notes
DVD-Rom material for your computer
Music CD: usually 30-50 minutes of audio only
8-15 Songs
Sometimes some multimedia to view in your computer
Sometimes will not play in your computer at all
The American consumer isn't that dumb.
It's much easier to download music than it is to download movies. The average movie file is 600 Mb. The average MP3 is 4 Mb. Add to that the fact that it's much easier to rip audio CD's into MP3's than it is to copy DVD's into AVI's or MPEG's, and the supply of downloadable movies will be far lower than the supply of MP3's. Thus, there's a huge supply-demand imbalance on file-swapping programs (like KaZaa) for movie files. As a result, downloading a movie file can take forever, due to the fact that 20 million people are trying to download the same movie file at the same time.
Perhaps that's why the movie industry hasn't suffered as much as the recording industry.
This space left intentionally blank.
Those were NOT 2400 Baud modems, they were (are) 600 Baud modems using quadrature amplitude modulation to achieve 2400 BPS. The "9600 Baud" modems vary by type (HST was/is different than PEP, and both different from the V.?? standards that came later), but were never 9600 Baud (only 3000 Hz available (not talking about about of band stuff like DSL now) on the phone lines at the best). This stuff is not that difficult, and we really should be technically as accurate as possible. Being lazy with language is a very bad habit.
Supply is directly tied into production cost, so production cost has everything to do with supply.
heres the thing, i can buy movies for the same price as cds now days, so......... maybe more people stopped buying CDs cause they're over priced :)
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
No one can deny that P2P has taken some profit away from the music industry. I can't argue validly that this is moral because its not. I do think they only have themselves to blame. And none of those guys are going to convince me that they're starving either. While CD's have been around longer, it was just as great of a technological advance at that time, as the DVD is today. I've seen more movies that I'd like to own this year, than Albums I've heard and wanted to buy.
Image has always been a part of both industries but I feel like its too important with music today. Maybe record companies should pump more money into the music itself rather than "Making the Band" and any other boy/girl band farms out there. I know why they do it, it makes them alot of money...look at how much money Britney Spears, O-Town, etc have made. That's where they've placed their focused and made their money, now they want to cry because people aren't buying CD's for the music they themselves have been neglecting?
Movies are a whole product. If you purchase a movie you think is good you're getting 90 - 120 minutes of what you consider good content. Even when I purchase a CD from my favorite bands I consider it a hit if I like 4 out of 11 songs. It doesn't sound like a good thing but I am fine with purchasing a cd and only playing half of the tracks, but don't expect me to buy the "Men in Black" soundtrack just because it probably has one catchy song from Will Smith (Notice I said catchy, not good). If I have that sort of thing stuck in my head, why wouldn't I download it... I know it will pass and I know that more than likely the rest of the Cd sucks. Yes there is no way to predict the quality of a whole CD based on one single release but these days its a good indicator to me. Maybe a few bands suffer in the exceptional cases but mainly those suffering are the one hit wonder sells the record industry knows they are pumping out.
The word gets out about good music and good bands. Good bands still sell CD's. I may download alot of songs but I still buy CD's. Dave Matthews Band is a good case, paying no attention to your opinion on their music or not. Their fan base is increasing and they are still selling out shows. The main point, they are still selling a sh!tload of CD's and DVD's. Why, because alot of people think the music is good, the only reason why a CD SHOULD sell. About a year or so ago the band recorded two separate albums under two different producers. They didn't release the first album because of the producer change. Problem was, the fans had grown to love many of the unreleased songs because the band played them previously in shows. That unmastered studio album was leaked and downloaded by many. The Cd the band released was also leaked about two months before it went on sale. Many including myself still bought this album, even though I had the whole thing months before. In July the band will release the previous album they held back on last year. It will contain two additional tracks I believe. Even thoug I basically have that CD I myself can't wait. As incentive, there are contest associated with preordering it and the band is also including a DVD of two Dolby 5.1 performances with the CD. If you ask me, they have the right idea.
When more CD's start offering us something worth the money they cost, the decline in profit may become a little less noticeable... (DVD-AUDIO, SACD maybe??). Don't get me wrong, piracy isn't really a moral thing, but I think the record companies could solve many of their own problems if they themselves become a "little less Shady". (Could that be the next Eminem Album??)
Its relitively easy to recompress a movie to a VCD format and then it can be played on 90% or DVD players
CD's have been around about as long as myself(and yes I can legally drink), without much change in that time. For me, DVDs became the VHS movie and more, making it worthwhile. Though the CD has always been the same thing, though they could try to market better the DVD audio, which gives you the CD and more, which in turn makes it worthwhile again.
On the other hand, there's really not that much music that I enjoy that is under control of the RIAA.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I don't know about all of you but my mp3 collection is pretty diverse. I have a song or 2 from hundreds of different 'artists'. But rarely do I have more than 3 songs from the same 'artist'. And more than likely those 3 songs aren't even on the same cd(and yes I have downloaded other songs from their cd's...I just don't keep them because they suck). What do you suppose the chances of me going to buy a $16 cd with 1 or 2 songs that I like on it? Indeed, not very good. Now when I buy a DVD I watch(and like) the whole thing. To me $16 isn't bad for 2 solid hours of entertainment. But in the case of most cds the entertainment lasts around 15 minutes. Not such a good deal. DVD: $8/hr CD: ~$60/hr Just a thought. --------------- Sometimes I feel bad about 'stealing' the music, but that feeling usually passes when I actually do buy a cd and find that 3/4 of the songs are terrible. You can't tell me that the 'artists' don't know that most of the music that they are putting out will never want to be heard. They have to know. And if they do know, why don't they release a cd 1/2 as often and have twice as much good music on a cd. Then I would consider it a better deal. Otherwise aren't they sorta stealing from us? Also, I'm just curious: Has anyone else ever tried to return a cd because the music on the cd was so terrible? We would do it with any other product, wouldn't we?
