Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
It's the economy stupid. That's the reason for the drop. Plus there is a lot of crap that sounds the same. It's not the pirates.
I've said it before, but people don't seem to get it yet: The music industry has a larger plan, namely to seize on the issue of "piracy" to justify purchasing legislation mandating the infrastructure required to support ubiquitous pay-per-use. Today's battles aren't about unit sales of music, but rather about shifting America to a pay-per-use entertainment business model.
This is why the RIAA is perfectly willing to shoot itself in the foot in the short term (5 years). It lets them bleat about piracy while they try to get rid of that revenue-limiting buy-once play-many business model
Remain calm! All is well!
Napster is long dead. There are MANY other (better) options now available. When my roommate used Napster back in the day the average search returned a good enough list to download something at a decent speed. But let's look at Kazaa. The average list resulting from a search is insanely long and the combination of downloads for a higher speed is SO much better. Granted Napster would have incorporated the same thing into itself but that's not the point.
My point is that just b/c Napsters gone does NOT mean that people are no longer able to download/burn music. That's just stupid to say that b/c it is gone there is no more desire to buy CDs.
My theory (based on my own economic situation after the stocks went to shit) is that economics have played a large role in the downturn of everything, including CDs.
Already have an Internet connection, already have a CD burner, already have P2P software, blank CDs running me about $1 a piece/average.
New CDs run me $9.99 - $17.00 depending (especially for smaller bands like I prefer to listen to, SCI, WSP, etc).
What am I going to do? I am going to download the damn MP3s or SHNs and burn them. Just like everyone else is.
Stop w/the happy horseshit.
Support freedom of music. etree and FurthurNET
They are losing buisiness because they are treating their customers like shit. You dont' treat your customers like shit and stay in buisiness for long. Eventually they must learn the painful lesson that laws can never overpower market forces and customer satisfaction.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Well as much as i personally agree with your point let me play devil's advocate and show you their thinking. Its not the current situation that is going to make them lose money. They are scared that in the future something will cause a mass switch over to p2p and they wont get any money. Personally i dont htink this will happen but this is why they are doing what they do.
Now the problem with their motivation is that its not going to get congress angry with them. They must make it look like they are being hurt NOW and must take IMMEDIATE measures to stop the swappers. If they simply said "we are afraid that in the future this non-issue will become a problem" than nobody would help them.
So really I think we are int he right as swappers. This is absolute BS they are pushing because they are scared and greedy which is a bad combination.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
...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!
Piracy is a paper tiger. Those who have discovered new artists through file trading have spent more money than the "freeloaders," most of whom wouldn't have bought anyway, have held on to. I suggest having a look at this Life In Hell comic strip from 1988. It shows that the RIAA's whining about piracy was BS then, and is BS now. The music biz first said player piano reels were killing them, then said the radio giving away free music was killing them, and so on. It's the same old BS.
How ya like dat?
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."
I still think the ol'
"The VCR is to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone." quote from our friend Jack Valenti shows how in touch these people are with reality.
The amazing thing is that they continue to refuse to admit that they might have been wrong about anything.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
...trying to explain to my gf why I wasn't going to buy her a RIAA produced CD. Her eyes have an impressive range of motion.
As proof of this, let's look at the top 20 selling albums of all time as an example:
1. Eagles: Greatest Hits
2. Michael Jackson: Thriller
3. Pink Floyd: The Wall
4. Led Zeppelin IV
5. Billy Joel: Greatest Hits
6. AC/DC: Back in Black
7.Shania Twain: Come on Over
8.Beatles: White Album
9.Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
10.The Bodyguard Motion Picture Soundtrack
11.Boston: Boston
12.Alanis Morissette: Jagged Little Pill
13.Garth Brooks: No Fences
14.Hootie and the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View
15.Eagles: Hotel California
16.Beatles: Beatles
17.Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA
18.Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
19.Guns N Roses: Appetite For Destruction
20.Elton John: Greatest Hits
The list is a little rock-heavy, but look at the difference bewteen the bands. There's a huge variety of musical styles here. In other words, the exact opposite of what's being sold now. Listening to the same carbon copy crap is boring, and the opposite of entertaining. Until the RIAA and the record companies start releasing albums from artists who are willing to experiment musically, then sales will not increase.
Personally, the last CD's I purchased were Ozzy Osbourne: Live at Budokan (and the remaster / reissues he's released this year), and Black Sabbath's Past Lives. I doubt I buy any more CD's this year.
ObHeinlein:
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
If the opportunity presented itself where I could legally give a swift kick to the behind of everyone behind the current dominate music distribution model, I would. That given, I thought I would give a take on this whole downloadable music thing that I haven't read before.
This article makes a little inroads in the direction, but I want to point out that just like music downloaders are in various categories, you have a whole continuum of music PURCHASERS. And it isn't a descrete category that people fall into... it is a continuum.
On one side, you have the people who compulsively buy buy buy everything music. On the other side, you have people who don't buy any music at all. In between, there are all sorts of levels of music purchase. And somewhere in between, is the "sweet spot" of consumers which can be swayed one direction or another to buy or not buy CDs.
Now, you have a disruptive technology like online music distribution. Some people like it for the convenience. Some people like it for the cost. Whatever. It doesn't matter except that in most cases, it slightly pushes them down the continuum towards not being as big of a music purchaser. (However, yes, there are counter-trends, like someone getting more excited about music and finding a new favorite group, and supporting them.)
But whenever someone downloads music, in general terms, it pushes them down the continuum towards being a non-purchaser. The effect on an individual level is probably quite small, and difficult to measure. However, when aggregated across a large population, the impact is dramatic.
I think the problem with surveys of how downloading CDs have affected music purchasing decisions is that it is too focused on the individual level. From their point of view, their behavior may not have changed significantly. Or they may not be aware of any change. But a slight change has occured.
That slight change is enough to push some people out of the sweet spot and into becoming a non-purchaser. Or the aggregate of a large number of people sliding down the continuum has an affect on sales figures.
So, this is the basic guts of the theory that I have when it comes to online music downloading vs consumer purchasing.
Comments? Questions? Criticisms?
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.