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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"
It's fairly obvious to me that the falling sales are both proof that the business model is failing (due to a change in the market environment) and that it will also provide ammunition for the RIAA's anti-P2P argument.
The RIAA is, I believe, misunderstanding the situation in that they would lose sales regardless, but the reality of any situation rarely intrudes on the legalities.
Of COURSE the RIAA will use this as evidence against P2P. Hatch wants to blow up your PC. Perhaps he should think about blowing up the RIAA instead.
The first candidate for House or Senate who proposes rolling back copyrights to 14 years has my vote, regardless of party.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
WRONG!
According to the RIAA and MPAA low sales is because of piracy, therefore we must have more laws and no rights.
Why buy entire CDs when we can pay only for the song we like a from a per song legal music download site? The MPAA claims that movie viewing has gone down, but they fail to take into account that you can see movies as well at home on a home theater system without the $5 popcorn or the chewing gum on the floor.
Fight Spammers!
"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?"
How dumb are they?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'de like to be the medic on call this night ;)
"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 just sell the same crap you get at Target. Real specialty music stores are doing quite well, at least from what I know from articles like this. When you sell the same crap as everyone else, the only ways you win are through convenience (e.g., location) or price. When you sell good music - a rarity through the Big 5 - that people want, they'll come back to you both because you offer a unique product and because, at least in some cases, they'll want to hear some of your suggestions. A rapport develops that no crappy chain can emulate or replace.
...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!
and it seems someone doesn't want to adapt...
While we all cheer from the sidelines and chant "DIE! DIE! DIE!" ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
When Richard Branson started the music retail arm of his empire (of course, back then his empire was only a youth advice center anyway!) he capitalised on a big gap in the market. In the UK at the time (the early 70's), all record stores were really boring places, no music playing, and the people in the store didn't care about music.. it was just another thing they sold, along with pins and ribbons. Richard Branson figured he'd create somewhere where music was playing, where the staff were all hippies who 'digged' music, and where customers could lounge around on beanbags smoking pot and checking out the latest tunes. What's more, he'd sell the records cheaper than anyplace else. His store (in Oxford Street, and on which he actually paid no rent to start with!!) was flooded with customers for quite some time. He noticed after a while, however, that while sales were brisk, a lot of people were just turning up and smoking pot all day without buying anything. He cleared these people out, and made it so that people would still want to come to the store, but not that they could stay there all day. And so was developed the current model of 'specialty record store' retail. This is a model that hasn't changed since the 70's! Virgin Megastores tries new things like having listening booths, and computerised searches of their CD database.. but it's too little too late, in my opinion. The next model of retail kicked off in the late 90's with the discounted 'pile it high, sell it cheap' WAL*Mart model of selling records. The big problem, however, is that this is not much different to how records were sold in the UK in the 60's! The staff at Wal*Mart don't know music, and they could care less about what you're buying So.. it seems we've come FULL CIRCLE. And let's face it, the whole music industry has lost its vibe anyway. I remember back in the 'good old days' that it was fun to go buy records, and it was a real thrill to get them home and put them on. Nowadays? Sure, there are a lot of good gigs going on, but few people exhibit the same excitement over CDs these days, since you probably heard half of the tracks on MTV/the radio already anyway. I think commercially music has lost its way, and while there's still a LOT of great music out there.. music just isn't as fun anymore. These stores are feeling the pinch. Why go and hang out at a record store when it's not fun anymore?
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.
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.
I have no idea how Sam Goody would be hemorrhaging money when they inflate their shipping costs by 875%.
I bought the GBA game Advance Wars from them and paid $14 US for shipping. It took well over a week to arrive, and when it did the postage mark was for $1.60 US.
I let them have it in an email, but they claimed it was all part of the "third party shipping".
Whether it's games or music, if they're going to practice business like that, I hope they fold sooner than later.
He earned no less than $10 during the four short minutes we shared a train.
This goes for DVDs at the offending retailers as well.
-matt
I agree with you that the RIAA will do all it can as it writhes in its death throes after having missed the bus when the Napster Revolution took place.
