Slashdot Mirror
Ipsos-Reid: More Americans Downloading Music
An anonymous reader writes "Ipsos-Reids ongoing research on file trading called Tempo again confirms a continuing rise in the number of Americans downloading music from the Net. Furthermore, almost a third (31%) of those who do download claim they have paid for at least some of the music they got online. Of course, having paid once from services like Rhapsody and PressPlay doesn't mean you were satisfied with the value. It does mean though that a sizeable audience are willing to give these record industry endorsed services a shot even though they can get it all free on KaZaa. You can see the the report graphs here."
... through bandwidth costs. :-P
I haven't bought more than a couple CDs in the last two years, myself... On the other hand, if I didn't download music I'd just be listening to the radio with its horrid commercials.
You'd almost think a 'net company would know
Very few will actually pay for music online to download when everybody else will download the same music, with no copy restrictions for free!
And that goes especially for you, BMG!.
Since you will no longer be selling uncrippled CDs, you will have forced me to find other sources of Music. I will therefor no longer buy CDs that I cannot play in the manner that I want, even if that manner is in compliance with copyright laws.
Thank you.
Dave
I understand that artists need to be paid for what they do just like everyone else... and I don't have a problem with artists being paid MORE then everyone else... What I do have a problem with is there royalty system. The music labels need to come up with a way of making money for themselves... Endorse the label and not the song. Create a way for us internet people to get a hold of the newest and latest music online and not charge download fees...
I guess my point is...Libraries, slashdot, open source software...etc etc... all seem to remain alive without making people pay big bucks for what they offer.
BMG or SONY could come out with a really awsome way to organize our songs... or help us out with the quality of what we get... but they don't... they just complain.
Bottom line: This is 2002... Kazaa(which I hate), and GNUtella(which I love) is not going away...neither is the mp3 format... deal with it.
The whole idea of downloading music is a neverending story. People will allways claim they do it because CD-prices are too high in their opinion. The record-companies on the other hand will continue to claim prices must be high because music is downloaden so often.
I won't claim I've never downloaded music but when the album is worth it I'll purchase it. Downloading just prevents me from buying and the regrets afterwards. Downloading and never buying therefor is quit lame in my opinion.
Downloading also gives me the opportunity to get familliar with different kinds of music. Record stores aren't very happy when people keep on listening without buying. P2P programs let you enjoy the listening in the comfort of your own home. As everybody can see there are some very legitimate reasons to download MP3. If everybody would follow such standards I think the entertainment industry would have much less of a problem with it.
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over the last few years, a tiny number of gigantic companies have locked up all our aural culture tighter than a drum. they hold a monopoly on the ears of the general public. radio stations are almost universally owned by Clear Channel. concert venues of course belong to Ticketmaster. there's pseudo-competition in the record industry, but all the competitors there are equally soulless.
... but DAMN, do we like to fight amongst ourselves, and so many woul rather go with the status quo, too afraid to find our own way.
there has always been those who reject this hierarchy, but until now we've relied on word of mouth, dubbed tapes, lamppost posters and flyers to reach our audience. musicians are slow adopters, but we are catching on. CD-R's and MP3's are mainstream now. can enough like-minded musicians -- musicians who reject the whole corporate machine, and don't mind sacrificing money and fame to operate outside of it -- can enough of us band together to form a cohesive movement, or will we remain isolated and disparate?
geography is less of a barrier than ever. the music industry has never been in greater need of revolution. and independant musicians have never been as well armed as we are now
i suppose only time will tell.
dan
the overprivileged
http://www.theoverprivileged.com
i could live a little longer in this prison
Almost everythign there is to say about the issue has been said already in previous slashdot stories. So just about anything I could say would be redundant. Except I just realized something. Let's say I bought all music I wanted on CD and didn't download anything. I would be without all my music from foreign countries and without my video game music remixes! That's the real reason I don't buy CDs. They don't have the music I want and don't have. Seeing as I've already got all the classic rock ever on vinyl.
I'll make a deal with you RIAA. Release a CD with the best of OC Remixes and I'll buy two copies. Until then, make mine winMX.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
"Well you know why popular music scene is full of "artists" like Britney Spears? It's because of people like them stealing music and destroying the chances of decent musicians."
puleeze, commercial acts like Britney have been around LONG before P2P "pirates". ever hear of Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran or Poison?
the good acts will ALWAYS be drowned out by the more commercially viable acts. P2P actually increases the distribution of the good acts, as there is no commitment up front to spend money on an album that you know nothing about.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I have a hard time believing that that many people have paid to download music in the form of services such as PressPlay, Rhapsody, and others. The numbers? Ipsos-Reid claims that 60 million Americans download music, and 31% (about 18 million) "reported having paid for any of the music they have downloaded." Maybe I'm missing one, but I don't think that these relatively new services have reached nearly that subscription level yet. Instead, I think many people who answered yes to the "have you paid for music" question were confused in one of two ways: either they thought that their ISP fee pays for the music, or they are referring to music that they bought in CD/Tape/other physical form, and also have seperately downloaded to their PCs. Unfortunately, the Ipsos-Reid and TEMPO websites are short on details, such as the exact wording of questions asked.
