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The Downward Spiral of Music Retailing
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?"
You either download the few songs you like, or you order it from an online store where it doesn't cost so much.
Both, unfortunately.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
"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?" Yes.
The real problem is that nobody in the industry is trying to adapt to all the changes that have come about in the past few years. The RIAA has spent all its effort trying to stop P2P sites rather than finding an alternative to lure consumers back to buying.
And while all this was going on, the retailers were just sitting on their butts not doing anything. What the CD retailers should have done was band together and get on the RIAA's back about coming up with a better product that would bring back consumers to CD purchasing.
The retailers will always have the hardcore music listeners who will continue to buy CDs no matter what. They are the people keeping those businesses around at least for a little while longer. Unfortunately, the average CD buyer has been swayed by P2P sites, being satisfied with the quality of the files they get from them.
So, what the retailers (and RIAA) should be doing is developing new incentives for people to go back to CDs (or another media). Why not add cool features (like they've been experimenting with) such as bonus content, exclusive concert ticket buying rights, etc.? Or, they should really push the DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD formats (preferably picking one as the standard), which offer far superior sound to MP3s.
Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps the procrastination has killed the CD industry. I hope not, personally, because I highly prefer a physical product to MP3s.
...they ought to refresh retail.
I feel that retail audio has stagnated with the CD, perhaps even regressed. Commercial CDs offer very little (in terms of audio) over P2P, and discs now are so heavily compressed sometimes a P2P mp3 from a leaked source might have better dynamic range.
Retailers should move toward pushing a new mainstream standard, say SACD.
Why? They want to know why they can't sell music? Here are some lyrics from some song...
Tell me, tell me, baby
How come you don't wanna love me
Don't you know that I can't breathe without you
Tell me, tell me, just how
What am I supposed to do right now
Why can't you love me?
Why-y, tell me, my baby
Do you think that would appeal to me, glasses wearing, Linux using, me? Maybe they should try songs marketed towards the demographic with some discretionary income.
Silly RIAAbit. According to a recent NPR piece, several folk and indie labels are doing just fine, thanks; one label just had its best year ever. Seems they distribute music people actually want to - gasp - Buy...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
No, that's just bull, the fact is, I and many, many others just don't have the money to spend on music...plain and simple. It's just not a high enough priority.
The US economy has crashed and record sales are down, doh!
Put people back to work and record sales will go up, doh!
More then likely it will give them more ammo against the P2P crowd. The RIAA and the companies it represents are trying hold onto a buisness practice that doesn't work with the changing market. The real estate market is going through a similar problem. Instead of fixing the way THEY do things, they expect everyone to buckle and do things the way they've been doing them for so long. The RIAA knows they aren't going to get too much money out of the people they're suing, it's mainly a scare tatic. We sue a few people and guess what, people might not want to do it just because they don't want the hassle. So even if sales keep dropping they'll never admit it's them. And when/if sales do return to normal, they'll just simply praise their own efforts. Either way, the people on the technology side lose.
The answer, obviously, is that there isn't money to be made in P2P, at least not really. Kazaa can maybe make more money off of advertising than they spend on hosting, but thats because the overwhelming majority of the content is provided by users for free.
Of course, its not really free. The record companies pay to record, produce, and market it. If they had to cover the costs of actually producing content on ad revenue from a P2P service, they would go bust, like every other dot-com that thought they could make it big off of banner ads while giving their product away for free. They quite reasonably don't want to do that, because they have a business model now that, provided their consumers respect existing copyright laws, is quite a bit more profitable.
Is it just me, or is sales for EVERYBODY seem to be a little bit slumped? From what I learned in a basic economics class, is that the economy can go up and down. You would think that since we've got the worst economy in 20 or so years, maybe people are holding off on buying CDs to do things like, oh I don't know.. PAY THE BILLS?
Perhaps sales for them will start going back up when jobs quit getting exported overseas, when people start buying things as locally as possible, and corporations stop paying people dick for wages. I think if this were to happen, people here would have more money, and they could buy more CDs.
There is no good new music out there. Period. It's all a rip-off of something else, which sucked.