I think the difference is because we can rent DVDs, whereas there is no legal, easy way to preview an entire CD.
Now they're going to start litigation against their customers.
They're gonig to sue the public into submission. Ain't they grand!
To a movie company, "Good" is a movie that makes lots of money. By their definition, a 100M$ movie is good no matter who liked it or not. The finest acting and story that only make 20M$ is not a "Good" movie to them.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
What's more interesting to me is the MPAA didn't WANT to diversify, they courts essentially forced them into that position.
Maybe the RIAA could learn something there.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It's a sad scenario in many ways, but it's here to stay.
PS. What's up with the 96Khz Super-CD's that were supposed to be coming out? That's a shot in the foot from the music industry if I ever saw one.
---- scrm
While the movie companies try to entice us to buy by adding extras like deleted scenes onto their discs (thus improving the overall quality of the disc), the RIAA is more concerned with starting lawsuits and draining every last dollar out of consumers than improving their product.
See these quotes from the article made by Jim Urie, president of Universal Music and Video Distribution:
Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
(Actually, if they dealt with consumer gripes you'd probably sell more product and make more money.)
Urie argues that lowered prices won't make a dent in downloading, saying, "The fact that consumers can steal music sort of trumps anything else we can do."
The article makes the very good point that most people have a certain amount they'll spend on entertainment. If CD's and DVD's cost about the same, then the consumer is going to look at how much "bang for the buck" they're getting with each. A DVD is typically packed with extras. A CD, if you're lucky, might have some tiny pictures and lyrics on the insert. No wonder consumers would rather buy the DVD than the CD.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
There are two reasons why dvd sales are good while music sales are bad.
1. You cannot download DVD quality movies in a reasonable amount of time, but you can download 256bit mp3 in reasonable time.
2. DVD's and CD's have almost the same cost now!!! You can get most movies for $15-25 but CD's are 10-18 USD, and I think most people think movies should cost more than CD's. They cost much more to make and are visual as well as audio.
Just some ideas.
I want to know what ever happened to purchasing power. I mean I thought that the consumer had the right to purchase or not purchase any product. I feel that I'm being forced to buy CDs from a major retailer so that the label makers can make money off of me. I know most of you are probably taking your PURCHASING POWER and not purchasing CDs because we demand better quality for the money we are paying (or not paying because we aren't buying them). The label makers are just freaking out because we are excersizing our rights.
No... brazil is NOT overseas [from the United States of America] because you need not go o-v-e-r-s-e-a-s to get there. You can drive if you want.
With the Panama Canal in the way?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does that take into account all the other stuff that bumps up the takings.
/Videos (don't shun my collection).
At home i have the following DVD's
The Wicker Man,
Blade runner,
Twelve monkies,
The Vanishing (Euro version)
Brazil,
A Clockwork orange,
The exorsist,
The shining,
Rambo box set (I had to buy it!!)
One flew over the cookoes nest,
etc....
All brought in the last year or so, and mainly antiques.
I could have downloaded them, but only I can only find the new crap on gnutella, and the Videos are cheep anyhows.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I know this is likely redundant, but:
Maybe the RIAA is not making as much money as they'd like (they are still making tons of money, though - I don't see any record execs power-lunching at McDonald's yet) because people are fed up with buying a CD for one or two decent songs while the rest of the album is crap.
At least when I buy a movie I know I like I get 2 hours or so of entertainment out of it, for just about the same price as the 3-6 minutes of entertainment I get out of a CD's one or two good songs.
Additionally, I personally bought more music when Napster was still around, because through Napster I previewed songs from the CD other than what was being played on the radio. Eventually I either deleted the song or bought the CD. I also discovered a lot of stuff I would have _never_ heard of otherwise.
Also, we're in the middle of an economic downturn. Maybe, just maybe, people aren't buying as much music because it isn't enough value per dollar.
If I'm budgeting my entertainment spending, I'm going to opt to pay $20 for a DVD rather than $20 for a CD, because the DVD has more value.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Each takes 7gb of space, which is about $7 at current IDE drive price levels
Assume a fellow has 224 GB of space in all. Now, if he has more than 32 movies, then in order to watch the movies that are on another hard drive, he will have to swap drives. Because ATA drives are in general not hot-swappable, he will have to shut down his computer, open the case, put on a grounding wrist strap, pull his drive out, insert another drive in his computer, close the case, and start it back up again.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As an LA resident, I can tell you that their so-called reporters tend to take the xxAA's word for granted. They almost never question the "billions in piracy" claims.
Though at least this article did mention at the very end that Universal tried to kill the VCR, and that it wound up saving the movie industry.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
You have to be wanting to blame the music industry and wanting to exonerate filesharing to not think that mp3s are negatively affecting music sales.
Have you talked to people recently? Do you know anyone except for audiophiles who still buys a significant number of CDs? Of the people I know, I and one of my friends are the only ones who still buy more than a few CDs per year -- everyone else downloads mp3s and burns them to audio CDs. Most people I know haven't bought a single CD in the past two years. And it's not because they don't like the music that's coming out -- it's because they already burnt their own CDs. "Why should I pay $12 for something I can get for free?"
