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The Effect of Pirated CDs
Moderation abuser writes "The real reasons music isn't selling as much as it used to, and not a lot to do with file sharing." I'm not sure that I agree that piracy is the reason for all of the music industry woes - I think creativity also has something to do with it, but those are still some huge numbers for pirated CDs.
They used to say "home taping" was killing music, now it's meant to be internet downloaders. But the real pirates these days are crime bosses - and the rewards are plentiful.
It's amazing I read this and immediately thought, "Crime Bosses, is this going to be about Record Industry Corporate Executives?"
But in all seriousness this quote is the most telling of all:
According to the RIAA's own figures, over the last two years the US music industry has produced 25% fewer CDs.
The peak of production was in 1999 when 38,900 individual titles were released. But by 2001 this was down to 27,000. Releases grew again in 2002 but were still below the previous high.
Musician George Ziemann says if only 3,000 copies of each of the "missing" CDs were sold, the fall in sales would be wiped out.
For Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter Research, the music is weathering a hangover after the 80s and 90s boom, when everyone was buying CD versions of their old vinyl records.
"Now the CD replacement cycle has drawn to a close," he says.
Also the global decline in CD sales is taking place against the background of a general economic recession that is depressing sales of almost everything.
When is the RIAA going to address these concerns? How can keep saying it's all file sharing when it's obvious these factors come into play.
Mike
The article contains an interesting point about the end of the replacement cycle, during which people bought CD's to replace their existing vinyl & cassette tapes. Where the music industry says that CD sales fell by 10%, it would be useful to see a split between newly-released material vs. titles released at least 10 years ago, and how these two groups fared.
On top of that issue, there are of course several other factors that are at work - the soft economy during 2001/2002, competitors for the teenage spending dollar, and of course the rise of online file trading. I know personally that I haven't bought a CD in a couple years, mostly due to the fact I haven't heard anything that compelling, but also that if I want a particular song (rather then blow $$$ on the whole CD), I can get it in a couple minutes online. If these knuckleheads could implement a useful, cheap service to pay for songs, I just might do it. But I want to be able to burn CD's to play in my car, and have access to a wide selection of music - not just one company's stable of trick ponies.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I have a lot of family, a lot of friends, and a lot of coworkers (all in all, about 50 people that I converse with weekly, and at least 15 of whom I converse with daily). All but a few of them participate in music piracy. All of them used to buy cassettes and CDs. I can't remember the last time that I saw any of them even set foot in a music store. I don't know anyone that has purchased a CD in the past year. I have one friend that is a manager at a Warehouse music, the other worked at Sam Goody's. The Sam Goody's closed down, after 6 years of doing awesome business, three years ago sales slowed to a crawl. You want to know what their biggest selling products were? Blank CD/RWs and MP3 players. The Warehouse Music is a pitiful shell of it's former self - they now sell more movies and blank CD/RWs than music. And despite this lack of sales in record stores, millions of songs created by today's modern artists are downloaded daily - even though they supposedly suck and lack creativity bla bla bla.
I can't be alone in my observations.
People can blame a lack of creativity, a reduction in available albums, etc. But I find it amazing that people are so quick to dismiss the effects that rampant, undeniable piracy is having on the music industry. I stopped buying music years ago because I realized that the prices were too high. However, my morals prevent me from stealing, hence I do not pirate music.
... you can't have "spaced dirt" without "Pirated CDs".
God did not implement a business model while building the human ear. He should have spoken to Bill Gates or Hillary Rosen or Hatch and implemented DRM in the cochlea or tympannum or whatever.
Too bad, evolution takes millions of (y)ears.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It is very obvious that the main source of piracy are these people overseas who even sell the music for money. Why doesn't the RIAA take some kind of action against them instead of suing random people in the US who only share (for free) a few songs!?! Also, they should admit that people downloading are not the main source of piracy.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
"The real reasons music isn't selling as much as it used to, and not a lot to do with file sharing."
Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if we could all visualize complete sentences?
Sigh
Download my free songs!
I realize the article cites organized crime as the real culprit ... but couldn't one of the other causes be the low quality of music?
... neither of whom could hold a candle to some of the rich-n-thick textures and beats of groups past such as George Plimpton's Parliment, the Tower of Power, or even going back further to the Beatles, who made some serious musical and technical innovation with renderings such as Yellow Submarine?
... it all sounds so contrived.
Meaning, as more and more merchandising of the performer comes into play, we get more and more "teenie-bopper" mediocrity such as Britney Spears and O-Town
I mean, now
Bah, perhaps its because I'm an old poop now.
--- have you healed your church website?
If you look on the Eff website, it has some interesting ways in compensating the artists if you don't want to buy their CDs.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
..Here are some other huge numbers:
1 million
237 Billion
A Hundred Kajillion!
Wow! those sure are some big numbers I just made up. And I bet I know where those losses come from - Radio. Think about it, where else can you get *TONS* of music for free? And after hearing how damn crappy most of it is, who's going to buy the cd?
air and light and time and space
When something goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault..
Really though, piracy CD's... I'm sure some people hunt for them, but in most cases, the fans (the people who would buy real CD's anyhow) would not buy them.. so it just leaves the middle ground where there isn't much money anyhow.. (maybe I'm wrong..)
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
I really just don't get the people who buy these pirate CDs. There's no getting away from the fact that they know they are buying illegal copies - the photocopied covers and blue backs are just too blatent on every dodgy market stall I've seen.
What I find shocking, though, is that people would rather fork over 5 to a pirate for a burnt CD than on the one hand download the album for free or on the other order a perfectly legit copy from Amazon (or Play, or CDWow etc) for 9.
Apparently, people trust random pirates at car boot sales and markets not to rip them off more than they do Amazon, simply because "you can't trust strangers on the Internet".
So yes, I think that they are right to go after these guys - they hurt the industry far more than the odd fileshare does.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I would love to put together an event like that in Union Sq. in New York, right in front of the Virgin Megastore. Have a few thousand of the "pirate" masses turn out, throw their old CDs in a heap, and then pulverize them with a steamroller. How's that for sending a message to the RIAA and the powers-that-be? Betcha that would make the front page of every paper in the world.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Change the price of a CD containing 18 tracks to $9.99 and sales will recover nicely. It's really that simple.
come down to Canal street in NYC and check out how the cops walk right past 50 guys selling pirated CD, DVD, CD-ROMs, video tapes you name it. File sharing? what's that?!
I did in fact RTFA. But I did not make my point clear. My point was that the RIAA should admit openly that downloaders aren't a problem and that these "counterfeiters" are. They need to stop using Kazaa-users as scapegoats for their drop in sales (which, of course, is not entirely due to piracy).
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
1. Because no loss of physical property = no theft.
2. Because copyright infringement isn't a big deal.
3. Because artists are getting screwed by the RIAA.
4. Because overall quality of music is down.
5. Because I wouldn't have bought the CD anyway.
6. Because information wants to be free!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
It's nice to finally see a credible news source (ie the BBC) carrying an honest account of the problem facing the industry. Maybe if this happened more often the government would be less inclined to beleive whatever the **AA tells them
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
Lets face it, the RIAA doesn't have an effective policy for sale and promotion on the Internet.
Firstly they screw over small webcasters, eliminating the hobbyist and enthusiast DJs (these are people doing it for love not profit and so should be encouraged).
Then they proceed to annoy everyone else online that has downloaded music (illegally yes, but it's infringement not theft under current laws).
Keep it up RIAA, keep us in the dark ages, the Internet had the possibility of being a new method for distributing and selling music but you blew it. You've sealed your demise.
Consumer Backlash is a poorly understood concept, but I believe the "Music Industry" is now experiencing it. I've been bitter ever since the price of tapes rose dramatically. This was followed by CD's where I not only re-purchased most of my music library, but was forced to purchase so many "Albums" to get individual songs. After thousands of dollars spent, hundreds of CD's which slowly became scratched and degraded, and complete inability to listen to a constant stream of songs I liked (again forced into the Album mentality), I've had it.
Now "The Industry" is suing their own customers!
I haven't purchased a single CD for five years, and I don't plan to ever purchase another. I am content to listen to the radio.
Torsten
and enough to get it to post
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
I mean, about the pirate CD syndicates run by crime bosses. If pirate CDs were available on the street like they are in Thailand, it would give me a serious reason to leave my house once in a while!
First problem is creativity. I haven't purchased a CD in 6 years. I haven't pirated I've just listened to the radio and borrowed CD's from friends. I'm an artist and object to pirating on principal.
The second problem is piracy. I say piracy second because the really good work that's done isn't pirated like the pop trendy teenie bopper music is. Peopl may download a really great song but will typically then go out and buy the album.
It's been a long long while since a new artist came out that was actually talented. I played better than most of these tards when I was in 8th grade. Where did all the Bob Dylans go, the Janis Joplins, the Stevie Ray Vaughns and B.B. Kings? Clapton is a memory and the Bettles are history. Good bands like Jimmy Eats World and Weezer barely get played, drowned out by Brittany Spears and J.Lo.
Turn on MTV and watch for about an hour. Keep track with a pencil and paper, count how many of these pop artists actually play an instrument. Then count how many of those actually write their own music. It's disgraceful to call these people "professional". They in no way act professional. They neither write music, play music nor perform it. They have dance instructors for the performances and lipsync the albums.
With all of this how can I as a consumer respect the music? If I don't respect it why in the world would I buy it?
Before p2p, I never really bought music. I enjoy listening to it, sure, but it never seemed to be worth the money to pay for it. For the price of a CD, I could get tickets to a DSO consert downtown instead, and still have money left over for lunch.
p2p came, and I started downloading music. I had never bought CDs in the past, and I had no plans of doing so in the future. The record industry is losing no money for all of my downloads: if the internet disappeared, so too would my interest in music.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I think creativity also has something to do with it
Oh, come on, you sound like an old man. There are so many good CDs out there that you could buy one a week for the rest of your life and still not hear them all, and that's assuming no more CDs were ever released between now and then. If you don't like pop crap like Mariah Carey and Kid Rock, you don't have to listen to it. But there's so much more out there than that.
Moreover, the real damage Napster did to the music industry wasn't lost sales. Instead, it created an "ala carte" mindset in that same once-loyal cd-buying demographic. Put another way, my kid won't buy an entire cd when he likes maybe only a couple of songs. CDs are a package deal, and the package deal is dead. Ultimately, the recording industry could do themselves a real favor by reviving singles.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
it isn't like musical quality has notably sunk in the last few years.
yes, they're putting out less albums - but because they're marketing individual 'pop sensations' more. the trend to produce less began before the sales fell.
and it's not because 'pop music is crap' that sales are falling. this bubble-gum shlock is the predominant bulk of what people are trading online. not to mention that britney is not qualitatively divergent from marky mark and the funky bunch. or wham! or winger before that.
people need to stop pretending that file sharing isn't going to kill cd-sales. it will. just as CDs killed cassette, just as cassette killed vinyl (audophiles and their tastes notwithstanding)
the artists -do- get most of their revenue from touring and tshirts and stuff, but the RIAA exists solely to distribute music. they -do- get rich off the rights to sell CDs so naturally their business revolves around protecting their rights. particularly because they dont have the infrastructure or the expertise to control, in any small way, electronic distribution. (since mainly you just have to post mp3s and advertise, or license apple to soak up the bandwidth costs for a share of your per track cash.)
but stop pretending: sales are down because trading is easy, and no-one except people who had money before and will have money after is being effected. not because pop music is 'crap'. not because there's 'less'.
yes, p2p is killing it. and for good reason.
i do wonder though, if file sharing has had a hand in the increase in concert attendance these last few years. (note number of summer concert 'festivals' and their earnings increases)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Clearchannel. Most people have historically been introduced to new acts through radio. For the 80's MTV also fell under this. Now we have Clearchannel having the same rotation of bought timeslots coast to coast 24*7, it becomes so predictable that I actually knew how many minutes after the hour it was one night because of the back to back songs that came on, they were the same ones that had been played at those same minutes 6 hours previously when I had entered the clients site! Also MTV is the same way (not that they ever had a super broad list of artist) anymore, the manager of MTV even talked recently about super heavy rotation where some of the few videos would be played even MORE times a day, it's not like MTV even plays that many videos anymore.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
holy crap! i just realized that the music industry as a whole has raised me to be a worthless scumbag with no morals as a whole. now they're pissed at me for sharing music. i, as a musician, would love for as many people as possible to hear what i've written. i would, however, charge people money to come see me live. that's a real world event. it's happening. it didn't happen last year and was just released yesterday. it is a moment. a recording is just the past. it's not what my favorite musicians are doing right now. however, if i had advanced notice that he or she was performing and i could pay money to go watch when it happens, i would. i would even give them a couple of bucks if i saw them on tour, because merch is profit, and duplicated cds are profit. how long before there are wireless capable ipods? i did this math the other day: 1 ipod = $400 1 ipod = 7500 songs 1 song @ itunes = $1 7500 songs @ itunes = $7500 cost of duplicating music = $0 $400 + $7500 = $7900 it costs the consumer $7900 to get an ipod fully loaded with the past. now what happens when there is a citywide network of wireless ipods with communication purposes as well? what happens when the filesharing community of america, and the earth begins to vote?
-knowles
I think the distinction needs to be made between a lost sale (and therefore lost revenue) and someone getting a copy for free.
Too often the music industry (and the software industry, and many other industries) simply state that they have lost X amount because those people didn't purchase their copy.
You need to instead consider whether they would have actually aquired it if they had to pay for it. For instance a student with 200 gigs of music would not possibly have bought that music if it wasn't downloadable, so the loss is actually nothing.
The same may apply here, I really don't know. They cite markets like China where these pirates operate, but China does not strike me as the main audiance for American music. Further, they have a long history of piracy, I am not sure if you can honestly say they have stopped purchasing recently.
This isn't to say that I think piracy should be legal - there is no reason that people should enjoy the benefit for free merely because they would not have purchased it - however you cannot merely count the number of pirated copies as lost sales, most likely a legitimate copy would never have been bought.
Proper sentence structure is for the mentally straight jacketed.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I think the real reason their sales have dropped is because more and more people are realizing that the "music" they sell is garbage. I'm surprised that people still buy any of it.
Luke-Jr
There were creativity slumps before there was piracy, and consumers just started buying the more creative artists eventually, forcing the record labels to adapt.
See Rock N Roll, New Wave, Grunge, etc.
Why doesn't the RIAA take some kind of action against them instead of suing random people in the US who only share (for free) a few songs!?!
Maybe because they are the Recording Industry of America not the RIWA (World). Their ability to get the Chinese govt to do anything is slim and none.
Hemos: (holds gun to RIAA exec)
CmdrTaco: (shoves release-contract for CowboyNeal in front of RIAA exec)
Either your brains or your signature, will be on this contract...
