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File Sharing and CD Sales, Again
Andrew Leonard writes "Stan Liebowitz, an economist studying the effects of file-trading on the music industry, says in an article in Salon that new numbers have convinced him that the decline in CD sales may be partially attributable to MP3 downloading. But he also argues that the decline does not justify draconian new laws."
will salon finally die?
A first post!
piss?
M$ sux lol!!!11
How come they dont analyze how bad music is nowadays as the reason for the decline in CD sales?
1 4/\/\ 1337Xo|2Z
I mean really. Do people actually still feel the need to type in the words "first post"???? It seems so ridiculously infantile and juvenile that one would do such a thing, knowing that moderators will just send you down to 0 or worse... come on! I realize this is off topic, but I have had a LOT to drink tonight and feel the need to rant. e
It sure as shit ain't first post, but it's the best damn 8th post ever. Eat it, biatches.
According to this well written story, music sharing actually increases music sales.
This Stan Liebowitz person is probably some guy trying to make a name for himself by stirring up trouble on Slashdot. Let's not give him the satisfaction!
You're always going to have the unethical/innocent geek kid who downloads an MP3 and listens only to it since his PC, MP3 player and PDA are the only things he uses for listening to music.
You're always going to have the normal guy who doesn't care about "branded" CDs or the slight (and sometimes perceptible) quality loss of MP3s over CDs...he goes ahead and burns his MP3s to a 5-cent CDR and listens to it anyway.
You're always going to have the fellow who likes to support artists, and buys original CDs. Catch? He now listens to MP3s to sample new albums. He doesn't like the sample...he doesn't buy the CD. Whereas earlier he would be stuck with the CD as a sample (no CD returns!), he is now a "loss" to the music company.
Wow, the first non-AC post! Anyways, all of the ACs post at 0 already, in case you didn't notice. Yeah, I need to go get drunk.
Please, stop beating it.
I have been pwned because my
Eat dung from my bung hole, Screech. Mayhem!
Ok.. of course, illegal file sharing has decreased the number of cd's some people buy, and increased others. Thats obvious. And of course, nothing warrants the recent attempts for new legislation.
Personally, I think the decrease in record sales is the price of CD's, and the decrease of the quality of new music. Many established bands are going downhill, or straying away from their fanbase.
A claim by the record industry that the decrease is purely attributible to file sharing illustrates that they are behind the curve when it comes to technology. If they had implemented the technology in the right way, all those sales rates would be going the other direction.
The guys a moron. His model says a recession doesn't affect sales much, therefore any bigger drops must mean something like MP3s have an effect. Maybe yer model sucks! A 5% change in income may be nothing if your making $100K/yr, and devastating if your making $15K/yr.
Oh well, I also hate the assumption that if I got if for free, then it's lost revenue, when I would have gone without rather than pay for it.
blah blah blah
Welcome to Radio Free Slashdot, bringing you the mello sounds of the '70s. Up next, Lady by Kenny Rogers.
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I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
I don't know, but I've been listening to this debate for a while.
I can tell you one thing, and this is just my opinion: Most of the music that's been put out in the industry in the last 3 years has been absolute shit. I think pretty much everyone can agree that the shit-to-good-music ratio has definitely changed. I *RARELY* buy cd's. I also go to live events. mostly because of the fact I'm in the electronic music culture, and it's easy to find (at least in the bay area, california) good djs playing good songs. I turn on MTV, and I'm almost offended of all the absolute crap I see. All these polished, produced, bubble gum pop groups, who, in my opinion, suck hardcore ass. It sucks, alot.
I also don't "steal mp3's". I've got better things to do with my time than go out and try to download some song off of a website that'll probably only be up for about a week before being shut down by the RIAA. I used to use napster, but it was to listen to albums so I could judge whether I wanted to buy them or not. When napster was still around, the music wasn't *QUITE* as shitty as it is now.
Anyhow, that's just my rant. I'm going to an "electronic music concert"(read: a real rave, bolt cutters and all) here in a few minutes. I'm going to spend my time this weekend listening to great music, and hanging out with great people.
I just hope that things get better.
> You're always going to have the fellow who likes
> to support artists, and buys original CDs. Catch?
> He now listens to MP3s to sample new albums. He
> doesn't like the sample...he doesn't buy the CD.
This would certainly be me, as are many others.. yes, it decreases sales... but none less then the radio has. The difference is that with the internet, the quality is a little better and you can avoid commercials.
There is also a 4rd group, like my sisters.. they buy the CDs, but download the mp3s because they aren't knowledgable enough to rip & encode their own.
The only sad thing is that there are some who abuse the power and never buy the cds.
The Computer Gaming Industry is making record sales.
People are being scared by anti-piracy campaigns.
The price of bread and milk is rising.
Pixels keep you awake!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Operating System *BSD was found dead in its San Francisco home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy its CLI, there's no denying its contributions to computer culture. Truly an American icon.
That I and millions of others like me have decided to boycott the RIAA?
Hmmm?
Might we be sick and tired of their power plays and their intrusions into our personal lives?
Hmmmm?
Might we be sick and tired of being called criminals by them?
Hmmm?
Could we be tired of ther inane music they've been producing the past few years?
Hmmm?
Well, My Leibowitz...what do you think??
When this question was first posted, (in about 1982), I gave a full, comprehensive answer.
However, it's gone on, and on, and on. So, can we just, for once, sum up:
Yes, downloading music from the internet hurts CD sales. Of course it does, but so does listening to the radio, and so do blank cassettes and mini-discs. It also helps to promote CD sales, in the same way that radio, tapes, and minidiscs so.
Nobody will *ever* be able to do a comprehensive study of this, because it depends who you ask. Ask a load of geeks, and they'll probably say that yes, they do download MP3s, but the quality is inferior, so they buy the CDs they can afford. They will proably also mention that CDs are overpriced, and that on a technical note, just about any copy protection could be broken.
Ask the average 'man in the street', who is computer-literate, and he'll probably say, yes, he does listen to MP3s, and that he doesn't even care whether he is infringing copyright or not, because he doesn't really know much about it. He probably thinks of downloading music as being as bad as copying a friends CD.
Personally, I think that people should stop trading music illegally, and put pressure on local shops to allow previewing of CDs. Otherwise, you're just playing in to the hands of the record companies.
Oh, and as for the people who complain about the inferior quality of copy protected CDs, most of you are lying, especially when you listen on cheap speakers, about 5 metres from a pnumatic drill. It is more to do with incompetent recording engineers who know nothing about how to master a CD, (over compressing it, normalising the tracks unnecessarily, letting the level repeatedly hit 0dB on the masters, etc, etc).
The economy is in decline and the baby boom after shock (now 30 somethings) are moving out of their prime music buying years.
Obviously they are going to loose sales.
The largest persentage of their prime audience has stopped buying.
Clueless Bastards (tm)
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
You're not a pirate if you promise to buy the CD of every mp3 you've downloaded when you get a job.
I'm too poor to buy CDs. So, how wrong is it to download music, if I wouldn't buy it in the first place?
What's really sad and upsetting is that you didn't even change the subject line before your rant. So now instead of one 'first post" there's at least two :)
But you're right - it's is absolutely stupid. I'm waiting for all the "LAST POST!" posts to start appearing.
Most places can manufacture a one hit wonder. Take those pop stars from those TV show contests. Nice kids, but potentially ruined by the business angles running them ragged.
But it takes a completely different level of artist to sustain originality. this seems to have been beaten to death by the industry
Give me a local garage man these days
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Do you think it's right to steal medicine for yourself if you have no intention to pay for it?
Could it just be possible that I DO NOT EVEN KNOW Any of the album titles from the pirated mp3's I own. Even if I knew the albums from the songs I stole, I wouldn't buy them.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I actually think this DOES affect CD sales to some extent. You no longer need to buy an entire crappy CD to get that one song that is stuck in your head. You can just steal the one song via your favorite file sharing network. Maybe it's just me.
Whenever I see some report on mp3s and CD sales, I always wonder...
Is reducing a company's profit a crime?