Certainly the music industry is pretty crappy, and most of its solutions to the problem are unworkable and hurt legitimate customers, but I don't think you can blame everything on them. People's tendancy to not pay for anything unless they absolutely have to (or are forced to) is the cause of a lot of the problems.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
One thing I rarely see mentioned is that I can buy most DVD for around $18 on sale when they are first released. Many of the older Back catalog movies are $10. When you compare this to CDs it is ridiculous, a soundtrack from a movie only costs about $2 less than the DVD. I get much more value for my money buying a movie when compared to a CD. The music industry is a victim of their own greed in almost every way. They complain about sales of their products which are grossly overpriced. They complain about a payola system that they created. And they are upset that a open market destroyed their distribution system. I can't tell you how many times I have gone to the store to BUY a CD only to find out that the store is out of the CD I am looking for. But a quick trip home and I have it downloaded in a few minutes. If CD's only cost $7-9 there would be much less incentive to copy music. Give us some extras like DVD's have. How about a discussion of the lyrics by the artist, a "rough cut" of one of the songs so we can hear how the music evolved. There are a number of ways that value could be added to CD content with just a little effort. The bottom line is, if your product is a good product AND it is priced fairly it will sell.
I see plenty of talk about how DVDs can't be copied.
Bull. DVD-R drives are becoming increasingly cheaper. *chuckle* It's almost at the point where I'd rush out and buy one, if not for the fact that cd-r's work fine for my backup purposes. (Yes! I use cd-r's for legal purposes! Horror of horrors!)
SVCD isn't even bad if you know what you're doing when you play with piracy. I first saw Fellowship of the Rings on svcd, and there were no real quality problems that I could see. (Note: I fully intend to buy the DVD, boycotts be damned. However, I would not dare seeing it in theatres, as I live in the largest conglomeration of rednecks north of the Mason-Dixon line.) Lacking a digital theatre near me, the quality was actually better than that of what I would've seen in theatres. *chuckle*
If that's not enough, I've seen copied DVDs that have no noticible difference from the real ones.
Though, I must admit, from the amount of 'DVDs don't get copied!' I see here, maybe it's new tech, and the MPAA will be hurting in a few months. *shrug* Somehow I doubt that, though.
You know why? Because the movie industry doesn't suck as much as some zealots would like you to believe. Read through the postings here to find out why. Those are the reasons there's no tangible harm being done. It certainly isn't because DVDs don't get copied.
(Although, maybe it's because Viggo Mortsen doesn't whine about how piracy is hurting him so badly while he's sitting in Ilmadris with a bottle of fine wine, kinda like that Lars Ulrich idiot does.)
"Consumers adore DVDs, which offer cool packaging and lots of interactive extras; they loathe CDs, which they say are grossly over-priced and padded with filler. "
Like cool packaging and interactive extras aren't filler?
Hmmm... I am a fan of Charlotte Church, and I can either pay $16.88 for her CD or I can get the DVD of the same music for $19.99. The CD has no "extras" on it or interviews, or video, or extra tracks for home-theater multi-channel. This choice is a real toughie!
-
"When I walked through Best Buy the other day, I was amazed to discover that the DVDs for "Austin Powers" and "Rush Hour" cost exactly the same as the movies' CD soundtracks."
- Everybody who likes "oldies" already has a copy of everything they like.
- The conversion from vinyl to CD is complete. And CDs last a long, long time.
- Rock peaked a long time ago, all house music sounds the same, and the bad-boy rap star thing is over.
- In each genre, the best work has already been done.
Nobody has produced a great new symphony in a century. The best rock was made decades ago. The best rap is a decade old. Any new performer must compete with the all-time greats of the past.
Recorded music is becoming a mature, low-margin business. Nothing wrong with that, except that the industry doesn't accept it yet.I think this is the best article yet on pointing out what the issues are.
CD's are losing popularity because the consumers are growing smarter about "spending their dollars smarter". CD's are WAAAAY to expensive and in most cases 90% filler with 1 or 2 catchy songs that they are hoping get picked up by radio and video to make them superstars (if this was not the case you would see 10 songs from each CD released as videos/singles because the quality would be such -- instead the artists themselves are saying that most of the CD's are subpar when they release another new full length CD with another good song or two, rather than trying to expeose tracks 3-10 on their previous work). The music industry is trying to play smoke and mirrors saying that it is the internet's fault. But on the flip side -- these same "pirates" are buying DVD's and going to movies in droves. The money is being spent where the consumers feel they are getting the squarest deal.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Maybe the problem lies in the record companies' attitudes towards their customers:
[Jim] Urie (president of Universal Music and Video Distribution) says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
Can you say "Duh!" Mr. Urie?
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I'm sure this has been pointed out a dozen times already, but the omision of this point in the article is so glaring that I have to mention it. Movies contain a massive amount of information. Songs do not. Just storing a movie on a hard drive in Divx format takes up 600Mb. You try to download a 600Mb file from a person limiting their upload to 10kbps. Don't plan on using the file for a little over 17 hrs. An mp3 averages 5Mb. On the same 10kbps connection you'd only have to wait 8 1/2 minutes. Also an album is broken up into tracks. Each track is an individual song enjoyable on it's own. Try downloading one chapter off of a DVD... wow this is great, it's the 12th scene in the movie, it's really the only one I wanted off of that DVD anyway. Not going to happen.
How about just stamping out your own DVD's. To copy a CD, all you have to do is have a CD-R and the right software. It's cheap, it's easy, and it takes minutes. DVD copying hardware is still pretty expensive. Do you know anyone with a DVD-R drive (Universities and corporations don't count)? Chances are most of you don't. That's because it is prohibitively expensive and basicly unavailable. That's also why you hear about the government busting DVD copying rings and seizing their DVD burning hardware... because it's unusual for anyone to have it. When's the last time you heard of an arrest where they broke up a CD copying ring and seized their CD-R stuff.