It reminds me of what Thomas Jefferson wrote:
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
When the price of a new CD went to $20 I simply stopped buying. I have no downloaded MP3s and no copied CDs. I've simply curtailed my music purchasing due to what I see as exorbitant pricing. Period. And until prices come down I will not purchase another CD. I am who the music industry is loasing as a customer, and they just don't get it.
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.
There's some good news though!
.mp3 file put into file sharing systems and RIAA expects many music pirates to be totally demoralized and overwhelmed.
After the eagerly awaited replacement of Ms Rosen by Ms Bono there will be Sonny & Cher songs in every bogus
An anonymous spokesperson said it would be "Total shock and awe" and that "their moral will be crushed". She added that "they will be slaughtered".
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.
Suppose:
-Tower (or other big music retailer) had a massive storage system with a vast library of legally copied CDs. Could be near-line storage to be a bit cheaper.
-I walk up to a kiosk and pick songs from the catalog of music, building my own playlist.
-I pay the cashier using the playlist number.
-I wait a few minutes while my custom CD is burned.
-The waiting area is full of t-shirts, knick-nacks and bric-a-brac related to music so when I pick up my burned CD I pay for a few shirts and a pair of "Fleetwood Mac" bookends too.
-I am happy with my legal, high quality music.
-The store is happy with my money.
It would work for me! As it is, I have not been in a music store or the music section of a bigger store in years. I refuse to pay $18+ to get just two songs that I like mixed in with songs I'll just ignore.
they have reasonable prices (about $11-$14 new)
they have a good selection (everything but pop and newer country)
they have a knowledgeable staff
quick special ordering
they carry smaller, independant labels you'll never find at *insert huge chain here*
Just an example, the new Radiohead album:
borders: $19.99
independant record store: $12.88
... is employees who know where the really good stuff is.
From my experience, the clerks in music stores - with a few notable exceptions - mostly listen to rap, metal, or old rock. What I want is to walk into a store, talk to someone, and have them guide me to where the good (!!!), relatively unknown music is. I love going to my friends with a new CD and saying, "Check this out, I bet you've never heard of them, but they're an excellent band!"
Until that happens, I'll listen to shoutcast and download the good stuff. I'll do the work myself.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
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!
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?"
The RIAA uses P2P as a scapegoat for the failed business models of the labels it represents and their inability (or unwillingness) to adapt their copyright stance in the face of new technology. In fact, the answer to your question is "both" in that as the reports of declining sales come out, the RIAA uses P2P to distract attention from the fact that labels have degenerated into top-heavy marketing machines.
The RIAA is not the record industry. When the RIAA says "we", they mean the big 5 record labels (Universal, Sony, EMI, Warner's, BMG). The RIAA is the recording industry's lobbying arm, charged with keeping the names of the labels out of the headlines as they seethe forward into the breach.
I'm wondering if accused P2P users can adopt a defense that they are non-profit broadcasters who got caught not paying their compulsories.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Why do half the posts on this story talk about the RIAA? The story isn't about the RIAA. It's not even about CD sales as a whole (though they do mention the declining CD sales); it's about SPECIALTY MUSIC STORES losing market share. Even if you don't want to read the article, at least the story submission. Or at least the first sentence of it.
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.
..is that most people treat P2P as radio/TV - and just as people don't run out and buy everything they hear/see on TV likewise they don't do it with P2P - and wouldn't have anyway - the loss is probably negligible.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
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.
The RIAA has no one to blame but themselves. We as consumers have voted with our wallets and they simply refuse to accept this so they are trying to legislate us into doing it their way. It's obviously not going to turn out how they would like it to.
I saw this coming when they went after Napster. Take down the largest at the time P2P service with centralized servers and replace it with numerous decentralized servers with no one to go after except for the user and you're fucked. So going after the person you're trying to convince to buy more of your product is your business plan RIAA? You bunch of fucking idiots. Whoever is dishing out the advice to the worlds largest group of techology n00bs should be shot. This has to rank as the best example of how not to do business, how not to work the P.R. angle, and how not to work into motivating your customers to spend more on your products.
