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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."
Just because someone downloads it doesnt mean they like it. Many people downlaod music that they would never buy and end up liking it and then buy the artists CD. The trading of music over the Net has greatly increased the different types of music that a person listens too. To bad the RIAA doesnt trust the studies that say this is true.
I purchase plenty of music in CD and LP form. Some of what I listen to is obscure, some of it is quasi-popular, but very little seems to be online anyway. It's much easier and less time consuming for me to go out and buy the stuff from the local non-chain music store.
Occasionally I'll download a track or two to see if I like an album, so I can put it on my "buy" list if I enjoy it. It may take me a while to buy it, but I do if it's available.
Try besonic, a guilt free way to download music.
Don't forget to select your country if your germans not upto scratch (the site's english, but quite a bit of the popular music is German!)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Porn industry doesn't complain
"Its all free advertising, and we've got premium services that are making a profit"
If the record industry could follow this model then it would be less of an issue.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
For the life of me I don't understand why you people keep dancing around this issue. You are all stealing. You can point your fingers in all sorts of directions in an attempt to deflect the blame (like your you will have forced me) but the truth of the matter is that you are stealing, plain and simple.
You don't need music. Even if you no one is obligated to give it to you. Crying about crippled CDs, that you brought on yourself by stealing in the first place, doesn't make it OK.
Cunning linguists
Shurely shome mishtake?
Surely you mean:
Even though they can get it all in return for hosting viruses and trojans on Kazaa?
Even thought they can get it in exchange for their integrity on Kazaa?
Even though they can get it in return for sitting online for hours looking for a decent quality recording of a track?
NO ID: BEING FREE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PROVE IT
Hmm... this one was interesting.
(First, does anyone wonder if this "anonymous reader" really exists, or if it's just michael making something up again?)
Anyway, here are the facts we have (from the summary).
1. A continuing rise in the number of Americans downloading music from the Net.
2. 31% of those who do download claim they have paid for at least some of the music they got online.
Let's review those for a minute. First: Piracy (or, to those zealots who says there's no guy with an eyepatch here), the illegal downloading of copywrited music without proper (in the legal, not moral sense) compensation is up. Second, thirty-one percent says they paid for some of the music they downloaded! So... how much did they pay for? 1%? 5%? 10%? 50%? Who knows? I'd guess no more than a third. If that's true, we have less than a third of the pirates paying for less than a third of their music... which, if downloading is uniformly distributed, means less than 11% of all music being pirated is being paid for.
And based on this he claims "a sizeable audience are willing to give these record industry endorsed services a shot even though they can get it all free on KaZaa."?
Yeah, right.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
It may be your opinion, but your argument doesn't hold.
There where "artists" like Britney Spears before napster or even the internet.
Musicians didn't make (lots of) money before the invention of radio and records. Right now technology makes it possible for (some of them) to make lots of money. It a few years technology has made it impossible for most of them to make (lots of) money.
If everybody "stole" their music, the record labels wouldn't have the money to promote artists like Britney Spears and only musicians who where willing to promote their own music (by giving it way) would make money (on t-shirt and live acts).
Things change - learn to live with it. In the old days musicians had to play at least a couple of gigs a week to make a living. My guess is that those days will return.
TC - My Photos..
You notice that it says free...It doesn't break down if they were download illegally from a filesharing service or if it was from legitiatmate sources, such as DMusic.com or Mp3.Com or for that matter the artist's websites?
Free does not neccesarily mean "stolen". Sounds like you've bought into the RIAA position lock stock and yardarm.
>Are you under the impression that copyright law requires record labels to provide you with CDs that you can play in the manner you want? If so, allow me to enlighten you: It does not.
It does, to a certain extent. When you buy a CD, you're not paying for the physical medium or the encoding of the media. You're paying to have the right to use that media.
No one is obligated to buy crippled media, but then again if people have to use illegal means to access the media they want, there's something wrong going on (as in : the media companies should listen to their customers instead of pissing them off).
this is not the only place you need to do this, you need to tell them directly, MAIL A PHYSICAL LETTER. signed and properly formatted.
Everyone using BMG needs to do this... email doesn't mean squat to them, a physical letter does.
Me? I finished up my requirement with them and cancelled via US mail letter with a full explination of this, that I will not buy un-useable CD's from them that does not work in my Car stereo, home stereo, and portable player. (all of which play mp3's and thus fail on the "protected" cd's)
Also end the letter with, "I am reccomending to all my friends and relative to avoid doing business with your company because of this."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sorry, RIAA and MPAA, but given the consistent mediocrity that you people have been getting away with for years, I simply don't trust you to give me the product I'm paying for.
What that means for you is that I will download movies on Kazaa or Imesh, and I will get MP3's before I pay one red cent to you. It doesn't mean that I want to rip you off, it means I don't want you to rip me off. It's basic economics that you don't seem to be understanding: I download 100 MP3's. Of those MP3's I find 4 or 5 that come from artists I decide I like. The rest get deleted because I decide they suck. I buy CD's that have been released by those artists to see if I like everything else they've done. I'd say that aside from a couple anthologies from 70's and 80's bands, and the copy of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" that I had to replace, I haven't bought a CD in the last 5 years that I didn't preview somehow.