Radio stations usually do not defy the law by refusing to pay royalties. And when they do infringe copyright, it is not difficult to bring the matter before a judge.
Because people are constantly looking for OTHER music.
FRA: STFU GTFO
With the current generation of high school students, a great many of them think 'why spend ANY money on recorded music at all?' They get all of their music off of the internet and divert their recreational dollars to video games or DVDs or whatever. One albun sale is not being shared among a half dozen friends but 'shared' among ten thousand strangers.
Baby boomers??
No, the big CD sales go to Britney Spears, Eminem, and other teenyboppers.
Breaking their copyright by copying and distributing the works or receiving copies of the works from others is a crime.
apples oranges
medicine is a horrible example, medicine might be needed for life, music certainly isn't. Plus, you say "no intention to pay for it", not "no means to pay for it" like your parent implied. Come up with a better analogy.
Ha Ha. Last post, suckaz. Anyway, hey man, you wanna go see that Simone movie tomorrow?
Why doesn't Britney Spears sing over Beethoven remixes instead of ruining her career with junk.
The problem is not copying, the problem is paying the creators for their work.
Historically, some companies have tried to solve this problem using various techniques (publishing, advances, royalty payments, advertising-supported broadcasting, pledge drives). All of these are predicated on economies of scale for large runs, and high costs of entry for competitors.
When a new technology comes along that changes these economics, it is time to look for a new model to solve the underlying problem, not construct a technical and legislative framework to restore the old barriers.
Please elaborate, copyright infringer.
..., if I wouldn't buy it in the first place"?
Why do you feel the need to justify your illegal actions with such silliness as "how wrong is it to
"So one of the things the industry could do with their downloads is have different prices. People with high-quality stereos aren't going to want to put the low quality material on, and the people who have lower quality stereos, with speakers that are incapable of producing the frequencies that let you hear the difference, then they'll buy the cheap ones. That would a way to broaden the market and increase their revenues. In a way it's surprising that the industry hasn't done that. And as they are trying to figure out their models for online sales, that would be one way of doing it. "
I seriously doubt any audiophile is going to be downloading their music. And the question about "hi quality" versus "low quality" isn't really an issue, as very few like the "pay per purchase" set up. (It offers less than any other method, basicaly)
I don't see any implication that the parent meant "no means to pay for it", only that he did not intend to purchase it in the first place.
Let's say it is a copy of Photoshop then. Is it okay to illegally obtain a copy of Photoshop for free because "you wouldn't have bought it in the first place"?
well, there's another group to that also, those who are technology savvy, like music, but have become tired of the RIAA and refuse to buy CDs.
and a final group, those who would never buy the CD to begin with. That can't be counted as a loss!
They're using their grammar skills there.
Stan Liebowitz, author of an upcoming book (set for publication Sept. 7) titled "Rethinking the Network Economy," is digging hard for quantitative answers.
So, not looking for free publicity to boost book sales then.
In May, Liebowitz published a paper suggesting that the record industry would soon be seriously harmed by MP3s. But in June, by the time Salon caught up with him, he was questioning his own conclusions after having examined the numbers and finding little solid proof that file sharing was hurting CD sales. Two months later, he's changed his mind again
So, this respected researcher has changed his mind three times in 4 months . Perhaps he should think and formulate a well conceived, intelligent opinion before opening his mouth next time - is this guy the salon version of the first post trolls ?
You don't publish a paper, then change your mind about your own conclusions less than a month later, then change your mind yet again, and expect to be taken seriously.
If it were the case that there was a 9.8 percent drop on albums, when you look at the historical record of the ups and downs of the CD industry, [that's] a bigger decline than we've seen in 30 years. It starts to look unusual.
Except, that a) we're in a recession, b) teenage disposable income is now spilt between DVDs, Games and CDs c) bland mass appeal music always sees a drop in sales - see the RIAA's "Home taping is killing music" campaign in the late disco, pre punk era.
If he thinks the drop is unusual then he isn't checking his historical data correctly. In addition, how can he explain the INCREASE in CD sales in the UK last year ? We have Napster too yer know.
It's really amazing how (CD) prices have tracked so closely with inflation. It's almost as if the industry just bumps up prices with the inflation rate
No shit Sherlock...
[What is clear is that] there's no evidence in the data that the tapes caused a decline.
MP3s wouldn't do the same thing. The reason cassettes led to growth was that before cassettes existed, you didn't have portable music. You couldn't play recorded music in your car, and you couldn't play it walking around, in a Walkman. It was the little cassette that basically allowed you to do that. To be technically correct, there were 8- track players prior to cassettes. But they didn't have quite the same penetration. My theory as to what went on is that [the rise in cassettes] coincides almost perfectly with the penetration rate of the portable, Walkman-type of thing. So it opened up this whole new market, which overwhelmed any copying that went on.
Oh dear.
Well 1) Most people didn't have recordable 8 tracks, so no, the 8 track WASN'T the same as musiccassettes. 2)We have new mediums now, such as the MP3 player, so according to your "theory" that should overwhelm any copying.
If people bought albums in the 80's specifically for the purpose of taping them for their new toy the walkman, then isn't the same going to happen now ? We should see an increase in up tempo running/jogging music, with the advent of solid state MP3 players which are finally immune to jumping, skipping and damage from violent movement.
So, either I'm going to see lots of hard cord techno stars from Germany and the UK become millionares as their record sales boom, or I'm going to see you change your mind about your pet theories yet again, probably just in time for the official release of your book.
Did Stan escape from Dallas University's, locked room, infinite monkeys on typewriters experiment ?
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
well, he said he was poor, thus he would not have bought it in the first place. Though I agree that I might have taken it the wrong way.
Personally? Photoshop? Yeah, why not? It's overpriced, and if I get good enough with it and start to make something that will actually get me a return, then I'll pay for it. That's what photoshop is for, is for making things that will eventually (hopefully) give you a return. I don't think you can justify the pricetag otherwise. I'll learn the skills, and when I have, and know that it's a piece of software that's worth the money, then i'll buy it. I wouldn't buy it before then anyway, so yes, it's ok for me to pirate for now.
There's also the guy who uses MP3s to sample new albums but wasn't falling for the "CD as a sample" trap before - he just wouldn't buy a new album if he didn't know it - he'd wait until perhaps he got a chance to hear it as a friend's place, or just do without. This guy actually buy more CDs since MP3s have come along.
Are there enough of these guys to balance the others? I don't know, but there are definitely enough that they shouldn't be ignored as a part of the market.
Russ
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Also bear in mind that said person samples by downloading an mp3, and purchases something that he would not choose to purchase otherwise.
Since mp3s hit the scenes, my CD purchases have gone *up*. This is not a unique situation: most of my friends are in the same boat, as well as several studies I have seen on this effect.
When we think about how this may or may not affect the music industry negatively, don't forget the positive effects as well as the negative.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I've got a jukebox of my CDs ripped, so I can just pick and choose from the whole library (27 GB or so at this point). Friends are always picking songs and asking "do you have..", which leads to downloading mp3s & adding them on.
Downloaded mp3s are handy and quick, but they aren't generally very good quality, and loose mp3s are "unwieldy". So I tend to actually *buy* the CD, both for the additional tracks and for the ability to rip them the way I want them ripped. This is especially true of singles/mixes.
Where I think the whole file sharing really helps is I *constantly* find older/newer/different music that I've forgotten about or didn't know existed.. different mixes, original recordings, other artists.. all types of things.
Since I've started downloading mp3s my cd collection has consistantly increased.. because I'd rather know it was ripped right and I like having an archived copy. Before filesharing I was basically done buying CDs. I've probably bought 2-4 every week since I started downloading.
I'm sure there are people out there that aren't buying any of their music, but it certainly isn't everyone.
I buy a lot more cds because of file sharing. And I've completely lost the feeling of "buyers remorse" over buying CDs. Even when I buy one that only had 1 good track on it. Because I wanted that track.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Um, certainly I hope I am not the first slashdotter to realize this, but, good economy = increasing CD sales (ironically during the first p2p frenzy), bad economy = decreasing CD sales (also during the p2p frenzy). C'mon people, p2p doesnt change sales THAT much, the economy does!