$cat
Pirate CDs sell more than original in Argentina. On every train station, on every main door of a college, there are informal booth offering prirated CDs. Sometimes is a table, and sometimes is just a fabric on the street with the CDs on. They have color photocopied cover. Official CDs costs around 10 USD, and illegal ones, between 1 and 2 USD. When most people earn 200 USD for month, there is no choice.
People who can't affort Internet access, buys this cheaper CDs. Almost nobody buys original CDs.
Another popular way of getting CDs, is asking them to your favorite software dealer. They send it on MP3 or wav, as you wish.
At least here, downloading music is not something RIAA should take care for. There are other issues more important for them (like the booth at every train station full of illegal CDs).
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Or.. they will come up with one good song, then release an album. I used to buy every album of any group that had a song which I "really liked." But after finding 1-2 songs max that were good/decent, I stopped buying entirely.
I download music that I don't own. If that makes me a music pirate, so be it. I've been doing it for a long time. That's not the point of this post.
I've found that my exposure to a diverse range of music has increased significantly due to the availablity of cheap (read: free) music. My friends have told me about bands that I'm sure that they wouldn't have heard about if not for file trading. I have been to concerts that I wouldn't have seen if not for file trading. I have bought band merchandice that I wouldn't have thought about buying before. I have heard music that has changed my life. I would not have had these experiences without file trading.
I give money back to bands or music acts that I really like. I still buy CDs, although very few of them and usually only to get high quality recordings instead of MP3s/oggs.
File trading has changed music in the way it is made and listened to, whether the RIAA likes it or not.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
And just to make up for my mistake, here is a parody that pretty sums up my last comment ... that the quality of today's music seems a bit canned to the passion of some of the FUNK we had just 20 short years ago.
... aside from crime syndicates popping Madonna CD's, I think the other crime affecting CD sales is pandering to the "American Idol" crowd.
The Onion Mothership Accidentally Descends On Hootie Concert
Point is
--- have you healed your church website?
Turn on the radio and you hear the same songs over and over and over again. So lets assume that I only buy music that I hear on the radio, which is probably the case for a large portion of consumers. I am now limited to a very small group of artists that get pushed by the media. Now factor in that I don't like most of them and now I'm left with one or two CDs that I would consider buying.
I remember in my childhood even hearing the big hits on the radio was a somewhat rare occurance. Now just turn on the radio and they will be playing it. Obviously the hits are taking over time from other bands that could mean more purchases by me. Not to mention that I don't need to buy the CD because it's on the radio all the time. I realize the RIAA's motives for trying to limit the number of big named bands, but I think it's starting to come back and bite them in the foot.
Here is a great article about how the labels rip off their artists. Scroll down to see a breakdown of where the money goes. It doesn't go to the bands. On the other hand, it also shows how much a CD costs to produce. Everyone thinks that a CD costs only a few cents to dupe forgetting that the real price of a CD includes all the production, promotion, lawyers, etc. The Problem With Music
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
yeesh
ridiculous
(For any other audiophiles out there who subscribe to Goldmine, you've probably already read their article on the state of the industry. For those who haven't, allow me to summarize.)
For as long as music has been for sale an interesting economic trend has emerged. As a new format is produced (sheet music, player pianos, records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, etc.) it's sales are small at first. As the format catches on, sales boom. People are buying music in the new format left and right (both new music and old music which they may or may not already own). As time goes on (typically takes 20 years) sales decline. The format is not "new and cool." People have purchased the majority of the back catalouge that they are interested in. Sales are limited mainly to newer releases (although back-catalouge sales still exist, just not in massive quantities).
Just about the time this happens, a new format for music distribution is released. This new format has classically featured improved quality and/or convience. After sheet music, the big thing was pre-recorded music. "That's right kids, you don't have to play it anymore! Just listen!" Later, records were replaced by cassettes "No more scratch and it's portable!!" Yay Walkman and Boombox!
Then CD's "No more switching sides and much better quality!" Horray for the Disc man, CD players, and computers.
But the CD format has been around for over 20 years now. People own the back catalouges that they want and will buy any new music that they want.
The music industry lacks a new format that can easily replace CDs. Although DVD-Audio offers much better quality and capacity, consumers have just finished replacing all of their records with CDs. They have installed CD players in their car. They have purchased home stereos, disc men, boom-boxs, and CD-Roms. The economy is down. Consumers won't shell out money to convert to another format now, espcially since the only thing that DVD audio has to offer is better quality and capacity. Many CDs right now don't fill to their capacity (how many of us have CDs that are only 30 or 40 mintues long?!) and many cd players have crappy speakers. In order to really get the quality of a DVD audio disc you need a *good* player, something which costs lots of $$$ and therefore won't sell like hot cakes.
Consumers are happy with CDs.
Although I believe that MP3s and priated CDs are stealing some sales from the record industry (lets face it, they have lost money from the college aged group), they are very few adults which are actually downloading music at a rate that would cause such a drastic deline in sales.
In fact, the Goldmine article pointed out that percentage wise, the decline in CD sales is no worse than the drop in sales that ALL formats before CD suffered on their decline.
The only way for the record industry to get the sales it wants is to get consumers to convert to a new format.
Or to release a bunch of *great* music. I'm talking a contemporary Beatles, the Who, Rolling Stones, Doors, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, Eretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, and hell, even another N'Sync or Brittney. (although these last two aren't music greats, they are niche markets which will produce a large number of sales)
It's an economics thing, not a piracy thing.
another reason why sales have been shitty is because the music sucks...u got boy band crap, fake britney spears, bands like slipknot and copy cat bands new found glory and linkin park, and freaky people like marlyn manson and eminem...
their music has no value...its all garbage...its either sex, drugs, more sex, more drugs, hate etc...
Album format is dead get over it!
Customers have spoken! They want single songs.. provide and your sales go up..don't and you die by customer hands..very simple Business 101..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
People are selling the same music that the RIAA sells, often for as low as $4 per CD, and are making a killing.
Doesn't this align quite well with what we've said all along? If the RIAA was willing to drop the price of legitimate media to $4 or $5 a copy, record stores might suddenly find themselves with a market again.
If I could go to a record store with $60 and take home ten titles, I'd find it worth my while. As it is, I'd be lucky to take home four albums for that price, and it's just not worth the effort.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
But didn't you hear?
Then there's the MS-EAR(tm)
To go along with your MS-EYES(tm)
It doesn't take a million year,
go down to your local computer store
and pick up the latest "Gatesian" Technology.
{that's MR. GATESIAN to you}
All your BASE are
mine^h^h crosoft.
I can see where downloading new titles could account for some not buying cd's. But how much of that goes on? I must admit I download very little music. If I did, it'd likely be older titles. Frankly, older songs should be made available at a discount in my opinion, but the music stores and RIAA doesn't do this. While I don't condone piracy or stealing or the like, it is interesting to sit back and watch the music industry get screwed the way they've hurt so many bands. I think the reality is that downloading is going to occur. What the RIAA is doing is trying to plug each hole as it occurs not realizing that there are just too many and that it's time for a new ship. People are tired of the current pricing structure. Now, what is RIAA going to do about it? If they keep this strategy of going after the millions of downloaders, they're just going to hurt their business in the long run. >
I was watching VH1's Top 200 Icons program, and they had some top of the food chain exec from Universal that flat out stated [paraphrasing] that "95% of all albums are failures"
Well now, isn't that a nice number. How can piracy or file sharing possibly make a dent into profits when 95% of all albums suck so bad no one wants to buy them?
I can't believe this is marked Insightful.
/. Hopefully some of the "insightfuls" show up when I metamoderate.
Just another example of the 5th grade rah rah bandwagon mentality that permeates
Here in the uk an album is 16 - 17 ($25) !
Rediculous! Now I just buy rare impossible to download records, or vinyl.
This is only true if you buy "Audio" CD-Rs. They're labelled differently, and are more expensive than non-"Audio" CD-Rs. "Audio" CD-Rs also have codes on them that allow them to be used by home stereo CD recorders. Data discs do not have that code.
I was listening to a song that told me to blow stuff up and fight the powers, and so, I quit buying music.
Sorry.
This is my sig.
I've bought maybe 2 CD in the last few years. Even that wasn't new music - I think the Stones and Floyd. Also, I don't use any sort of downloading service. Quite frankly, there isn't anything I want.
I think I'm the poster child for the "lack of content" angle. I have money. I'm sick of my old CDs. I'd like good, new CD's. But they keep throwing a bunch of shit at us, and what decent music they give us is mastered so shitty (see slashdot last friday) that it's unlistenable.
BTW, if anyone knows of any decent, modern bands in the spirit of great 60's and 70's rock, I'd be damn grateful. Major label or indie, I don't care.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
this article is nothing to do with the reasons for decreased sales in America: it's about piracy on an industrial scale, which is primarily a problem in developing nations.
Was wondering how many /.'ers listen to vinyl, and how has this affected their music purchases.
I have been the pround owner of a VPI Aires Scout for almost a year now.
Although I listen to alot of classical, I found that my wallet took a beating when I went shopping for classical CD's. Little did I know that the same music is available on vinyl, and it's availalble for as little as a dollar.
I recently picked up 3 mint classical records at the New York City Opera thrift shop for a buck a peice. One of these titles on CD still command close to fifteen dollars (on sale, 16.99 regular price)at the local Tower Records.
I also find my vinyl listening session are less iritating on my ears and last longer.
I think you missed my point. I'm not agreeing with their excuses, just listing them to save everyone else the trouble.
I won't deny that p2p networks have an effect on record sales... But i sometimes wonder how much of an effect.
There's been a few times where i've gotten hold of a couple of mp3s from an obscure band that that i totally dug. And i went out to buy the CD.
Another case in point- I've got a pile of CDs that are many years old, plus tapes and vinyl that are even older. Most of this older stuff i would buy on CD, but they've been out of print for years and years.
Call me guitly, but i just spent the weekend ripping songs and copying CDs for my dad. 6 albums in total. If i could go to a store and buy him the retail version i would, but they're simply not available.
Another case in point-
Some years ago i licensed a few of *my* tunes to be used as commercial spots. I've never seen a dime. I've never heard these tunes on t.v. or radio either, but that's not the point- you pay to use them whether you do or not. I can't afford a lawyer right now to chase them. So i'm out $10K.
You'd think that the RIAA would be all over this, as it is thier job to protect the rights and property of musicians.
Nope. Sorry. "Your claim is insignificant compared to most. Go away."
Millions of people worldwide organized in protest against the war in Iraq didn't help any, sadly. I'm not saying I'm for or against the war, but the administration who carried out the war plans pretended as if a massive worldwide outcry didn't even exist. If they can ignore so many people and move forward with their agenda as if no one else's opinions or ideas mattered in the slightest, then who will the money-grubbing whores side with when it comes to the issue of copyright legislation and file-sharing? The rich RIAA corporations who line their pockets, or a few "music thieves" who crunch some CDs in the street?
It's odd... that kind of thing worked with the Boston Tea Party. Now it seems that there is simply too much money in the corporations, and too many people who are ignorant and apathetic that the RIAA companies can count on for their revenue. Are the people who do give a damn hopelessly outnumbered? Or are we just too disorganized to make a difference?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Um, yeah, so?
People see the Music biz as scum who steal the lifeblood from artists and who profit by exploiting those artists and performers.
There are at least three effects at work with piracy these days.
1. People can't afford to get everything they want, so they buy the minimum (hardware), and rationalize the theft of the rest (Windoze, music, games, apps, etc)
2. People really don't like big corps and think that taking from them is no big deal.
3. People want what they want when they want it and don't give a flying *!@# what anyone else thinks.
Personally, I do find myself in category number 1 with software, and whenever possible pay for stuff I like (gotta keep the developers in biz to get more). But I'm a lowly slimy scum who'll install windoze/office at home anyway.
Looking around with regards to music and games, I think most people I see are in category 3. That doesn't say much for America's long term social stability, but it does explain quite a bit about so many of us pretentious yankee bastards, doesn't it?
... its because the RIAA is SUEING "us" for sharing music.
During the Napster "craze" I was lucky enough to have DSL, and downloaded quite a bit of music... mostly (at least 90% of it) was stuff I owned on tape that I didnt want to buy on CD. Still, I would buy 5-6 new albums a week. Then I caught one of Lars' (of metallica "fame") interviews where he was slamming file traders, and then after that the RIAA (I assume it was them, I was more "joe public" back then {in high school} and just knew it was being shut down) went totally after napster, I stopped completely.
I've also urged my friends NOT to purchase CDs, and most of us dont. In fact, I've purchased 2 CDs in 3 years (Tom Petty's latest, and Avril Lavinge as a gift for my girlfriend).
I wont buy CDs until the RIAA cuts this bullshit. i WANT to buy CDs, its a pain in my arse to download an entire album only to find that 1/2 the songs cut out halfway through, or are poor sound quality... however, I'll be damned if MY money is going to fund their law machine.
Friends dont let friends buy CDs.
I do know that when I was in college (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away), I could buy three vinyl LP's for under $20 when they were on sale, and I'd do that on a pretty regular basis, probably every two weeks or so. These days, 20 CD's in a year is probably an overestimate.
CD's cost too much. They probably cost a bit more than the old vinyl, but should be cheaper to produce than cassettes. And why does the latest pop pap cost $19, or maybe $13 on sale, yet the record labels will push a disc out to BestBuy for $7 or $9 for a hot new artist? They must be able to make money on that, so why not all the time?
I buy a fair amount from BMG music club. Their shipping prices suck, but it's a good way to catch up on back catalog, when they've got "Buy one, get three free" or "Buy one, everything else for $1.99" sales.
I don't download music. I hate headphones, and my current car CD player won't play CDRs, nor will my DVD player attached to the home theater. Yeah, I could replace those, but I'm not in a hurry.
So where's the problem here? I'd buy more if I knew I was getting a decent disc. WXRT in Chicago used to be a bastion of new music, digging deep into the tracks on a disc. Now, they're barely above the level of a top-40 station, but to a different demographic. And they answer to Viacom. And they're advertising more.
At this rate, I'll be like my parents: listening to the same dozen artists for the rest of my life, because I can't stand to turn on the radio to find out if anything's better.
But there's cool new stuff out there, and I've been lucky to find it:
How do you find it? Stay away from the mega-stadiums, and visit a club, coffeehouse, small theater. Actually listen to the opening
act! They're often at higher energy than the headliners, because they've got more to gain.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Vinyl LPs were around $8 when cds came along. The record industry decided "why not charge $15.99 for cds?" even though cds quickly became much cheaper to produce than LPs.
Somehow they also were able to convince artists that even though they were now making twice as much cash, that the artists still deserved to make the same amount of money for each unit sold.
If they werent so greedy and sold cds for $6 a pop people would buy them over a cheap knock off even if its still a buck or two more expensive.
Bottom line: being ridiculously greedy is a privelege not a right. They're just upset they cant rip off the consumer like they used to be able to... boo hoo!
