Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Downward Spiral of Music Retailing

Posted by michael on from the nine-inch-nails dept.

chundo writes "Business Week has an article about the financial problems plagueing specialty music retailers. Tower Records, Musicland, and Sam Goody are all "hemorrhaging money", despite efforts to move sales online. Some chains are trying to adapt - Virgin Megastore is testing an in-store service to download songs to portable players, and their Radio Free Virgin unit hopes to break into digital music retailing. Is the failure of conventional music sales reinforcement that the RIAA's business plan just doesn't work, or will it just provide them with more ammunition against the P2P crowd?"

7 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder... by Guppy06 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The downward spiral of music retailing"

    Is it directly proportional to the downward spiral of music quality? How about to the downward spiral of RIAA-member customer "relations?"

    1. Re:I wonder... by JebusIsLord · · Score: 4, Funny

      "The Downward Spiral" was an excellent album. WTF are you talking about??

      --
      Jeremy
  2. Re:How about they collect donations? by telstar · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Donationware will never pay anyone's rent."
    • Apparently you've never ridden the F train with the guy on the fake horse that plays the Spanish music.

    • He earned no less than $10 during the four short minutes we shared a train.

  3. Re:Who goes to the store to buy music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I just bought 6 CDs at a record store yesterday--because they were having a going out of business sale (30% off across the board).

  4. Re:It's the economy stupid! by nihilogos · · Score: 3, Funny

    CD sales increased when the economy was bad in the early nineties. In fact, the economy was worse then than it is now. How do you explain that?

    Nirvana.

    --
    :wq
  5. Why would I pay for this crap? by Geekbot · · Score: 4, Funny

    I spent 20 years of my life buying mostly overhyped crap by these companies. Almost every album I bought was a ripoff with just a couple songs of any quality on them. For 2 or 3 years I didn't buy any music because it was so awful, expensive, etc. Then I found p2p. I can listen to what I want at no expense to me. If I find a group I like that is independant I can buy the CD for a nice quality copy that supports the artists that have earned it.

    At $15 to $20 per CD that works out to about 3 hours to 4 hours of work for someone working minimum wage. Who would work 4 hours so they can support Britney Spears' music career? The sooner her career's over the sooner we get to see her in Playboy.

    The RIAA/music retailing business in its current form is dead. It's not dead because of P2P being good. It's dead because it has been a piece of crap years but they locked out competition. P2P is the only competition out there for RIAA. Anything hurting their sales helps respectable companies and artists enter the market.

  6. you must be new here... by MoreDruid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Even if you don't want to read the article, at least the story submission. Or at least the first sentence of it.
    obligatory /. quote: "You must be new here"

    --
    The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.