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
So long as you can live with yourself and not get prosecuted, I guess.
This will bypass electronic networks for the actual file. But security will be interesting.
Combine geocaching with file swapping. You set up locations with shitloads of CDs or DVDs and then you put up the locations on some sort of service. You get a 'token' that lets you pick up a box and copy away and/or add to the collection. If you do add, you upload the directory to the service and put the box back.
Anyways, preventing filthy cops from busting you will be an exercise left to the reader.
If anyone is going to try this, please mention me, Gyro Gearloose, somewhere.
It's all I ask!
I think the /. editors must have been sleeping at the switch when they let this one though. Whatever happened to editorial bias?
I liked this quote:
The net effect of tapes was positive. But it doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been more positive if people weren't making more copies. [What is clear is that] there's no evidence in the data that the tapes caused a decline.
That's one think I noticed from previous stories on this issue. Readers are always quick to point out that sales increased during the Napster years, but they overlook the fact that the sales were also decelerating at that point. You can't just look at a simplistic side-by-side comparison and expect to jump to a fair conclusion.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
I don't know much about the economics field, but it seems to me that Liebowitz is more of a media whore than a social scientist. Sales figures seem a very coarse screen by which to filter the fickle motivations of the music buying public. The headlines look neat though.
Read the article, and he's changed his opinion three times in roughly as many months.
I mean, duh. Of COURSE the trading of mp3's is going to effect the sale of CD's. The only question that remains is to gauge what percentage the decline in sales mp3's are responsible for.. which appears to be precisely the problem he's grappling with.
Is it 0.0000001%, or 10%, or 50%?
He said it best himself:
"It is certainly not conclusive, by any means, that there's real damage going on from MP3s. [...] We're seeing a medium impact, which still could be explained by other things -- but we can't discount the MP3 possibility."
Which makes sense to me.
I have never bought a CD until recently. Actually, I didn't listen to much recorded music. The question you might ask is why I chose to buy a CD at all.
The answer is that you get what you pay for. The quality of an MP3 is much lower than the quality of a CD. Sure, it is digital. But there are errors made in copying a CD to a computer, and even more errors made when converting from spacial domain to discrete cosine domain (and back during decoding). The truncation of certian frequencies doesn't help much; they cut off a little of the audible range for those of us with more acute senses of hearing.
I bought a CD so that I'd be able to enjoy the song more; it was worth it because I like the song enough to care. Maybe I won't be able to tell the difference between CDs and wavelet transformed copies, but we don't have a lot of those yet. So to me, MP3s are a little like high quality tapes- still not quite as good as having the CD.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The pure and simple fact remains that the entire planet will STILL be trading music in some fashion until the end of the time itself.
* Outlawing filesharing networks won't slow it down.
* Blocking access to the sites hosting networks or files won't stop it.
* I doubt that even getting rid of the net won't have much of an impact.
Everyone has forgotten (or is ignoring the fact) that even before any of these things were around people were swapping music just as successfully. How many of you had (or still have) stacks of audo-cassettes you dubbed from a friend's CD before CD-Rs came out? For a point in time, that's how some of my friends ONLY got music.
Life has taught me, Pam and Tommy Lee to pick battles and roll with the punches -- a clue train that the record companies need to hop on before they get completely pounded into the ground. We can all rest assured though that they won't stop until some enforced (laugh) law is on the books and/or the net is gone (laugh) and they are "suffering" as much as ever.
They don't get that the net is growing and changing, and perhaps one day there won't be any ISP to close down, or backbone to hamper. This particular battle will only get harder for them...
So what will really happen?
Considering that everything happens in cycles, I'd guestimate that we'll probably see a flourish of musicians making music for the love of it rather than record companies making musicians for the profit of it.
But... as someone has already posted (more than once). This is definitely a dead horse, and I have decided at this point that I simply don't care anymore - I've already converted all my CDs to MP3 format.
You need 1) a time machine, 2) ability to access to the many-worlds multiverse, and 3) access to the album sale data.
Just set your time machine back to sometime before Fanning writes the first Napster code. Then, choose a universe where he falls madly in love with a lovely blonde, and gets rid of "that stupid computer" at her request. Monitor CD sales for the next couple of years.
Next, choose the current universe (or maybe one exactly like this one, except where nobody thought of this experiment, just in case there's some weird time looping feedback thing going on). Monitor CD sales for the same period.
Then, you'll be able to say if Napster and file sharing affected the music industry, all other things being equal.
I swear, I bet these so-called "economists" can't even change the gravitational constant of the universe!
> When this question was first posted, (in about 1982), I gave a full, comprehensive answer.
Talk about "first post"!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I feel that since I would not purchase the music in the first place; furthermore, have no means by which to purchase the music, no one is being hurt from my downloading of the music. Who is losing money, if there is no money to be spent? It is not possible to equate this to a physical product that can be inventoried and sold to another consumer, if I did not buy it.
Hey! Please wait with that law I'm about to buy my first cd-burner.
We can deduce from the rediculously inflated price of CDs, the assumption that we are all thieves, and the total lack of diversity in the music that they premote that they don't serve the consumer.
It is therefore clear that the only people whose interests the record industry serves are their own, and they do nothing for us (short of lobby congress to restrict our digital freedoms) - so why should we buy from them?
Do people actually still feel the need to type in the words "first post"???? It seems so ridiculously infantile and juvenile that one would do such a thing, knowing that moderators will just send you down to 0 or worse... come on! I realize this is off topic, but I have had a LOT to drink tonight and feel the need to rant
Perhaps, however my first post is modded "0", your reply is modded "0 (Offtopic). So naa naani boo boo. Besides, I know the real reason behind your rant, you're just angry that you did not get the first post, but thats.... OK. You will have
better luck in the future, you should not have to
resort to drinking simply because you did not
get the first post, there's always the next
article. Jealously is so... petty.
I buy CDs since 10 years ago. I have now about 180 albuns, 140 of them was bought on the first 6 years.
Why this?
Because I just can't sustain a buy rate I was able to sustain on the first 6 years! My "purchasing power" is falling down since 5 years ago, but the prices of the CDs had been remained steady.
Oh, had I mentioned that now I am married and with child? People grows up.
It's just plain math. I can't buy what I do not afford.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
All advocacy aside (and I am firmly in the pro-mp3/anti-RIAA camp), how is this not obvious? I lost interest in the music scene a while ago, and mostly pack my mp3 portable with excellent public radio such as This Life and Fresh Air. But a friend bought me a cd for my birthday and I never cracked the seal, just downloaded the tracks for convenience. It sounds fine to my unsophisticated ear, and the cd just sits on my shelf. The truth is, that probably the bulk of the decline is caused by the music industry. But all things being equal, if it were possible to legislate the digital music genie back into the bottle, more music would be paid for. Not as much as is downloaded, but come on, its simple supply vs. demand.
This guy is a professor? I really hope this article isn't representative of his academic work. I know economics is the dismal science, but really:
> The one big piece of evidence that I didn't have
> when we talked before was a half-year year 2002
> number [that appears to indicate a 9.8 percent
> decrease in album sales.] There has to be a
> caveat in here, which is that I don't know
> if this number is correct. It's a half-year
> number that I saw in USA Today, from SoundScan.
So his entire paper is based on some number he read in his morning news. Umm. And then:
> If [we] assume that half the computer owners have
> CD burners -- a number that I've seen -- you just
> double the decline that's already occurred.
I don't know where to start with this. I've read better logic on crop circle web pages.
Where's the science?
Hmm. A quick web search reveals he spends most of his time defending Microsoft.
A.
How did this guy arrive at his conclusions?
The study is so far from being comprehensive
that it cries out to be tossed into the dustbin.
As others here have said the reasons are many
for the decline in sales. I haven't bought a new
CD in years. I do buy used CDs occasionally.