CD's are over priced. I wanted to buy a older CD (Metalica's, Ride the Lighting) and it was $14. Come on, that album came out 20 years ago, why so much?
Amazon.com and other like online sellers are killing these companies. Why? I can sit at home and order new, used and hard to find CD's, DVD, books and more. Why drag my ass out to Tower Records (Which always plays the worse music on the store's stereo system) and pay too much for music and DVD's.
The music biz business model is not working in todays market, so they'll blame pirates. Make a good product and sell it at a fair price.
Linux O Muerte!
It's the specialty retailers who are feeling the pinch. Their plight in actuality has little to do with P2P apps, but does have to do with illegal activity by the RIAA.
Specifically, they're suffering because the RIAA started obeying the law.
Allow me to elaborate.
With the rise of big box retailers (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc.), the RIAA began to fear about ten years ago that the big-boxes would start selling only hit music at huge discounts (possibly at or about wholesale cost) as a means of generating foot traffic. This would threaten stores that basically just sell music, but have a larger selection, especially of catalog records (which are far more profitable for the RIAA, since there's no promotion needed).
So the RIAA instituted a practice whereby they would agree to pay for advertising by retailers in newspapers and store circulars and such, but only on the condition that the prices advertised were above RIAA-set minimums. This is quite obviously price-fixing and is illegal. About three years ago, the RIAA agreed to settle the price fixing charges and refrain from the practice.
Now you have Best Buy and Wal-Mart who sell only the CDs that are currently hot, but sell them for pennies above cost. Essentially, when you buy a CD from one of these big-boxes, you're paying the wholesale cost of the CD, the shipping, and your share of the store's utility bills and the salary of the checkout girl. The store costs are fixed, regardless of how many transactions the store handles, so by spreading it out over more transactions they make even more money off the sale of TVs, stereos, food, clothing, or whatever the store's main specialties are. Against competition that's willing to make no profit whatsoever on your product, the specialty stores have huge problems.
Successful by whose standards? I doubt a P2P sharing system would generate the huge amount of $ that controlling the whole distribution channel generates at present for RIAA members. As well, most P2P networks are circumventing the $ part that the RIAA covets so much quite effectively. (The morality of this is left as an excercise for the reader.)
This is what the whole issue is about - not just $, but cultural control. A P2P network is not nearly as easily tamed as distributing CDs, since the clients are not controlled directly by the companies. No control of distribution = no control at all = no more created cultural icons (like Brittney Spears) = no way to generate guranteed revenue = no value in the stock.
In summary: In your dreams, bud.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Imagine that - go to any store, download an album onto the iPod in a matter of seconds (via the fast Firewire or USB2 ports). This way anyone with an iPod, no matter what OS or platform, can get music onto their iPods!
OF course the RIAA will use this to score points. That's what good lobbies do. But, a number of other things are going on that preclude attributing the bad times at speciality shops solely to p2p downloads.
First, the population is getting older. Buying music is, for most people, an activity that decreases as they get older.
Second, in addition to downloading, music is offered for sale in many venues that weren't available a decade ago. As the article notes, why make a special trip to a speciality shop when you can buy it from Amazon, at Walmart, or on your next stop at the bookstore.
Third, I'm skeptical about the 40 million Americans download music claim, or the common assertion that filesharing prompts purchases that wouldn't happen otherwise. But, if/when it does, it seems likely that the purchaser will be inclined to order it online using the same computer used for the download, rather than going tothe trouble of traveling to any store -- big box or speciality shop -- to make the purchase.
Fourth, this is very speculative, but the music industry has, for a number of years, lacked the one or two overwhelmingly popular acts that can spike sales across the industry. (Think Beatles in the 1960's.) People who would not otherwise ever buy music do buy the music of these acts.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
You've just named a grand total of two projects that have been able to stay afloat because of donations from the public; and only because these are extremely high profile projects. I'm not even sure Blender counts, because the original company that created Blender just sold the source code, they didn't continue to develop it.
Go ahead and ask the average SourceForge developer if they're able to quit their day jobs and continue their projects based upon PayPal donations. I dare you. I'll tell you right now, the positive response rate will be in the neighborhood of less than one percent. Less than one percent of open source developers are able to write open source for a living.
