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.'"

Comments

Any bets..

[josh crawley]

Any bets that this will be crippleware music with heavy DRM locks?

And then it will fail? I surely could do without this crap.

here we go again...

[natron 2.0]

Let me be thhe first to say it:

"Downloading music on Kazaa causes me to go buy CDs, I just like to preview the songs first"

come on you know you all were thinking it...

Re:here we go again...

[Oculus Habent]

Indeed, plenty of good songs are on bad CDs. It would be nice if you could make compilation CDs with the individual tracks you want - preferably made in a local kiosk. That way they could cost less, and they would have just what you want. Ideally, you could also call the local music store, buy one over the phone and drop in to pick it up.

Downloading songs allows me to be sure about buying a CD before I do - I've wasted money on plenty of "One Hit" CDs that I never listen to.

Buying online, if available per song with a *slight* discount for a complete album, could prompt me to buy music more. The convenience it a big factor.

And even if it's set up in a DRM environment, if the sound is high-fidelity (better be if it's locked out - should be anyway) I can encode an MP3 on a second computer (maybe even the same one) and use it elsewhere.

Of course, they have to keep in mind that it's very easy to make the switch back to file-sharing if things go badly.

Re:here we go again...

[germinatoras]

There are lots of people who really do that, though. For me, it's a little of both, but either way the RIAA is ultimately better off for it.

It would take several hands to count the number of artists that I've discovered (and purchased music from) due to finding the MP3s on my friends/family's computers.

Examples:

• Liquid Tension Experiment
• Goldfinger
• Tracy Bonham
• Hole (Courtney Love)
• Chris Ledux (yes, it's country - forgive me)
• Stabbing Westward
• MxPx
• Reliant K
• The Get Up Kids
• Blinker the Star

...and many others. As far as "previewing" music via illegal MP3 downloads, consider that there are people who really do work that way. I want to be legit, but P2P is the best preview service available.

Re:here we go again...

[Khazunga]

It would take several hands to count the number of artists that I've discovered (and purchased music from) due to finding the MP3s on my friends/family's computers.

And here lies the danger of P2P to record companies. They are the middle-men. They are the ones who control *who* is the next big-hit, who gets airtime, who goes on display. If people stop needing them to filter good bands out of all the garage teens playing today, their business will be no more (since artists won't see a benefit in signing for a label).

Of course

[koh]

Of course, who else would provide us with all this kewl DRM content ?

Then again, they may just want to "give it a shot" before submitting to DRM technologies... I bet the switch is not going to be cheap for them, either.

So if the question is, if those labels happen to make a good buck selling inline, will they bury DRM ?

Sad?

[gpinzone]

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.'

Why is that sad? It's probably true to a degree. The good news is that these companies are trying to embrace a new distribution model. What's sad is that they may not be successful when a 100% free alternative exists with as much consumer perceived add-value to the product.

Re:Sad?

[Mr Guy]

You must be new here.

The submitter just assumed you've kept up with the recent revelations that sales PER ALBUM increased. The losses are a direct result of the companies releasing less albums.

Re:Sad?

[anon*127.0.0.1]

Thanks for the link. It was interesting reading, especially the quote from the RIAA "In addition, the label incurs additional costs in finding and signing new artists"

Bad grammar aside, I never realized that new artists were such a shy, retiring lot, or that locating and signing them was such a difficult activity. I was under the mistaken impression that most of them would do anything for a bit of publicity, and would sell their own mother for a record deal. Silly me.

Already paid for Pressplay

[laigle]

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.

No Reg Required

[Motherfucking Shit]

6 Retailers Plan Venture to Sell Music on the Web
By LAURA M. HOLSON

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 26 -- Six of the largest music retailers plan to announce on Monday that they are joining forces to sell music that can be downloaded from the Web.

The retailing group, called Echo, consists of Best Buy, the nation's No. 1 electronics retailer; Tower Records; the Virgin Entertainment Group; Wherehouse Entertainment; Hastings Entertainment; and Trans World Entertainment, which operates the FYE store chain. The six retail companies will each own an equity stake in Echo that together will make them majority owners.

The new effort is motivated in part by the two-year decline in compact disc sales that has forced recording companies to cut costs and lay off employees and has damaged music retailers, too. Wherehouse Entertainment, for one, announced last week that it was filing for bankruptcy protection from its creditors, in part because of lackluster CD sales. And earlier this month, Best Buy announced that it would close 107 stores.

