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Yet Another Look at CD Sales
citizenkeller writes "Dan Bricklin, of VisiCalc fame, has published a very interesting essay on "CD sales, downloading, and burning". In his own words: 'Given the slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal customers. Perhaps the real reason for some of the drop in sales was the shutdown of Napster and other crackdowns by the music industry.'"
Maybe the real reason there was a drop in CD sales was *gasp* the fact that we're in a recession? The Dow Jones was up around 12000, now it hovers around 8000 - CD sales seem to have held up surprisingly well, actually.
Personally, I've bought many more CDs since Napster than I did beforehand, 'cause I discovered lesser known groups like Apocalyptica that I really enjoy listening to.
The slashdot crowd has been saying that ever since the shutdown of napster. Many /. folk have commented on how the nap music to preview before they buy. Others mention how Napster and after Gnutella have actually increaded their CD buying. Most people link the slow down in CD sales to the economic downturn rather than making the RIAA's claim that it's from file trading.
I think it's pretty clear that file trading is pretty neutral on the music industry and i join others in wonderment over the industry's heavy handed tactics to stop file trading when there is no evidence that it even might hurt their bottom lines.
Too bad that most people think that this theory is crazy and will never happen.
Pay-per-view is the holy grail for the music publishers. (not the artists, it's actually the death of art) I hope that if they ever do get this passed that there is some sort of riot, but unfortunatly it will be silently accepted like everything else.
Apathy.
Besides the obvious - who in the current economy has tons of available cash to buy lots of CD's - there's the incredible rate at which the price of CD's continues to go up. Um, I'm not a marketing major, but seems to me that if your product isn't selling at $20 and testing says the people like your product they're just not BUYING it, odds are really good that your price is higher than they're willing to pay.
Add to that problem the fact that most music the recording companies are releasing (esp. the stuff they really push) all sounds the same. Either you get copy cats, really is there that much difference between the many "look at my navel" bimbos out there??? Or you get stuck with a group that had a hit album once so all their later albums try to sound just like their one good album. Even if you find a group you can enjoy and listen to, usually you're stuck paying $20 for their CD which has maybe 2 good songs and the rest is crap...
Of course, given alternatives, people are going to find other ways to get their music of choice.
They also said the bad economy was a factor, and said specifically they didn't believe piracy to be having any significant effect.
...We all stop sponsoring terrorism by not bying music which is under the control of RIAA?
Buy indie music from labels who have nothing to do with the helldemons. Check out text file I have attached below.
List of Record Labels that feed RIAA
Everytime you buy a CD that's on that record label listed, you directly finance the people who turn around and take away your fair use rights and civil liberties.
Think about that for a while. As for the Dropping CD Sales, all I have to say is:
The laptop sales are also dropping. I guess it could be attributed to the widespread online hardware piracy via Lapster
(disclaimer: this is a shameless plug for a website, but I am a satisfied customer)
Convenient way to buy independent CDs, without giving any of your money to the RIAA: CD Baby
They even let you pass a message to the artist for every CD purchased. Plus I love the line on the "about" page: "No Microsoft products were used in the creation of this website."
Remain calm! All is well!
I've always been a big music fan. I've got several thousand albums in my collection. I still buy a lot of CDs but the difference now is that I buy most of my stuff from unsigned bands instead of stuff from the major lables. I find a lot more interesting music this way instead of the "cookie cutter" music being put out by the majors. For example, let's say that today I want to buy a heavy metal album. I go to my favorite search engine and look up "heavy metal band". This brings up a list of a ton of bands I've probably never heard of before. I even narrow it down to my home state of Illinois some times to see what the local bands are up to. Then I go down the list, visit webpages, listen to MP3's (yes, most unsigned bands that I've seen post MP3's on their respective sites), if I like what I hear I buy the CD straight from the band. Nice thing is most often the RIAA doesn't see a dime. Another benefit I've found is that most bands like this will actually e-mail you back once you've bought their CD. I've gotten to meet some really cool musicians this way. Try that with some big-name act.
Would I buy stuff from major label bands? Sure if they had anything worth listening to.
What is your point? The industry's claim for years has been that piracy has been *THE* major reason for dropping sales, a viewpoint which has been fairly impressivly argued against. Of course there are more than just one or two reasons for the downturn, but clearly the major one is the economy, followed closely by the thin-gruel-like consistency of most pop music today.
Arguing that since the economy cannot be the *ONLY* reason it is somehow less valid to proclaim it as such than the industry's fallacious attacks on internet piracy is a farce.
I'm sure that one or two deeply religious parents out there have forbidden their children from buying Marilyn Manson albums - does that then also mean that we can claim that "Religion is *THE* reason for the downturn in music sales", as the record industry would have if it chose to exercise a vendetta against religion next?
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Where the article begins to fall down is when the author begins to speculate without hard data such as his belief that cell phone usage adversely affects music sales. It completely falls down when he counters the very data with the following quote So since burning and downloading didn't cause a sizeable dip in sales it must have caused an increase instead? This conclusion is incorrect and quite illogical.