I remember when CDs first came out and everyone
balked at the high price. The record co. said well
they're expensive now but they will get
cheaper. Guess what? They didn't get much
cheaper. Initially the cost of the blank media
was high but economy of scale brought the prices
down for blank media. But the CD prices remained
high. My point is that the record companies are
mostly used to the old ways.
Another reason I don't buy much is that I already
have a LOT of music. I don't need much more. And
if I do buy I'm very choosy.
Another reason (as someone else pointed out) I'm
sick of the tactics they're using to increase
profits. What better way to let them know how we
feel than to hit them where it hurts. The wallet!
For some good music try theirs:
Guggaqwan
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
found this: hit charade [i found it thru zeropaid.com] A flashback to a similar downturn at the end of the D-I-S-C-O era, when they tried to blame home taping... basically music is becoming too banal for people to make the effort, trouble is now, unlike the 80's, record industries are too multinationalized for new genuine talent to get through the gaps into the mainstream... well thats the gist of that article according to my hangover brain
Give me a local garage man these days
I haven't bought a CD in years. With the money I've saved, I will soon be able to afford my very own garage man.
Consumer "Give us good music" RIAA "Let them eat cake"
- Examine a controversial issue the perspective of your expertise (it helps if one side of the issue is backed by a very wealthy cast of characters who will do anything to promote their side)
- Announce that you will be writing the book
- Announce that you have found "evidence" in favor of one side
- Announce you were wrong and that you now have evidence to support the other side
- Change your mind again, announcing that further information has revealed that your first conclusions were correct, just two weeks before the book is published.
- Now everyone wants to read your book to find out if they've been vindicated.
He studied 30 years of record sales data, and in the three months prior to the publishing of his book, he has found "new evidence" that caused him to fundamentally reverse himself twice? If this guy publishes a book on how to sell books, I might read it, but I won't be reading this one. Who's to say he won't change his mind again in October when he needs the cas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H finds new evidence?I was sitting around today in computer ethics class and I thought to myself an interesting question? Why is there a music industry? Well the Music industry was able to make copies of music, that others could listen to right? The entire business model is that they pick what they think will be popular then they release. So under this business model they "own" the rights to a song, this way another music company would not be able to sell that song as there own...
Now its the computer age, the problem that people used to have with the distribution of music is gone, it can now be very easily, instead of having to make thousands of relatively expensive peices of vinyl, the music can now simply be "uploaded" then copied as many times as anyone wants to by people with semi specialized equipment, and then listened too at leisure.
What does this all mean to me? Maybe the industry itself, in its current form is obsolete, maybe they should provide tangible gain from buying music, perhaps a trinket or some item that makes actually owning the original box "worth it" or some other interesting marketing stunt.
Currently the Music industry generally finds "the next big thing" and then says "hey everyone this is cool you should listen to it" and much of the populace usually does, and honestly i dont think most of the music is half bad, im not hardcore about what i listen to so hearing the occasional britney spears or whatnot doesnt bother me to much.
What the Music industry should do is simply cut its losses, instead of alienating and restricting, a lot of people should simply lose their jobs and go elsewhere. This is a harsh view perhaps, but consider this, when a reliable robotic arm for car manufacturing was made, a lot of people lost their jobs because the cost of the new technology outweighted the cost of keeping less effecient human staff.
The internet should be seen as that robotic arm. Another model should be sought out and used.
I think the industry has hit the point where the business model they follow is obsolete, but like a workers union or group of factory workers, they will try their hardest to make sure they keep the money coming and keep their jobs, despite the fact that they no longer serve the same purpose.
The solution? Still promote, the thing they will always have a monopoly on is first served experience. this is when they can get chip ins from advertisements etc, by showing videos on TV (im sure already do that) but they should put the focus on the experience of going to a concert, make them just as exciting, but also pump them up even more. Say before a band is coming to town, that isnt quite as well known, maybe release samples of their music prior to the show, with the complete song being played when you come to the event.
The computer is a unique ethical question, we have here a device that can do something in a medium (easily) that could only be done through slow difficult means, and thats instantaneous copying and or executing of complex instructions. To hold the technology back really is avoiding the ethical issues of whether its right or wrong.
saying its wrong to copy and listen to music is actually avoiding the question altogether. The "law" says its wrong, but the law also hung witches a hundred years ago too, but as I see it the current method of distributing music is not based on an ethical principle, its based on teh fact that it was a service, and a service only relatively skilled individuals could do, now that service can be done by many, easily, so its now obsolete right?
Oh well its 3 am, maybe ill do a coherent version of this eventually.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
No, in fact, music from yesterday *isn't* available for purchase these days, even from Amazon.
As one example, I still can't buy Isao Tomita's "Bolero" album on CD. You can get "Bolero" itself as a single track of a collection (who would want 10 different versions of the same song, just to get the one you wanted?!?), but you don't get "The Mother Goose Suite", "Daphnis and Chloe: Suite No. 2", or "Pavan for a Dead Princess".
As another, I can't get a "Baltimora" album, except as used vinyl (if then); the only thing available on CD is one song, "Tarzan Boy" (good tune, but ruined by the "Listerine" commercial), and it's only available on "Beverly Hills Ninja" or in some *LAME* 80's dance collection (two exceptions: a cover band, and an "Italo" Italian dance CD sold in the U.S.: a *LAME* non-80's dance collection).
Frankly, I'm amaze that "Buffalo Springfield" or Harry Nilsson is available (incredibly hard to find, though).
-- Terry
That depends on the individuals involved. But the fact of the matter is that if they're too rigid, they'll get replaced by some start-up that's not. That much is certain. You can't be terribly inefficient, terribly rigid and hang on.
Maybe not, but if you have congress in your pocket you can drag the whole country to hell trying.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Somehow this reminds me of the laws that government tried to pass back in the early 1900s banning cars because they would ruin the massive industry that revolved around horse and carriages.
The record industry is useless. Their sole purpose has turned into self survival by means of legislation.
I hope every one of the big record companies goes out of business. I guarantee you all music artists as well as listeners will be better off.
-Britney Spears
RIAA is like a hawk that wants to protect its food while a bunch of ants are trying to carry it away. :)
Anyhow, RIAA will fight with legalization and lobbying until the last drop of blood, becouse it's about their survival, and they have gotten too fat, too lazy and greedy to lower their CD prices. They could slice prices in half and earn bilions anyway if they wanted. But they want 200 bilions of profit insted of 100 bilions.
They will die like a dinosaur if they do not adapt to the new environment, Thats the way Darwin's theory of evolution goes. And it fits the business/tech world well.
I don't think their decreased sales are a result of file-sharing, but they don't believe that at this point. So what have they done? First move was to attack the company, Napster. Futile. Other companies popped up. Eventually Napster lost and mostly everything went Gnutella-like so there was no company to sue. Now they want to attack the network and individual users. I believe that will fail because ISPs won't want the RIAA poking around on their network. Some are already taking precautions.
A faint hint at their next move might be this, which would be to change their distribution media. That will certainly fail to the classic "if I can hear it I can copy it."
So what's next? Will they finally understand their business model needs changed? I don't know what other option is left for them. Once that ends up as the only choice, they'll either fade into oblivion or do it. I don't think we need to wait much longer because they're really flailing about trying lots of things at once right now and nothing is working.
When it does happen, I predict it's gonna hit hard and fast. They'll try a radically new model and some artists will use the transition time to jump ship and sell their own music directly. It really wouldn't surprise me if the RIAA forked and became multiple entities, each competing with the other using a slightly different business model. Some of you are thinking "yeah, sure, like that'll happen." All the signs are there though. They act like they're in control but they know they're not. Just wait.
I wouldn't expect too much from statistics and economics. The problem with these studies is the poor quality of the numbers that are available.
In the case of music sales, the industry has a long history of manipulation of sales figures to support various ends. With the recent focus on bogus corporate accounts, I think its gong to be very difficult to get a clear picture.
If the music industry wants to claim that file sharing is hurting sales, I would expect them to bend the numbers to prove this.