Like the recording companies, music retailers are searching for new sources of revenue. Vinyl albums and cassette tapes have nearly disappeared in recent years, leaving retailers with the CD as their main option for selling music. But a proliferation of free music-swapping services on the Internet has led to a decline in CD sales. According to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks album sales, 681 million were sold in 2002, down from 785 million in 2000.

"Obviously, there has been a lot of talk in the last three years and there have been a lot of failures," said Dan Hart, the chief executive of Echo, referring to earlier attempts by legitimate Web sites to sell music online. "But we see this as an inflection point. Retailers are saying, `This is the time to do it.' "

Mr. Hart said that Echo hoped to get licenses from the recording companies to distribute their music through the retail chains' own Web sites. In November, the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi Universal, began to distribute 43,000 of its songs through major retail and music Web sites, like Best Buy and Circuit City, for 99 cents a song or $9.99 an album. That total has since grown to 60,000.

Liquid Audio, a company that has developed technology meant to allow the secure sale of music online, has rights to 350,000 songs for downloading, but also has deep financial problems. The company agreed last week to sell some of its assets to the music distributor Anderson Merchandisers for $3.2 million as part of its liquidation.

Anderson, which is the music distributor for Wal-Mart Stores, also wants to be a distributor of downloadable music in retail outlets. That could eventually put Anderson in competition with Echo, but Mr. Hart said Echo was not opposed to working with Anderson.

In fact, Mr. Hart said he expected the pressures facing all parts of the music businesses -- including distributors, retailers and recording companies -- to motivate them all to work together to find a viable alternative to piracy. "People are saying, `Let's make it work on a real level,' " he said.

Such cooperation in online music ventures would have been unthinkable two years ago as retailers and music companies were at odds about how to best approach online music sales. More than a years ago, music labels embarked on their own online efforts, but so far they have received less than rave reviews.

Now, though, the music companies and the retailers need each other more than ever. Recording companies make the music, but it is retailers who know their customers. "Retail has always been about more than simply selling CD's," said Jerry Comstock, the chief executive of Wherehouse Entertainment. "We are in the customer relationship business."

Under Echo's plan, once the group received the necessary licenses, the partners would market their services together and separately. Efforts might include promotions like "Buy a compact disc, get a free download." The retailers could also enable customers to download music in stores using portable devices, like the Apple iPod. "No one has really marketed these services," Mr. Hart of Echo said.

But some analysts suggest that no matter how much creative and marketing muscle is behind such efforts, they will not catch on unless the music is priced right. The average cost of a compact disc, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the lobbying group which represents recording companies, is $14.21. Many critics say that is expensive when compared with other media, like DVD's, which offer loads of extra features and programming.

"Any opportunity retailers have to find additional revenue in a time of falling sales is a positive," said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. "Yet we continue to think that pricing has to come down to get pirates off of the free sites and onto legitimate ones."

This isn't a good analogy

[kahei]

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.

Re:This isn't a good analogy

[halftrack]

"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."

But then no music would reach the consumer. How do you figure that "... marketing/distribution/hyping ..." isn't essential for music to be sold but for a airplane to be sold. You could put all those Boeing engineers, with all the parts and the managers, and get a plane. But which customers know it's there and for sale if not for Boeing's "... marketing/distribution/hyping ..."?

"At one point, perhaps the record corps were necessary for distribution, ... So you get my point, but do you think that all the record corps do is print CD's, nothing else? It might not be very hard - given todays technology - to distribute music, but face the fact; PR and promotion - which one of the record corp's main field of interest - is important to get out the popular music (although much is crap.) In addition record corporations send artists on tours (you don't get real "live" performance no matter how sofisticated technology is,) make sure they're properly supported. Most important is that to distribute massive amounts of music you need a massive amount of servers, sysadmins, and a huge pipe to the net. This isn't cheap and someone needs to do the job.

Granted, the current state of the music industry is to much money and conservatism. Their biggest flaw is the unability to embrace new technology in a way that would benefit them and the artists. It seems they're to focused on preserving the current market instead of creating new ones. By doing so they hurt consumers. They don't realise that DRM is technologically impossible and that the DMCA is consumer unfriendly.

To say the recording industry is bloat however only shows that you have a view that's just as narrow as theirs.

Re:This isn't a good analogy

[sporty]

"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."

