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Music Biz Predicts 6% Decline in '03
jonerik writes "According to this article from Reuters, music industry executives gathering this weekend for the global music industry conference Midem in southern France are being told that a 6% industry-wide decline in sales is being predicted for 2003; not as bad as last year's 9% decline, but bad enough since '02 and '03 come on top of a five percent dip in 2001 and a 1.4 percent fall in 2000. As a result, talk of consolidation is rampant at the conference, with the most likely scenario being a buyout of EMI by BMG-Bertelsmann. Critics, however, are skeptical that the labels' problems will necessarily be solved by simply bulking up. 'The politics at the major labels hasn't changed. The guy who puts his neck out on the line could get fired. Whereas the guy who keeps his head down is safe, and he gets to keep his BMW for another year,' said Paul Myers, founder of Wippit.com, a subscription download site."
is the fact that they put out less CD's than they have in previous years..
begun, the flame war has..
is pandora's box, and their diminshing expense business model almost ensures a continuing growth/profit downturn.
QUESTION - How can you depend on a smaller subset of crappy music to support a more diverse and growing audience and still make a greater profit, with out Andersen Accounting 101....
ANSWER - you can't unless you can claim the losses due to an illegal act and get aid or a system slanted in your favor...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
> Golly! It looks like that particular argument is now dead and gone.
Hardly. As has been mentioned before, some independent industry analysts were actually surprised that the drop in sales was only as much as it was. They did the calculations of new artists signed, albums released, and all the other factors that go into the total sales equation, and estimated sales to be actually less than they ended up being. Some concluded that music sharing might have accounted for that.
i think is because of steep degradation in quality of music.
:-)
senseless pop songs.
kids putting out albums when they should be school. i mean when a 12 year old starts singing about love and world peace, i feeling like shooting him
rap artists who should be in jail
rock artist who just do head banging and no music
Music as we know as long been dead.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
> Economy slumps
> Music sucks
> Downturn...must be piracy.
Another effect is that they've lost a free bonus market that they've had for the last 20 years. During the '80s the baby boomers shelled out millions or probably billions to replace their vinly with CDs of the same recordings, and during the '90s they did it again to get the remastered versions of those same recordings.
But both of those trends have almost completely run their course, so the record companies are back to selling new music for the first time without all the free bonus re-sales of old stuff to the large and economically powerful baby boomer generation. Unless they can think of a way to get the boomers to buy all that stuff for yet a fourth time, that "free bonus" revenue is gone for ever.
I would like to see a plot of sales growth/dips for the past 25 years that counted only new releases.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's easy to pirate the music... damn easy... and I have 3 burners and tons of software to manipulate the software and convert formats however I like... so I'm set but I think if music was that cheap, I would just go ahead and buy the cd's. It would be easier to buy them than pirate them and I wouldn't be spending all that much.
But we all know that this will never happen. Maybe the price will go down a little but I doubt it. I have noticed when going to concerts at small clubs around Seattle, when the band has cd's for sale at the show and they are cheap, like $10, they ALWAYS sell out. I'm sure they make a pretty good profit on those since they are selling them themselves. Maybe more bands should do this. What if at the next Metallica concert, you could buy all of the cd's they have ever released (except for box sets of course) for $10 each? Would you buy one? Would you buy all of them? I would buy all of them... and I already all but one.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
So I take it you believe the studios are selling DVDs near cost, since they already milked the public at the box office and they don't feel the need to earn (much) more money off the massive DVD campaign? DVDs are selling in larger and larger quantities, and for movies that do so-so at the box office, the DVD sales boost the total revenue of the film considerably (Reign of Fire comes to mind, did horrible in the theaters and was in top-5 of rental and sales charts for a few weeks).
I actually see non-Disney (boo his) DVD ads on TV on a regular basis now, more so than I see music ads, except those damn "Wow!" albums. Someone has to pay to get all those menus scripted, all the other language tracks recorded, the commentary tracks, the featurettes, the friggin' DVD-ROM content. Plus it comes in a nicer box than a jewel case, and is a fundamentaly more expensive media to produce. So why again are they close to if not less than the cost of a CD with 45 minutes of crap music?