BEFORE Napster hit the scene, I got a Memorex 1622 CD-RW drive (Amazingly, they're also the subject of a major class action law suit at the moment...) and used it to burn copies of EVERYTHING for all my friends.
It still all revolves around CD burners. Take the current MP3 situation and subtract being able to burn CDs. Sure, there's portable MP3 players, but the REAL album-purchase-killer is being able to actually have that shiny disc with the music on it in your hot little hands. Most of my friends who aren't interested in computers know that us computer geeks can burn CDs and won't hesitate to ask for a copy of the latest albums or songs they can't get out of their head.
Do you actually tell your friends that they have to go out and spend money on something you can burn for them on an inexpensive blank CD? "Come on, you're supposed to be my friend... Help me out here." Unlike home taping of the past, CD-RW drives have become VERY fast as of late... A C90 tape actually took 45 minutes per side (yes, it had to be flipped) to record, a 40X CD-RW can burn an entire CD in less than 8. CPUs have become much faster as well. It's become a whole lot easier to fire up your CD-R mastering software in the background and burn CDs while you're say, reading Slashdot.
When a friend asked for a copy of a tape, it meant rewinding, analog distortion, getting the levels right, and FLIPPING THE DAMN TAPE. Burning is just a blank CD and a few clicks away.
---
Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
Perhaps the notion that you are using someones creative work in a way that they do not desire would challenge your little ethnical delima you have here.
Personally, i haven't bought a cd for at least 7 years. I steal music and it's wrong. But i don't try make up some stupid ass excuse for why I do it. Do your self the favor and stop lying to yourself.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
RIAA certainly lost my business indirectly due to file sharing, you see when an industry treats me like a criminal I very quickly stop being a customer.
The only thing I regret is buying all the CDs I did before I saw the RIAA's true colours.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
I have no chance to read his new paper. From the interview and his old paper, I guess he's running time series data of total CD sales on a bunch of variables including income, and use a point in time or volumn of file sharing (which how it was measured??) Better model he might used is a structural demand and supply model but that won't change the empirical problem he is facing.
This is indeed not going to tell you anything trustworthy, even anything is statistical significant. Even he admitted that there may be a bunch of ommitted variables that may contribute to the significant estimated impact of file sharing. From the small income effect on the CD sales he described I would tend to think he's running a reduced form equation model. Which, the parameters he estimated, compound with the ommitted variables (and what instruments he had) most probably making the estimates not interpretable.
It would be interesting if they have surveyed the music consumption pattern of people before file sharing is wirespread, and now do a follow up survey on the same people and study their music consumption pattern. This panel data will gives much better description on the change in behaviour pattern because of file sharing. Another way is to survey now, identifying the group of people that are less likely to do file sharing and compare their consumption patterns with the similarly group of people that are actively sharing files on internet. Say, people with broadband access may share more music than others. That's more trustworthy by using micro-data.
A sig is redundant.
That the sales of oatbags plumpeted when the
cars became popular and availible to the
common man to.
But that might just be a rumor...
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
yeah, the 'oh, the cds cost so much just because we have to include the research cost for a while' was used right at the beginning, but did the prices ever fall? no.(i'm a bit skeptical that the costs would have had to be included for more than 1 year at most to include the research)
actually this is partially shooting the record companies to their own foot, because independant smaller recording companies(often formed by a (ex)band) can do much more aggressive pricing and cut through with that. there's this (sort of )punk rock band in finland that publishes it's own stuff, and got the cd's to stores nationwide, and sold at much lower price than 'normal' cd's, guess what? they were still making good profit and made a breakthrough.
the vinyl would seem more attractive.. at least you get something for the price.. tho i haven't bought a new cd in 2 years.. and if i were to buy some stuff it would be 5e/disc classical, funny how you can produce stuff that takes ~50-100 guys to play and sell it cheaper than pops*** that takes 1 producer.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I wish it were so... I really wish i felt my serving mp3's on ftp, irc, kazaa and gnutella would have this very desired effect you describe... Sadly i doubt it
PjotrP
I've got something for the RIAA to Analyze,
1) Slow Economy at the same time of slow sales. what a coincidence, I actually bought food so I could stay alive, instead of a cd during these hard times.
2) Greed. Isn't this interesting, (A) they double the price of cd's over cassetts, even though it costs them less then 10% to produce the cd's or what it did cassettes. (B) Artists only get $0.10 - $0.15 / CD sale, ok so wtf happens to the other $20 I'm spending? (C) Just about everything the RIAA is doing to piss us off is because they are soley motivated on Greed.
3) Monopoly. Please please, do us all a favor and split these greedy bastards up before they take away any more freedoms from us.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Oh, of course this means MP3 is the cause.
At least he has the honesty to say that it might not be. Of course the industry doesn't care if it is or not, it's a convenient excuse.
It couldn't be the homogenization of radio, the CD prices rising significantly faster than inflation (been to Musicland lately?...this doesn't really apply to most internet retailers, though), the industry's insistence on putting out what THEY want rather than what CONSUMERS want...
"the decline in CD sales may be partially attributable to MP3 downloading"
Sure is. I know that I haven't bought any CDs since napster went under. This whole MP3 downloading thing has killed my desire to buy CDs from people who call me a criminal when I download some music and then buy the CD. I bought everything I downloaded(and kept for more than a minute) from Nap. But now, I buy nothing. If I absolutely must have it, I go an extra mile and find the used CD store. But those bastards aren't ever getting another dollar out of me.
I probably would have bought the Star Wars AOTC soundtrack....but they copy protected it overseas. So even that one got on my list. I downloaded it and made copies for friends. F U RIAA.
I'm sure we are all glad that accept the fact that you are a dick.
It seems to be that the Slashdot-Correct way of thinking is to say that the music distributers brought these problems on themselves. But I don't think they're entirely to blame. Cheap bastards like me have something to do with it as well.
I don't mind admitting that these days I only go out to buy a CD if, after arsing around with gnutella for a day or two, I still haven't found it. If there was a "perfect" file sharing network, I'd never buy a CD again.
You might say, "you do this because CDs are overprized" (even more true here in the Netherlands than in most other parts of the world). To which my honest reply would have to be, "if CD prizes were cut by 50%, I would only cut the time I spend trying to find one on the net by 50% before giving up and buying it".
My bottom line is, if p2p networks worked perfectly, I'd never pay for music, regardless of how reasonable the price might be.
The thing is that in the last twelve months the economies of most of the world are in recession, even by the economist's definition. The record labels have still increased sales by 5%, not bad for a non-essential good.
Personally I would like to take the "Price inelasticity of demand curve" and stick it up a certain economist's backside and that of certain industry protection groups.
The guy read a statistic in the newspaper, and admits that he hasn't checked it himself for accuracy. If it is reliable, then it reflects a larger decline in music sales then he had anticipated, and so failing any other explanation, he speculates that it might be attributable to file copying. But he has done no analysis at all on this result, and when the Andrew Leonard presses him on it (good for you, Andrew, but this also shows why your interview is hardly newsworthy), he admits that there may be any number of alternative causes.
Michael, why do you bother to post something like this to Slashdot? We can draw no conclusions from this at all, because there is no evidence here to speak of. I'm not saying that it's impossible that file sharing may be damaging music sales, but this article gives us no reason to conclude that it's really happening.
I really thought that geeks had a better understandng of statistics, and when they do or do not give real evidence of possible underlying causes, than most people have. Of course, numbers are terribly tempting, they create such a powerful feeling of objectivity and proof; but they can also create myths that are nearly impossible to debunk because "everybody says so" and "I heard it on the news" and it all sounds so believable.
The media, and that includes Slashdot, have a strong role in creating such myths by simply regurgitating statistical claims without any regard to the quality of the analysis. Michael, you have some editorial discretion, and you ought to use it. I'm not saying that Slashdot shouldn't post articles on the subject, but I think they certainly shouldn't bother if it just means that untrustworthy claims of fact get propagated further.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
While the the recording industry, and their paid help, is worried only about the economy,... Did they ever consider that the public doesn't feel like buying the mindless crap they are putting out after the terrible loss of life on Sept. 11th. I am not one to claim every recent change in our society can be traced to those events, but bubble-gum pop and a serious political mind set do NOT mix.