If I download a 100 CD's, does that mean I would have bought a 100 CD's? Hmmm, the RIAA lose estimates is flawed. Let alone that the economy sucks right now.
[corrected title] 95% of all albums are complete failures
Let's talk fact. What we're talking about is not piracy, is not theft, it's copyright infringement which has it's own set of laws and regulations. The RIAA/MPAA hope that by associating more negative words with the act of copyright infringement they'll disuade the general public from infringement - just like all those FBI warnings at the beginning of VHS tapes is supposed to disuade home users from copying the tapes.
The fact is that IP laws are difficult to enforce especially during a time when so many other things seem more important. Additionally the bigger problem for MPAA/RIAA is not home user swapping but the rampant copyright infringement of counterfitting happening in Asia and the third world nations. Those areas are the only areas these companies have to grow into and they can't because the black market is so much cheaper and more convenient for the consumer.
These corporations know exactly what the cause of their current financial problems are. Should they admit that the problem is just a cycle or due to their own inability to react consumers requests for services and the consumers changing taste in music? Yes. Will they? No.
They need to keep shareholders investing money. The way to do that is to show that sales are artificially slowed due to "piracy". If "piracy" were stopped their sales would be up - so just wait to sell that stock because they're on top of it.
The fact is that many consumers who are internet enabled are finding that there's a wider range of music available online than there is at Sam Goody. They're finding that Sam Goody has stopped selling the music they like to listen to and has turned into little more than a top 40 store. They've also found that some of the artists that they liked that Sam Goody et al still sell, have jumped to the pop ship and no longer have any edge.
Since being online my music tastes have shifted because I've been able to find music from Germany, France, Japan, Russia, etc. Plus I've been able to find more independent bands that fit my tastes instead of "Joe Radio Listener" (which is who Sam Goody typically stocks for).
The fact is that Sam Goody and all the little mall music stores chains are getting hit hard and it has less to do with copyright infringement than it does to do with changing times. Wal-mart can sell a CD for $13 and Sam Goody sells the same CD for $18.99. While Sam Goody et al are going out of business a lot of local independent record shops that don't cater to the top/pop 40 crowd are thriving. They're thriving because they have or can get what people really want and that generates loyalty and cash flow.
I know plenty of file swappers. I know those that buy no music, but then they didn't before file swapping. I know those, like my friend Laurie, who downloads gigs of music a week, but also spends about $60 a month on new CD's (not CDR's). I don't think it's accurate to say that EVERY file swapper is infringing, nor is it accurate to say (and studies have proven this) that file swappers purchasing decreases.
Mostly people are buying at Wal-mart or wherever happens to be convenient to shop and not making special trips to the mall for what they can get at any store close to home. It used to be that you could get something different at a music specialty store like Sam Goody - that's no longer true.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
This article nicely sums up some of the major reasons that file sharing is not destroying music sales.
For the most part, I download albums that I have owned in the past. In many cases I've owned multiple copies of a CD and am simply not going to pay for another one. Once I started making a decent amount of money this year, I found myself buying more Cds than I ever had before.
Plus, it's not as though downloading an entire album only takes a few minutes. Depending on how obscure the artist or group is, I have found myself searching for a few hours or even several days to nail down every single track on an album. Then you have to listen to every song to make sure it hasn't been cut off and doesn't have any malformed data which causes the song to make a skipping sound. Then depending on the burning software that I use, some of the files will have to be converted to a different format. This does not always work, and so I have to go searching for another copy of the same song and hope that the file format is acceptable
Sometimes it's not worth my time to try to get an entire album from a p2p program and I just go out and buy the damn thing, and the issues raised in the article seem to point to some very real sources of revenue loss for the music industry, which is something that seems to be missing from their crusade against file sharers.
In the article it mentions that 1) some of the piracy is coming from major labels copying their rivals CDs (with 2 major RIAA companies having been fined twice), 2) the RIAA is producing 25% fewer CDs than it did even 10 years ago ,and 3) most of the money lost by the music industry is being drained by organized crime syndicates, not P-2-P swappers.
Of course the RIAA is afraid and targeting domestic file-swapping. Congressional lobbying/bribing allows them to use their muscle most effectively on their home turf (US Soil). Domestic file-swapping is also a source of revenue drain, just not the primary one. Yet they are afraid because their revenues are down despite having produced fewer units to sell. Their prices are inflated to the point that file-swappers often feel that they are pseudo-Robin Hoods that steal from the rich RIAA and give to themselves and others. The few bad apples who flagrantly do this in violation of copyrights on a large scale "justify" the RIAA "anti-piracy" efforts in the mass media, which the RIAA subunits often hold stock in as well. They have the money and moxie to make the rest of us pay their over-inflated prices while morally justifying it to those people who do not know better.
Meanwhile the international criminals are difficult to track and catch. Thailand may be bulldozing the copies it finds, but I find that the more extreme the public demonstration of enforcing law, the less often it is actually enforced. Thailand, China, and other areas of Southeast and East Asia are the HQ of large-scale piracy. Anyone with friends who visit Hong Kong, Beijing, or Taiwan regularly is likely to have been offered pirate DVDs or CDs of recent movies or music. Even the soundtrack for recent movies are available...often before they leave the theater. Enforcement of copyright in those countries is more difficult, especially since the WTO is reluctant to enforce rules so stringently against the truly huge economies.
Copyright may be an outdated notion according to some, but the RIAA has the money and Congressmen that it deserves watching if only on a civil liberties basis. The DMCA is only one example of how creatvity is stifled for the benefit of copyright holders. Any future moves by the RIAA could be as stringent or worse. I'm not suggesting we appease the dragon that is the RIAA, but instead we keep vigilant watch on where they are actually losing money as this article does. Thus when the RIAA proposes legislation like the DMCA hard evidence can be used to discourage legislators from enacting such laws.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
According to record industry officials, sharing isn't just bad, it's terrorism.
Up until the August break, the RIAA and MPAA were lobbying Congress to bridge the DMCA and Patriot Act, giving the government to send song-swappers to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite periods of time without the aid of legal representation.
Attorney General John Ashcroft was reportedly shocked to learn of "illicit book-sharing parlors" located in nearly every city and town in the United States, many of them government sponsored. He has vowed to use the DMCA to shut them down.
According to the RIAA's own figures, over the last two years the US music industry has produced 25% fewer CDs.
Of course, the fact that thousands of tech people are out of jobs still and the market is in the dump has nothing to do with it. Right. Look at the most of the tech industry and it is a dire picture. Why wouldn't this hit the recording industry? A a lot of us who are directly affected by the slump in the market buy music. I have a lot less money to spend on music today compared to a couple of years ago.
Low consumer demand hits Sony profit
Tougher time for techies
These days RIAA is all about miss-information to serve their own purpose. Nothing else.
Akvo.org - the open source for water and sanitation
Well maybe if the CD didn't cost $18+ I might be willing to actually buy it, but when music that was release 15 years ago is selling for 17.99 on a disc I could have bought back then for $14.99. Most music to me isn't worth $18+ I have no problem at $12 to pick up a disc. Even if it's for 2 songs, but that additional $6 makes a huge difference in my decision making.
If it's a lack of availability of different types of music, why they fuck are all the top forty artists the ones being downloaded on P2P apps?
People say this all the time, "I hate the music the RIAA is making now, artists these days suck, the songs suck, I hate buying CD's with 1 or 2 good songs and 12 tracks of filler crap", while happily downloading every Top40 hit from a P2P App. Which is it? Does the music suck, or do they just want it for free? Because if it REALLY sucked, I imagine they wouldn't be downloading the same artists they keep saying suck.
For older music all those costs have been amortized many times over.
Unwittingly, you just made the argument that Beatles CDs should cost far less than the latest Phish album (since those costs have already been paid for)
and exactly what kind of message would you be sending? How you are dumb enough to litter the ground, block traffic, yet not have any meaningful point? go back to school, hippie, and leave the real world for those of us who think.
...you start using paragraphs?
I think that the RIAA got used to the (illegally) obscene margins on CDs and tought that people would buy the same old crap at the same rate FOREVER.
Now they're hurting because:
1)They've been dragged into anti-trust courts and lost, (the prices for CDs aren't going to rise for a while,)
2)Everybody's tossed out their old turntable and albums a long time ago and have replaced what LPs they though were worth replacing and that source of funds has dried up FOREVER (CDs last a lot longer than LPs.)
3)Recycling may be good for the environment and for lounge/live acts but its lethal for record sales. Most people don't want to shell out more money for yet another cover of the same old song (most people can't tell one version from another after a couple of beers,) and they don't.
4)The RIAA is not capable of creating content, they can only try to make money from it. The more they meddle in the processs, the more it sound like music created by and for accountants. Its really hard to make a move on somebody accompanied by the sound of ringing cash registers.
5)They got used to the marging and never planned for when they would end and the river would run slowly and sluggishly.
Now they're attacking their only reason for living, their only source of funds, the people who 'd buy CDs if they didn't feel so ripped off and insulted at some of the shlock that's pushed at them.
I predict accelerating death for the xxAAs.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
why are people downloading it?
If the music sucks that bad, why do people download it. If they go to the trouble to download the tracks, they must have some value to the downloader.
The RIAA has repeatedly stated that making mp3 files from music CDs you already own is perfectly legal. It's the people who don't own the CDs that the RIAA is going after.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have not bought a music CD for a long time. I have a linux box (RH9, much better latency than RH8)continuously recording an analog stream (sox | lame > file) from the music channels of one of my DirecTV receivers. It gets chopped off every hour and on the hour and a new file gets started. These files are burned to cd/rw (mkisofs; cdrecord) and this is the music I listen to on my portable mp3 player. If there is a favorite I will pick it off from a file and create a smaller file for it. I can do the same for radio(FM) broadcasts or MTV. Fidelity is not much of an issue for me at 128Kbs.
Last I checked, totally legal RETAIL sites for downloading music have been springing up all over the place.
Also more downloading of indie work (ie MP3.com) has probably affected the sales of the big boys. I know a lot of the music I like is harder to find retail than on MP3.com. Further, a lot of people with CD burners are now also making copies for themselves so they don't scratch up the original and have to repurchase--something that didn't happen in 1999 since most people didn't have burners, especially fast ones.
All these are just small chunks but they add up.
Much like I stated with the laptop/desktop report... statisticians can report whatever you want people to see.
Someone needs to do a report on the revenue making it to the artist themselves (from recordings) excluding all concert revenue and memorabelia items and I bet you'll still find an increase.
-- Enigma
The radio stations are sooo damn crappy now that I can barely leave one tuned in for a couple of minutes. Advertisements are not the problem. If they would simply advertise products and then get back to the music, that would be acceptible. Now, there is so much "How great a radio station we are, we are so great we dont even need to be playing music now". Play the music, play some ads, play more music and shut the hell up people! Sound samples, fart jokes, and useless DJs that dont even tell you what they played are a great reason why people don't buy a song they want on their way home. BECAUSE THEY NEVER GET TO HEAR THE FREAKING SONG!
You obviously missed the point of my post. I don't agree with these arguments (because they are absurd), I'm just listing them.
With prices being slashed to just under $26 (CDN) for a one-disc album (Apocalyptica - Revolutions at HMV in the west edmonton mall) as a desperate attempt to bring back consumers, the RIAA has all but consumed its options in the war against piracy.
This is Bucky McIdontknowshit, signing off
1+1=3 for sufficiently large values of 1.
Everybody else saw a drop in sales in 2001 and 2002 but apparently the RIAA seems to think they are immune to a sagging economy with high unemployment.
Perhaps the decline in music purchases has something to do with other competition for discretionary spending. Although there have always been other entertainment options, many of the music purchasers may now be spending their leisure dollars on video games, software, movies, downloadable tunes for their cell phones or even hardware to play them on. The record industry has to realize that consumers have a fixed amount to spend on entertainment and needs to compete for those dollars. In the past, music buyers didn't have as many other options for their entertainment spending. I suspect if you looked at the total spending on entertainment it has gone up, but music is just taking a smaller share of the that spending.
Me personally, I got a copy of the new Foo Fighters CD from a friend, and listened to it for a while, and then gave it back and went to a concert.
After hearing various news specials about where the "Money spent on a CD goes" why on earth would anyone buy one?
If I know that the store gets 40% and the labels 30% and then the artist gets 5%, why am I going to reward the companies for the artist's talent? I'd rather go to a concert, where the artists can see my visual support, and get a larger piece of my money that I intend for them to recieve for some great music.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
It is your patriotic duty to download songs as much as possible and put these crime bosses out of business.
label CD? When I first posted that I was boycotting the RIAA because of their anti-consumer actions, I meant it. I am not pirating it, I am simply not purchasing it until they grow up and realize they can't sue 60% of the US.
List to radio on line. Commercials pay for thw I hear. Downloading music SHOULD be the same thing.
It is just going to take time for the industry to figure it out. I agree that the way groups will make money is by putting on concerts.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
After reading a bunch of these comments, am I the only Slashdotter that still buys CDs? I download an MP3 of a song I like, and a few more from that artist. If I like the songs, I buy the CD.
:)
I would never pay for MP3s because the quality isn't as good as a CD, plus I feel like I should get something tangible if I pay for it.
Also the "I don't buy CDs because nothing original has been released in the past 5 years" response is a cop-out. Newsflash: Britney Spears isn't the ONLY person who has released a CD in the past 5 years... look around there are a few gems out there, you just have to look places other than MTV.
And if you REALLY don't want to support the RIAA, just buy all your CDs from CD Baby. They may not have the artist you're looking for, but they probably have an artist who sounds a lot like em.
According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.
The IFPI's Commercial Music Piracy 2003 report, produced in early July, reveals pirate CD sales rose 14% in 2002 and exceeded one billion units for the first time.
so that means (using RIAA's simplistic logic) that file sharing has, in fact, increased legitimate CD sales by 3.2%.
I think you missed my point. I'm not criticising you, I'm responding to the arguments you listed :)
keep in mind this is the same industry that brought us the boom chick boom chick of disco in the 70s and all the albums sounded the same and sales steadily declined .who did they blame? cassette tape!
the industry need look no farther than firing their consultants and A&R depts.scrapping formulas and getting real lives.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
- Compilation CDs of Top 40 hits are best sellers even months after the songs have gone stale.
- Apple's music service looks like a winner.
- Music sharing is attractive enough to convince even "honest" people that piracy is justice.
Album-Oriented Rock is dead except to dinosaurs like me. Sure, they tried CD singles years ago, but they were not priced to sell.My brother has been in and out of menial jobs since leaving the Army earlier this year. A man with a degree and 4 years of military experience is working for $8 and change. And he's spending money on mondane things like car payments and insurace. Have you noticed how compitent the folks at Starbucks have been lately. The sales staff at the Bookstore has certainly aged and matured a bit. And I don't think they are paying that much better.