The long and the short of it is that the reason the motion picture industry isn't taking a hit from the internet while the recording industry is, is because they have fundamentally different products. Movies don't lend themselves to electronic distribution at current internet speeds while songs do. It's not some malicious need to pirate songs, or the challange of it or what not as stated in that assanine article.
I recently joined a gym that constantly plays what I am guessing is currently popular music (or perhaps what the RIAA would like to ram down our throats). If this is the case, then I would say they're suffering because the music plainly sucks. It all sounds the same, the videos look the same and there is hardly a distinction to be made between songs. It is what I call McMusic. It generally consists of a constant thumping synthesized base drum and not much else in the way of instrumentation and the lyrics are never about anything more imaginitive than about who she wants to fuck or who has fucked her and dumped her or some other relationship psychodrama. On some "songs" they sample other songs that weren't even good when they were popular. I would be happy to NEVER hear "Jack and Diane" again but some idiot thought it would be a great idea to sample the fist few chords and make a sappy, crappy, syrupy love song out of it. Then there's another idiot that ripped off the theme for "The Young and the Restless" that is pure torture to listen to. Perhaps the worst of all though is the one where they've taken the main theme from Pachelbel's Cannon in D minor and put another set of sappy lyrics to it. I mean, am I the only one who thinks Brittany Spears' voice sounds a lot like an infant crying? It's awful. What happened to real music that is interesting to listen to? Where thought and inventiveness of the music can take the listener to places they've not been yet? I can only name a few recent bands that are entertaining to listen to. I am hard pressed to name any that I think are truly musical pioneers. Probably anyone who is doing great things musically either doesn't look like a model and can't dance like N'Sync so the music industry doesn't want them.
When the MPAA sees movies being downloaded, it's like watching people shit bricks. They KNOW it's painful trying to get a file just under a GB over a little copper cable.
When the RIAA sees music being downloaded, it's like looking at those annoying files that get left behind and bloat your windows diractory when you remove a programme. (Yes, i use windows, so flame mee) individualy, the are puny, just a few KBs, togather, they make up a GB!
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I think it has more to do with pricing than anything else. The music industry charges the same for a cd that the movie industry charges for a dvd movie. I doubt we'd still feel the same way about divx if the DVD's if pricing was out of control like in the music industry.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
If there was a format similar to DVD but more analagous to the way CD albums are packaged, you'd have a format like DVD only each DVD would include 10-12 movies (only 1 or 2 that you actually wanted to see) and cost 10-12 times as much as a current DVD (so more like $200 instead of $20) - No one would buy these, either.
On the flip side, if there were an audio format packaged in a way that was analagous to DVD's, you'd have CD's with just the one or two good tracks on them, the video for the song and maybe even an interview with the artist, and they'd cost maybe $3, I suspect consumers would nab them up in droves. The funny thing is that we almost have this, they're called CD singles, only they don't cost $3, they cost often $7-8, and the available selection primarily corresponds to the mindless dribble that gets programmed on most FM radio stations by the corporate drones at Clearchannel and their ilk.
Any industry that doesn't listen to the "gripes" (as Mr. Urie stated) of its customers ought to consider a) how long it will be before it simply has no customers, griping or otherwise and b) Why it would, in turn, expect its customers to give darn about its own gripes - after all, who needs whom more?
Now, granted, no one can blame Urie for being upset - while he and his cohorts were busy ignoring customer "gripes", others who have paid attention (read: Shawn Fanning etc.) have empowered Urie's customers to do something about it since he himself was unwilling to do so.
More ominously for Mr. Urie, I think, is that at the same time an unintended side effect has been that all his competition has been empowered - by this I mean the small unsigned bands (who, until now, have been forced to adopt a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude towards the record labels and their dubious policies) are now achieving previously unheard of levels of promotion and public awareness.
In fact, I would not be at all suprised if the next Napster or AudioGalaxy is created by a group of artists who are willingly providing their own works for free or for a small fee - the only thing they'll need to achieve critical mass is enough artists, who, by all rights, should eventually figure out who they're better off with, each other or the record labels.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Its a different story for the movie industry. If I download a movie thats i find very good I have the incentive to purchase the dvd due to the extra's that you get with and...plus the quality. Downloading music on the otherhand once you have it they is not anything else to gain by purchasing the cd-rom. I will buy cd's from artists that do good music but if they were extra's or a making of the music video supplied as an extra cd in the pack i'm sure people would buy a lot more cd's.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
The headline for this article should be "MP3s fiddle while DVD Burns."
Something that people have to realize is that movies come out in movie theaters first and make big $$$. Then they come out on DVD and it is just a bonus for the studios. Music doesn't have that initial money from a movie theater type situation. I think that is why the record companies are more scared and more affected by piracy.
You can compare the money a movie makes in it's theatrical release with the money artists make going on tour. Thus putting the comparison of buying DVD's and CD's back on the same level.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Why is the MPAA less worried than the RIAA...
1a. Movies are much more expensive to make (especially, action/scifi/fx-based movies). This means that there are fewer movies made and more people know about them: think 'natural monopoly'.
1b. When you buy a DVD/VCR movie you buy a 1.5-3 hour movie you want to see plus some extra stuff you may watch once VS. a music CD where you get the 2-3 songs you want (of about 3-4 minute each) plus lots of crap you probably don't care about at all, ever (there are some great albums, but they are the exceptions).
2. Downloading a movie is a big deal (100's of MB) -- even worse if it turns out to be crap quality. Downloading a crap mp3 isn't much of a loss (5-10mb).
3. Movies (VCR or DVD) sell for a more balanced price. It costs about $4 to rent a movie vs $10-30 to buy one (depending on format) or $8-15 to see it at the theatre (per person). Not a bad differnce for a decent movie since you can now see it as many times as you want. Music on the other hand is free to listen to on the radio vs $15-30 for a CD.