FREE HAT!
"Stan Liebowitz, an economist studying the effects of file-trading on the music industry, says in an article in Salon that new numbers have convinced him that the decline in CD sales may be partially attributable to MP3 downloading"
Well, *of course* it's due to mp3 downloading. The question they should ask themselves is: WHY are the mp3 downloaded so much? Because we don't care about the artists and like to get free music? Or because we don't think there is any other options because of high prices where a big percentage does NOT go to the artist?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
provided the new model didn't consist of someone taking their product and giving it away for free. You can't change your business model to compete with thousands of people stealing from you.
(12) Federal Trade Commission finding the Recording industry cartel anti-competitve and engaged in illegal price-fixing.
That is EXACTLY the problem we're still facing in the record industry. I believe it's high time the Antitrust Division of the DoJ go after the RIAA and force them to lower album-length audio CD prices to around US$11 per disc; the current US$18 per disc price is at a point where there is just too much economic incentive to pirate music. A good comparison is OPEC; in the late 1970's they raised prices so high that people were either reducing oil consumption and/or looking for alternate sources of oil. By 1986, OPEC was in dire straits due to economic realities catching up with them.
Compare this against the movie industry. The fact that new-release DVD movies are between US$20 to US$30 per release set is extremely reasonable, especially when you consider new releases often contain a plethora of extra features in regards to the movie. And you can often get older movie releases for under US$15. At these prices, there is no real incentive in making a pirate copy DVD, to say the least.
My CD purchases have significantly decreased since I have started to listen to streaming audio on the internet. Previously, I purchased CD's so I could listen to music all day at work - pop the CD into the CD-ROM drive, plug in my headphones into my computer speaker, and them code/jam all day long. The only way that I could add variety to my music was by purchasing new CD's or borrowing a co-workers CD.
Now that there are 1000's of Internet Radio Stations, I don't buy many CD's anymore. I go to shoutcast, pick a style that I am interetested in listening to, and then listen all day.
The one caveat is that the only CD's I do purchase are by people who I've never heard of on commercial radio, but you find on eclectic radio stations such as Radio Paradise. So, my purchasing of unfamiliar artists has gone up, but my overall purchasing has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased.
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
just do like me and vote with your wallet, DO NOT under any circumstances spend any money on music and movies, if you want to listen to music listen to the radio, if you want to watch a movie watch television (with basic cable only, no pay per view and no premium channels like HBO or anything else like that)...
also find something else to do for entertainment, read a book from your local public library, play baseball or volleyball or some other sport, crossword puzzles are fun, and if you really want a challenge learn something new like a new Operating System for your computer, go get a copy of Linux maybe Redhat or Mandrake for newbies and when you get good at that get a copy of Slackware or Debian...
America's lazy way of getting entertainment has created this behemoth of a industry and they are like junkies for your money and it is time for the junkie to go cold turkey and get weened off of the American dollar...
I think the biggest problem is the fact in terms of bang for the buck, the audio CD is losing big time.
/. think about their anti-piracy policies) realized that the sell-through model for video distribution pioneered by Disney works extremely well, hence the reason why DVD's are still reasonably priced for what you get. Small wonder why many movies that didn't quite make their money back in theatrical release are making it back in video release.
Think about it for these reasons:
1) Today's videogame consoles cost between US$150 and US$200, but many games give you 30 to 60 hours of fun to play all the way through; in the case of sports games (like the excellent Madden NFL 2003), it's even longer than that. It's that time you spend on the game that makes the relative high cost of a game (around US$40 to US$50) still a pretty good bargain.
2) The DVD has also become a major bargain; you can get pretty good console players for under US$100, and the price of DVD discs (US$20 to US$30 for the latest releases, frequently under US$15 for the older releases) are a bargain considering the content of what you get. The MPAA (despite what people here on
"(and sometimes perceptible) quality loss of MP3s"
Ha! Play me an mp3 and I can pick it out every time. I don't know about you, but i can hear over 16KHz and I do notice definate loss in quality - most notable in and around the hi-hat. This is why I don't download mp3s. I also don't buy many CDs - very little released by the riaa mafia is worth the price they are asking. Most of what I've purchased over the last several years has been released by smaller companies...
when CDs first came out, I was a purchasing fool - I had a 1,000 piece collection at one time early on, when I ran out and bought all the re-releases of my cassettes and LPs but prices continue to rise while the new bands are less likely to attract my attention and the cost of production has gone down considerably. I won't throug my good money to the Recording industry's polluting executive jet planes.
Anything you say will be held against you.
Being able to listen to hundreds of bands has changed my musical tastes to rarely include any major label bands. Since many of artists are obscure and not even available I end up purchasing them at shops that are not part of the SoundScan program.
If the law sanctions attacks on my property, does this constitute unreasonable search and seizure? Does this violate Due Process? Is it a bill of attainder (condemnation by legislation, not by the courts).
Does the right to bear arms and form militia give us the right to own electronic arms, which defend against electionic attack? Given that pre-emptive defense is increasingly acceptable, perhaps we should form unregulated militia, which defend themselves with D-DOS counterstrikes against the RIAA?
Laws like these foster a very hostile climate on the Internet, with implications that go way beyond the problems of the RIAA. Do our legislators really want to bring this on?
And people who download more than the radio's selection of an artist's work, and decide the majority are Crud, so don't buy the album.
And people who don't have any radio access to hear new music with (believe it or not, there are large chunks of non-metro California with virtually zero radio reception -- I know, I live in one of 'em) and otherwise would never hear ANY new music, so would otherwise never buy any either.
But I suspect the majority actually do what I do: I get exposed to some "new" (at least to me) artist via MP3, I like the first song, so I download a few more and like them too, then I run out and buy the album as a hardcopy backup (of better quality) for the ephemeral MP3s that might go *poof* if my hard disk goes tits-up between backups.
I can tell you positively, that there have been TWO periods when I've *bought* lots of music: when I was DJing and had access to one of the largest music libraries in the world (complete with a tape unit so I could copy whatever I wished), and when I had faster online access and it was reasonable to download lots of MP3s. Since I moved, my connect speed went to hell due to shit phone lines (right now I'm connected at 16.8k!!) and it's no longer practical to download anything; after a while I noticed that I was no longer buying music either (probably because there's nothing new in my MP3 collexion to entice me to lust after my own real copy of).
Coincidence? You decide.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Since when did the RIAA (or MPAA for that matter) have the right to make money? If they are losing money, it's not because everyone is pirating, it's because their business model is flawed. They like the system the way it is far too much to change it. It is not the goverment's job to make laws to help them prop up their dieing business. The RIAA literally has no strong competition, so they have gotten fat and lazy. Open up the playing field, and I garuntee either the RIAA will adapt and change it's business model, or it will die and be replaced by a company which can adjust to changes in technology better. If I own a car dealership, I don't blame a slump in car sales on car theft. The author figures that sales are down more then they should be in a depression. His conclusion is it must be because of piracy. I say it's because they have given us no incentive to buy. The people who pirate 99% of the time wouldn't have bought the cd anyway. The RIAA is losing money because they would rather buy legislation then give up their cartel like business practices.
The last cassette deck I had was a dual unit that could autoreverse while recording and copy tapes at double speed. Of course, there's little gotchas that come up like music is still playing when the leader tape comes up and 2x speed quality issues. On the whole, though, it worked and was easy and convienient.
Quoting:
Yes, I've posted this gem before, but I thought it bears repeating. Forrester has a very high credibility with corporate management - one of the pundits they rely on for intelligence.Yes, the full report costs $495. But I figure that's less than I've spent on CDs that I bought as a result of being able to download samples for free.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I'm fairly sure a sizeable part of CD sales in the past were based on impulse buys, going from personal experience. When people have a song in their head, whether it's actually any good or not (think Chumbawumba here), they want to get a copy of the music quickly. In the past, that would mean grabbing the CD on your way to work or whatever. Now, it's much quicker to fill that impulse with a snappy MP3 download, which then gives you time to realize "What the hell was I thinking" and promptly avoid ridicule from your friends for buying a cheesy CD. However, I also believe that similar declines would be seen if people were allowed to return CDs to the store for a full refund after being opened. Face it, people are now simply making more intelligent buying decisions, and the market itself was overvalued in the first place. Perhaps now with this new competitor technology to level the playing field, we are seeing the levels of sales drop to what they're ACTUALLY worth to consumers.