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
"Two words that shouldn't fit together: Music Industry
Ever wonder why the Foo Fighters sound just (almost) like Nirvana when that x-Nirvana drummer wasn't even with the band and didn't really much write songs when he did? Answer: it paid to write songs like Nirvana. Or, more specifically, the record company paid the FF's to sound just like Nirvana knowing that's what would sell to the stupid shit kids out there riding along on yesterday's pop-cool-whatever.
I can just see some record company execs schmoozin' that drummer and telling him that he could still have a fine future in the industry if he could just write songs like no-more-head-Kurt did: "Would you be interested in forming a new band like Nirvana, drummer?" Reply, "Well, ya. Uh, I could try... How much would you pay us?" "We could make it VERY worth your while if it sounds like Nirvana and the kids see you as the band reborn."
Some jack-off from that 90's Clash wanna-be band whatever-they're-called was defending himself recently about "the state of punk in the 90's" sort of thing in Alternative Press and saying that it can be about money and getting down on people who are giving him trouble for being commercially successful. Well, I say fuck these fair weather pop-punk bands pretending to be rebels and acting like they're breaking new ground. I mean, I have a 9-5 job at an ISP in Salt Lake City, Utah and I have pink hair and although my boss is liberal and customers make comments sometimes, most everybody likes it like it's fun, which it is. I bring up this example to simply point out that pink hair 20 years ago would be a statement and likely cause trouble and now slack, somehow-I-keep-a-job types like myself can have pink hair and keep a job-obviously things have changed. Hell, even extremists like Marilyn Manson hardly cause a stir outside of places like Utah and Florida.
I'm applauding this lack of concern for appearance and simply want to point out that punk music is not rebellion anymore-some of it is still damn good, but it is music and not some fucking costume party for pseudo rebels.
Back to my RANT that making music into an "industry" is not a good thing overall-one mostly gets copy-cat bands like the Foo Fighters and all those Epitaph bands, on a good day but more likely Alanis Mourisette female-singer -with-heart-on-shoulder pop radio hell.
This is not to say that one can blame record companies when I just heard on the news this morning that the most popular radio station in NYC is playing 80's disco music!!!! Nietzsche's notion of the masses as cattle clambering along seems quite fitting at moments like this. But anyway, what are people buying when they pay for an album? What do they hope to get from some LL Cool J song?
This idea of "music-as-industry" really gets me bad because I have to listen to this shit when I'm in someone's car or flipping through the radio station's in my honey's car since her tape player doesn't work. This is hellish. Where is the surprise in any of this shit? Where is the soul in it? how can anyone feel any emotion besides hatred when listening to this? I'm no Rocket Scientist *sob* but why can't music have some soul again? Are people so brainless and exhausted that most anything will do? Are people so lazy that they'll let radio and record producers choose what they will like and hear?
I see people gobbling up the feces over and over again and then see stacks of some "big" band's music at the used music store less than a year later. So many bands are liked and hip for no apparent reason-take Rocket From the Crypt. Their music is boring and lame and lifeless and unoriginal and yet Sympathy For the Record Industry (cool name) bothers to waste cool record art and vinyl on these San Diego kitch bitches. I keep hearing people talk about their wearing bowling shirts on stage like that's a good reason to buy and enjoy their albums and concerts. What am I missing here? And then Blacktop comes to town a year ago and less than a dozen people are out to see them.
Now I'm thinking about films and getting pissed about that too. Ever hear of "quote-whores"? I'll RANT about it sometime.
If you agree, don't be getting too full of yourselves too quickly. Most of you liked disco in the late 70's/early 80's--or would have if you had been around and old enough."
godlessmotherfucker.com
Sales are down because the labels can't sell much more of the stuff from the 50s to the late 70s. There is so much that's unavailable due to inability to gain licensing rights and clearances.
The Star Formerly Known As Prince called himself that because his record label wouldn't let him use his own name. Hell, the Carpenters from the 70s still have a huge following and all their video stuff is still in demand, but it can't be sold because clearance can't be obtained. Now who the hell would fight over them?