But then no music would reach the consumer. How do you figure that "... marketing/distribution/hyping ..." isn't essential for music to be sold but for a airplane to be sold. You could put all those Boeing engineers, with all the parts and the managers, and get a plane. But which customers know it's there and for sale if not for Boeing's "... marketing/distribution/hyping ..."?

Ah, but think of how much music in the 60's and 70's moved around due to word of mouth. A time when artists did more in concerts. A time where bootlegging wasn't such a crime.

There's another thing. Now is a time of pretty girls and nice looking guys getting contracts 'cause they can dance a little, sing a little and be technologically enhanced to look like a super star. Think anyone particularly thought Led Zepplin could dance the same cookie cutter coriographed way, much less professionally? I highly doubt it.

Get a bunch of programmers in a room, would you have bsd and linux? :)

Re:This isn't a good analogy

[liquidsin]

I played in a band. We booked all of our own shows at bars and small venues, did all of our own setup / breakdown / sound, made all of our flyers to stick up at bars so people knew we were playing. We kept the money we made. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough that even though we weren't working "day jobs" we could still pay our rent and other bills. We made our own music with no help from a record company. We made promo tapes to give to the owners of venues who wanted to hear us before they signed us to play a show. So how again does the record company make the music?

Re:This isn't a good analogy

[Stonehand]

Perhaps a fellow named Ed Sullivan also had something to do with it, no? Publicity matters.

I kind of like it

[Mdog]

Obviously, I don't agree with the motivations of the music companies. But I DO think it's cool that we have this ongonig *technical* struggle...the DRM arms race.

Again, I hate the music companies, but seeing the clevarness go back and forth is great to watch. I hope I can get in on it personally some day.

Re:I'll bite

[twofidyKidd]

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.

Re:I'll bite

[anon*127.0.0.1]

That depends... is "making" the music the creative process of arranging notes and lyrics, or the physical process of manufacturing the CD? If it's the former, then it's the artists that make the music. If it's the latter.. then hell, I've got a CD burner. *I* make the music.

Re:I'll bite

[junkgoof]

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.

Sales are down...

[Sh0t]

...Because on one hand, the amount of actually release went DOWN. So yes, if you put out less stuff, chances are you will sell less. It's been on /. with the RIAA numbers fuding articles of prior months after the hacking attempts. If p2p programs are causing less sales, it's probably not from the overt "They are stealing music" reasons. As somebody noted above, more than likely, people aren't falling into the one song album trap anymore and are becoming better shoppers for their dollar. People go and try out a few songs of an upcoming album, realize it's SHIT and then don't buy it. Caveat Emptor taking to the digital age. I'm sure many of us download a few albums, find one that really speaks to you and rush out to buy it. I've done it many times and I'm sure many, many people have done the same thing. I'm betting for some artists, the p2p trading has generated them more buzz than if they had to have a record company pay to promote them. My advice to the RIAA would be to maybe invest in finding better musicians and making cd production and distribution cheaper than it is now so cds can be 9.99 instead of 18.99, while still giving the artist his same meager cut :[. Raunchy

Sad to say?

[fobbman]

"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.'"

Sure it's sad, but as the business sections of the main media rags are little more than Corporate PR publications, is it at all surprising? The company says it, and then the newspaper quit attributing it to the source, thereby trying to pass it off as Fact. As most of the readers don't question what they read, it quickly becomes public opinion.

Sigh...

[tmark]

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.'"

The silly demonizing of the record companies is really getting counter productive. In a strict sense, of course, the recording companies don't "make" the music (of course the artists do, but under contract), just like software companies don't "make" the software (their programmers do, under contract), and just like home-building companies don't "make" the homes (the construction workers do also under employment contract).

But it is a useful shorthand to say all of the above. Without the record companies the vast majority of songs that get traded so happily on P2P networks would never have made it to rippable CDs in the first place (as an aside, I always found the usage of the term "rip" in this context to be somewhat revealing).

And the poster's implied distinction between the record companies and the people who "made" the music suggests that the artists are uniformly against the record companies and their efforts in this area. P2P advocates are being flat-out chauvinistic if they think that all artists - or maybe even a majority - disagree with the RIAA's stands. It irks me when I see a few artists' views trotted out with the implicit assumption that their views are representative...what's the real big picture ?

To be sure, there is a vocal group, but I wonder whether they're getting disproportionate press precisely because they're arguing something more controversial - you never hear about Metallica complaining about P2P anymore, because it's just boring and it seems obvious.