You're always going to have the unethical/innocent geek kid who downloads an MP3 and listens only to it since his PC, MP3 player and PDA are the only things he uses for listening to music.
You're always going to have the normal guy who doesn't care about "branded" CDs or the slight (and sometimes perceptible) quality loss of MP3s over CDs...he goes ahead and burns his MP3s to a 5-cent CDR and listens to it anyway.
Then again, isn't it questionable whether or not the people in these two examples would've bought the CDs anyway? Before MP3s, I just didn't listen to music (outside of the radio and such), and therefore didn't buy CDs. Now, I listen to a lot of songs that are released openly by the artists as MP3s and occasionally save RIAA songs... and therefore don't buy CDs. So in the case of people like me and the cheap or morally opposed people in the examples you listed, MP3s have changed how much music we listen to, but has kept the amount of music that we buy firmly at $0 per year.
In the end, I think it mostly balances out. Some of the people that used to buy CDs no longer buy CDs because of MP3s, some of the people that didn't used to buy CDs now buy CDs because they were introduced to the artists through MP3s, and some people never bought any CDs and still don't, regardless of MP3s.
The real problem with this debate, though, is that you can't really tell what's going on. There's no REAL way to tell how many people started buying CDs because of MP3s, how many people stopped buying CDs because of MP3s, how many people stopped buying CDs because of the slow ecnomy, how many people stopped buying CDs because of the prices, etc. It's all just biased statistics based on small samples, coupled with opposite views of the situation that are equally valid and logical.
Firstly, most people download particular songs they like. They might like one or two songs from a group. For example, I like "Hey Baby" and "Keep on Dancin" by No Doubt. I don't like any of their other songs. There's no way in hell I'd go out there and actually buy a full CD by them. So I download the two songs I like. This doesn't hurt the industry because I'm downloading things I wouldn't have bought in the first place.
Similarly for most people the vast majority of the time.
Also, lets not forget, that there was NO EFFECT -- NONE WHAT-SO-EVER -- observed in CD sales until the recession begin. NONE. So, gee, I wonder what's really causing this downturn in sales.
The economies in a recession, does the RIAA really expect people to buy as many CD's? DVD's are becoming more and more popular and commonplace, as are computer games, and game-consoles...does the RIAA really think that teens will still buy as many CD's, even with all the competition offering vastly superior value? Descent 3 and Descent 2 each go for 10 bucks from Amazon.com. That means you could buy both of them for the same price as ONE CD. Now, you decide. What's better, Descent 3 and Descent 2, games from which you can get months of enjoyment from in single-player mode, years in multi-player, or a single CD, which you can get maybe an hours worth of enjoyment out of? Tomb Raider 5, 4, and 3 sell for 20 bucks a piece from Amazon.com, while Tomb Raider 1 and 2 go for around 10. Any of these would be be better than having a music CD. The latest greatest game that I like -- Eternal Darkness sells for 50 bucks from Amazon.com, 32 bucks used. Again, a better deal than a music CD.
Jurassic Park and The Lost World sell for 24 bucks a piece off of Amazon.com. Much better value than any music CD I've seen. Jaws is also available for 24 bucks, along with many other great movies.
So, competition from outside the music world BLOWS music CD's away in terms of value.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I am into the whiole MP3/burning thing.
If I wasn"T I wouldnt have spent over 500$ on originals of my digital media in the past month.
The funniest thing about this is that the music industry, which is basically frivolous, has more political clout than the computer industry, which is both more useful and much bigger.
That's pretty much what I'm like. My CD collection had alot more diversity than Beatles, Led Zepplin, AC/DC and Aerosmith after Napster. And that was because I was afraid of buying a CD of some band I never heard of then find out they suck.
It also helps for songs you want but don't want to be caught by any of your friends buying their CDs (couple songs that are early 90's one hit wonders that I want).
Is that like the way horse sales declined with the advent of the automobile?
-- SIGFPE
Please provide a reference.
I am unable to confirm via CNN or local newspaper as of 11:57AM CDT.
IF Downloading is contributing to poor record sales is the portion causing poor record sales primarily material that is available for sale.
Someday you'll probably have enough money to buy them. In fact, if you got a job, you could probably be buying them /now/. A lot of people "work" so they can afford things they "want"...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I'm in my mid-thirties. I remember listening to records when I was a kid. When I got old enough to get a job I would go out and buy on cassette tape the same albums I would listen to on vinyl when I was a kid. When the cassette tape would break in my car's cassette deck, I would at some point purchase the cassette again. Then, when CDs came out, I would buy the album on CD. When the CD got scratched/broken, I would buy another CD to replace it.
My point is this: Don't we purchase a 'license' along with the medium the music is contained on (i.e., record, cassette, CD), and this is the bulk of the cost of the music? If I pay for a particular piece of music one time, shouldn't I have a lifetime 'license' thereafter to listen to the music, and after the initial purchase I should only have to pay the cost of the replacement medium it is on if the original medium gets destroyed (e.g., $2.00 for a replacement CD instead of $18.00 full price)?
I think this is how the RIAA can be beaten at their own game and by their own rules: Point out that their music 'licenses' imply a one-time purchase of the music, except for the replacement cost of the media. Or, this argument at the very least entitles me to download an MP3 song/album from the Internet for free, provided that I purchased that song/album at some point in my life.
Perhaps a class action lawsuit can be filed against the RIAA to recover the costs incurred from everyone having to purchase multiple music 'licenses' for the same music...any lawyers out there willing to try?
Oh well, I used to buy around $200 CD from a local indie store a month. But after I got laid off months ago from a well paid syadmin jobbie, and have to live off my unemployment check, CD becomes an expensive hobby. So between CD and the net, I keep my DSL connection, and get all my music off the net. Not that I want to rip off the artists, I really cannot afford buying music anymore.......
So in my case, I would continue to buy tons of CD, I love indie music, if the economy is better....
24x burns CD in ~3 minutes, why is it 40x in 8?
It's called, "Come and get me, asshole. HAH!"
Dooby-dooo. I'm copying an MP3 now, and no one's stopping me. Nyaa, nyaa, ne-nyaa-nyaahhh. HA! What are ya going to do about it? Huh?!
decline of cd sales -- no, that'd probably have something to do with them being $18 each. the riaa are the real pirates, greedy corporate wankers.
i'm not convined cd sales have decreased. mp3s have contributed to many of cd purchases for me.
Sure, but what sort of effect it has is still hard to measure. Does it provide free advertizing making people want to support the artists? Yes. Does it allow people to avoid supporting the artists? Yes. So, it probably helps and hurts the industry to some degree.
:)
That being said, I think that the *single biggest factor* is that the record industry, by targeting Napster has left a serious sense of betrayal with their would-be customers. I personally knew many people that simply stopped buying CD's after Napster. And I personally only buy foreign artists anyway, so the RIAA companies don't get a whole lot from me
So is it artistic doldrums? Probably to some extent. Is it MP3s being downloaded? Maybe a little. But is it the industry treating their customers like crooks? You bet.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
First off, it's a *gamble* to buy most CDs b/c you don't know if the songs are any good. How many times have you bought a CD just to find that there was only 1 decent song on it (or no decent songs)?
And at $15-20 for a CD, I am reluctant to take that gamble.
Shared MP3s is a great way to *sample* music: I find out if I *do* want to spend the money for that album (or not).
But the added bonus for us consumers is that we are hearing all kinds of music we would not have otherwise heard. For that reason alone I have bought CDs of groups I am now newly enjoying.
Well, its historically documented that the rise of automobile hurt the buggy whip business too. Things change. That's life.