So until we can re-create the privilaged class of spoiled brats who have nothign better to blow their money on than videogames and CD's I think and discussion on loss of sales due to Y is premature.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Maybe ISPs should change the broadband rating system, instead of kilobits per second, how about stolen revenue per second - e.g. I got a 1.7 srps connection, means I can download $1.70 dollers worth of illegal songs per second?
Interesting article. I like how it pulls several threads together - and it makes me wonder something.
The RIAA's idea to clamp down on file sharing won't solve their problems. So, what are they going to do next? What are they going to do after the annoy even more people? They're not solving their problem.
To call their strategy short-sighted is to be unfair to short-sightedness. It appears they have literally no strategy.
So, what's next?
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I honestly didn't know about this site. I'm not surprised to see that they carry Thought Industry, (Kalamazoo's finest), and I don't mind that they don't carry the major label releases (some loss). Cheers!
(this is not a
Did they really call some proposed format "DVDA"?
/.?), "DVDA" is an acronym for, well, let's say a woman who just can't get enough.
For those non-pr0n fans out there (any on
Then there's Primus, who are just plain weird. They're a cross between rock, funk and stuff like Pink Floyd and the Police.
Zwan are pretty cool too. There's loads of psychadelia in there mixed with T-Rex and New Order. If you like them, try Smashing Pumpkins (now defunct and a bit more rocky).
Tori Amos is a good song writer.
Stick Men
The article has lots of numbers but they don't say the same thing.
In just three years, sales of pirate CDs have more than doubled.
The IFPI's Commercial Music Piracy 2003 report, produced in early July, reveals pirate CD sales rose 14% in 2002.
That means 100% more sales for pirate CDs in three years. Assuming these are the most recent numbers.. That would mean an average increase of 43% in 2000, 43% in 2001 and only 14% in 2002. Looks to me like pirate CD production is going way DOWN..
Point 2:
Counterfeiters have forced the price of a fake CD down to about $4, which only makes CDs in the music shops look even pricier.
Embarrassingly major record labels and distributors have been fined twice by the US Federal Trade Commission for price fixing their products.
These two statements are not related in any way. The first statement was refering to prices and bootlegging in other countries. The FCC did not fine them for price fixing in other countries. They were fined in the US because of deceptive practices. I would say they got away with it so long because of the lack of other distribution methods including bootleg copies.
Is this shitty reporting or blatent twisting of numbers?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
EMusic is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vivendi Universal. This puts a whole new slant on the affair...
(this is not a
That's what it boils down to in the end.
There now exists in the world technology to make exact copies of something in the digital domain. Anything that exists or can exist in this domain is rapidly going to lose its artificially imposed scarcity as the interconnected world reproduces it ad infinitum.
That goes for music, movies, programs, and any other concept that has its roots in 1s and 0s.
Laws in meatspace are not going to stem the tide. It's already in motion.
What the SMART companies, individuals etc will do is sit down and work out how they can make money from their craft with the reproductive value of their wares at zero. Value will have to come by other means.
For now the movie companies continue to offer value in their cinemas with giant screens and bum-numbing subwoofers. If they accept that they will make their revenue from the cinema and can live with the fact that later on the film will be released in the digital domain with little profit, they will continue to survive.
Those that don't, like the music industry, will wither and die because they are not willing to change the perceived value of their product.
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
Clearchannel has purchased many of the stations in my area. There is now nothing new being played on the radio. They are playing the same old formula junk... Sure, there may be new songs, but it's the same old artists.
So if I only have the same songs (that I already own) being played on the radio, Nothing resembling music on MTv, and not allowed to "Pirate" music over the net... How am I suppose to find new music? The answer is, I don't. That is why i only purchased 1 cd last year. With the price of CD's, There is no way I'm buying something without hearing it first.
--st
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
If anything, music piracy will only be the death of the big-5 studios and their machine. Music will go on, and likely get more popular and creative along the way.
The mass-produced pablum the industry puts out now is not produced for "quality", "talent" or "creativity". Most artists that are meal tickets to the big labels (Britney, Christina A., In-Sync, JLo, and so many others) don't write their own songs. They don't play an insturment, and they barely can sing. Most of the music backing them up are from samples of real music from the last 50 years. Their only real "talent" is to look good and shake their ass.
Look at it this way. Why hire studio musicians and real artists to sit in a studio with a real creative artist (who could be difficult) when you can hire a person whom you own, give them an image and songs, and then lay down tracks with a bunch of pre-stored samples?
The world won't end if the big-5 go down. There was a demand for music before them, and there will be one afterward. The only difference is that artists will be chosen by the listeners for their talent, not by music executives to maximize profits and shove their junk down your throats. Will artists make less? Probably for a time. Will they make more in the long run? Absolutely. Once the big-5 stop deducting stuff from their royalties, real artists will be rewarded, and the Brittney artists will (hopefully) scoured from our collective consciousness.
The way shared music was SUPPOSED to work was to provide unsigned artists with a platform for a wide-listening audience. Their tracks get shared, and if they are good enough, people will go to their site and buy their CD directly from them. The other thing shared networks were good at that the industry hacks STILL have not addressed is out of print tunes. You can't get George Harrison and Paul Simon's duet (performed once on SNL) of The Boxer on a disk. You can't even find half of Robert Johnson's blues collection unless you dig around for vinyl 78's. They don't want you to find this stuff because (heaven forbid) you might aquire a taste for something they can't make a profit from.
It's all relative man, but music has become less diverse instead of more. It's all homogenized now, and the industry isn't going to let you listen to stuff unless they can make a buck. I won't shed a tear if they go down. The only thing that will be lost are music executives with $5 mill a year jobs and executive jets they make off the backs of other people.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
What were these three CDs? Two were THE DOORS, and the other was the new Janes Addiction.
Typically in the past I HAVE downloaded MP3s to listen to tracks I wasn't familiar with to test an album out. And for 5 years, out of many MP3s, not a single album was worth buying, IMO ..
I've decided that the lastest Janes Addiction is pretty crappy and WISH I had downloaded this thing beforehand so I could have known if it was worth buying. So now i've wasted $13 that could have been spent on another Doors cd, or a feature packed DVD with multiple soundtracks, extras, and all sorts of kickass stuff.
The music industry is dying because the talent is lacking in a huge way. Everyone is churning out anything they can to make it through life instead of actually just making music for musics sake.
Hi - I just want to drop my 2 cents about this. Artists are making MUCH more out money out of their shows than from the income their albums provide. Per CD, an artist (a famous one) receives between 1 and 2$ per copy MAXIMUM. However, they receive a lot more for the shows they do and that people STILL GO even if they didn't pay for the song. Of course, I'm talking about popular artists (e.g. RIAA backed artists)... it may be different for local artists, punk bands and others non-commercial artists.
Just searched for this topic on goggle, I've found this link where an artist talks about this precise view of the subject. Interesting.
The casual person walking on the street doesn't care about it, and if they send an officer into the area looking for piracy, that in and of itself has been determined to be 'racial profiling'.
It's a similar problem with latino DUI. Even if the cops might _know_ that a bunch of latinos will be driving drunk, if they cruise outside a latino neighborhood and ticket those driving drunk it's still thrown out for 'racial profiling', even though latino DUI is an acknowledged problem.
The real problem is that it isn't 'racial profiling', they are not being pulled over because they are latino, they are being pulled over because they are driving under the influence. It just happens to be that many people drive under the influence going in and out of these particular neighborhoods, and those people happen to be latino.
Sometimes when I read this crap I think people are stupid.
Nobody ever mentions that while CD sales are staggering, DVD sales have been increasing. The money for entertainment did not dry up... it went other places. The CD is an outdated medium just like the cassette and the 8-track.
The kind of people who pirate music and software are the kind of people who would never buy it in the first place. Why? Duh.
Because they are too poor and the products are too expensive for them. Not because they hate record execs or software execs (although they should because they are dumb).
Exactly, and if you think of the alternative pricing schemes that the RIAA wants to black and white the issue into (I download the song for free = not even 44 cents of revenue) then the whol issue becomes pretty clear. If the music industries entire catalog of music was at even 50 cents a song then even small business webcast would probably look viable again. If CDs cost 5 dollars then I might buy an album every once in a while instead of my current standing of having not bought a non-used CD since 1996. I don't think I've even been in a music chain store for a few years, they don't have anything in there that I think I'd find interesting and thanks to all the nice representation from the RIAA the concept makes me a little ill. In any case I probably won't be buying a cd at any cost anytime soon, if I can do my little bit to bankrupt the folks who bought my public domain away then I feel I'm doing my part for democracy.
I stopped buying cd's regularly when they started charging 18-19 bucks each for them. What a rip off. They have no concept of Supply and Demand. Any other industry would lower prices to meet demand in hopes that by doing so it would spark sales. But not these idiots they just keep jacking the prices up to try to cover their record setting overhead.
It seems glaringly obvious to me: selling recorded music is no longer a viable business model without very draconian measures against the technology that makes virtually free copies available. This is being attempted via various laws and lawsuits, but I don't see this working in the long run.
Now, is this necessarily a bad thing? Well, as has been pointed out numerous times by a slew of people, the artists themselves make most of their money on live shows. Thus, the only big loser is the RIAA and the record labels. I'm sure few will shed tears for them.
I see two consequences of this:
1. The manufactured pop star is going away. This can only be a good thing from the point of view of the "true artists", as it eliminates competetion with a gross advantage in the marketplace due to the artificial distribution and subsequent promotion mechanism.
2. Less music will be made, but it should be of a higher caliber, or at the very least made by people with more of a passion for it. This actually returns music to its pre-recording technology origins, as the vast majority of musicians before ~1900 were amateurs or semi-pro. It will no longer be a job or career, rather a hobby.
My boss was saying the other day that he lets the kids use the broadband connection under the condition that they download whatever music he wants and burn it to CD for them, in order to "get my money's worth" (referring to the UKP 15-20 a month fee). I was pretty shocked that a person in a position of responsibility in an IT consultancy (a big one) would have that kind of attitude to the law. I know this is ammo for the enemy, but it's the truth. That's why I'm anonymizing it.
It's understandable since this site is in English, but most of the posters have exhibited a very US/UK-centric angle on this.
The article is absolutely right. Piracy (i.e. bootleg CD copies) are responsible for more of the industry's losses than all other reasons combined. We just don't see it here, except on the occasional big-city street corner. In the rest of the world, it's prevalent, and it's a very big world out there.
By the way, I agree that there's a lot of shit music out now, but historically that's usually been the case. It's not like there's been some huge shift toward crap lately. For every Elvis Presley there have always been a thousand corporate-sponsored Mitch Millers. For every Beatles, a thousand Archies. Actually the Archies had a couple of good songs, but I digress..
Also, regarding the organized crime angle, the US music industry has always been tied in with US organized crime (this is not a conspiracy theory--check it out). So in a way, this is an international gang war...just shows you how far our Mob has fallen in power that they aren't even willing to take on the new kids on the block (no pun intended). I guess it's not as easy to buy off the authorities in China, Thailand, etc etc.
Finally, artists make the vast majority of their incomes from touring, not CD sales. It takes a couple of VERY successful albums just to pay of all the money "loaned" by the record companies for things like "breakage" (when's the last time a CD broke in shipping?).
As far as (business-minded) artists are concerned, CD's are not just their art, but promotion for their shows. So piracy/downloading doesn't concern most of the savvy ones. They make it work FOR them.
I can't remember Metallica ever being called "savvy".
Anyone else tired of talking about this subject?
I really, really tire of complaining about the music industry, and the music industry complaining right back. Personally, for all of the lies, insane justifications, and pure virtriolic hate coming from both sides, I could personally care less anymore if I turn on a radio, or listen to a CD and all I get is static. Never before has so many billions and so many lawsuits come out of such a useless part of our society. People, it is just organized sounds.
Headphones with user end licenses. Internet computers not being allowed to communicate with each other. Capitol hill attorneys. Rock stars that are now internet experts. Music snobs. Federal laws. Soundtracks that cost more than the DVD. Nine thousand lawsuits a day.
The music is crap. The said justifications for overpricing said music is crap. The stealing of music is crap. Consequently, justifying stealing music is crap. It's all crap that is not worth our time.
I think I'm going to go outside to hear the birds chirping with a little highway noise arpeggio in the background. Unless I am not allowed to anymore. I am not listening to any more CDs than what I have. I am not downloading a thing ever again. I am not listening to the radio anymore.
I choose to not participate anymore in any of this. If it bankrupts a company or two, if some kids go to jail over some tunes, so be it. But no one is getting my money, support, or time on this crap ever again.
First of all yes I do d/l music but to my ears all the formats out there with the exception of the lossless ones sound like sh*t. I personally can't understand how people can stomach that crap for general listening. They are good enough for previewing song content, and maybe for your car or while jogging when you really have alot of background noise so it doesn't matter all that much about quality. I am now actively buying DVD-A and SACD versions of music that are so vastly superior to MP3 and CD in sonic quality that I cannot really justify purchasing a regular CD.
So what is the point of this? I listen to music on a pretty high end system and choose not to listen to it on any other type of system. The problem today is most people DO NOT sit down and listen to music on a dedicated system. Almost everyone seems to be listening to music on crappy computer speakers, headphones, or car stereo systems. All of these venues generally hide all the defects present in compressed music, so to most people it is good enough. I have done nonscientific tests with friends who always say the same thing, they can hear the difference when played on my system but it doesn't matter cause they only listen to music when a) in my car b)traveling in the subway/airplane or c) exercising. That is the saddest thing I have heard. Music is no longer listened too like it was before. It has become a background noise filter for people and because of this most people will find compressed music and also poorly mastered music acceptable.
If you look at the trend in music generally all music has gotten louder. The reason I believe this is the case is because of the noise filter quality music has become. Forget dynamic range just ramp up the volume and normalize it there so people can drown out the cell phone talkers and other street noises around them.
So what happens when people get home? They don't sit down and relax listening to music they either watch a DVD movie or TV. Again reinforcing the current market trend of movies out selling music. Others I am sure hop onto the net and web surf, or d/l music for tomorrows noise filter.
The bottom line is the music industry MUST begin to offer a compressed music venue for the general masses. If they do not they will go under. As much as I hate compressed music I have to say that it is possible that in a few years that will be the only source of music that is reasonably priced. CDs and the newer High res formats like SACD and DVD-A will probably still be around albeit extremely expensive like vinyl is now.
it's complete bull to say that tape to tape piracy is comparable to online digital piracy - tape to tape meant you were with the person you were giving it to, listening to it with them, talking about the artist. That's called effective word of mouth advertising. That's not what the Internet is today, at all.
people rip off full albums from artists that are barely scraping by, indiscriminately. Young people who have been raised on nothing but this have absolutely no moral compass on the issue. and it *is* an issue that requires some moral compass.