Similarly, if you switch the music business over to a harebrained donationware scheme, you will absolutely kill the independent artist, the person who languishes in his/her studio day in and day out just so they can sell a couple thousand copies of an album for $10 a pop.
That's the great thing about capitalism: companies charge what the public will bear. You may not be willing to pay $20 for an album, and that's perfectly fine-- that's your perogative. However, you may be willing to pay $.99 for the one good song off an album, in which case I would refer you to the iTunes Music Store.
But under no circumstances should the entire industry go to a "take it all, and maybe you'll throw us a dollar" model. It will kill the independent musician.
Isn't Wal-Mart one of (or *the*) largest retail seller of CDs at the moment? I'm sure that's not helping. Of course, I won't buy anything there either, not if I can help it.
I prefer used CDs, anyway. Cheaper, same discs. Unfortunately, the one chain store that stocks 'em - Wherehouse - seems to be bleeding out into oblivion as well. They've closed most of them in my area, and I saw a bunch closing down in L.A. recently as well...
Music retailers are having trouble selling music because the music being offered falls somewhere between boring and terrible. Despite claims about advertising being able to brainwash people, no quanity of clever marketing can make people buy something they don't want or enjoy.
Interesting music is not being promoted, so it's hard to find. I keep an eye on artists I like (Rollins Band) but finding new stuff is rare these days. I wish I knew a reliable source for new, good music.
The problem with these stores is that they are all trying to sell a commidity item. There is no difference in that CD whether you are purchasing it from Amazon, Goodies, or Tower Records, somehow do these stores expect that just because they have the product that they automatically will have people begging them to sell them that CD? It is a commidity, someone can get it anywhere.
If they want to sell something, they have to sell a service, give people a reason to go their store and buy a CD there, listen before you buy, or a nice place to relax while chilling with their music. Just throwing the thing up on a stand with a big sign saying *$16.95* is just not good enough anymore.
You have two consoles before you. On the left, the blue console. It has a full catalog of DRM-restricted songs made by many major record labels. You are not allowed to burn those songs, listen to the in your car or portably, and each downloaded song costs one U.S. dollar. If your hard drive crashes and takes your licenses with it, you've lost rights to all the songs you once had, and you must buy them again. Downloads are quick and easy.
One the right, the red console: a vibrant P2P network teeming with shares. It has perhaps 50% of the musical selection blue, but with the added benefit of hundreds of terabytes worth of movies, software, images, and, well, above all, porn. All content is free, based on open standards, and unrestricted. Downloads are quick for popular media, but can take days or even weeks for hard-to-find items.
Which would you choose?
C'mon, be honest. That the latter exists right now and the former isn't even close to is beside the point. Human nature being what it is, blue has almost no chance of ever succeding while red is right there by its side.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
This is fine by me, if I want to look at racks and racks of CDs I've never heard of, I'll go to my local used CD store instead of some place with a ridiculous stupid name like "Sam Goody".
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why do you listen to artists that only come up with a few songs that you like? Seems to me like you haven't found what you like if that's the case.
Also remember that buying downloads comes with DRM, and also leaves you without artwork or liner notes, or a physical object containing your product. Personally I'd rather go buy a cd single for a couple dollars if I only liked one song, get the packaging, and the disc, and make my own DRM free mp3s, or oggs, or whatever.
Plus you get a b-side song or two that way.
I usually download full albums, and then decide if I like them. If I do I look for used copies that are around $4-5 since that's what I'm willing to pay for a cd.
A new release is Metallica's St. Anger, downloaded it, hated it, not buying it. Nobody lost a dime in this other than me paying for the electricity to listen to it. Hey, electricity broke the DMCA! Time to shut down the power plants!
Type O Negative's Life Is Killing Me is another very new release, which I loved, (and I'm talking about the ALBUM, not a song here or there) and plan to buy it as soon as I can find it for a price I'm willing to pay. In the meantime they're going to get money from me when they come to town, because I'll be right up front at the show.