Movies... same deal. I don't even trust Hollywood not to fsck up "Lord of the Rings", and won't see it until I'm done downloading it. If you people hadn't been consistently passing off crap for the last quarter century, I might be more willing to spend money on you, but as it is I'm not spending anything on you until I know that I'm getting what I pay for.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I agree that typical radio stations tend to have very unsavoury commercials in large amounts. It might be worth checking out 'community' radio stations in your area. I listen to jazz fm broadcast from Toronto a lot (also available on webcast) and since they're a non-commercial radio station as defined by the CRTC, there's only something like 6 minutes per hour of ads. I *have* bought CDs based on what I heard on this station.
Do any similar 'non-commercial' radio station designations exist in the USA?
I have an even better idea for how the record labels can make money... They can charge 1 time royalty fees to companies who make portable Mp3 players.
Example:
Sony makes an Mp3 player that can hold 100 songs...charge Sony royalties for 100 songs...for every product sold... They would make a fortune.
Then again...wait a second... Isn't sony also a record label? So technically they would be charging themselves for distributing songs? That can't be right.... So if Sony the label wants people to stop pirating songs... Why do they make MP3 players to play those illegal songs?
Things that make ya go hmmmmmm....
--
An active Open Source advocate.
The top 40 lists are guided by album sales, additionally, artist tend to write what sells. I am guessing that the crowd under 25 yrs old downloads much more than over 25 yrs old (completely unsubstantiated guess) that being said, the top 40 does have a lot more mature type sounds lately (more accoustic music, higher vocal quality etc...) Could the traditionally teeny bopper top 40 be getting more guidance from the older more apt to pay crowd? Could teenagers be robbing themselves of their 'right to vote' for the music of their choice? If they are is that something that still matters or will the top 40 fade in the shifting paradigms of the 21st century?
As I said that is all speculative.
Buying an Album shouldn't be like opening a gift bag. You should be able to know what's on the disc, before you buy it, to decide if you WANT to buy it. Sure, the radio plays 1 or 2 songs, over, and over and over.... and Most modern music stores will let you listen to a CD in store, but what if i want to listen to that music in context?
So i download it, give it a listen from my favorite armchair, and decide wether or not it's worth my $20. If not, it goes into the Recyclebin. I'm not a pirate, if i don't like it, i don't keep it. If i do like it, i buy it, and rip a higher quality MP3 straight from the CD.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
I've been using Rhapsody for a few weeks, and it's a blast. For $10 (roughly the price of CD) each month, I get unlimited online access to a huge catalog of well-digitized music. Very simple and very good.
The $1 per track charge to burn to CD is pretty high, so I don't do that.
Just because record companies are swine, it does not mean that it's OK to steal stuff from them. Rhapsody lets me get (most of) the music I want at a very reasonable cost.
Highly recommended.
(No, I don't work for them, etc.)
Me emailing them, or sending letters probably wont do squat, but if the Musicians they represent said that crippled CD's weren't in there contract, bye bye.... Then maybe EMI/BMG et all would notice.
So, Email/Write to your favourite musician and tell them that you will no longer be buying there music because it's crippled, suggest that this might be a get out of Jail free card in terms of there contract etc....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
and how that is different than other entertainment media: money the industry spends (contracts, studio time, etc) is spent on future returns on this investment. So the idea is that you can spend half a million on a band with the hope that you will reap many fold over this.
Everyone mentions Britney Spears but also notice that her music is not what the record industry hopes for. What is best for them? Pink Floyd, Journey, etc. Remember that these old rock acts are not on the Billboard 200. Why? Because decades old music would represent 75% of the chart! These are the records that go quadruple diamond and will continue to sell... forever. Britney/N'Sync are good right now, but do you think those albums will be constant sellers in a decade?
So not only is trading cutting into these longterm sellers, the industry knows that if they don't sell Britney et al now, that is money that won't come around in the future.
[In an Economic view] Now this industry is making all these investments and their market is bottoming out. All their speculation tools are useless (since, as others have said, they don't know where to spend their money).
The big difference between the record companies and economic speculators is that the record industry can't invest more in mainstays! I mean there are only so many Zeppelin and Beatles hits comps they can release a year.
"Well they should only release good music!" Yeah, and when has that ever happened in any product industry? Software? Automobiles? Fast Food? Pffff. Pipedream justification.
What is music when you despise all sound?
...and they still can't come up with a successful model that will allow them to make a buck from downloadable music. They're a bunch of F**K- ups, what can I say? There's truly no other way to describe these morons. For the TEN MILLIONTH TIME let me try to explain it to these pure idiots: The consumer is willing to pay for downloadable music under the following conditions: First: It must be reasonably priced. The guys who think I'm going to pay a buck a cut for a 128k quality MP3 are nuts! 35-50 cents is more like it. A monthly flat rate for stuff over a year old makes even more sense. Second: I want to be able to play MY songs (emphasis on MY) on my computer, in my car, on my boombox, on my portable player, and anywhere else I see fit. Third:I want a GOOD SELECTION OF SONGS! I HATE the crap coming out on CD these days. Also, I NEED A SOURCE TO HEAR all kinds of music! I half give you credit for this one: at least you got half a clue and stopped biting the hand that fed you with Internet Radio (kinda). Finally:This paranoia over 'copy protection' has simply got to stop! There's a saying that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush! Perhaps it's time that you guys learned that saying, 'cause right now the bunch of you get NOTHING from the bush!...except for Hilary Rosen -maybe- *wink*