4. DVDs offer more value with extra scenes, better sound/video quality, etc than music CDs (which may have some cool liner notes).
5. Movies are something that you devote dedicated time to. Music (mostly) is background noise -- I know this will offend some audiophiles, but its true for most people, most of the time.
Just some thoughts...
(Prices listed in Canadian dollars, but I believe they are very similar in USD)
For a long time, MP3's were computationally intensive enough that they were annoying to use on anything less than a pentium II.
Ah you kids! It did suck, but I was making MP3s *and* burning them on CDs on a Cyrix sub-Pentium machine back in the early 90s. Still have some of the MP3 albums I recorded from then ("I can get *HOW* many hours onto one CD?) and they are great. I made them because it beat carrying dozens of albums to and from work and there were no reliable and/or acceptable streaming radio sites.
My only regret? That I converted so many tracks using only 128Kbps. CD blanks were not cheap then (try $10+) and every MB counted!
Da Blog
The music industry has not followed the example of the film industry. If you download a movie and find it a good film you are more likely to purchase the dvd for the better quality and the extra content. Download some music and they is no incentive for the getting the album. Maybe if another cd with a few extra's like making of the music video or interviews would persuade custoemrs to buy the album.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
The situation is pretty simple. The current batches of movies are good and are reaching all audiences. The current batches of music and pop stars aren't even worth the download for the most part.
The music industry is hurting because the new music that is out is not worth buying. When I go to the store I normally buy a cd that is 10 years old or older. "Opps I did it again" com'on is that worth $17.
CD's are 20+ years old now they should be selling for $5-$10 and they would fly off the shelf.
no because the record companies don't see that much money from concert tours
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
I was thinking about this, this AM.. (dangerous I know, thinking will soon be illegal too, but anyway)
The problem the RIAA is having is a issue of supply and demand.
Hear me out.
No matter how HUGE the demand for online music, once it is in digital format on HD's the supply is infinite. You have too much supply for no matter how much demand.
Look at it this way:
If we put a base on Mars, and started terraforming the planet, how much will air on Mars cost? It will be in short supply. It will cost money to make. So unless it is a communist base, AIR WILL COST MONEY. What does that have to do with the question of the RIAA?
Simple: Air production on Mars is mostly controlled by 5 big companies: Universal Air, Sony Air, etc. etc.
These companies make billions.
Fast forward several centuries and the Terraforming is complete. Now outside the base is breathable air. But the Air companies seeing their market dissapearing press Mars Govt. to require people to wear spacesuits and helmets outside the base at all times. Because only criminals and crazy young punks have ever gone outside without them in the past. And now the Air companies make even more profit because they came up with a new way to produce Air. (just bottle the stuff outside and sell it to the people wearing suits)
When supply is infinite, unless the free market is destroyed, value is nill nada nothing.
And when you copy something on a computer you do not loose the original, so supply is infinite.
Just my rambling thoughts.
The real truth of the matter is, the latest offerings from the music industry are not generating as much interest as the latest films are. Junk is junk, P2P and pirating aside. Of course, they have to blame it on something besides themselves...
"Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
Perhaps he needs to re-introduce the word "customer" into his vocabulary. How many items that you've purchased recently (besides food/drink) have you actually consumed?
An argument that people are again raising is this idea of piracy "being a non-issue" because those who watch only pirated movies (or listen only to pirated CD's) wouldn't buy the retail versions. This argument, however, is flawed because there's no way to ensure that these people's "spirts wouldn't break" in a world without piracy. We can't really assume anything about such a situation because it doesn't exist and never has.
For example, let's say John buys only pirated movies. He says that he wouldn't buy them if there weren't pirated versions available. That's easy for him to say because, frankly, there's no threat to the availability of pirated movies. Faced, however, with the choice of paying retail or not watching movies at ALL, EVER, would he really hold up, or "give in" and be an honest, legal consumer.
Another argument has been made regarding the similarity in price between a movie and its soundtrack recording. "Well, *obviously* that means the entertainment industry is cheating consumers!" Or does it? Look at what has to go into *both* products, that requires similar production costs:
-media preparation, by *good* artists and designers
-distribution costs of similarly sized and weighted products
-securing copyrights on the recordings
-...and a slew of other things that I'm probably forgetting
Also, something driving down the prices of DVD's is the boom in DVD sales. The DVD is probably going to sell a *lot* more copies than is the soundtrack recording. (Let's face it- most soundtrack recordings are lame anyway.) This means that the individual DVD's can be sold for less money than the CD's and base costs of production like graphic design are easily recoup'ed by DVD sales. In addition, consider this: would any more or fewer people buy the soundtrack recording if it were $10? Perhaps, but I think the entertainment industry knows that the people who buy a movie's soundtrack are going to buy it even if it is a little over-priced.
Yes, the entertainment industry is a twisted place, but what else do we expect from a group of people that provides such a basic part of life as entertainment? Movies and music recordings (notice, I say *recordings*) are, for better or for worse, a cornerstone of the American economy and the American way of life. The entertainment industry knows that people *are* going to buy music recordings and movies, so why not charge more for them? The legal, just, and RIGHT way to protest these organizations, if we disagree with their pricing, is simply NOT TO BUY THEIR PRODUCTS. (At this point, too, I'll remind any Christians out there of the bit in Matthew about the "other cheek".)
The entertainment industry isn't like food or clothing or real estate in that people don't *need* music recordings or movies. NOR ARE WE ENTITLED TO THEM if their pricing practices are illicit. We ARE entitled to the ability to drive them out of business by simply not buying their products.