Has anyone conducted polls of major artists to see where they stand and how they feel about the RIAA ? I'm not talking about disenfranchised had-their-day-in-the-sun-more-than-a-decade-ago artists (*cough*Janis Ian*cough*) and I'm not talking about little independent artists who probably secretly would *love* to get a big record deal if they could - what about a survey of artists in the Billboard 100, or artists with the best selling CDs in the last 10 years, or the top 100 artists traded on Kazaa/Gnutella...or some other reasonably objective criteria that defines a sample of artists under contract to record companies represented by theRIAA ?

What is needed here is hard, representative statistics, not agenda-laden anecdotes that fit whatever story happens to be convenient with the story-teller's philosophy.

Cry me a river

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Cry me a river

[herrd0kt0r]

"People can't "pirate" subs, gyros, or muffulettas."

the gauntlet is thrown.
any takers?

Re:Cry me a river

[WIAKywbfatw]

People can't "pirate" subs, gyros, or muffulettas.

Well, if they can pirate ships surely they can pirate subs too?

Sherman Act

[cenonce]

Any bets, this won't get past the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

At the very least, I'm sure there will be consumers proteection issues for price-fixing out the wazoo for DRM challenge music files!

That will make me run out and buy! Unforunately, the media companies just don't get it. I will NOT spend 18 dollars on a CD, and neither will most (all!) of my mid-20 to mid 30s friends. So there aren't not "losing" music sales to music file sharing. They just aren't getting any sales anymore because I am fed up of them feeding me schlock and expecting me to pay for it. As far as I'm concerned the ball is in their court to offer non-DRM challenge MP3 (Ogg, whatever!) files to me at a reasonable per song rate (reasonable to me seems to be a buck fifty to 2 bucks a song (average 12 songs over an 18 dollar CD)). Then frankly, I will pay for music.

Until then, I'm buying up as much cheap casettes as I can so I can "time-shift" my music to MP3 format -- That is Fair Use!

But will they have a clue?

[DrXym]

If a professional music site sold high quality mp3's for a fifty cents to a dollar a pop from a fast, dedicated site then people would flock to it. Better yet if it had band news, discussion forums, reviews, ratings, live streaming etc. then people would live on it.

Naturally you'd still have lamers on p2p, but then these people would never use a pay site anyway, even if meant wasting ten hours to find and download the same songs that the pay site sold for seven dollars.

CD Sales are down because they released fewer CDs

[BenSnyder]

There is a convincing piece by Damien Cave on Salon.com titled "File Sharing: Innocent Until Proven Guilty" which argues that there is no proven correlation between downloaded music and the decline in CD sales. He continues to argue in "File Sharing: Guilty As Charged?" that a good deal of the 'sky is falling' rhetoric created by the record companies and the RIAA is based on supposition and self-interest. In addition, the article "RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up To Piracy" analyzes the RIAA's own statistics and argues that they do not support the RIAA's conclusion that downloaded music is the cause for the decline in CD sales. In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25% decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3% and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1%. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.

Also, the record companies just settled a price fixing suit in which they admitted they were overcharging consumers. This point seems to be overlooked by the RIAA in its attempt to place all blame for the woes of the music business at the feet of mp3's. Is it possible that the decrease in CD sales is related to the conspiracy by the major record labels to inflate prices?

Re:I'll bite

[nicedream]

I don't know much about the roots of Led Zepplin and Eminem, but I am a huge Beatles fan. And I'll tell you this, record companies had a lot to do with us not getting the Beatles sooner.

They received countless rejections, including the one from Decca that famously said "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out". And once they did make it big, Capitol Records still felt they needed to rearrange their albums to make them more palatable to the American public.

The biggest reasons for The Beatles making it big was their pure, raw talent, plus their strong drive to be the toppermost of the poppermost because they believed they were the "best fucking group in the god-damned world". And Brian Epstein definitely had a lot to do with their breaking through to superstardom too.

Facts and Fiction.

[Mitreya]

Best Buy announced that it would close 107 stores

Any proof? I have not seen any closing stores yet, but I have seen an OPENING one (due in a month). If they close 107 stores and open 108, that's not quite the same as just closing 107 stores...

The average cost of a compact disc, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the lobbying group which represents recording companies, is $14.21.

What is the average cost of a DVD? An audio tape? judging by the prices, the audio tape costs much less on average, yet it's the same music...?

Re:The record companies DON'T make the music!