Same with the Partridge Family. There was a recent TV special, but their original recordings weren't replayed, it was easier to get more studio musicians to rerecord them.
I hope the industry chokes on that Supreme Court ruling.
To put a finer point on it, compare the price of the 2 disc DVD to the audio CD soundtrack of the same movie. They are usually about the same price. Which would you rather buy?
Hypothetical question: It is legal for me to copy an audio CD to a tape, in order to play in my car. Can I legally copy the soundtrack off a DVD to play (audio only) in my car also?
I see rumors that they're talking about re-releasing their catalogues in yet another format - some kind of "better CD". Absolutely NO question that the industry is counting on the old stuff to prop up their current poor efforts. (and you wondered why that copyright thing was an issue) I'm busy stocking up on $50.00 CD burners that will play anything and keeping back a machine or two with IDE interfaces. I'm NOT buying the stuff I like in another format. I own some of it in 3 or 4 already.
Are they really predicting decline? Does this mean they can no longer claim to have unmet projected increases? Or are these actually overlayed negative adjustments to projected increases, which can then once again be blamed only on piracy, rather than suck?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You know, between 1986 and 1992, when I was in High School and going into my "entry level" computer job, I purchased nearly 400 CDs.
I kind of got fed up with the music industry's attitude, even back then. Did you know that CDs say that "unauthorized *LENDING*" is prohibited? I hated feeling like I was an evil person because I was making compilation tapes *FOR MY OWN USE*. I hated their attitude that they had to milk us for all that they could.
So, I did something about it. I boycotted them. In the last decade I have hardly gotten 100 CDs. Despite the fact that during this time I was making 10x more money than when I was buying more CDs. Probably half of the CDs I've bought since 1992 have been independants or smaller labels or the artists themselves.
A full 10% of CDs I purchsed just to give away (a small band a friend was involved in, I purchased a whole box to give to friends).
Back in the '80s, I'd buy anything that caught my ear. Now I'll only buy something if I've heard several songs from the disc and still like them after a year of listening to them.
How long does the entertainment industry think they can treat their customers like dirt, and expect them to still keep coming back?
I'm sure that internally the RIAA realizes that some of the spending is down because of the economy. If they don't, they're bigger fools than I expected. But their public face keeps making me feel worse and worse that I don't want DRM, I want my music in MP3 format, and I want to keep multiple copies (laptop, player, server), even though I don't use *ANY* of the file-sharing systems.
So, my boycott stays.
At least with 500-ish CDs, it's hard to get bored listening to the same stuff over and over.
Sean
I hear people complaining about $18-$20 cd prices, and I have to ask, where the hell are you guys shopping? Are you seriously buying cds from stores like Sam Goody or the Virgin stores?
I can find nearly any cd for $13 or less, which I don't find to be outrageous.
I can find a CD I want on Amazon, download all the tracks from Kazaa-Lite, and then donate money straight to the artist via MusicLink. The only time I buy a CD is for present-giving or when I receive a Borders gift voucher. The RIAA could take a look at their main product CDs and not focus so much on piracy or P2P as 'Bad' - because they are 'Good' when compared to the inconveniences of the CD. Records are an antiquated concept except to DJs. Now CDs are on the chopping block with their commercial counterparts.
In case you haven't noticed, Napster is dead and gone. That was the easiest and most reliable way to sample music (even sample kiosks in music stores tend to be broken) -- being able to browse through others' favorite songs led me to buy more CDs -- I haven't bought many CDs since the death of Napster...
I think its worth noting that in the last year more interesting new music was heard on Mitsubishi and Sprite commercials than on the radio. New, great music comes out all of the time, but there's zero interest in promoting it. Not on MTV, not on the radio, not anywhere. The only way I find out about new music is by reading the alternative press or through word of mouth.
The record industry is an industry of parasites. Their business model is based on relentlessly screwing both the producer of their product (the artists) and the customer. The executives themselves, as in most industries, produce nothing and contribute little. Anyone who's ever worked in a big corporate office can attest to this: the highest level of management spends most of their time schmoozing and going to catered "meetings". Their jobs are the least at risk, they work the shortest hours, and yet they make the most money by several orders of magnitude. I think that C. Brown from Leaders of the New School said it best in "Scenario":
"We're all making pennies on our records, so who makes the paper?