You cannot legislate the free market via scare tactics and propaganda while in the mean time not working to create a more technology based business model and not expect to demonize yourself in the process. As soon as the RIAA starts to bear down on users and suing the shit out of them then they'll really start to see a backlash of epic proportion. It will come to that and they're going to be in for the shock of their lives. Fuck the the RIAA/MPAA. They are getting exactly what they deserve and there's not a person I know who feels any amount of guilt over not being ripped off and now having a choice.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
There's an answer that could virtually wipe out P2P music swapping, but the record companies are so blinded by greed that they will never see it.
Ever since recorded music first came into existance there is one thing that consumers have wanted and the record companies have steadfastly refused to deliver:
The ability to purchase exactly the songs you want and only the songs you want. At various times you've been able to buy singles in various formats (45 rpm, CD, cassette) but even then, the record companies dictated which songs were available.
The answer is amazingly simple: Put every song in existance on-line in one central location for download at a reasonable price (25 cents per song or less) in standard mp3 format with no DRM crap. This would be enormously successful and would generate huge revenue.
But the record companies will never agree to this and never even allow it to enter their minds. They are still locked into the mindset of "why should we let people buy one song for a quarter when we can force them to buy an entire CD for $18".
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.
- If I want to buy a "top 40" record, I'll pick it up for $12 at Best Buy or Target or something like that the next time I'm in the neighborhood.
- If I want to buy an obscure record by a local or indie artist, I'll visit the local House O' Piercings And Attitude (aka indie record store).
- If I want to buy something that nobody'll have in stock and it'll have to be special-ordered anyway, I'll go to Amazon.
See Sam Goody in there? Neither do I. There's no reason for me to go out of my way to visit a place that charges 50% more than Best Buy for the same mainstream crap. Besides, my days of "gotta have that new record right now" are over. If I am feeling lazy and willing to pay the premium, I'll just buy it from Amazon.Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
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.
Even if you don't want to read the article, at least the story submission. Or at least the first sentence of it. /. quote:
"You must be new here"
obligatory
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
The only thing these stores specialize in is charging $18 for a CD.
postmodernsideshow.com
I use to buy two CDs a week. Then it went to one CD and one DVD once I got a DVD player. The first thing I would do when I buy a CD is to make a copy of it and put the original away. This is simply because I have kids and the number of scratches I find on them (once I pick them up off the floor) would make the initial investment I made very expensive. I don't think this is piracy, I believe this is simply looking after and valuing what you have. I stopped buying CD simply because of the false and demeaning stance the RIAA has taken which would make my backup activity illegal! Although piracy should be (and is) illegal, where the phuk does the RIAA get off assuming that I am a pirate simply because I value my property.
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 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.
Secialty restaruants are having a similar problem of people going to food discounters like grocery stores to get things to eat. Food "pirates" have enven set up soop kitchens! They must be stopped or the country's biggest and most important industry, food, will implode.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Tower Records: $9.99
c-hack.com |
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."
Buh bye, Musicland, Sam Goody and Tower Records. Join the 8-track in the dustbin of history.
How ya like dat?
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
Recent thought that occured to me: mass market tactics are generally designed to appeal to young consumers. You could argue that the high water point for the median target age of that demographic happened when the children of the baby boomers, the largest demographic wave to hit the scene in a while, peaked sometime in the late 80s and early 90s. Put plainly, there are fewer kids to pick up the trends.
Tweet, tweet.
Napster may be dead as a bent dog, but while it was still kicking it achieved something significant: It convinced my mom, my grandma, and my friend's mom and grandma that they could find and download all the Perry Como songs they could (force me to) tolerate.
They haven't forgotten. If they can't P2P, it just makes them pissed off - they aren't buying $20 CDs ever again.
-Graham
It appears that the RIAA has been judo chopped by the "invisible hand" of economics.