[barryfandango]

Not true - unfortunately recording companies do have a say in the music their artists create. They hire a producer to manage the recording of your album, the re-recording, re-writes etc until you have a product the company is happy with. Just one of the many things that sucks about the industry...

No need for reporting

[burgburgburg]

It's so much easier to just accept the industry line that the two year decline in CD sales is due to P2P services. No need to check to see if there is evidence to support this. It's common knowledge. It's accepted. "Facts" would just interfere with the flow of the story.

The 25% decline in industry output, the economy, the specifics of the offerings, the collusively illegal prices, the wide variety of other available choices for purchase, the ubiquity of music available free on MTV, these are all bothersome and distracting. And "reporting" can tire one out.

Downward spiral...

[mattis_f]

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.

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 ... and if I buy they will conclude that their strategies worked...

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.

It's the economy.

[Paul the Bold]

They quote two numbers for record sales, showing a decline in sales by 13% from 2000 to 2002, and claim that it is all because of illegal file sharing. Why do people believe this? There is a simpler explanation: it's the economy, stupid. People have less money to spend. I do not participate in file sharing, but I have also not bought a new CD in over a year because I don't have the damn cash! Perhaps some people buy fewer CDs because of file swapping, perhaps some people buy more, but nobody knows the general trend. There have been no unbiased studies.

The sad fact is that the New York Times parroted the alleged reason for sales loss without some kind of disclaimer, such as "Music companies claim that a proliferation of file-swapping...". They are a reputable news organization, they should know better than to parrot facts given by a trade organization. I heard this same thing on CBS news yesterday, but I wasn't surprised. It was typical of CBS quality journalism. However, this was most certainly sub-par for the Times.

Prepare for prosecution

[burgburgburg]

According to this editorial in news.com, the Justice Department, the RIAA, the MPAA and the BSA are all working together to start some prosecutions under the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act of 1997.

From the editorial: The NET Act works in two ways: In general, violations are punishable by one year in prison, if the total value of the files exceeds $1,000; or, if the value tops $2,500, not more than five years in prison. Also, if someone logs on to a file-trading network and shares even one MP3 file without permission in "expectation" that others will do the same, full criminal penalties kick in automatically.

Re:Prepare for prosecution

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

old music

[British]

Hey, how about this to sell CDs? START OFFERING BACK CATALOGS.

Most of the stuff I download I can't even get on CD in the first damn place. Had they re-released older Devo albums(not greatest hit compilations), I would buy it in an instant. If they released CDs of (insert obscure 80s synthpop band here), I'd buy it. Is it availble? No. Forget it then.

Probably it woudln't be commercially feasiable to release CD versions of old vinyl from bands that never got popular, but it would be cheaper than new music from new bands.

WRONG again

[zaren]

The article says "a proliferation of free music-swapping services on the Internet has led to a decline in CD sales.'"...

I haven't bought many cds lately, and it's not because of the Internet (since I don't use p2p). My decline in purchases is for two reasons:

1) CDs are too bloody expensive
2) Current music selections SUCK.

Get a better variety of music out there, and don't charge so fcsking much for a CD (weren't the prices supposed to come DOWN over the years?), and you'll get more customers. It really is that simple.

The Cdnow Experience.

[jetkust]

I remember purchasing music from cdnow thinking i was getting an mp3 file i could later burn to a cd, only to find out (after the fact) the music was in this liquid audio format where the "recommended" player was liquid audio player (which i believe was the only player). It also claimed the song was only playable from 1 computer and was crippled in such a way that I had to do an analog rip of the song from one of my computers to the other. My point is that if they are going to be successful they have to be MORE convenient that file sharing programs. And not just by having easily downloadable mp3s, but an easier interface, more reliability, and faster downloads, etc...

Re:I'll bite

[Anonymous Coward]

If and when the Major Labels go down, while you and the millions of others who are fans of the Corporate Product they call "music" are left with nothing, life will continue as usual for those of us involved in independent music.

This has been said again and again: MP3 downloads are a blessing to independent artists, and a curse to major label artists. It's a bell curve of success / downloads.

Maybe what will happen, if we're lucky, is the death of Corporate Music. An artist could only get so big without becoming unprofitable. It would do away with the artists (and managers, labels, etc) who have nothing on their minds but money. We'd be left with just the artists who truly love the music and the art. Isn't this what we had before the 80's? Beatles, Led Zep, etc? The perfect position on the bell curve?