What this all boils down to is honesty. If we assume, and I think it's a reasonably fair assumption, that the entertainment industry is employing questionable business practices, then it follows that they are lying, as a result of greed. To whom are they lying, probably lots of people, but that's what it all boils down to. John in my previous exaple, though, is NO BETTER THAN ANY CROOKED EXECUTIVE, because he is lying, too, again because of greed. An industry with lying and greed on both sides of the equation isn't "balanced"; it's screwing over everyone involved.
I think it was Gandhi who said, "you must be the change you want to see in the world." If you want the entertainment industry to be fair in pricing etc., it follows that you should be fair consumers, and be honest.
So buy your stuff.
True there are people that do like Pop music (aka people from the age of 8 to 16) but there are other people that like as you said the "typical geek music" aka Weird Al, death medal, and so on. There are also people that like heavy metal, Hard Rock and Punk (as I do).
Sure Britney, NSTINK and Blink 182 sell 5 million albums a year but it is the lack of other types of music coming out that can really hurt album sales. Bands like RATM, Metallica and even Weird Al can sell and do sell a lot of albums when they release new material. If I can remember correctly Metallica has had 6 albums sell over 10 million copies worldwide and even Weird Al can sell 1 million copies of an album. The real problem is that in the last few years these bands haven't come out with anything new and except for Korn (and a few others) no new bands have been able to replace the number of albums that these other bands sold.
Which brings me back to the fact that the record industry would rather push bands like NSTINK than the next heavy metal band. Because they no they will get a lot of sales over a very short period of time (2 to 3 years). Unlike these other bands that will come out with something new every 2 to 3 years that sell well (but around 2 to 3 times less compared to the Pop bands in that same time period).
Sure there are many people that like Pop bands but to eliminate the other half (the richer half never the less) from mainstream listening to other types of music is stupid. You can also say well there have been recent success stories from non-Pop bands/stars such as Stained or Incubus. But if you listen to their shit that gets played all the time it is much softer (more Pop like) than there other much heavier stuff they have come out with.
So until a "good band" (as far as I am concerned) comes out with a solid album I am personally not going to buy anything. This has nothing to do with ripping MP3s for me it is about the music.
The Memento Limited Edition DVD has the most monstrous menu system I ever hope to see in my life. The play disc is bad enough... a grid of maybe 50 words, and you have to hunt for the 5 that actually do something.
:)
But the special features disc really takes the cake. To get to a SINGLE feature, you have to: a) pick a particular picture from a large group. b) answer a bunch of irrelevant quiz slides, c) when you get to a specific one, you have to pick a certain choice to start making the slides move SIDEWAYS. d) keep picking this same choice to slide sideways until you get to another specific slide e) pick a certain choice from the final fake quiz slide.
Once you have done this, you get to a menu for a SINGLE FEATURE. Want to watch a different one? Repeat the above steps with a different picture for step a). Takes like 3 minutes to get to each feature. Absolutely ridiculous.
On a positive note, the packaging is quite cool... I especially like the genuine post-it note stuck to the inside of the case which reads "Watch". Hehehe
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Bootlegs
The Google Directory lists many sites that sell All-Region DVDs and VCDs. These are almost always bootlegs-and are almost always the better deal. If I have, say, $20 to spend on movies, I can buy one legit movie fot $20-or two bootlegs for $10 each. Although the sound and picture quality will be inferior, I would have ot prefer the legit version twice as much for that to be the better buy. And if I only want one movie, I can buy one $10 bootleg, and have $10 left over to spend on other things.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
This guy Urie should be shot. Not only does he openly admit to not caring about consumer concerns, check out this gem:
'Urie argues that lowered prices won't make a dent in downloading, saying, "The fact that consumers can steal music sort of trumps anything else we can do."'
But people have always been able to steal music, since the invention of the tape recorder. So now they're using piracy as an excuse to not improve their product offering. They simply refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that piracy is encouraged by low quality and overblown pricing. What a load of bullshit.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
the success of DVD almost certainly has something to do with its (perceived) value versus its cost. you can buy the new Harry Potter DVD for $15, or the new Britney Spears CD for $15.
a lot more person/hours went into the making of the movie than the album, so it is a better deal. if the music industry didn't rip people off so badly, I would buy a lot more CDs.
There's a fundamental flaw in what you're asking. They don't have to prove any of what you say. Even if everything that they've said is just FUD raising banter (as well it may be.)
The law is on their side and no matter how much we scream about "fair use" or "...but I wanna!" the facts remain that the U.S. is run by industrialists who have a sympathetic administration in power.
Feel free to take the high moral ground, but in this country you have no rights to ask the things you ask. Period. Sure I want to know the answers too, but you should really spend your time fighting the fight on the same field of play where the battle is actually occuring as opposed to in some theoretical sandbox where everybody plays by the rules of a gentleman.
In the power struggles of corporations perception=reality. No contest. Look, all hackers are Kevin Mitnick and he is evil. CNN said it so it must be true.
If Hillary says the music industry will collapse unless the U.S. Congress enacts a bill that denys Common Carrier status to ISPs then it will happen. You can hold your breath waiting for that to happen because you won't be going blue in the face waiting.
As soon as the trial runs of "we're doing what the consumer asked and selling our music on the Internet" fail that will be all the proof your elected official needs to roll over. Now he'll have some tangible evidence that people want to steal and won't buy at any price. Then it's all over.
So fight the fight on the terms on the table or be prepared to be a casualty.
You're going to be reamed out and cross-threaded by Big Brother and don't even know why.
As always YMMV.
It's called your local library. A lot of times you won't even have to pay to rent the CDs. You can just borrow them free of charge. (Provided you don't damage or fail to return them.)
Or did you mean one that did not involve you leaving your domicile?