The govenment is only able to mandate what is punishable by itself, and what is not. It does not, and should never try, to dictate morals. While I realize that a lot of people base their sense of wrong and right on what is illegal and legal, there is no reason to expect that anyone else will. Remeber, morals are like religion, everyone has, and is entitled to their own views. The place of law is to step in when those views create an unresolvable conflict. Basically, you're more than welcome to view things, as right and wrong, from the perspective of the current law, but please don't try and force such beliefs on the rest of us.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I found this interesting experiment concerning shareware registration/payment and I think it has some bearing on discussions about music copying, file trading and sharing.
The same experiment is also related here.
What it shows is that people were 5 times more likely to pay for the shareware when they were made to pay versus relying on the honor system. So when the shareware was "free", only 1/5th of the time was the author paid for his work.
The extension of this result into the discussion of music sharing I think is obvious.
I don't usually make comments like this, but I have to say that this article is little more than a rehashing of stuff we've known for quite a long time now. In fact, Zeimann's now-famous analysis was published in December of 2002! And the author of this article is certainly not the first to assert that the RIAA needs to deal with the changing environment instead of resisting it.
Here's a really strange tangent maybe.
The vinyl to CD conversion was fueled by lovers of music that was originally on vinyl, correct. These people are usually over 30. And therefore have already built important and long lasting connections to the music they grew up with. So if you really love the music of the 60's I can completely understand that you find today's bands devoid of anything interesting. Because the cultural and social makeup as well as the musical landscape itself is a vastly different thing then it was back 40 years ago, when the bands you love were creating their music.
Furthermore, 'baby boomers' are the largest age demographic, and also have the largest disposable income, outside of teens (who are easily distracted with cellphone ringtones, videogames and other cash pits) So if this large body of people stops buying music due to a lack of interest in many bands as a whole. Then of course there will be a sales drop.
This combined with the large amount of garbage music being created inside the pop and hip-hop scenes, it's easy to understand why there could be a decline in sales. The older markets can't identify with the current music, and a portion of the younger generation can't tolerate the landslide of shit coming from the labels.
But then again I could be crazy
But sound quality. Despite all the limitations of old CD players and sound problems from thigns like jitter, with the kind of equipment most consumers had a CD was a huge sound improvement. LPs could sound a whole lot better, but it required the pruchase of expensive equipment where a cheap (relitavly speaking) CD player did a much better job than a cheap record or tape player.
Now, SACD is quite superior to CD in terms of sound quality... But it takes a superior system to bring that out. You are just not going to notice a huge difference on your average cheap home system. It takes something with better capabilities to expose the increase in detail an SACD offers. Couple that with the trend to limit the shit out of all new music and it just doesn't matter to Joe average.
The jump to digital provided a big noticable improvement to the average consumer in that music didn't hiss and pop any more, didn't wear out through playing it and also tended to sound a lot better at the consumer price point. Just not the case with the new high definition audio formats. They are just digital, like CDs, and all their increase in resolution requires a higher resolution playback system to appreciate.
Analysis of the Issue
Regardless of the "fault" of piracy, here's an interesting thing I have noticed with most industries where something can be pirated - music, software, literature, movies, and the like. They always claim that "piracy cost us N dollars". Now, how can this be the case? Generally, when you think of "cost", you think of a sum that someone must pay. For instance, when the automotive industry says "warranties cost us $2 billion" it makes sense, because they must spend $2 billion of their own cash to cover the warranties. That means they have to take $2 billion they already have and spend it on something.
Compare and contrast with "lost sales due to pirating". The music / software industry does not have to give any of the money they already have because of piracy. They still sell some number of product, and obtain revenue from those things they do sell. The question then becomes, if there was no piracy, would they sell more items and thus increase their revenue?
Any person with a good business brain should see that piracy is not a cost in the strictest sense. It is simply untapped potential, or evidence of a poorly priced product. It is simply supply and demand. The public is willing to purchase a number of items at the set (by cartel or whatever your opinion my be on that one) price. There is demand for more product, but not at the going price, so the public finds an alternative. Because there is an alternative, at a much lower cost (the cost is not dollars but risk associated with ownership of unlicensed product), some people choose the alternative.
A New Business Model
A good solution, if the content industries were real business-savvy, would be to find the price at which they would sell the volume they want to sell. If they cannot make ends meet at the revenues they are currently getting, they should implement some other form of cost-cutting or whatever. And in the content industries, cost of distribution is almost zero - CDs cost pennies each, and packaging, printing, and shipping are also insignificant. (Proof - go to NASDAQ and look up M$s financials - note their revenue of $28 billion and cost of revenue is only $5 billion - gross return of 460%. (Constrast with Ford - revenue $165 B, cost = $125 B; gross return 32%) )
This means that their business structure is not right - they have too much overhead, or are too greedy. Their cost/pricing structure is not sufficient based on the demand for their product at the prices they want to sell. Sure, they will yap that if they sold as many CDs as people are downloading, at the price they want, they would get N more dollars. However, to sell that many more CDs, they'd have to drop the price and only then get M more dollars. But, if by dropping the price 5% increases volume by 10%, then they'd end up with more than they estimate.
Hypothetical Finances
Let's say for instance that CDs would retail for $10 each, say $5 wholesale. If you sell 100,000 copies, that's $500k. I'm guessing production costs are around $50k for tooling and such and $0.01 for each disc at that volume - or $1000. So cost of product is only $51 k. I don't know what labor is to make 100k CDs, but I'm guessing the machines can crank out 5000 / day for sure - that's only 20 days of production. At (auto) union costs of $50 / hour, say for 10 employees for those 20 days, labor would cost $80k. So now our total cost of producing those 100k CDs is $131k. That leaves $369k to split between the band (estimate 5 people) and label people (how many does it take to get a record going? Let's be conservative and say it takes 20 people).
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
7) Argument by dictionary.
:)
8) The band sucks live.
Oops! wrong thread.
"Most of today's music is crap."
What shoots this argument down for me is that if it's so bad, why is there a copy in your possession?
"The artist sees next to nothing on CD sales; the tour's where the money is made. "
It's a bit more than that. Planet Earth is rather big. Very big. How long do you think it would be for a band to tour the entire planet? What about every artist out there? The word, impractical comes to mind, for both band and audiance. There's a reason those shiny discs exist.
That's why all these "arguments" by "excuse makers" fail. They fail the reality check, that all ideas have to subject themselves to.
My favourite is "The Internet will save you." You'd think that the dot.drop would have taught us something. First a good portion of music's customer base don't have Internet access. Second a lot of it is still dialup. Third people want a physical item on their shelves, liner notes and all. Fourth despite all the band sites out there, no one has yet shown that they are successful, let alone viable enough that one can just live off them alone(1). Fifth offline advertising has shown to be more effective than anything online.
(1) Maybe this is the assumption that the OSS model, will fit across other fields of endevour. You know live in your parents basement, eat Ramen for months, and giving it all away will guarentee success.
The fact that fewer commercial CDs were produced and marketed is not necessarily inconsistent with the idea that piracy was the cause, or at least one of the causes, of decreased CD sales. It may be the case that for a marginal band the record company projection that "X" number of CD sales will be lost to piracy is enough to tip the decision from "Yes, we'll produce and promote the CD" to "No, we won't produce and promote the CD because we don't think we'll recoup our money." But for the projected amount of piracy and lost sales, the CD would have been produced and marketed.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The article states: According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.
I wonder if the RIAA has considered the fact that purchases of *all kinds* of goods have dropped in the past two years. A lot of people are out of work, and people are saving money more than they were a couple years ago. I don't doubt that piracy has some effect, but really, you can make statistics say anything!
Thier "older" stuff - the new album that you suggest pales in comparison. Specifically, Nothingface, AngelRat and The Outer Limits (with 3d glasses and art!!). Also in the heavy progressive vein, download the now free music from the now-defunct Laundry, which featured Herb from Primus on drums and vocals (Motivator, not Blackface): http://www.laundryroom.net
Last CD's I bought were when the Wherehouse Music near me closed. Because I could afford to be adventerous and investigate the limits of my eclectic tastes at 6 bucks a shot. But truly my money mostly goes into DVD's and movies. While CD prices have been rising for the most part, DVD's have been crashing. Suicide Kings for 6 bucks at Target, that is just F'd up. It's too good to be that cheap. I don't recall ever having said something similar about any CD. Hell even the triple DVD of Blackhawk down costs less than most double CD sets, and already has seen a considerable amount of replay. Other people being equally clever have no doubt noticed this entertainment value disparity. Because seriously, when it's 20 dollars for some crappy new top forty album which has one song which is worth listening to, with a shelf life of a year or 19 dollars for some new T2 special edition in a fancy metal case, seriously what kind of choice is that? Obvious. At least to me.
Maybe it's time for the monopoly to start looking at cost control. While they might own music distribution, they don't own all entertainment on disc, so their price fixing would tend to make the a little short term money, but drive people to other media over the longer term.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
...are you just stupid?
"Perhaps you could use the analogy of books. It costs about $0.60-1.20 to print an average paperback. Retail is $6-$12. So a basic markup of 900% on manufacturing cost. Cost of pressing a CD: less than $0.10 in bulk. Actaully, the insert costs more. Also, they're lighter and smaller than most books. So $3 sounds actually on the high side."
I take it you don't work in the book publishing industry? There's more than just cost to actually make the book involved.
"Why not burn CDs to order in shops. Print the insert with a high quality colour laser. Quality almost indistinguishable from a pressed disc package. Distribution cost slashed. Inventory cost zero. Why not?"
You must have missed the stories we have on Slashdot, about media longevity? Remember a CD is pressed not burned. I have CD's that go back to the 70's and they still work (baring scratches). Can you make the same claim about your "burn at the store" disks?
This is yet another example of the BBC news site telling stories like they are.. they don't demonise computer users and file sharers as 'filthy robbing pirates putting the hardworking people of the music industry out of work' but actually write informative and well researched stories.
Admittedly a few shaky ones slip through (like their blatant nVidia advert a few weeks ago) but overall I find them to be the Google equivilant of news.. fast, free, and very interesting.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
In fact, it's time to repeal the royalty payment on DAT tapes. Nobody puts music on them, but they're still widely used as backup media. It's worth pushing a bit on that just to make it clear to the RIAA that the "music tax" era is over.
When talking about this, always use the phrase "music tax". Especially when talking to Republican officeholders.
A simple, real world example is me. I don't download MP3s to fill my music collection, but I did used to download a few to check our new bands recomended by friends. Those usually led to me buying new CDs. I used to buy quite a few more CDs than I do now. To be honest, over the last 3 years: broadcast radio has gone into the toilet (no new music & lousy selection), CD prices have gone up (they were already expensive), money is much tighter than it used to be, and my life has changed; I'm now more likely to spend money on my house/cars/kids/etc. than the overpriced CDs I would have bought a few years ago. Another big FYI; my parents are also buying fewer vinyl albums and tapes than they did 20 years ago! My kids are buying fewer CDs than I did tapes at their age; but they're not downloading either. My oldest daughter actually listens to much of the stuff I do - stuff released 10 years ago. Her thoughts are the same; there is very little good new music hitting the stores.
What with the threat of being sued by the RIAA for sharing music, I was considering just switching to buying pirated CDs at my local market. I'm sure buying pirated CDs probably helps support evil mobsters, but... wait, sorry, "pirated" was redundant in that last sentence.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In most any bar in NYC during happy hour (and probably later - but I mostly get happy then go home) a recent Asian immigrant will come in with a bag or briefcase full of pirate CDs - mostly classic rock and current best sellers. Typically they'll easily sell about a half-dozen per bar at $10 each. Since bars in NYC tend to be in concentrations where a someone on foot can easily visit a dozen bars per hour, if the salesperson is making $5 per CD, that's real money.
From the ethnicity I assume the stuff is coming out of China. It's easy enough to stash some CDs in the containers coming into Chinatown, and hardly the thing Customs is most anxious about in Newark and NYC these days. Then again, if Customs is paying attention, it would be easy enough to set up a CD replication plant in the same digs as the garment sweatshops the Chinese are also running around the city.
Attributing this to "gangsters" seems a bit much though. I doubt the tongs are especially involved. This is more just the way Chinese culture does business - ducking the government as much as possible is considered common sense, not criminal. If we had their experience with government, we would too. (Or, if we were enterprising friends of Geo. Bush like Ken Lay, we would anyhow.)
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
How come I never got 3D glasses with The Outer Limits?
I'll check out Laundry. They sound cool!
Cheers.
Stick Men
Pirating + economic downturn + vinyl replacement finished = far less CD sales. Also mentioned were that teenagers are more interested in cell phones than music these days.
The RIAA and CD Industry has been fined twice for price fixing, and pirating is heavily undercutting the pricing schemes established by the CD industry. So overchaging to the point that pirated copies become massively popular is the implication.
No singles available on CD translates to file sharing with the current high pricing scheme as well.
What would be a good solution?
I remember when Dave Matthews stirred up people, by sending in anti-bootleg teams to bust record stores across the country. They were selling bootleg copies of his concerts, that were unavailable on commerical releases. Apparently demand for his product was higher than delivery. His response was to put people out of business for trying to meet the demand. His record sales dropped as the hard core fanatics got pissed and quit buying his stuff.
Bob Dylan's response. He went out and bought all the bootlegs. Then picked the best tracks and released a 3-cd set of "Bob Dylan: Best of the Bootlegs", thus meeting the demand for more music. He undercut the bootleggers, because his collection was of known quality and cheaper than buying a bunch of $30 bootlegs to find the good tracks.
The RIAA needs to get real and realize that it's current business model is failing. One, it needs to offer more reasonable pricing and cut out the excessive "advertising/promotion" budgets that are used to rip off the artists. Secondly it needs to offer downloads of mp3's at even more reasonable prices since no manufactoring is requited. This would handle the singles market. Then it can attack the bootleg market head on, because it offers a competitive affordable product in line with demand.
Attacking filesharers, is not the best approach. Here's the reasons I see: 1) It would take 2000 years to supoena every file sharer at current rate. 2) Filesharers tend to be youth who are fans of music. Attacking them is attacking your future market. Creating animosity with the primary consumer is not good business strategy. 3) A lot of filesharers probably wouldn't buy a copy if left with no other choice than buying it. In my youth, I was a pirate of computer games, I had no money to buy them--therefore I couldn't and I stole them. Had my only option been purchase at $35/title, I wouldn't have. If I could have bought them for $5/$10 a piece I probably would have. I'm not justifying my behavior, just explaining the business case that the RIAA seems to have missed.
A bunch of entrenched lazy bureacrats who can't keep up with change is half of the problem. The other half, is people without enough self control (encouraged by continuous marketing and consumer culture), who feel compelled to create large markets based on theft.