The author also seems to imply that shutting down Napster reduced the degree of copyright infringement but this seems unlikely given the number of P2P services that sprang up in its stead from Kazaa to Audiogalaxy to Gnutella.
BOTTOM LINE: The article correctly points out that the claims of the music industry of the costs of copyright infringement are exaggerated but falls down by claiming that copyright infringement fuels sales without anything more than a gut feeling to back this up.
Because of the media monopolies crackdown on Napster (and because I am also having a harder time finding music that is worth listening to and CD's that are worth the price.) I decided to boycott their products. So I probably helped a tiny bit with that drop.
I hoped at one point the RIAA companies would get the message. Instead my small boycott has been spun into more ammunition to be used against me.
Speaking as a part time, small volume, music sharer. I bought more music two years ago then I have in a long time and I KNOW for a fact the Napster helped fuel my desire for music.
Go figure.
-Derek
My opinion (and probably many others') is summed up quite well in this article. To sum it up: P2P should be viewed as a promo tool (a la radio stations), and if CDs were a bit cheaper everyone would be happy (including the RIAA, who'd see more sales).
I agree with most of what has been said in this forum but... That doesn't change the fact that people are stealing something they should be paying for. I am one of the "stealers". BEFORE napster and the NET I used to buy anywhere from 1 to 4 CDS a week. I had a bad habit of listening to music. Now that I am older, and do no have the same disposable income, I don't buy 3 CDs a year.
Because of the Internet (not P2P) I have had amazing exposure to all kinds of artists and genres of music. I still listen to the same amount of music I did when I was buying 1 to 4 CDs a week but now I download them. I make a mix CD every 5 days. So I am stealing the music I used to pay for.
I do agree that most of the music these days is disposible and ~$18 for a CD is crazy, but it does not change the fact that this product is on the market for a cost, NOT FREE. When I download it no one makes money.
I don't know the solution but I do know a couple of things. The economy has to change. The RIAA has to realize that the consumer is smarter than before and will not put up with paying ~$18 for a cheap piece of plastic. I do think I would buy more CDs if they were under $10. At that price it is not worth it for me to try find the whole CD on the net. Singles... Singles are dead. No one will pay for 1 or 2 songs on a disk for $8-$10 bucks.
My 2cents...
First, the most important hard number that matters: 13%. This is the percentage by which record sales (as measured by SoundScan) are down this year over the same time last year. That's a HUNK. Study after study has failed to demonstrate that downloading either is or is not responsible for this dip. It ain't the only thing, IMHO.
Among other things, this bust comes at the end of a decades-long boom period for the record industry, and like so many other businesses, labels have spent the last few years riding a bubble. Unsurprisingly, the bubble has burst. We all know that selling records is a low-margin business that usually loses money (SERIOUSLY. NOT KIDDING.). If a larger label makes a killing it is probably on a runaway hit that sells hundreds of thousands, or millions, not ten thousand or less like the vast majority of releases do. Most labels lose money most of the time, and the ones that steadily make money generally do so on a scale that doesn't even register on the radar of the major-label wonks.
So what do we have? We have: four major labels, owned by conglomerates who wish to use the Beatles/Dylan/Zeppelin/Stooges/Clash catalogs to cross-promote their products, and to finance other ventures. These conglomerates have little patience or interest in sinking money into new artists who will lose money for years at a time.
We have Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. selling discs for LESS than WHOLESALE, to the point where small record stores are buying their stock on the sly FROM THESE STORES instead of from the labels themselves.
We have an environment where, in the last year, TWO of the largest distributors have gone out of business (That's like WB Films and Paramount going tits-up), and TWO of the largest retailers-- Virgin and the Musicland family of stores.
We have radio AND touring in the hands of basically ONE company.
We have declining fan interest in the lastest dead horse trotted out by U2, Britney Spears, String, and the N'Backstreet Boys.
All this adds up, not to downloading killing the industry, but the industry starting to feel the effects of too many boardroom ultimatums and short-term decisions.
13% of sales have gone PFFT. It's a market correction, and a lamentable one, that the conglomerates that own the majors have precipitated themselves. Janis Ian is right-- the future is with people selling their own records out of the backs of cars, and this just might be the real start of that.
...but writing the whole thing off as "CDs only cost $1 to make, so they are charging way to much and deserve to have their stuff stolen" oversimplifies the whole thing to the point of being ridiculous.
True. But so is "Buying legislation to continue the stranglehold our monopoly has enjoyed for decades"
Face it. The recording industry believes it is their god-given right to make profits. Even in a recession. Note that they didn't lose money last year...they simply didn't make the same increase in profits.
If all P2P was shut down tomorrow, I have a feeling that we would see a decline in music sales anyway. That is all this article is trying to say. Actually it went a step further saying that the losses would have been even more.