Put a little effort in to it. You can find lots of things at libraries. And what you can't find they will often get for you. Yes, I should know. That used to be my job. I was more than happy to buy things that people were asking for.
Just FYI.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
piracy has been the (supposed) bane of the music industry,
The music industry is *dead* ???
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I am a consumer with significant disposable income. I want more music and I am trying to BUY more music. Interestingly, the music industry does whatever it can to prevent the sale.
The industry is doing everything possible to prevent people from previewing music before buying. The industry has shut down all file swapping services, and has not provided any alternatives. The radio stations play the SAME 10 SONGS over and over, endlessly. You can't rent music. Internet radio stations are actively being shut down.
I guess I am supposed to buy music "sight unseen!" That's much like wandering into a car dealership and saying "I'm buying a car, I want a test drive," only to be told: "NO! That's driving-piracy. You either buy up front or you GET OUT!" Naturally, I would go to another dealer.
Most industries do whatever is possible to shove their products in your face. It's annoying, but it's reasonable: they're trying to increase their sales. The music industry is doing everything possible to prevent me from buying their products. Bizarre.
The music industry does not even conduct market research, because:
We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes
Umm...How do you intend to make more money and sell more product if you don't deal with consumer gripes? You are SELLING A PRODUCT. What a bunch of fucking idiots.
I hate listening to music on tapes because it takes time to get to the tracks I want. I like cds because they allow me to skip songs quickly and get where I want to go on the cd.
.I can see why a person would want to skip alot of tracks on a cd but why would a person constantly want to do the same thing with a movie ?Ok I can understand fast forwarding adds and such , but apart from that don't most people just watch a movie from start to finish 99% of the time?
It could be said that the reason why most people like dvds over video tapes is the same reason why most people prefer cds to tapes
Clearly dvd's are alot more convienient than video tapes and this coupled with a reasonable price is why people buy them.
The music Industrys problem is that all of the new formats they plan to offer the public allow the public to do less than cds allow the public to do now and that the public in general are perfectly happy to listen to 128kps mp3s and consider the quality of the afore mentioned mp3s to be acceptable and hence do not really care all that much for the super dooper quality that the music industrys ultra copy protected new formats offer.Basicly dvds offer me usefull features that video tapes do not have at a reasonable price,All the proposed copyprotected music formats offer me is a pian in the ass.
_________________________________________________
Seriously, it looks like that the current system fails both the fans and the artists. Paul Westerberg just released an album recorded in his basement. Unfortunately this link does not include the full interview in which Westerberg complains that while he got $1 million advance on his last big studio album, all of it was spent before the record was shipped. About half of my music money is spent on local artists like Salaam, and most of the other half is spent on used CDs.
A large part of it is a simple issue of economics. Peer to peer distribution would seem to be a great way to promote albums without paying thousands of dollars for radio air time. In addition it would satisfy people like me who have a serious trouble finding a radio outlet where I can hear cool new music like Yann Tiersen(heavy flash page) or the Tosca Tango Orchestra (review, I could not find a band web page). Quite honestly, the only major label albums that I purchased new in the last year have been movie soundtracks ( Waking Life, Amelie, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou).
I think it will we need is a radical shift in the way that we buy, promote and distribute music parallel to the rise of microbreweries. An alternative market of music favored by those who know better. Just as you have the Budweiser's of the world selling large quantities of watered down whiz, the major labels can keep doing what they do. Meanwhile there are good outlets for the good stuff. (Insert gratuitous beer snob flame of mass-produced American beer drinkers here.)
I do feel that there is a good place for traditional hardcopy distribution, partly some gate keeping regarding the quality of the audio distributed, but also to provide brand recognition for particular genres.
The music industry isn't worried about illegal copying for the current market conditions - they're concerned about the future.
This is 100% true.. but it's WHY they're worried that's the problem.
Up until the recent past (say, 5 years ago), the music labels were the only way to reach a national (or even international) audience... if you wanted to become famous, you needed them.
With the advent of the Internet, that's no longer the case - any musician in the world can get international exposure without needing a record label... it's slowly starting now, but in the future, there will be NO need for a record label at all..
RIAA members are worried about the future, because they realize that they've become obsolete. It's about control, not copyright infringement.
Here's the god's honest truth...record companies have consolidated in the past 3 years and they are looking for every excuse to blame away their shrinking bottom line.
The fact of the matter is their product SUCKS !
The new baby bands aren't saving anyone's ass and certainly aren't putting people in the record stores.
That simple.
As far as file sharing goes? It has been the biggest promotional gift to record labels since radio stations stopped having live orchestras and started *gasp* playing RECORDS!
And they've f*cked it all up!
The price of a DVD is not that different from the price of a CD. The difference:
DVDs have hours of video and high quality surround sound.
CDs have an hour of run-of-the-mill digital stereo.
Other factors:
- People are boycotting the RIAA Trust, because of the way it treats artists, fans, and other companies. For example: MP3.com, whose pants got sued off for letting people listen to their own music.
- Britney Spears
- "N" Sync
- What's playing on the radio? Same thing as an hour ago. And they want us to buy that garbage?
- Now the RIAA is trying to crash your computer when you put a CD in.
- Services like Napster, which help people find music they will like, are being shut down.
- "N" Sync
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Average DVD:
Cost: 20 dollars
What you get: 1.5 - 2.5 hour movie, plus audio commentaries, trailers, making of the movie / behind the scenes, sometimes interactive DVD-ROM stuff for the PC, etc...
Average CD:
Cost: ~13 dollars (I think)
What you get: Roughly an hour worth of music, maybe a "bonus" track.