Supply/Demand economics slapping the RIAA upside the head is what's going really going on.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
In Sri Lanka all we get IS bootlegs. As of writing
Software - Rupees 80 per CD (no matter what the title is price is no of cd's in package * 80)
Music - Rs. 100 (this is with inserts and everything indistinguishable from the originals unless you read the spelling carefully
VCD Movies - Rs. 120
DVD's - Rs. 250
US$1 = SLRs 100 (more or less)
I don't buy much music because its all top 40 drek, i prefer to download what i can off kazaa, but i DO buy a goodly amount of DVD's. (miss having the inserts and all that though, but no doubt they'l start to add them in soon)
recently (last week) they enacted an IP law in SL (mainly so that we can get a favoured nation status with the US), but i see this having little to no effect on the bootleggers.
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
This is too perfect. Everytime you download music for free while making sure the artist receives no compensation, you are engaging is civil disobedience! You are doing it only in order to stand up for your principles! Yeah, that's right. Its not like you actually enjoy the music... and whatever else you buy with the money you otherwise would have spent on the music. No! You are sticking it to the Man! How noble of you!
Martin Luther King would be so proud.
And when you are served with the subpoena, and the lawsuit, and your computer is seized, we'll see your Gandhi-like willingness to pay the price.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I'm not sure that I agree that piracy is the reason for all of the music industry woes - I think creativity also has something to do with it, but those are still some huge numbers for pirated CDs.
Are you insane? I have been to Malaysia and every CD cost $1 and instead of audio CDs a lot of times, they throw in a hundred or so MP3s on a disk.
This sounds like me. I happened to be at a Virgin Megastore looking at CD's this weekend. Specifically, I was looking to replace a Simon and Garfunkle CD I had stolen a few years back. Now, maybe its just me, but I would think that a CD containing a collection of songs that was put out before I was born would be a bit cheaper than a CD by a current band, something about the whole supply and demand economics thingy. Well, I found the one I was looking for, flipped it over to look at the price and nearly keeled over from shock, they wanted $19 for the thing. The only thing that I could think was, "give me a break, that's outragous for this". Sure, I like some of their stuff, but I'll be damned if I'll pay $19 for it. I promptly put it back on the shelf (it took a bit of self control not to just chuck it over my sholder). Now, at this point, I decided just for the heck of it to thumb through the rest of the CD's on that shelf, and happened to find the exact same CD with a special $10 sticker. Seems the store was having a sale of some sort and everything that was stickered was on sale for $10. So, I grabbed that copy and took it to the front of the store and bought it, $10 was about what I was willing to pay for it.
Now, maybe its just me, but every time I go and look at CD's I am staggered by the price they are trying to charge for these things. Truth is, I don't listen to much new music, I don't like it, and I would have thought that CD's of older music would have come down a bit in price, the producers are no longer spending money promoting those bands, so why the high price? I know for a fact that the high price of CD's has lost the RIAA et al. about a dozen sales from me this year, and I don't think I am alone. Now I should say here that I don't download the songs either, I just make do without. If they are really that concerned about dropping sales, you would think they would consider lowing prices just a bit on the older stuff, it might just drive a few sales.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I've put off buying new CDs for the last six years, waiting for the high resolution formats to become available and cheap. There is no point in buying new discs if you're going to replace them right away. I will likely replace some existing CDs with high resolution versions of the same material if it isn't too expensive.
Still waiting...
"It is very obvious that the main source of piracy are these people overseas who even sell the music for money. Why doesn't the RIAA take some kind of action against them instead of suing random people in the US who only share (for free) a few songs!?! Also, they should admit that people downloading are not the main source of piracy."
Insightful indeed.
All enterprising businesses require customers. Be they illegal (music pirate, drug dealer), or legal (music store, pharmacy). Someone is buying those CD's. To say that the main source of piracy is the one's making money off it, is to ignore this simple bit of reality. While at the level of the customer, it may be a few? It does add up. Kind of like the side of the road, all junky with broken bottles, and other trash. A few at a time, made that mess. Adds up quickly don't it? Why should we be hypocrites and say it's a bad thing at one level because someone made money, why saying it's OK, because it's only a few, at another level who maybe didn't make any money(1)?
"Also, they should admit that people downloading are not the main source of piracy."
As I said above, there are customers for illegal CD's. It doesn't matter if it comes via phone line, or back street allyways. The customer will get his fix, no matter what.
(1) I should point out that even at the common man level. There's costs. Cost of connection. Cost of equipment, and supplies. Cost of time. Cost of legal action if caught. Even being a thief costs. Simply shows that there's free, and there's the illusion of free.
Since China wants to trade with the US, and recently joined the WTO, the US trade representatives have huge influence there, and at the behest of the RIAA, the BSA and others, have pressured the Chinese govt to crack down on piracy. Which they do periodically, closing stores and confiscating goods. However, as the CD/DVD factories have huge overcapacity, their friends in the local government protect them and they're only closed temporarily if at all, and the shops pop up again. So they do try, but not very hard, except when, for instance, the US president comes visiting, they'll do a sweep to get them off the streets. It's the nature of digital copying that gets cheaper and faster each year that makes it impossible to stop.
I quit buying music off the major labels because their pop fluff sucks. That is it. Market something worth listening to, and I will buy it. It is as simple as that. If you want my business, offer somthing that I would enjoy. Until then, I am going to continue buying music from my favorite artists, 95% of whom are independant. -Ian
Good luck. The RIAA doesn't like to address real concerns, they like to blame the ones they made up. Right now their favorite target is online trading, but this will change. I'm waiting for the day the RIAA takes a firm anti-abortion stance. That fetal tissue was potentially a future consumer! The thoughtless actions of another deprived a lifetime's worth of revenure from that cluster of stem cells. That makes the parents, doctor, nurses, clinics, Jane Roe and the supreme court justices that sat on the bench in 1973 all liable for the hundreds of albums the person-to-be might have otherwise purchased. Sue 'em all!
On my own little rant here, I have a big problem with the term "theft" when referring to file swapping. Theft means that someone has been deprived of something. In the case of file swapping, the label can only argue the loss of potential revenue. When I was shopping for a TV, I was looking at a Panasonic and a Toshiba. Both of these companies had the potential revenue from a TV sale. I was only buying one TV, and I decided to go with the Panasonic in the end. Should Toshiba get all pissy because I deprived them of potential revenue? The proper term the RIAA should be using is "anti-trust". For the record, I don't swap online - I tend to get most of my music from MP3.com and www.fatwreck.com (a great indie punk-rock label). And even then, I tend to buy the CD's of the stuff I really like. That's one great advantage of the type of music I listen to - there's a misc artist collection of punk called "Hopelessly Devoted To You" with MANY volumes. Each one has ~25 tracks, and costs about $5 (taxes in). There's lots of other examples, too. General rule for me: If it ain't worth the scratch to own legit, it ain't worth the drive space. There are a few exceptions, but the RIAA wouldn't be making any money off them anyway (either indie bands or stuff that has been off the market for too long to buy). And to think, I wouldn't have even known there was all this GOOD STUFF out there had it not been for Naptser. Hey, I WAS in high school when it came out, you gotta cut me some slack.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
It's odd... that kind of thing worked with the Boston Tea Party.
... at best it is simply the lessor of great evils.
...
No, the Boston Tea Party FAILED. Had it succeeded, parliament (or King George) would have reformed their tax legislation, the colonies would have been given some form of representation in London, and the American revolutionary war would never have been fought.
Because it failed, there was a revolt with widespread support, ultimately a revolution and a change in government (forced at the barrel of a gun).
Now it seems that there is simply too much money in the corporations, and too many people who are ignorant and apathetic that the RIAA companies can count on for their revenue. Are the people who do give a damn hopelessly outnumbered? Or are we just too disorganized to make a difference?
The people who give a damn are ALWAYS outnumbered. Whether it is revolutionary era America, France under Louis XVI, or Afghanistan (remember them?) under the Taliban or the pro-American governnment, the majority simply want to go along to get along and make a living.
The key is having a well organized and potent interest group who can work for effective, peaceful change and legislative reform or, if that is impossible (remember Russia?), capable of mounting an effective revolt. Which may be well what America requires before the government can return to the hands of the people.
The problem with revolts and revolutions is that they are very costly to a society and a culture. People die, lives are turned upside down, the economy and industry are generally devistated, and post-revolutionary stability can be a very elusive thing. So, as much as a revolution may become neccessary, it is never a happy or 'good' thing
Which, arguably, is quickly becoming the case
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
When I was out of IT work and took a retail sales job two years ago I was astounded at the number of people buying audio CD-Rs. I told them they didn't need them and that I used regular cheap data CD-Rs and they worked fine. They didn't believe me and paid several times more for the audio CD-Rs. Some believed they sounded better, and some just didn't believe that the data CDs would work.
A few did own recorders that required audio CD-Rs, but as far as I could tell they were in the minority of audio CD-R buyers.
IIRC, the labeling on the audio CD-Rs did imply they reproduced sound better. Heh.
"With nowhere to get these singles and no desire to buy an expensive CD album just for one song, it is no wonder many fans turn to file-sharing systems."
I wouldn't exactly label people who only like one song out of ten a fan. Fans tend lo like a higher percentage of songs on an album than your average listener.
I think the real reason for declining tape and CD sales is cell phones. It used to be that driving in the car, or walking from here to there, there wasn't much you could do but listen to music. Now you can talk to people on the cell phone instead. So, out with radios, CD players, and walkmans, and the tapes and CDs that go with them.
No, Britney Spears isn't the only one who has put out a CD but has the general quality of music gone "down"? I know it's pretty subjective but maybe this is a matter of percentages.
Personally, I realize that when I was younger I used to purchase more CDs. I wonder if there is a correlation with age and the purchasing of CDs. I think that if I were a teen and I had access to mp3s I probably would have not bought ANY CDs since the funds of the young is so limited.
That said, with age I realize that I'm a lot pickier when it comes to purchasing CDs. There are various reasons for this which include a refined taste in music, astronomical CD prices, few artist whose music I really enjoy. And, personally, ever since it's become more difficult to download mp3s I've noticed a decline in my CD purchasing. Like another person stated above, mp3s would allow me to sample a group's music and if I liked it I would purchase the CD because the quality just doens't compare.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
(I know that someone's going to mod this down as a flame or a troll but I don't care. People have to see that taking something without ever intending to pay for it isn't the way to reward the few artists that they enjoy.)
Not that other people haven't said it by now, and many more won't...but anyway.
There have been numerous people who've taken things without ever intending to pay for them over the years who've done me a great favor by doing so, and other people small favors. First there was the guy who gave my roomate a pirated copy of Apollo 18. My first exposure to _The_Greatest_Band_of_All_Time_, a pair of johns that have provided me with many hours of entertainment. Now, I own nearly ever album they've ever made, some are just hard to find retail, and Long Tall Weekend of course came out when I didn't have a broadband connection. But the same guy loaned the same roomate a bootleg of Bare Naked Ladie's, If I Had A Million Dollars. It was too funny so I bought Gordon based on the strength of that one bootleg song. And naturally all the other albums followed. Then there is the dorm neighbor who made me a copy of that Alpha Team song Go Speed Go. And I looked for that song on CD for two years before I found it retail. (I really should have just bought it on line. But I didn't know it was Alpha Team or the name of the song was Go Speed Go) I ended up buying the Saturday Morning Cartoon CD because it had "a" Speed Racer song on it, and now I also have a total of four versions of the Alpha Team Go Speed Go on two different compilation CD's.
All those copies were from people and to people none of whom had any initial intention of buying any more of the music. No one ever intended that someone eventually pay the artists for that music. And look what happened. It's pretty lucky for everyone but my wallet that there are so many people out there so willing to share the artists they enjoy with other interested parties.
Not every good done in the world is intended to be so, nor should it be.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Just because the top 40 sucks, doesn't mean there's not good music:
Rock:
PJ Harvey -- if you don't like her, you have bad taste
The Magnetic Fields -- not really "rock" but excellent
R.E.M -- still putting out good stuff
Sleater Kinney -- great music, good performers
Le Tigre -- maybe you should be more political?
Rose Polenzani -- more folksy, I recommend "Dragersville"
The Butchies -- "3" rawks!
Amy Ray -- totally rocks
Tragically Hip -- best Canadian rock ever...for you fogies
Electronic(a):
Bjork -- yeah
Boards of Canada -- insane
Tracy + The Plastics -- great LoFi
Lamb -- kinda like Portishead
Kruder and Dorphmeister
Hip Hop (not my strong genre):
The Roots
Jurassic 5
My college roommate always said he was smarter than anyone who used the word "irregardless".
There is a special fee you buy when you buy tapes and that extra money is redistributed to the labels (albeit not that fairly).
When you DOWNLOAD MUSIC YOU HAVE NOT PAID FOR AND HAVE NO LEGAL RIGHT TO OWN, both you and the person you downloaded from have violated a copyright. Specifically, distribution rights. That is illegal. The industry is trying to prosecute you for it.
Now, what *I* object to is that people who are LEGALLY sharing files are being treated just like the criminals out there. THAT is garbage, and what's worse, their tactic is basically to abuse the high cost of lawyers and mediocre income of your average defendant to coerce people into forking over a few grand to get the suits off their backs. Innocent people are getting fucked over.
But I have no sympathy for the other 99.999999999999999999999999995% of you who are knowingly and willingly breaking the law.
I used to think that this stuff made up by the recording companies is nothing but garbage. Now I am not this point of view anymore. Yes, in early days working up from pubs to record deal to charts was the way to go. That is not an absolute though.
The "manufactured" bands could be a stepping stone onto something biffer. They just get their name out in the market. It does not mean that once a "boy" or "girl" band always a "boy" or "girl" band. It is a foot in the door. Robbie Williams, George Micheals all had their beginnings in boy bands...
The overall problem though is that music industry is just feeling the pinch of 12-18 year olds lack of attention. Maybe 12-18 do not need to buy music anymore. I see it in my younger brother. His surround sound music system is wired to his TV and he is constantly listening to MTV or VIVA. Why does he really need to buy music? If he likes a song, he just whips out a mini-disc and records straight off his digital TV feed and gets a perfect copy. (This stuff is not rocket science and does not require overally expensive equipment. Just the right equipment) He would rather spend money of video games or something along those lines...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Why would you want to reward the artist? Name me five RIAA artists that retain the copy rights on the work they record. The rights owners are the labels, they deserve any compensation that's due. Please don't advocate stealing from labels.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
My FOOT out of your ASS.
:<Etner> site - just like slashdot - but for GAY PEOPLE like YOURSELF.
... and can do amazing things with you ASSHOLE!
Thats what I am doing - after I kick you there. Could you be any gayer - I mean this is slashdot - news for NERDS you fucking dumb ass!
Some one should create the
I'd call you a NO TALENT ASS CLOWN, but the fact remains that you must be really gay
PROPS TO 2K AND AXJ.
Laundry is supercool - also, check out www.bornnaked.net. Born Naked is another band that blows away the radio crap that clearchannel keeps spoonfeeding kids. Herb played guitar for them.
scariest band in the world
you probably shouldn't have read this.