One has to kinda feel bad for the recording industry, poisoned by the P2P, we watch this dinosaur breath it's last few breaths. Sympathy aside; do we need record labels? What need or demand do they fulfill? They take artists, produce their albums, then distribute the album (radio/CDs.TV) - their revenue is generated from record sales of which 1-2 percent ends up going to the artist. Artists make money by touring and endorsements.
Recording equipment used to be extremely expensive - thus making bands dependent on record labels to front the money needed to make an album. This is not the case anymore. One can make a professional recording studio for under 30,000 dollars, and this number keeps shrinking every year. Bands can produce/fund their own albums. Technology has brought 'Recording' to the individual - eliminating the 'Industry'.
What about distribution? Well, it is evident the Internet is a pretty effective medium for distributing music. No longer are people limited to being exposed to new music solely by what they hear on the radio or see on tv; rather millions of people can be exposed to your music via the internet. Radio and TV were easy for the RIAA to control/influence - but the internet is to decentralized.
No more mass marketed music? Sounds like a good idea to me. No more boy bands, brittany spears, lincon park, etc. What does marketing have to do with art?
History will explain the recording industry as merely a phenomina fueled (and destroyed) by the development of digital technology. IMHO.
But we all cared about music, and we knew music very well. All the store sold was musical equipment, stereo equipment, and music - not pins and ribbons here. But my bud was in school and didn't really care too much about the store - it was a trap for him (the family business) and he was more concerned with getting his phd so he could get on with a career of his own.
Anyway there were probably tens of housands of music stores like that back then. Some were hard core, some were family businesses - but most all had one thing in common: the people running them at least KNEW something about the music they specialized in. A good many of them traded in used records as well.
But most of those places are gone now - they died even before the chains started feeling the pinch. With the chains in the back pocket of the majors, I think this change is actually a good thing. Because the one thing the indierecord stores CAN provide like no other is service. If the indies were to specialize in indie artists, in providing a local "hangout" and a place for people to gather and trade knowledge and music, they could once again become a dominant force in the industry.
Consider: why is it OK to hang out in a book store, sit and drink coffee and read all day, but record stores think this is so bad?
Even with the internet, people still like gathering and hanging out. Provide a place for them to feel comfortable and organize your service around that model, and there's no telling where the stores of the future could go. Think about people sitting around, drinking coffee and eating crullers, trading music on their ipods, exchanging knowledge - maybe even bringing in their old LPs to have them "ripped" to SHNs or APEs on the store's high quality LP playback system.
No matter how they spin it, I just never hear a downside when talking about the death of the (old) music industry. It's a great time to be alive... unless you're a slave of the RIAA.
I hate to associate casual file sharing with something like big time gangsters and flaunting criminal laws like the USA's old alcohol prohibition period. But I'm going to do just that. What an excellent example of a vocal minority flaunting its abuse of power, of passing laws eliminating citizens rights, creating laws to turn respectable law abiding citizens into criminals, and all the problems that errupted from it. Why do politicians feel they have the right to destroy the trust of the citizens they represent.
Oh, that's right, because some corporation donates millions of dollars to keep them in power. Who would care if it was just some corporation moaning about their terrible victimization at the hands of 15 year old kids? Not anyone if they didn't get our elected representatives to attack the citizens of America over things so petty. To protect a corporation's un-American rights to control distribution channels, what you see and hear, and the public domain they stole from the American people, our government has completely sold us out. Anyone who doesn't want their children labeled criminals and attacked by their government to protect unreasonable demands by corporations should be insulted and view those dishonest politicians as enemies of the people, and traitors to the USA. That's right Orin Hatch, as far as I'm concerned you sold out every American citizen to get your name in the paper, to get re-elected, to serve your party's interest over that of the American people and you did it for a bunch of multinational corporations. As far as I'm concerned you're a traitor to your country and should be put on the next boat out of here.
So they have themselves to blame because they can't compete with free pirated copies of their own products? The free market is not the same thing as the rule of the mob. There are numerous laws set up in order to insure the harmonious operation of free societies, some of which take away certain "rights" which in the abscence of the rule of law, many people enjoyed, such as the right to kill any person who is weaker than you are, kidnap them and make them your slave, or steal all of their possessions.