I mean between the fact that the RIAA is acting like an economic cartel and the fact they've set the price point somewhere in the stratosphere (e.g., US$18 or more per album-length audio Compact Disc), no wonder why sales are nose-diving. Anyone's who's taken a beginning course in economics in college knows that if a cartel sets its price too high, there is WAY too much economic incentive for consumer to thwart that cartel, hence the rise of file-sharing sites like the late Napster.com. If the RIAA had set its price at US$11 per album-length CD, the economic incentive to pirate music drops dramatically to the point that music piracy would not be worth the effort.
It is the MPAA allowing new-release DVD movies to be priced at US$20-US$24 that has actually discouraged movie piracy here in the USA, along with the fact that broadband Internet access is still not common and also that the file size of DiVX files of a movie are still very daunting to download even with cable modem connections.
It is here to stay like it or not, barring draconian political measures and dictatorship.
Clearly there is need to change business model. What else was Internet bubble all about? Many established business models, literally ported to HTML, few scripts and few servers, clearly don't work. What else was Internet bubble burst about?
Clearly music is not what it used to be. When I was in college I could find exciting new band at least once a month, if I tried. I (and many from my generation) could listen to 2-3 albums from a single band for 6 months or more, over and over.
Still, even the hardest music junkies arrived at 200+ vinyl records and that was it, for the next 5-10-15 years. Eventually they upgraded them to CDs and bought maybe extra 20-30 CDs of new, young bands. To stay in shape and remain open for the new things, so to say.
So where is the basis to expect the sales of music via standard distribution channels to grow, or even stay level nowadays? It doesn't exist.
Yes, I don't like ordering online. I also want to have hard CDs of any music that I want to keep for a long time. But there is a limit to it. At the same time I am getting tired of changing CDs. I used to think I need a brand new stereo equipment at least every few years. It was also very important piece of furniture, in every aspect of social interaction. Now I see it almost as garbage, taking room space.
Most people won't rush, as they used to, to upgrade to the latest version of Windows. Minority will continue to play with Linux and Mac. The same goes for hardware. At the same time more and more people are getting used to keeping music and other media content on their computers.
So where is the big money in music distribution via Internet? Nowehere. People just develop needs to experiment more for less money. On Internet there is no place for monopolistic vendor to apply the old business equation: increase the quantity and lower the cost.
Otherwise, by now we would all be happily paying $35 per month for guaranteed quality and delivery monthly stream of music of our momentary choice to our computers over the Internet. Why are we prepared to do the same with cable but not with music?
First, because the technology is still not reliable enough. Second, because the medium is different. It is much more about the discovery, search, temporary whim and experimentation. It is much less structured, preprogrammed and much more diverse and distributed.
Sorry media content distributors, but without planetary dictatorship and complete control over all Internet backbones, money flow will only continue decreasing. And so even if piracy was nonexistent.
Eventually it will hit its evolutionary bottom. It would still be a good chunk of money but nothing as stellar as it used to be.
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.
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...
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?"
Or it could be that the teeny boppers are running out of disposable income and everyone else knows the music sucks ass. I haven't heard any new decent material on the radio for a long time. Everyone is trying to sound either like Blink 182 or Britney. I think the music industry is starting to feel the backlash of homogenization and the one-size-fits-all mentality. I hope I'm right, because I would love to taste the irony that the RIAA and Clear Channel are on the path to mutual destruction at each others' hands.
-R
CD sales are down for a few major reasons. One people see less value in them than they used to and they are expensive and risky compared to other forms of entertainment. That is they don't give you the bang for the buck that a dvd or a concert ticket does and you never know if your gonna even like the music on the cd.
Two, the RIAA has been by their own numbers selling 25% less albums than were for sale in previous years. Compare that to only a 10% decline in their cd sales.
Three: CD's as a loss leader. Stores that sell CD's as their primary business cannot compete with stores like Best Buy, Walmart, Kmart, and Wiz and Circuit City that sell them at a loss because they bring people in to buy high margin items like TV's, clothing, and computers.
Four: P2P "piracy" and disdain for the RIAA and its tactics. When people copy a movie they say "oh cool I don't have to buy a ticket to see this movie" When people download a CD, they say "Heh sticking it to the RIAA again" The music industry has the worst reputation. Even worse than hollywood and oil companies and politicians
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.)