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
I have been a fan for a while now of designing a business which would use internet downloads as a service for promoting artists-- applying open source principles to the music business model, and helping everyone to be successful WITHOUT the RIAA. I don't have time to do this (since I am starting a different business), but I would be willing to contribute my thoughts to any serious effort.
So, if this resonates, feel free to write me.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Some of the author's points are:
younger consumers live in a world where popular music is ubiquitous (and therefore less precious) than in the '60s and '70s
older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno
the tastes of graying Beatles and Stones fans have fragmented, making them difficult to reach via mass-marketing
younger fans lose interest quickly and often don't develop strong loyalties
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Stephen King when IDC confirmed that the Stephen King market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all slashdot readers. Coming on the heels of a recent slashdot post which plainly states that Stephen King has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Stephen King is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Troll Admin comprehensive trolling test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Stephen King's future. The hand writing is on the wall: There may be no future at all for Stephen King because Stephen King is dying. Things are looking very bad for Stephen King. As many of us are already aware, Stephen King continues to lose market share; red ink flows like a river of blood.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Troll leader Anonymous Coward states that there are 7000 users of Stephen King. How many users of CmdrTaco are there? Let's see. The number of Stephen King versus CmdrTaco posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 CmdrTaco trolls. Kuro5hin trolls on Usenet are about half of the volume of CmdrTaco trolls. Therefore there are about 700 users of kuro5hin trolls. A recent article put smokedot trolls at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 smokedot trolls. This is consistent with the number of smokedot Usenet posts.
Major marketing surveys show that Stephen King has steadily declined in market share. Stephen King troll is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If the troll is to survive at all it will be among troll hobbyists and dilettantes. Stephen King continue to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all intents and purposes, Stephen King is dead.
Greed is what I believe has called for all of these horible laws infringing on the rights of all computer users. The recording companies simply want all the money for themselves, even the artists that are responsible for all of their wealth see a very small percent of the money. That is probably why very few musicians are behind these laws (Metallica aside).
SIGFAULT
MP3s will allow you to decide if the entire album is worth buying...a radio will just show you the hit single...
"You can't be terribly inefficient, terribly rigid and hang on."
You can be if your a monopoly.
First: I'm a songwriter/artist. Yesterday I needed to pick up some blank CD's for some material for the drummer to review and was at Fry's Electronics. I picked up a pack of 50 that said CD-R for Audio on it. It was marked down on the shelf, but not on the package, so I asked a sales guy on the floor to double-check the price, which was $14.50. But, he asked what I was using them for and I told him music and he told me I didn't need to use the ones labeled "audio" and that 2 cents of each blank goes to the RIAA and that there's a serial number on them. So, I bought the ones that didn't have any label ("Data" or "Audio"), which cost $14.99, but at least I'm not contributing to the enemy, if what this guy at Fry's told me is true.
I'd be curious if anyone else can validate what he said. Also, I notice that my own CD's that I make on a CD-RW drive in one of my machines won't play in my Mom's 2002 Honda. My buddy Layden Robinson just released his 2nd CD, Verse a couple months ago and paid someone to do it and those won't play, either. Does anyone know if this has something to do with the serial number, perhaps? It would suck if paying the RIAA the extra couple pennies would make it possible to play them in newer consumer-based CD players, but it would be interesting to know if that's what's going on...
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
because it probably realizes that the best and most effective way to solve this problem is through normal market dynamic
Yeah, except the current "market dynamics" are pushing the great unwashed (wrongly) toward what they perceive to be an alternative: MP3 downloads. And that's pushing the recording industry to buying Congresscritters.
As for the FTC not regulating because it's a diversion, I read a piece in BusinessWeek today about the possibility of Nestlé chocolate company buying Hershey's. Chocolate is a diversion too (don't give me this crap about chocolate is addictive - so is coffee!) and the deal would have to pass antitrust approval (The deal would give Nestle/Hershey 55 percent of the market behind M&M/Mars. Nestle currently has 11 percent.) Of course, Nestle probably makes other things besides chocolate, but I don't know what..
Yeah, except the current "market dynamics" are pushing the great unwashed (wrongly) toward what they perceive to be an alternative: MP3 downloads.
No, this is a choice being made by the same people whining about the RIAA. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to download MP3 files.
As for the FTC not regulating because it's a diversion, I read a piece in BusinessWeek today about the possibility of Nestlé chocolate company buying Hershey's.
Well, there are certainly some potential anti-trust issues at stake here. But, since the RIAA is an association which represents several competing entities, they're quite obviously not subject to the same rules.
"The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history." (Janis Ian during a live European radio interview, 9-1-98)
FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet Debacle
"Quite frankly, when I spent three months researching and writing The Internet Debacle, I wasn't planning to become part of a "cause". I assumed that the 35,000 subscribers of Performing Songwriter Magazine might read it, and a few might email me about it. I had no idea that a scant month later, the article would be posted on over 1,000 sites, translated into nine languages, and have been featured on the BBC." (Janis Ian)
http://www.janisian.com
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
One of the best things to come out of this file sharing fiasco is the ability for bands to be heard by people who would otherwise never hear their music or be prepared to pay $30 per CD. Now that it is possible to never by a CD again, I think artists we have to rely more on their live performace to make money - which is what I believe music is primarily about. Lets not forget that the artist sees hardly *any* of that $30 so its not the artist who will be most out of pocket - it will be the major record companies and who really cares about them?? Many bands today still do not support file sharing - most likely they have only heard the record companies side of things. Before long, record companies will be a thing of the past - good riddance - put the money into the hands of the people who actually do the work.
RIAA members, and labels in general are often accused of hiking the prices and overcharging (certainly in UK compared to prices elsewhere). But you can be sure they would still claim self regulation is the way. Isn't the availabilty of mp3 just a public form of self-regulation.. we promise we won't exploit artists until no music is made right? It's really just a market correction.
.. why dont the prices of CDs come down .. simple economics, you cant tell me there is no margin on the things.. You can't really compete with free. but legit music has value added benefits and a convenience factor (they always have the music first! if nothing else) .. or does it suit their purpose better to show declining sales to push the draconian laws through?
And when supply has just gone through the roof, hence demand falls
Somewhat similar to this problem is a petition to repeal CARP. It has a space for you to show how many CDs you've purchased by listening to internet radio.
Not exactly the same, but close enough, eh?
[insert witty comment here]
IMO, a lot of these studies are started with the premise already fixed, and then looking for data to back up the prejudice. In this case, the researcher thinks MP3's must have a negative impact, and looks for evidence to support his theory.
It could (and will) get worse. Just like the tobacco industry, the IP empires are fighting to maintain a position of power, and will use any tool possible. Even more studies will be appearing, showing just how much was lost in revenues that should have gone to the "rightful" owners.
To be quite honest, these numbers are all "coulda, woulda" fantasy. Lots of people copy software, photocopy books and articles and trade software that they had no real intention of buying. And there are real-life for-profit "pirates", though I prefer to call them "counterfeiters", but I've never met them nor seen their goods.
One other thing that *really* irritates and scares the IP empires is the way intellectual property leaks out *before* it is supposed to be released. That's what kicked off the Metallica v. Napster thingie, and why Apple attacks rumor sites that post "sneak previews" of their new machines.
The IP empires hate it when IP escapes before it can be buried. Studios have been known to sit on albums after recording, just to punish the artist. P2P networks offer a way to "smuggle" such works out into the open where they can be freely traded. It robs them of one of their favorite weapons.
And that's what it's all about, and why studies like this are the new battleground. It's less about the money, but about controlling who gets to see/hear what, and for what price.
(sigh...)
I don't know why I had to rant for so long like this. I guess it's because the next have/have-not battle is going to be over IP. Stallman is this generation's Karl Marx, and Disney is the "evil capitalist" bent on maintaining power. It will be interesting to follow...
which already have a tax on them which, in theory gets back to the musicians, or tell them to write a check to the musicians (which they're probably never do). If they're that clueless they'll believe the Music CD's sound better anyhow, even without the green marker.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)