I did locate another TEMPO survey that a mere 27% of downloaders would prefer to pay for a music service if it were availabe (italics mine). All these data seem a bit inconsistant, and if you're doing anything valuable with this info, I wouldn't trust it much more than a Slashdot poll.
The giant record companies were once a necessary evil when proper recording equipment was very expensive and there were few channels for distributing music. Now it is easy to record at home, modify the recording on your home computer and burn your own CDs or put your music on the internet. I do like the idea of a musicians community where you can exchange resources and ideas, or at least network.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
of course more people are downloading more music...it's on every commercial for broadband that i've ever seen. DSL, earthlink, roadrunner...and now that more people are signing on for these services, then yes, of course, more people are online to download more stuff!
Furthermore, almost a third (31%) of those who do download claim they have paid for at least some of the music they got online.
The key word is "claim." The actual value is probably much lower, and getting increasingly lower.
The Ipsos-Reid results summary is very vague anyway... it doesn't say that poll respondants paid for a download service, just that they "paid for any music they have downloaded". They very well could have bought a CD of music that they downloaded online... I would think many people would consider that paying for the music.
It does mean though that a sizeable audience are willing to give these record industry endorsed services a shot even though they can get it all free on KaZaa.
No. The number would be significantly smaller were people to know free services existed. Some friends who were left in the dark by Napster started to sign up for these pay services until I told them about the existance of free ones, at which point they quickly about-faced.
The American Way: don't tell me there's no such thing as a free ride.
You don't think that the GE engineers making lightbulbs sit around and have lunch with the ones making high performance jet engines, do you?
More like, you don't thinkt he GE engineers making lightbulbs sit around with the ones making power plants to see how they can make a lightbulb emit less light and use more electricity.
Turns out the best way to run a business is usually to just make each product the best it can be instead of concentrating on "the big picture"
Thank god. (not that it prevents many from trying)
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I'd be happy to pay for the music I get online, provided...
I do download music from the net. But what I download I either delete or I buy the CD of it. When I get the CD, I rip the tracks and put them in my junkbox machine (e.g. my Linux file server) and play them there. The CDs are stored and not sold, given away, or even loaned. But if the CDs eventually no longer work, then I will certainly reconsider my plan. If I can pay to download and that works, fine. But if none of the pay-for methods work, what else can I do but steal the music?
Artists ... is your label ripping you off by not making your music work for me?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sit there and mull that over a bit.
Think about the implications.
By trying to contratually (EULA) or technologically (broken CD s) strip away our fair use rights granted under copyright law, media companies are stealing from the commons. (Ok, so this is the complimentary argument to their "TIVO users are thieves".)
I do agree that if consumers are ill-informed enough to buy into something, that they get what they pay for. If they start getting pissed that they can't listen to their Briteney'N'Sync in their imacs and returning them, maybe things will self-correct. If you sign that EULA, you agree to abide by its terms. You can sign away any rights you want to in a contract.
But make no mistake about it, copyright is an ARTIFICIAL state of affairs. Hell, look at what happened with "It's a Wonderful Life". It was of little value until it had been RETURNED to the public domain . Then the cable companies started using it for cheap holiday filler, and it became woven into our common culture. And this was something that the media companies (unknowingly) did.
Mickey Mouse would not be worth anywhere near so much if people everywhere didn't recognize him. Disney owes that value to Mickey being part of our common culture -- and copyright is a temporary grant of use THAT MUST BE RETURNED to the public domain.
standard Discordian disclaimer : parts of this are blatent lies, parts are true -- use your head and figure it out for yourself
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Predictability, hogwash. The point here is that the RIAA is using their current monopoly on music distribution to stifle competing methods of music distribution. They don't care whether or not their income is predictable so long as it is copious. Are they afraid of people getting music for free? Yeah, a bit. Are they afraid of new infrastructure developing which will make them obsolete? You bet your AC-trolling ass they are. The point is that the internet totally removes the need for some ultra-huge corporation to physically distribute the cd's, because Joe Geek can run apache on his cable modem and send his music to people all over the world.