I was recently on a trip to Mexico and while browsing the Mercados - not the tourist ones, the one's the people of Mexico use - I found stall after stall of vendors selling CDs and DVDs where the box art was a bad color or b/w copy of the original and the disc inside was either a CD-R or DVD-R with the label written in sharpie.
Rollin' in the Hay
Hollywood is nothing but a black hole for that which could do so much good for the human race.
"Now the CD replacement cycle has drawn to a close,"
Yep. That pretty well describes my CD buying pattern. I replaced the LPs that were broken, lost, flood damaged or scratched. I also wanted them on CD for convenience. Except that some were never released on CD. I got those via file-swapping. Later, I aquired the means to rip them myself. So, the RIAA thinks I'm a pirate. They are the ones with the eyepatch and the parrot on their shoulder. So, now I've replaced these albums. There ain't much new stuff I want. I know there are people who can play today but you'll probably never hear 'em. They don't fit the mold. That's why I think the music business died a little over 20 years ago. It's been kept alive largely by the replacement market but now that's played out.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
What's up with all the poor grammar in Slashdot stories? Puhleeze.
The MP3's are only traded after the band gets popular. In the majority of cases, the effect would range from minimal to non-existant.
In fact, I'd argue that because people are exposed to the music for free, there's a great chance someone will like it and buy it.
Imagine the effect if the RIAA put low quality (128kb) MP3's of new bands on the P2P network with a brief commercial at the end that says "Buy the new album from the band today at a record store near you".
If they did it today, it would be so novel, that the band would skyrocket to #1 and they'd make their money back times 100.
But I guess the corporate culture at these record companies doesn't reward risk taking.
Too bad.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Here's the best lobbying effort done in recent years. Basically, Interpol is linking terrorism with piracy of Intellectual Property. They note that it is needed much closer cooperation between police and IPR holders. And who are the IPR holders? here is their list. Yup, those guys have also bought off Interpol. Can only be impressed... :-(
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
You go boy! Rebel against the evil RIAA!
This isn't Nazi Germany yet. They haven't quite yet started rounding us up and sending us to the camps. But we can't just sit here and do nothing.
Crushing CDs with a steamroller is not a significant or sensible event by itself. No such theater is, by itself. It is the political symbolism behind it that matters. Why did the patriots dump the tea into Boston harbor? Was it because they hated tea? Was it really a good thing to do, on the face of it? It just made the harbor dirty, wasted a whole lot of tea, and probably caused a brief spike in the local price of tea, ironically hurting the average joe. So why did they do it? Because they wanted to send England a message: we object to your levying taxes without our having a say-so. Likewise crushing CDs or some other protest (whichever you all think would work) would not be about hatred of CDs, but sending a message to the RIAA and government that we object to their actions.
I agree with both of you that most people never take action. The topmost word and first reaction for most people is "Can't!" That is why every movement and social change in history has started with a few, just a handful of highly motivated individuals with a vision. That's why we don't need and don't have to expect that everyone out there will suddenly agree with us and work to change the laws. We just need to get our acts together and go to work. We understand the problem, and have some good ideas about how to solve it, so let's do it already.
We'll have to brave ten thousand NO's, the first couple thousand coming from the enlightened denizens of these very pages, but we only have to get to one yes.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Hmmmm lets see.. it's not from the BOYCOTTs now is it ?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I've had lots of cd's fail.
Cheap car cd players scratch them bad, lend them to a friend. but them with lable side down and they are totally ruined...
My girlfriend recently got mad when she couldn't find a CD... and then she pawed through all of her cds... a bunch of scratches occured to the cds..
I'm sure the RIAA smiles upon that. but I hope to hook her up with a 100 gig HD and rip all of her CD's in high quality...
But she doesn't want a computer attached to her stereo!!?!
But She'd accept straight rips of the CDs.
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
I agree, but for $15/month for unlimited downloads... you can listen to lots of jazz for that one low price and at the end, you own something that you can play forever (or move to a new medium).
I think its the best service out there, STILL.
Is this anywhere near as nobel as the most famous acts of disobedience recorded? Not in the least. But does that make it automatically something to be mocked?
to quote Thoreau:
The full text of Civil Disobedience is here. Maybe you or someone would like to read it. I don't feel that, just because the law seems relatively insignficant or benign, that it is to just be accepted as the definition of right and wrong. Of course, who's to say that I have the fortitude to go through with any of this, I never said I did. I'm just pointing out that there is plenty of justification, and that copyright protection, especially in its current form, is in no way some universal truth or undeniably just law.
Look at the experiments.
In the test case, they broke their own rules for success:
(A)the quality of their SmartDoc software is suspect (it "only took a couple of days to put together"),
(B)and it's not something people really want/need except a slight niche that very possibly will use it once or twice, and never again, for what it's used for.
Further, there are any number of things that skew the results:
#1 -- shareware that is crippled inevitably gets really bad reviews on shareware sites, while PoNC gets nice reviews, especially when the software is something people tend to want. As far as utilities go, the community has decided that they don't like crippleware. While this attracts more freeloaders, there are many one-shot users, and the reviews will steer those who intend to buy towards non-crippled software unless the crippleware is just completely brilliant.
#2 -- Prevalence of one-shot or "once in a blue moon" users abound. Crippling the features isn't a great way to get them to buy; offering EXTRA above and beyond the functionality, such as shareware games in episodes, was the best way to go about it. Offer a free download, and a pay-for-full download, and see what happens.
One of my big pet peeves is when people make "good old days" type statements. Doesn't matter what it is - music, the populations work ethic or the moral fiber of todays youth, some people only remember the good stuff of yesteryear while forgetting all the stuff that sucked at the same time.
"# Don't pay for the recording or mastering that was done for the music"
An insignificant cost for most bands. I mean, listen to the last Shania Twain record. There's $1M in production and arranging, but that's an exception. Most of this is in the low six figures.
"# Don't pay the artist whose music they're stealing"
Neither do the legitimate record companies for the majority of small acts.
"# Don't pay for the artwork on the cd"
Again, under six figures for most bands, and for thh majority, just over 5 figures.
"# Don't pay for promotion or advertising, since that's all done by the label"
Promotion today is all about prommoting big-name acts. Or do you mean the payola they pay Clearchannel?
"# Don't pay the lawyers to research the songs to ensure you're not stealing some stupid snippet of lyrics or a partial tune, as just happened with Flaming Lips and Cat Stevens"
Oh baloney. This isn't significant.
The cost you've totalled are under $250K TOPS, and less than half of that for most acts.
So each album has to cost 3 times the market price to pay for $125K worth of overhead?
Here's a tip.... price CD's according to the market for them. A new act costs $200K to get out there. So you charge $5 for the CD. The Stones get big money for their nursing-home sound. They charge $12.
That doesn't leave a lot of money for inflated record exec salaries, but as I've just pointed out, they are clue-fucks anyway, so investors are probably better off dumping their sorry asses.
Or is the real problem that they're afraid $5 would point out the flaw in the record company's pricing cartel?
Shouldn't we, as consumers, be mounting a class action against the RIAA and associated companies for fraud? Sounds like a serious case of misrepresentation to me, projecting lip syncing digital manipulation fodder as being serious musicians/singers/artists.
"I'm not sure that I agree that piracy is the reason for all of the music industry woes - I think creativity also has something to do with it,"
/. crowd before, but didn't expect it from an editor.
This statement is woefully ignorant. Rock, for the last 4 decdes has had it's share of good music and crap. If you complain about Britney Spears and Eminem today, consider KC and the Sunshine Band and the Bee Gee in the '70s, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, and New Kids on the block in the '80s, etc. To blame lost sales on lack of creativity that started abruptly in 2000 is laughable. I've seen this lame arguement from the
Vote for Pedro
Was wondering if you had any albums by Motoi Sakuraba, and if so, which recent ones are worth getting. I think the most recent one I have is either Valkyrie Profile (arranged) or Force of Light. I have Star Ocean 2 (not arranged), and didn't care for it nearly as much. I prefer the arranged albums - are there any recent ones? Finally, what site do you recommend to purchase them from?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
What I can't work out is why pirated pr0n videos now cost more (25) in London than the official ones (19.95)! Surely some mistake!
Well, how are they going to sustain their business model of paying radio stations millions to promote their new albums with the pirates are getting all the profits? If this continues, people will be forced to listen to music they actually like, rather than whatever the RIAA decides to force down their throats!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
physical CDA format CD-ROM distribution will die.
a CDR with 10x the number of songs on it is a much preferable medium to transport your music, don't you think? or the various solid state data formats? (CF,SD,Memory Stick,USB drives) or DVD-R even, when prices come down a bit.
the lack of shipped physical media is not a limitation of electronic distribution. quite the contrary, it's a HUGE benefit - as when new media are divised, you can carry your data over to them as well, and enjoy all the benefits, without having to rebuy your content. (as occurs every 'official' media cycle, vinyl->8track->cassette->cd)
and p2p and the death of CD distribution are two different pieces of the same pie.
p2p is demonstrating that electronic distribution is the way consumers wish to operate. p2p itself does not preclude the sale of quality music data online.
music as data, divorced from a particular physical CD is what's growing. with the proliferation of inexpensive online purchasing mechanisms, you will be able to pay for your 256kbps stream that you appreciate. probably for less than a buck. not being force-fed a great couple singles with a pile of filler.
and people will always use p2p as well - but the new players in the digital distribution market won't care, as quality and convenience will be on their side (no mislabeled tracks, bad tracks, poor quality tracks, hard to find tracks, etc).
as for p2p eating cd sales - no one can statistically -prove- that. as no-one is polling people who aren't buying CDs, asking why they aren't buying. similarly, no-one did a scientific study showing that DVD killed VHS killed BETA - but it's still accepted fact.
the only evidence anyone can provide - is common sense.
p2p is growing by leaps and bounds.
legal electronic distribution of music is growing by leaps and bounds.
all technology players are pushing to get mp3 functionality into their playing devices.
electronic distribution companies are springing up, backed by big players.
cd sales are declining.
the top 40 on radio (paid for by the RIAA) is -not- the same as the top 40 on iTunes.
the RIAA as a distribution player is dying. the CDA format as it's vehicle, is dying.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
It almost makes you want to listen to Marilyn Manson. Almost.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The RIAA would like consumers to believe that they must *pay* for their culture or risk being branded a pirate.
The analogy is not loosely formed. In the earlier days pirates on the high seas would extract high payments from through passage ships to use particular routes to achieve their destination.
What the RIAA has brilliantly achieved is inverted the analogy. Throwing the ogre of PIRATE upon the public and imposing a commercial guilt to protect its tolls over its route.
The waters remain just a medium over which the music traffics. RIAA is hard at work brainwashing all the idiots into believing that their two medium (vinyl & laser) applies to (bits). That would compare with Pirates claiming in Admiralty Court that their *passage fees* on the high seas (a common property) equally applies to the Panama Canal (private property).
RIAA are Pirates in the strictest sense. They are robbing the common people of their culture and holding hostage their families fortunes, equipment, reputations and the US Courts to intimidate.
Their CD sales may very well decline as more idiots realize that supporting a Pirate and his lobbyists never satisfies the Pirate.
I live in Taiwan, and just about EVERY km or 2 in any city there's a night market, most of which are sell cheap CD's, and VCD's. I can buy a CD for only about 1.5 USA dollars, or a movie for 3. ANYWHERE.
I'm a gnu world man.
The point is not that an unfair law should not be resisted, even if the law is a minor, trivial one. The point is that people don't use Kazaa out of protest, they do it out of greed. There is no high moral ground, they are not a "wise minority" as Thoreau would say, they are just greedy. Nobody calls looters is Oakland "protesters" -- they are looters. The people behind the Boston Tea Party didn't take all that tea home and drink it to protest the tax, they poured it into the harbor. The Boston Tea Party was civil disobedience, Kazaa users are just looters.
Maybe if they bought more expensive artists they'd get more creative songs.
Go back and re-read those definitions you just posted. Taking is removing! Copying is copying! If I take something from you, you don't have it anymore. If I copy something from you, you still have the orgional item.
Now take your lame-ass argument and get lost.
Maybe you should take your own advice. For absolute proof that you are a niave sucker who fell for RIAA propoganda, why are they suing students for copyright infringment instead of theft, a far more serious crime?
Are you and I the only /.ers who are against "intellectual property"? This place stinks of corporate conservatism.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Option 3 looks like it has the best potential for short term profit and a lingering continued existance.
Why not? It is exactly the same model empolyed in an entirely different business (unless you consider music to be software for your player) by SCO. Too many businesses consider suing more desirable than trying to compete more effectively. This tells me the so-called free market ideals are giving in to too many special interests that permit them this course of action.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In the real world, copying bits is hard to stop. Only in the "intellecutal property" fantasyland are bits hard to copy. And that is crumbling. Every pirated CD is a good thing. Reality...deal with it.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
You can argue that, but the record companies aren't under any obligation to take your advice. (They might also suspect that you have a conflict of interest.
You might be right, but I don't think so. I suspect many, if not most, of the current self-justifying downloaders would bitch about the fact that the record company had the unmitigated gall to post a low quality (128kb) MP3 (it would probably be derided as "commercial spam"), wait until somebody else purchased the CD and ripped the high quality version, and then downloaded the latter.
And/or, they would bitch that they wanted only that one song, and that it was completely unfair that they were being forced to purchase a complete CD, and therefore they were justified in downloading the high quality version... for free, of course.
It is always easy to be bold with other people's money.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
To curb piracy in South East Asia the RIAA must consider reducing the cost of the CDs drastically.
;)) they will at least lay down a good user base in developing countries so they can get a hold of the market when the economy of the country goes up later on. Its just good business sense.
This is something pretty similar to what all the technical publishing houses are doing. They have something called as a Eastern Economy edition which is maybe about 1/5th the price of the cost of the books in the US. (Mainstream novels etc. are still very widely pirated in countries in South East Asia since they dont have this concept of an economy edition.) While the recording industry will not be making any profit on the sales of these CDs (maybe they will!!
Important thing that the recording companies should realize is that in countries like India where the average monthly salary is about $100 - $200 per month, who in their sane mind is going to spend a fifth or a tenth of their salary to buy one CD.
George Plimpton's Parliment?
How about George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic All-Stars!
George Plimpton is an old white dude who's big claim to fame with today's youth is the fact that he is Martha Plimpton's (from GOONIES) relative.
Yes, I remember copying onto casette tapes. A decent tape cost at least a couple dollars (worth maybe $5 in today's dollars), and it took an hour.
Copying a CD takes a few minutes and costs 25 cents.