Some of those concern intellectual property, and make texts, music, and other creative works the property of their creator, and prohibit copying them without the permission of the creator. Naturally they also allow these rights to be transferred to other legal persons, if the creator deems doing so to be in their interest, as they could transfer any other form of property. A market in any commodities requires ownership of this form to exist: If items can be stolen and sold by the thief for below the cost which they can be produced, and such stolen goods are widely available, producing them becomes financially unviable. Moreover there is no incentive to make a product if it can be legally taken from you on terms other than those you set. The same rights must exist with regard to the production of creative works if any kind of market is to function, and if intellectual property laws aren't enforced, these rights, for a content producer, do not exist.
The only thing these stores specialize in is charging $18 for a CD.
postmodernsideshow.com
Industries like the RIAA and music distributors are using a model that doesn't work anymore. Technology has made them redundant. All you need to play recorded music is to have a copy of it. Obvious enough, but only recently has the media carrying the music itself become irrelevant.
Time ago, that copy came on vinyl, then tape, then CD. Fine and dandy, and the record companies supported this customer demand fairly well (not really music companies - the label and the artist was a different thing). They progressed through the different media and made a ton of money.
So here we are in 2003, and people still want music, but many of us don't need or even want a CD to hold our copy of the music - we just want the music!
That's what the record industry can't handle. Their distribution and business model needs to be overhauled. They need to reshape themselves into pure production and marketing houses, but get the hell out of the distribution game. If they were smart, they'd sell "per song" to Amazon, or whoever, and do it just like iTunes does. Hell, you could set up terminals in CD-Stores for punters to grab the tracks they want directly to their iPod and then pay at the counter.
P2P has always been there - we used to swap tapes and dubs back in primary school years ago - so I don't buy the "Napster is Killing Us" lines. If they play the game right, people won't need to scour the net to find their favourite tracks in high quality - they'll just dial up Warner Music, or the 50c website or whatever and download it. I'm sure some payment method could be handled, say a monthly account type of thing (eg, pay up purchases on the 20th), or an online version of EFT-POS to avoid CC charges.
It's not that difficult, but these cats seem to be shit-scared of making the necessary changes
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I just can't fathom paying more than 20 bucks for a CD when I'm not even sure I'll like half the songs on it. I can't see paying that much when I like the songs on it too.
Why don't they drop the price back to like 12-15 bucks, then people might actually want to buy CD's again. They only cost a few cents to make anyway, the rest is all profit...
------ Will of Iron, Knees of Jello.
(A RANT) ...Especially since the FCC's recent "deregulation" ruling allowing monopolies of the airwaves. Say goodbye to anywhere having a "local scene" that would generate some income for the music industry. Without the local airwaves to promote local music there will be less and less choice. Without a large pool of local musicians to draw upon, and by focusing on narrower and narrower "cash generating genres", the music is always going to get worse, and sales will go down. Right now music is targeted at 14-year-old girls and moody teenagers, AND THAT'S IT. What about the rest of us? Box sets of stuff that's 20 or 30 years old. Wow. How about some good music? How about videos on regular TV? If the Beatles came out now they'd be ignored, because they "don't fit the mold". Screw the music industry! Support the musicians, encourage the good ones, and spread the word around when you hear something good. Go see the bands live. Buy a t-shirt. It's about time that the music industry stopped being a bunch of lawyers and turned into artists again.
But yes, I agree, the entertainment industry has always been "big business" and it's not as if the execs have only recently gotten greedy. It's just that the whole thing has been snowballing and a significant minority of consumers have reached the breaking point.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
But fuck them. Fuck them in their ears, just as we get fucked in the ears listening to the shitty music they put into the machine. Fuck their silly equations implying what music we "must" like. The stuff in these "speciality" stores is the crap that plagues today's radio stations. I Live in one of the most culturally diverse areas of the US, the New York Metro area, and most of the radio stations here are owned by the same company, and most of them play the same garbage. Do they think we want to listen to a bunch of whiney, scrawny white kids with tatoos or a bunch of illiterate hip hop artists talking about clubs, cars, guns and bitches? I certainly dont, and none of my friends do either. Maybe thats why album sales are down? Maybe its also the 18 dollar sticker adorning the cd's. Have i illegally downloaded music? yes. would i if i felt i had a viable alternative? no. Being morally bankrupt as they are ripping off the consumers, i hope they go financially bankrupt as well.