The internet is here. MP3 is everywhere. The cat is out of the bag. No amount of legislation will ever put the cat back in the bag. We as a society must find a way to make digital music, which has an infinite supply, financially profitable. That is the challenge that technology has presented us with. We must not allow the self-preservation instincts of an outdated business model to prevent us from dealing with the problems we are presented with. This is the challenge of our times...we must make music profitable or face the loss of a key element of our culture.
Now, there are probably a number of answers to this problem that involve watermarking, buying music over the internet and so on, but IMHO all of that is destined to failure.
The essential problem is that the internet is really a form of collective consciousness. Once a piece of music is put in someone's P2P share folder, it essentially becomes part of this enormous network of information storage. Once a song hits the net it is no longer physical goods, but rather information. The cornerstone of the information anarchist philosophy is that information wants to be free. It's difficult to reason yourself out of watching a pirated movie. Download a divx you haven't seen and burn it onto a cd. Place it in front of yourself. Whether or not you can get past the inhibitions society has placed on you, the indoctrination that information must not be free, somewhere in the back of your mind you feel there is no wrong in that information moving from that disc into your mind. The emerging interconnectedness of our society means that music is no longer a good, but rather information. Trying to fight this only divides us.
Clearly the relationship between artist and consumer is no longer the traditional capitalist one of producer and consumer. Music is not consumed, it is spread, as information.
However, the capitalist mode of thinking does apply when we look to the relationship between artist and society as a whole. Society consumes the performances of the artists and returns a fee based on the success of said music. This is the essential characteristic of the music industry, not the business model that the RIAA has crafted to complete this relationship. We only need to find a new way of expressing this relationship in a society where music is not scarce. The solution is this: all Americans must pay a yearly tax. The infrastructure to generate income via taxes is already in place and quite efficient. Then, the music of any artist would be accessible to anyone via the internet. All we then need is some mechanism to track which artists are listened to the most, or perhaps each tax form would require a list of artists who should be compensated. Perhaps some democratic process could elect representatives who oversee and influence the process. In the end, though, artists would be judged on their contribution to society and recieve appropriate compensation. However, there would be a maximum as well. Once an artist reaches a certain contribution to society they recieve a fixed fee for the rest of their lives, whether they produce music or not. Instead of making millions because of artificial scarcity, they will be given a more modest life, but one that has absolute security, freeing them to continue with their music, unhindered by financial worries.
Think of it this way. If someone said to you "We're going to take care of your living expenses for the rest of your life. You're not going to drive a porche, but all you have to do is make music. You will never have to want for housing, food, medical, anything. No worries. If you are famous and loved, even if only for a few years, you are set for life." and you didn't take it, you're in it for profit anyways, and you're as bad as Brittney Spears. The true artist seeks glory, recognition, and success. If you want to be rich, well, then you need to contribute to society in some other way. There is still a motivation to reach the cutoff point. Say you write one song, release it, get a few thousand downloads, you might get a check for a couple hundred bucks. If you make a song that is as popular as any mainstream single these days, you're going to be taken care of.
Sure, this idea is pretty damn communist. Sure, artists can't have huge mansions anymore. However, it does two important things: listeners aren't criminals anymore, and the RIAA's price-gouging won't lure idiots like a lot of the trash on MTV because of the massive amounts of money involved.
Look at musicians over the course of history. Our society is an aberration in that Musicians are respected and paid as if they were royalty. Muisicians previously lived for two things: recognition and security, and my proposal offers just that. The life of a musician should be one that sacrafices the greedy pursuit of financial wealth for the satisfaction of making a meaningful contribution to society. The truly great musicians write music to express what is in themselves, and to share that with others, and they look to our screwed up system to ensure that they get to eat the next day. The RIAA has commercialized music beyond belief, thus uprooting the true factors that should drive a musician.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I think the problem the RIAA does not realize is the fact they are falling victim to the laws of economics--the invisible hand has slapped them hard.
When you start pricing album-length audio CD's at US$18 per disc in what amounts to a cartel-like situation customers are LESS likely to buy CD's produced by RIAA member companies because the customer thinks the record companies are gouging them for high prices. Anyone who's read up on basic microeconomics know that high cartel good prices encourage ways to undermine the cartel, hence the reason why file-sharing sites have become all the rage in the last four years.
If the RIAA had been a bit more enlightened they should have priced CD's at round US$11 per album-length disc, which would have drastically cut the economic incentive to pirate music. After all, is there rampant piracy of DVD's here in the USA? Of course not, given the fact that the MPAA allows DVD's to be sold at reasonable prices (US$20 per disc for new releases, US$15 or much less for older releases).