Also can I say that your position that "most unsigned bands are crap" is truly disheartening. You'd think that Slashdot readers would understand independent music, what with all the Anti-Microsoft, Pro-Geek philosophy. The principle is totally the same: Bloated, useless, soul-less, well-marketed, poorly-produced crap vs. the true, powerful, under-budgeted, heartfelt independent. I'm excited to think that with just a little effort, you can make the discovery yourself.

How the record companies can come back

[yerricde]

The major American motion picture studios are doing better financially than the major American record labels partly because a movie often pays for its production at the box office alone, whereas a record has no box office at all, except for motion picture soundtracks.

Solution: Make music videos for all songs on an album. Interweave them with a cheap plot, and turn them into a movie. (I'm thinking like Moonwalker but hopefully better written.) Release the movie theatrically on the Friday before the album comes out. Then, after a few weeks in the box office, put the videos into MTV's heavy rotation.

This should be easy enough for Sony, Warner, and Universal, who own both a record label and a movie studio. It may not work for Bertelsmann and EMI, who don't have major U.S. movie holdings.

If I am talking out of my rear end, please explain to me in polite language why this wouldn't work.

Re:YOU COCK-SUCKING MUMSHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Your eloquently stated opinions intrigue me. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.

I havent bought a CD in about 5 years

[stratjakt]

And I havent downloaded any mp3s either.

And I probably never will. All the artists I listen to are dead or in drug-induced comas or something.

It became clear to me long before the whole P2P-vs-DRM issues that the music industry has nothing left to offer me. I already own all the music I'll ever want to listen to.

Likewise, I've never purchased a movie, and probably never will. I'm just not the type to watch a movie again after I've seen it, so I dont see the point in owning one.

That said, I don't give a rats ass what happens to the entertainment industry or P2P.

They can lock it all up with DRM so noone can hear it, they can make it all public domain and print the sheet music on toilet paper. They can charge $300 per minute of audio, or give it away for free. They can mandate that Yoko Ono is to do backup vocals for every song until the end of time just so people wont want to hear it.

They can go bankrupt, go to jail, go to hell.

I just dont give a shit.

And I'd wager that every day another handful of people like me come to the exact same realization. RIAA members sell images. Few people truly love music enough to pay to listen to it.

Three steps from concept to completion

[yerricde]

is "making" the music the creative process of arranging notes and lyrics, or the physical process of manufacturing the CD?

Copyright law recognizes three steps in the process of making a record:

1. Making the music. A songwriter writes a song and (I'm assuming) buys liability insurance that the song is original and not accidentally plagiarized.
2. Making the recording. This is the job of the performers, producer, and sound engineer and encompasses recording, mixing, and mastering. This stage makes the difference between a demo and a commercial recording. Result: up to 74 minutes of great-sounding wav files.
3. Making the phonorecords. ("Phonorecord", or "phonogram" in some countries, is the copyright law term for a fixed reproduction of a recording; it does not refer to vinyl.) Any large-scale CD replicator will do this.

So they have created a product. But somebody still needs to create a demand for the product, and promotion is traditionally the job of a label.

Vote with Your Feet (and your money) - Go Indy!

[Lodragandraoidh]

The best thing bands can do today is to put up a website with free downloads of all their songs. Beside each song have a recommended donation price ($1 to $3 per track) - with a paypal link so folks who appreciate your work can pay.