Which wouldn't have been playable on any of the current players.
Which would have required record stores to stock twice as many discs, meaning probably half as many selections, since they would have the old and new formats.
Which would have increased mastering, manufacturing, and inventory costs.
Which a lot of people wouldn't have wanted to update to because frankly most of us don't want to spend an additional $500-$1000+ for a difference we can't hear.
Which wouldn't have succeeded well at all for years at best.
Which might not have played an any computer players, ending that market.
And which wouldn't be immune from digital ripping, compression, and filesharing anyway.
You call that a plan?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I haven't bought any this year. I used to buy a couple per week. I have 61 mp3 files (I just looked) on my computer. I have thousands of ogg files, all ripped from my own cds. I don't buy fewer cds because I'm stealing music, I buy fewer because
a) I don't much care for what the studios are producing these days, and
b) I've got other things to spend my money on besides cds that may only contain one or two decent songs.
Piracy is an easy scapegoat, but as long as they believe that piracy is the cause of all their ills, they will continue to lose revenue and must eventually figure it out or die.
They are blind to their true problems.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
That, and the crappy US economy at the moment. I sure don't go buy music when I'm broke...of course, this is just another excuse to say "OH, they're PIRATING because they CAN'T AFFORD IT".
Sadly, the RIAA answers their own question about why some people prefer to go to the trouble of pirating (hunting it down, getting a stable connection, finding correctly labeled files at a decent bitrate), but they dont realize that the answer isn't "eliminate piracy", that's a fight you'll never win.
The answer is better quality for lower cost, just like EVERY OTHER INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD MUST DO. Somehow they think they can do it sdrawkcab and sue/lobby their way to success. Thy're not losing much from me, I never pirate music anymore because I feel most things I could find I wouldn't want to listen to. Other people, however, won't just vote with their wallet, they'll vote with their LimeWire. The music industry is destroying themselves and they don't even realize it.
Intestesting side note: Think this dip in sales might possibly be a massive "voting with out wallets", and the RIAA just thinks we're all pirates because we're not buying? I think they need a wakeup on the content front, I'd really be happy to give them my money if they'd improve the situation instead of just antagonizing it. It's easy guys:
- Make it better. (More interest.)
- Make it cheaper. (More units sold.)
- Profit! (And everyone else is happy, too.)
Not everyone is interested in "stealing". We do, however, like to be entertained and we're willing to pay when we can afford it. Think about that.CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
That happens to everyone when they get a bit older. It did to me in the mid 80s. It's not necessarily the fault of the RIAA.
My experience has been that the music I have come to like the most is music that challanged me the first few times I listened to it. I haven't bought an album in years now, but back when I did, I often didn't like it at ALL the first time I listened, but came to appreciate it with repeated listens.
That all changes in a world where people don't commit to a purchase of the album.
And there are albums that just aren't individual songs, and that shouldn't be. To go waaaay back, for an example, the Beatles' White Album is a complete work. I have it on vinyl and I haven't been able to listen to it for years, because 'Martha My Dear' (first track on side three) has a skip in it. Everybody knows that you have to listen to the White Album straight through without pause, and when I'd gotten through all of sides one and two and hit 'Martha My Dear' and it skipped at an important passage, I just couldn't listen to any of those songs anymore.
***umm, anyhow....***
My point is: it seems lame and limiting to buy individual songs. Artists create big bodys of work, and often the 'catchy' tune on an album isn't even the best one that has the message. It's a deterioration of the art form for people to just buy bits and pieces.
And I know: lots of crap music out there, lots of it doesn't hold together as an 'album.' But some does, and always has. Hope it can in the future...
I've not bought a full price CD for over two years. Neither do I use any p2p service.