The man in Manhattan laughing in the skyscraper."
I've often wondered if the downturn in CD sales is not at all due to piracy, but simply to boomers aging and not being particularly interested in new music. By now, boomers have already replaced their old 60's and 70's vinyl records with CDs, and so aren't buying any more. Gen X and younger are a smaller number of people, they have no vinyl to replace, and so ongoing sales will be smaller.
If it was not all scratched up, then I'll bet the vinyl would sound the best. Actual anlog sound is always more realistic than a computer synthesized immitation of it no matter what the bit-rate is.
How ya like dat?
I'm sorry, but this just gets my goat. The record industry insists that they're loosing business and it's just horrid what P2P is doing to them, and it's all piracy's fault.
Find me another mutli-billiion dollar a year industry that's NOT hurting in this day and age and I'll give you a cookie. On top of that, they're a non-essential industry! They should be hurting more than anybody else out there right now!
Okay, lets assume this is horrible to the record industry. The industry is just decimated by P2P right now for arguments sake -- who the hell do you know of right now that's been laid off by them and is hurting economically because of it? Anybody?
Lets step back into the world of -real- products with value right now. They're hurting... badly. I've seen Steelcase (a fortune 500 company recently) cut back their staff by large marks because of the economy. People aren't pirating office equipemnt, it's just a bad economy. There's rumors of a automotive parts manufacturer shutting down here too -- and that's not because of piracy. People still drive cars, and beleive it or not, they usually buy them. Yet, still, they're hurting. People are getting laid of from real jobs in real industries, yet these SOBs have the gaul to say that their sales are slumping and beleive that it's somebody else's problem that it's happening.
Bull... fucking...shit. Welcome to the real world, fellas. When people who make products people actually need are out of work you can sure as hell bet people that make things that noboby really needs are going to be hurting for money.
Is Emusic making any money? They seem to be doing exactly that.
seriouslyexcited.net
Mainstream music is far too saturated on the radio, in stores, MTV... and 80% of it sucks even if it wasn't saturated.
If eminem came out in the 80s I wouldn't listen to him.
If he came out in the 90s I just may listen to him.
Today he's one of the hottest artist in the industry, that's how low are music standards have gone today.
Lets not forget the fact that their output of new artists is down also, and any other factors they like to keep quiet about if it doesn't support their War Against Piracy®.
For those interested, The BBC World Service [link in sig] is starting an interesting sounding series today [18th Jan] called "The Global Music Machine," about the way the Record Feudal Lords screw any artist that has the misfortune to have dealings with them.
In the trail, they cited the way they take original artists and force them to put out "radio-friendly" albums, and the extremely dodgy contracts they make them sign.
Should make interesting listening.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Or have prices gone up? Tonight I went to the mall to buy 4-5 CDs. I was looking forward to this for a while, as I've been in England for several months and didn't want to pay crazy euro-prices. When I figured out that 5 CDs was going to cost me the better part of $200CDN, I walked out of the store. I remember when $25CDN was the most any non-import single LP CD would cost. Now it's up to as high as $38, with $28, $29 being common. None of my selection was priced under $20!!! Granted, this was the only store I checked, but with prices like that (and 15% tax on top) I don't think I'll be back to check again soon.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
One major change, which doesn't require too many subjective evaluations to notice, is that the music companies have made a shift away from developing artists to a regime where they're more about developing songs. There's always been a certain amount of this throughout the past few decades, but it's taken on a particularly feverish industrial pitch in the last several years.
The end result is that listeners seem to be less attached to the artists that they listen to, and buying the album or becoming part of a following is less important; with the exception of a very small number of artists, all you need is that band's one or three major hits. Then you can forget all about them because chances are they'll just fade away.
This change really took off right around the time that it became easy to simply swap and collect songs in a convenient and reasonably high-quality (ie non-casette) format, with the Internet and p2p making it easy to share with millions of people all over the world. Instant disaster.
GOOD :/
... its right from the artist.
If I buy cd's
I refuse to support the RIAA gestapo.