Right. I'll shell out money for a DVD over a music CD anyday. You just get more for your buck (besides the fact that CD's are grossly overpriced for the cost of making them compared to a DVD).
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
The consumer will pay for an entertainment product when he is convinced he is getting value for money.
As for why the consumer doesn't feel that he's getting value for money when buying CDs, this quote from a record industry exec says it all:
Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
I'm not sure if the journalist is as clueless as "Or are they just products of an Internet culture that has them believing that whatever's on the Web is free for the taking?" suggests or it's that given that this is the local paper for the entertainment industry, he can't say what he really thinks. Or if he simply didn't read through the entire article before hitting the send button.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The music studios are not taking advantage of technology. They could set up a system for selling songs, where their cost would be very close to zero, and then charge a small amount per song and still make money.
Instead of doing that they continue to sell CDs, and they try to sabotage any new way to sell music that comes along. They are doing what they can to prop up the price of CDs, even though they are now much cheaper to produce than they were when they first came out.
It used to be that all the most popular songs were released on "singles" (small records) for a couple of bucks; these days if you want the popular song you must buy a CD with many other songs. The best way to make money is to give people what they want; this isn't giving people what they want. It is not surprising that people would rather download the one song they want than pay $18 for a CD.
If the music studios aren't careful, they will become irrelevant. It used to be that the only way to make any money in the music business was to sign up with a big studio; but now, with the Internet, it is possible to make music, advertise the music, and sell the music, all on your own and without signing your life away. Go to mp3.com and look around. There is a ton of music there you can listen to, and a ton of CDs you can buy, and all without the music studios being involved. CDs there go for around $8 or so!
The amount of action in the music world is not getting smaller; just the amount of dollars the big music studios are seeing. The Net economy is starting to route around them. They claim piracy is killing them, but it's the world changing around them and they have their heads in the sand.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
"Stealing music is illegal."
You can't steal music. You can violate a copyright, but stealing music is impossible.
Lets stop the semantic game though.
When you copy MP3's over P2P, you're being patriotic. Anything that destroys the moral bloodsuckers that are called the RIAA and whom they represent is something that is for the common good.
It was illegal for Rosa Parks to get in the front of the. That didn't make it WRONG. Oh wait, but your logic, she shouldn't have ridden where she did. She should have worked to change the laws.
Well goddamn it, she was RIGHT.
Likewise, its illegal to share mp3's. But that doesn't make it WRONG. Congress no longer cares about your or my rights. They care about protectingt the RIAA members. That means we have a moral right to ignore laws that enable the RIAA and the people they represent.
So your point then, is that the RIAA's efforts to stop casual music piracy have been at least somewhat successful, and thus they should continue along the path they've been following?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nobody I know pays $17 for anything other than import or limited edition CDs. The only places that you can find such ridiculous prices are the Tower Records and their online equivalents (like cdnow.com). For popular music, Best Buy generally sells everything for around $12-$14. For more obscure stuff, cheap-cds.com has a fairly good collection, with the majority of CDs being $15, shipping included. If you like punk music, you can almost always order cds for $10-$12, shipping included, directly from the label. And as you mentioned, used CDs are quite cheap. Ebay is a good place to get used CDs -- if you want anything that's been popular in the last 10 years, you can get it really cheaply (Green Day's 1994 hit Dookie typically sells for around $1, for example).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Just wait for the compression to keep up.
Then we'll hear a lot more RIAAesque shit from the MPAA.
Talk to ya then.
"Failure of Windows operating systems is extremely rare. If it happens, it is usually due to operating system file c
Do you know that people outside of the US buy stuff! And sometimes they don't even speak American! Freaky huh?
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
From reading your post, I personally think the biggest problem with the RIAA is simple: they are engaged in cartel pricing to fix prices for audio CD's.
It is that cartel power that causes album length audio CD's to cost for the most part US$18 in the large record stores (Tower, Virgin Superstore, Sam Goody, etc.) and US$14 at discount stores like Wal-Mart and online retailers.
Somehow, the RIAA is very clueless about why cartels fail: cartels encourage consumers to find ways to circumvent the producer. The reason why places like Napster became extremely popular is the fact consumers got tired of paying the steep prices for audio CD's and the fact audio CD's contain way too much filler material not of interest to consumers.
The only way the RIAA can put an end of music piracy is simple: price audio CD's more realistically. They should be priced more like US$10-US$11 per disc retail, at price that would drastically cut down the incentive to pirate music.
dcavanaugh, you wrote: There is at least 10x the amount of data on a DVD compared the CD. At $22, it's just not worth finding a way to download & store all those gigabytes. If you can rent the movie for $5 at Blockbuster, it's not even worth considering the piracy alternatives.
The reasons why most consumers won't want pirated movies over the Internet are as follows: 1) the picture quality is mostly vastly inferior to the original DVD; 2) a movie in DiVX format is 500 to 800 megabytes in size, a daunting task to download even with broadband connections; 3) people like the extra features on DVD discs, and 4) DVD prices are very reasonable (US$15 to US$25 per set for the vast majority of DVD releases).
'Likewise, its illegal to share mp3's. But that doesn't make it WRONG. Congress no longer cares about your or my rights. They care about protectingt the RIAA members. That means we have a moral right to ignore laws that enable the RIAA and the people they represent.'
I hope you can see the flaw in your logic. We have no 'moral right' to ignore the law. What you purpose is anarchy. You certainly have no right to ignore the law just because you don't agree with it.
Your way of thinking will get you some quality time in jail with Bubba the Butt Fucker.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
There you can learn about unjust laws and when it becomes justifiable to break them.
Only sheep follow the laws without questioning the motives behind them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
3 bucks for a stale ass rental? I can go to family video and get 2 for a dollar and a kids movie for free.