Why, because the current music promoted by the big media companies is unoriginal rubbish.
There is new stuff worth buying, but you will never see it on the shelves of the mainstream retailers.
That's the RIAA's real problem. Competition.
There's a lot more content on a DVD than an audio CD, it costs far more to make a movie than an audio recording, the movie plays longer than an audio CD, yet movies on DVD are cheaper than music on DVDs. What's wrong with this picture?
And then there's the basic problem that most of the mainstream musical genres are mined out. The best symphonies are a century or more old. The best jazz is from the middle of the 20th century. The best rock was made several decades ago. The best house, rap, and hip-hop dates from a decade ago. Until somebody comes up with a new mainstream genre, the RIAA is stuck. (People keep trying. Gospel rock? Country/rap crossover? Noise music? Next, please.)
Video killed the radio star...
If you're signed to a label, they get your money, no matter where they buy it. If it's a packaged CD, then it's Their money, and you, the artist, only get a fraction of the money (18% if you're metallica, and usually closer to 10% if you're the newest 1 hit wonder.) Independantly recorded albums sold by the band, for $10 or whatever are the only kind that directly support the band. The only way you're likely to be directly supporting a band by buying the CD (not downloading or pirating or whatever else you can think of) is if they have no record label or contract. This is a fact of life. If 'everclear' sells you a CD at the show for $10, they probably only get $1.40 of that money, because they have to purchase the albums from the publisher/printer themselves. That guy who sold it to you, you know the over-egoed roadie wearing the 'It's ok I'm with the band T-Shirt?' His paycheck is signed by the Label or the Promoter, not the members of the band.
Speak for yourself.
1. Fight P2P - This is what they're doing now, and if they want to make it illegal the majority of the populous will have to understand, otherwise it'll just be Prohibition all over again. Unfortunately the record industry is looked upon by its customers as a dirty industry, with Britney Spears deliberately marketted to take money from children nagging hard-working Parents like Happy Meals toys are. The Government cannot be seen to be on its side, otherwise it would upset the voting establishment (people older than 25) which sees this music as disgusting mass-manufactured rubbish. It would be regarded in the same way as the Government supporting McDonalds toys. Screaming, nagging children are the bane of Parents and is visible to all. It dissuades potential Parents from having children, inverting the Country's population triangle which will cause huge macroeconomic problems in the future.
2. Alter their product - This will be unsuccesful, I go to buy CDs because of the music they contain, not because of some snazzy stuff
3. Decrease prices - You can't beat free
4. Die out - the only remaining option. In its corruption and decadence, perhaps this would be most fitting. China illustrates what happens when a country has mass music piracy.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I just read your post, and I wanted to check out some songs off the Type O Negative album. Forget about trying to listen to it at the local music store - everything's shrinkwrapped (some stores around here are getting systems to let you preview any cd in the store, but it should be standard for every record store, at least the ones that charge a premium!). Forget about hearing it on the local Clear Channel radio station - they all suck. No preview clips on Sam Goody, Tower, or Amazon (yet). So leaves me with the option of paying $$$ for a CD I've never heard, or using p2p to check out a few tracks. What do you think I'm going to choose? (Yes, I realize there's always the option of giving up and not listening to or purchasing this album at all). How the fsck do you expect people to but your album if they can't hear the music?!?
Let's also not forget another big problem with these stores: some of them tend to sell a wide variety of music.
Wide, but very shallow.
My own CD buying has increased (thanks to greater discretionary income than college years), but I almost never step into one of the CD stores. Shopping there is like expecting to buy designer clothing from Kmart - it ain't gonna happen. If it's general pop or orchestral music I'm looking, it's amazon.com's former cdnow that I shop. Usually, though, it's direct from the label - Metropolis Records for instance for 90% of what I listen to.
Funny thing, I've only found maybe one or two Metropolis artists in BestBuy - Apoptygma and Funker Vogt. Lesson of the day? If you won't sell it to me, don't complain that I'm not buying!
*scoove*
(and don't try to pass that nasty michael jackson my way! even FBI agents now know that only losers listen to that.)