Then, get out there and tour - pay your dues every weekend to promote your music and your website. You're not here to get rich quick - you are here because you love the music.

~~~

The best thing music lovers can do is start donating to these pioneering indy bands - and stop buying CDs - unless it is absolutely worth it (and I don't consider much new music produced in the past 5 years worth it - with a few exceptions).

a gross, yet accurate oversimplifacation

[kraksmoka]

The average cost of a compact disc, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the lobbying group which represents recording companies, is $14.21. Many critics say that is expensive when compared with other media, like DVD's, which offer loads of extra features and programming.

To be more blunt. A CD comes with 74 minutes of audio only content, with possibly a little extra photographic or artwork on the case. For the same amount, you can buy a DVD with 90-120 minutes of AV content, plus typically anywhere from 5-20 minutes of extra, behind the scenes, get to know the creative artist footage, interviews, promos, etc.

Bottom LINE. The labels are not providing the same amount of Bang For the Buck value in their products as the studios.

they won't get publishing rights

[mo]

Nobody talks about this, so I just thought that I'd point out the rats nest that is publishing rights. For an online service to be legal, one needs both copyrights and publishing rights. Copyright for most works is held by the members of the RIAA. The similar organization for publishing rights is called Harry Fox Agency. However, Harry Fox has thousands of members and they are all very small. If you want to make a legal online service, you have to get written authorization from these Harry Fox members. However, the lack of coordination and technology at Harry Fox makes this almost impossible. It is extremely diffucult to get this permission because they don't know who owns the publishing rights, or are unable to contact the owners for many songs.

This is why even services like pressplay and musicnet do not have a very good selection. For background, see this article where Universal lost a lawsuit when it was sued by the publishers when they attempted to put music that they owned the copyright for online.

Formula for success: lower prices

[OneInEveryCrowd]

If individual songs were priced around a nickel (5 cents US) and album prices were a dollar or less online music sales would be a success and the companies involved might actually make more and not less money.

There is a precedent for this type of scenario. Remember Compuserve in the late 80s and early 90s ? It had several hundred thousand members and charged $6 and $12 per hour for access. Remember what happened when Netcom introduced the $20 per month flat rate plan ?

I realize that given the greed of the current music "industry" leaders this won't happen soon, but besides that does anybody think it *wouldn't* work and solve most of the "piracy" problems if it was given a chance ? Compuserve always said their prices were a bargain and no one could do it for less also.

My Letter to the Editors of the NYTimes

[BrianWCarver]

In today's NY Times article "6 Retailers Plan Venture to Sell Music on the Web" Laura M. Holson writes, "a proliferation of free music-swapping services on the Internet has led to a decline in CD sales."

Ms. Holmes has either succumbed to the incessant propaganda of the big music labels or has an insight into global economic causal relations that would make even Chairman Greenspan envious.

During the same time period that peer-to-peer file-sharing networks have been active, several other factors have existed that seem as likely or more likely to explain the recent decline in CD sales.

1. The music industry has consolidated to such an extent that many radio stations sound exactly alike, reducing consumer choice and interest.

2. The music industry focuses almost all its promotional efforts on a few super-artists who have a chance to sell millions of records (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Boy Bands, etc.) and so non-mainstream or non-teen-pop artists that would interest people over age 25 (with purchasing power) do not get the exposure necessary to attract new fans.

3. Consumers have more products competing for their limited dollars than ever before. DVDs, wireless phones, digital cable, broadband internet, PDAs and a host of other things soak up time and money that used to be spent listening to music and buying CDs.

4. The music labels over-charge for their products (and were even recently convicted of illegal price-fixing and they have not offered a reasonably priced alternative to file-sharing networks that does not cripple the downloads in some way (limited playbacks, unable to burn to CD, expires after a set time, etc.) It's not surprising then that when consumers don't get what they want, they don't shell out their hard-earned cash.

5. There is an overall slowdown in the economy, if no one has noticed.

In response, consider instead that:

1. Jupiter Communications did a study in 2000 at the height of Napster usage that showed Napster users bought MORE not FEWER CDs.

2. Actual artists claim that file-sharing increases their sales.

I would have hoped that a reporter for The New York Times would be more careful about so casually asigning a single cause to such a complex effect.

[snip personal info]

If published, please print name and city/state only.

Yeah, but the reason CD sales have slipped...

[sterno]

Kazaa is out there, and sure, a lot of people aren't buying some CD's because they use Kazaa to either:

a) discover that the CD's suck
b) get the one song that's actually good and save the money they would have spent

Kazaa isn't what's cutting into CD sales though. If you look at the stats, the amount of new music being produced by the big record labels is down. Thus, less people are feeling compelled to buy new CD's. Furthermore, any market that existed for people upgrading from tapes, etc, has been thoroughly exploited by now.

Also, the record industry is undergoing a significant fragmentation because the mass marketing of radio is driving people to find more obscure alternatives amongst local bands and on the Internet. Since the record labels offer no significant alternative on the Internet, they lose a lot of their power to control the market. Instead of having to listen to the 40 most popular songs get played to death I can go find whatever I want and play it as much or little as I want.

Basically when you get down to it, these record companies are aging dinosaurs who have a business models engineered for an environment that has ceased to exist. Evolve or die.

At The Trial...

[davydd]

Lawyer for the prosecution: We realize, your honour, that the defendent's illegal file sharing totalled only $1,206.59, but we intend to prove that this is, in fact, equivalent to $2,892.61 in price-fixed-- ahem, value-added RIAA products, and therefore request the greater sentence....