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Six Giant Music Retailers Will Try Online Sales Together
PingXao writes "The New York Times is reporting that several music retailers are banding together to test online sales. Sad to see the article's author flat-out claim that '... a proliferation of free music-swapping services on the Internet has led to a decline in CD sales.' The retailers are starting to get a clue but still have a long way to go as evidenced by 'Recording companies make the music...' and 'We are in the customer relationship business.'"
Any bets that this will be crippleware music with heavy DRM locks?
And then it will fail? I surely could do without this crap.
When the Pressplay 6 month, $30 subscription deal came up I thought I'd test the waters of legal music d/ling. And what it showed me is that anything the RIAA signs off on is going to be a complete fraud, a waste of money, and ultimately a failure. They can stop blaming Kazaa, their own suits have cost them more money than trading ever could.
If you took a whole bunch of airplane parts and all the Boeing engineers and put them in a room, the result would not be an airplane, because the Boeing company and the things it does in the way of managing/coordinating/research are indeed necessary for the production of airplanes.
If you took a whole bunch of signed recording artists, and left them in a room with the appropriate tools, the result *would* be music, because the marketing/distribution/hyping done by record companies is *not* necessary for the production of music.
At one point, perhaps the record corps were necessary for distribution, but now that physical media are not necessary, it's harder to make that case. They certainly aren't necessary in the way that Boeing are necessary for airplanes, anyway.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
That sort of perception is the problem. The recording industry is a delivery medium, not a means to an end. The way things have evolved, yes they do produce the music, but its been my opinion and most likely, the opinion of others that the quality of said music has degraded to the point that it can be attributed to the decrease of record sales for the past 3 or so years.
Suits should stick to business, musicians will stick to music and as such, should be the music makers. If the music industry isn't very obviously a monopoly to you or anyone else at this point, then you haven't spent enough time realizing the impact they've had.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
Boeing hires people to design, prototype and build planes. People do not design planes and go to Boeing to have them produced.
The music industry is starting to create bands (Britney, backstreet boys, Milli Vanilli...) with music made by unattractive artists and lip-synched by pretty artists, but they do not create music.
The music industry looks for people who are already producing music. They take what they find, pretty it up a little, package it and flog it to the masses.
Marketing has more value than content creation in America. Just ask the near-bankrupt contract company that manufactures hardware that M$ stamps a brand on. The brand stamping is a major cash cow for M$, the production company is in the red.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
"According to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks album sales, 681 million were sold in 2002, down from 785 million in 2000."
Well gee, it's not exactly like everyone else had a record year in 2002. I own a deli, and sales were down almost 30% last year over 2001. I'm likely going to have to sell the place or close it down within the next few months, but you don't see me whining to everyone in sight that things aren't going my way.
People can't "pirate" subs, gyros, or muffulettas. There is one thing and one thing only to blame for the fact that I'm almost out of business: the economy. People aren't spending the money to eat out every day, and companies are cutting back on their catered staff meetings/conferences/parties.
When nobody has any money, sales are going to decline! Get over it, Record Industry! The "piracy" argument is overplayed at best - just like everything else the RIAA pumps out - and at worst it's a red herring.
I also think the comparison of 2002 sales vs 2000 sales is a bit misleading. Things have changed a lot in this country since 2000.
I used to feel at least a small pang of guilt when listening to downloaded music - if I like it, I feel like I should give the musician something back somehow.
... and if I buy they will conclude that their strategies worked...
Nowadays, with the recording companies trying to force me into buying worse products at higher prices (now there's a way of competing you won't learn in school!) I'm getting so annoyed that I *really* don't want to buy anything. If I do, some of my money will go into things like crappy CD's and lawsuits, which I don't want to support.
It's becoming a political statement for me not to buy CD's or copy protected music. At least not at full price.
And that will of course make the record companies think there's even more DL'ing going on, with more efforts on their part to stop me
Strangely, it seems like we'll both loose. They won't get my money and I won't get the music that I want. Oh bummer. What's needed is a new business idea, where the middleman is either gone or doing something else.
Who the hell modded this down? Unless this law was repealed, a discussion of it here is extremely on-topic! I thought I was reasonably well-informed, but I hadn't heard of this law until I saw this post.
Given that RIAA members have been found guilty of price-fixing and are clearly continuing to price-gouge, the idea that you need only rip off $1000 worth of songs puts a lot of people in danger, even if they haven't done much of this.
My best recent example of this is the Beatles 1962-1966 double LP. I went to buy this at the store (an event that would've marked my first new RIAA purchase in months), but found it was priced at an insane $36. $36!!! For an album that is 30 years old and has already sold millions of copies. Well, I balked at that. Had it been $20 or less they would have had my money. But nevertheless, if I'm found with a copy of this album, I am going to be held to the inflated price, and not anything reasonable.