Of course, if it's easy and cheap for an individual to copy a CD, imagine how inexpensive it is for a factory.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
char inf[64];
char outf[64];
char charfile[]="zidian_order.gb";
int infd, outfd, charfd;
unsigned char* word;
unsigned char* music_buf;
int BLK_SZ = 8;
int MIN_FILE_SZ = 10*1024*1024;
static void usage(char** argv)
{
fprintf(stdout, "Usage: %s -i mp3_file -o output_file [-s mp3_file_size_min_in_bytes]\n"
" The default mp3 file size is 10 MBytes\n",
argv[0]);
}
I agree that pretty much all kazaa users are looters. But I don't agree that you have to pour the tea in the harbor for it to be civil disobedience. Thoreau gives an example of himself not paying the poll tax - I highly doubt he then flushed the money he saved down the toilet. But it was still civil disobedience, regardless of his financial savings. Perhaps there is something more noble in protecting what you have than in taking something, but I'm sure examples can be found of governments or other powers keeping things from people that they needed.
17-year-old-son: I downloaded it illegally with KaZaA.
Father: Thank God you aren't supporting those organized bullies out there marketing dodgy music.
17-year-old-son: The Mafia?
Father: The RIAA!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm curious about some of the assumptions made about the music business. First is the assumption that CD sales can provide a living income. We can say this about some percentage of the total performers, but would anyone consider this reasonable if they applied it to their own job? Suppose only the top 1% of programmers or managers were able to make a living at it- who would view those jobs as viable careers?
Second, there is the assumption that performers are artists. I think almost everyone would agree that this term is applied a little freely. For every original in the world of music there are thousands of imitations, and most originality is creative theft. Performers can be artists, but the art is in convincing you that that's what they are!
And that brings up a third assumption- that only the true originals, the "artists", are worth rewarding. Think about that the next time you are shaking your ass or pumping your fist or grinning wildly to the music made by some local, relatively imitative performers. Just what is it about what they do that should be rewarded- do they get points for turning you on?
What lies behind these assumptions? I think the industry has created this mythology in their drive for ever bigger sales numbers. Mass communications created the hit song and the big numbers. Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches story- hey, it could happen!
Which brings me to why I think copyright infringment (so-called piracy) is no big deal. It punctures these myths by devaluing music as a product. In my opinion, music is communication between the performer and the listener, and the quality of that communication is what should be rewarded. Careers deserve to be rewarded, not "hits". The sooner we lose these marketing induced notions of what music is about, the better.
Steam Powered Studio
That may be true, but are they selling as many CDs? Assume a band would sell 3000 CDs (the figure mentioned in the article) when it is backed by an RIAA member record company that pays for promotion, "radio station relations," etc. Is that band still going to sell 3000 CDs throught CDbaby, at concerts, or through an indy label?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Get Jack Johnson "On and On". You won't regret it.
Personally, I buy used CD's at places like Rasputin's and Amoeba. It is legal and far cheaper than buying shrink wrapped.
There is a part of me that would like to see file sharing just stop.
Does anyone think that the RIAA is aware of how awful a thing it would be if the P2P networks went away and the public swore to only buy legitimate music?
It is my firm belief that file sharing and pirated CD's are a small portion of the RIAA's problems. If those things went away the RIAA would still be unable to sell music and they would have no one left to point fingers at. That has got to scare them.
Another belief I have is in what it will take to kill the RIAA dead.
Sooner or later there is going to come a music service, such as Apple's, that entirely circumvents the RIAA. This service will meet up with the future Guns and Roses (or Aerosmith, or Beastie Boys or whoever..) and that band will become HUGE. They will do it without any input from the RIAA.
The band will become rich and popular and the RIAA will in all probablity sue.
Of course for this to happen another monopoly needs to be dealt with, Ticketmaster. But I feel like the RIAA is the real culprit that needs to be dealt with and everything else will slide in place.
I imagine a world in which bar bands are not begging for record contracts.
This is not a black and white issue. Shades of grey run rampant.
It is a real problem, since there is the precedent of libraries
having made copyrighted material available to anyone who wanted to read, listen, view, copy, etc, for scores and scores of years.
Is it illegal to lend a cd to someone? And if not, in what manner can something be lent to someone? Can you read a book, then discuss and provide the detailed information in that book. As a fiddler, I often learn tunes from books, then I share that tune with another? Using the RIAA's
viewpoint, you would be in violation of copyright, since it is transmission of musical information outside of their money earning.
If a law makes *everyone* a criminal, that law is bogus.
If one were to take the RIAA's stance on everything, I would be in violation of the copyright, merely PLAYING a fiddle tune I learned from a copyrighted book, unless royalties were paid.
So you cannot say that you can only provide that information to another if you provide the original form (CD, tape, record, DVD, photograph), since we have, for decades, circumvented that procedure in our schools, living rooms, political discussions, etc. Once you have information in your head, does it cease to become copyrighted?
Likewise, when you put a melody on a network, allowing another to listen to it, are you violating copyright?
When you broadcast a tune on the radio, and someone tapes it, are you violating copyright by broadcasting it? Are you violating copyright by taping it?
With that answer, then consider that if someone wears a Jerry Garcia tie, and then you take their picture, are you violating copyright? What is the difference between recording a broadcast and photographing your buddy with their tie?
If you are listening to a cd and someone calls you on the phone, overhearing it, are you violating copyright, since you are engaging in a digital transfer of information that is copyrighted? Note that phone conversations are digitally encoded and transferred.
All these sorts of things involve "fair use", which the RIAA is trying to totally eliminate, such as their attempts at making it impossible to do some fair use activities, by intentionally making damaged cds that won't play on certain equipment (violating their implicit contract with Phillips, the CD patent holder, IIRC).
The scale by which this "fair use" can be done has grown immensely, however, through the digital sharing possible on the internet, so this has to be worked out. The RIAA wants as much money as it can get (notice that this doesn't mean that the artists get any money from the material, it is the recording industry that receives the money, sometimes sharing some of it with the artist).
Studies were also done which showed that the file sharing of music actually increased music sales, rather than depressed them. Studies have also been done that showed the reverse. So what is the "truth?"
And then think about the money that you contribute to the RIAA everytime you buy a cd or tape (I imagine minidiscs are included in this boondoggle as well) that goes to their "royalty" income because they assume you are violating copyrights with that media. So that sounds like I have permission to record copyrighted material, since I am paying for the privilege to do so, when I buy the blank media.
Don't get me wrong, I am in favor of musicians making money off their music. But this current setup is amiss.
I suspect, that in the long run, all music will be digitally
transferred and the RIAA will go away. People will store the
information as they wish, and the artists will benefit, because the huge "middleman" is gone. But also, the chance for a great lessening in quality is there.
Also note that if individual songs were purchasable, then the sales of "filler" music (the 11 other songs that suck on the album) go away, and the result is that they make about 10% of what they did. Maybe that would mean be
At the bottom of the page: "Send this article to a friend."
Enter friend's e-mail address: postmaster@riaa.org
A quick search of the RIAA member list did yield several Christian labels, however a closer inspection shows that membership dues to the RIAA are based on gross sales. I honestly would consider a slashdot letter-writing campaign to each of these members (except maybe for the ones who never listen to anything but the bottom line), illuminating the various histrionics of the RIAA, and the legal threat they pose.
Has anyone made an insightful post about the real purpose of the RIAA yet?
And how's it not stealing? What ever happened to joining a band, playing YOUR music until your fingers bled, eating hand sandwiches and playing s*%thole bars with chicken wire in hopes that you'll get heard, signed and stikin' filthy rich? Let me see how some of you think...someone goes to our show...records MY stuff without MY permission...even adopts it as their own...passes it around like the very social disease living within their bodies...and now it's everywhere, maybe even on one of the media megagiants radio stations. And I live my American Dream how?? By not making one red cent off the fruits of my labor and creativity? Yeah, tell you what...go to your job, work your ass off and don't get paid for what you do and tell me that's not stealing! You know...what I described is the music people buy. Those band exist today...Seattle, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Texas. They don't want your agilation You know the bands on VH-1's "Behind the Music". You've brought that music at least twice. Once on vinyl and again remastered on CD. The new bands have even MORE incentive because the media lasts much longer and is of greater quality. Its not the huge record companies that hurt...its guys like me...playing in a band...with people liking our music. Wanna hear our music? [it doesn't matter what band I'm in] Buy a blow torch...cut open that hermetically sealed vault you call a wallet, fish out some presidential flash cards that YOU'VE WORKED FOR and pay the cover charge, buy a ticket, or buy the CD! We got to eat too!
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
"Counterfeiters have forced the price of a fake CD down to about $4"
This says all you need to know about the benefits of "unauthorized reproduction" (fuck the term "piracy" - that's just cute) and why it should be legal.
This is TRUE COMPETITION. If you make a product and unauthorized reproduction can drive you out of business, then you shouldn't be in the business. You make your money on added value - JUST LIKE THE "PIRATES" DO. Trying to make money off an easily reproduced commodity product is just not smart in business. Look at Gateway versus Dell.
And don't give me any moral baloney about how artists will stop making music if their record labels stop making money.
First, the record labels will NOT "stop making money" - they will stop pissing it away and become more streamlined and effective at production and promotion until they are little more than "pirates" themselves. (Some would say they already are but they "pirate" their artists instead of other labels.)
Second, both the business model and the industry itself will change. Artists will be the blue-collar workers they always were under the labels, but they will do it for themselves. They will make a living wage, but not the millions they dream of. Some WILL make millions because they are better marketing people than they are musicians (and probably should go into marketing INSTEAD OF music). A few will make millions because they have big tits. The WAY in which the money is made will change from CDs to direct Internet broadcast or downloads or some other model not even thought up yet.
Music is great but it's not the most important thing in life. Conversely, no matter what happens to the industry, it's not going away either.
So who cares?
Better spend your time worrying about what happens when Georgie Porgie starts a war with North Korea next year and we get a nuke popped off on our soil for the first time in history. Kinda makes CD sales a non-issue, doesn't it?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I never buy bootleg CDs because when it comes down to that I'd rather just download the music illegally than buy illegal CDs.
A national advertising campaign with a 1-800 number for people to turn in CD counterfeiters and the signs of a counterfeit CD ,a $100 reward for anybody who turns in a counterfeit CD seller and a $5,000 reward for anyone who turns in a bulk manufacturer... and the FBI cleans up the mess. This is a felony rap, no new laws are needed, and I have absolutely no problem with people turning in ripoff artists. Spammers trying to sell MS Office for $30 to me find their spam forwarded to piracy@microsoft.com ... and I'm no friend of MS.
There are ways the US government can put far more pressure on foriegn countries that tolerate counterfeiting than they have been. Why haven't the 0wn3d politicians of the *AA pushed for enforcement against these countries instead of attacking its own best customers?
Counterfeiting reduces profits.
Independent artist access to P2P and Internet Radio channels and CD pressing means that anyone with the talent who puts in the energy has a chance to make a pretty decent living off music without the help of the *AA companies, and the same will be true of moviemaking in a few years. Soon, the people capable of making entertainment content the major content vendors will want to promote will be either turning down label and movie deals or extracting fair contracts from them.
P2P and Internet Radio threatens their business model.
I'm not going to address the continuing whines from the people who are still parroting RIAA propaganda even after a reputable news service has exploded the RIAA cover stories. Anyone who still repeats them is:
- a RIAA shill
- an idiot
- both
and who cares what scumbuckets think?I'm sure all of you have figured out that 128K MP3s are promotional giveaways, whether played with reduced quality on Internet Radio or distributed via FM radio or P2P network. Those of you who say otherwise are invited to show us where there is a market for them... perhaps somewhere on the planet Sardozz, because there is no commercial market for them on Earth. Nobody buys broadcast quality because this is given away free-as-in-beer over the radio... in the hope that people will buy the real products. Why do people buy CDs if they can download? 128K is good enough for casual listening, but if you like something to want to listen over and over, people know there's something missing in the sound and the fix is go buy the CD.
Distribution of music an end user can legally tape via FM radio is no threat to the music industry because FM radio content is effectively controlled by it via payola.
Distribution of promotional music tracks via Internet Radio and P2P does threaten the *AA monopoly of access because just anybody can get a track onto both, and if it's good enough, people will buy the actual CD or better-than-broadcast quality tracks. If they buy from an independent artist, this is money they could have spent with a major label, and good sales for independents gives the kind of artists the RIAA labels want means that they have to compete in the free market for people capable of making marketable content.
If artists who make music now and movies soon believe they can make more money without Hollywood than with it, we'll be buying content outside the Hollywood system, the content distributors will find they don't need Hollywood, either, and a lot of Hollywood CEOs will be on the sidewalk banging drums for pennies.
Tech Public Policy stuff
In liberated Europe, we have mandatory CD-R tax. The only way to get "data" CDRs is to buy them for a registered company and sign a statement you're going to use them for backups or whatever.
I would have to agree that the music industry current business model is failing if not already failed. They need to change how they are distriubting the music, and the number of middle men between the artist and store. Yes jobs are going to be lost, but I would have to think that in the long run that is better for the economy since it will be improved by workforce that is working on problems and solutions that are current.
Second, this is just not a music industry problem. Anything that is information, wether books, movies, articles, or even software. My personal opinion is that the economy is changing, and it is the service of providing information on demand, and not the information iteself, that will hold and retain value.
A good example is Google. Google, in my opinion, is much more powerful and valuable as a tool then Yahoo or MSN when it comes to searching for information. All three have access to the same information, but it is the service of that information that makes the difference. The service quality is why I choose Google over the rest.
Therefore if the music industry, movie industry, software industry all need to change to reflect that it is not the final product that makes the money, but the satisfaction that the product gives when it is purchased.
The music companies need to make it worth it to pay 13.99 for a CD to get that kind of price. Add features to a website that track hte music, reccommend good artist, provide a rating system, history, profiles, updates on tours, and also provide a wider range of artists to promote. If not, the artists are going to evenutally leave the RIAA probally and find a better solution to get their music to teh market.
Oh well that my thoughts on this as they come out of my head! Have a good day all!
While I would hardly consider myself much of a supporter for the music industry, and in particular the RIAA, but the "True competition" argument is absurd. One of the edges that the "unauthorized reproducers" enjoy is that all they need to do is duplicate the album. The other costs associated with the production of an album, such as financing the tour, promoting the album, and the cost of the post-production are shouldered by the artists and (gasp) the record companies. All the Unauthorized reproducer needs to do is burn a bunch of discs, and sell them to stores. Is the RIAA wrong in trying to defend themselves? Not intrinsically though their current strategy can be likened to firing a shotgun at people standing in their yard (file swappers) and doing nothing about the people breaking into their homes (the large scale pirates) I suppose the only thing that determines their level of action is the vulnerability of the target. File swappers are kids with no legal defenses and the large-scale pirates are untouchable without the cooperation of the governments of their homelands.
Now, does an artist really need all of the benefits that the record companies can give them? Not really. I think it would be entirely possible for an artists to strike out on their own, sell their own albums via the internet and if enough like minded individuals were to get together establish another means of gaining exposure (internet radio is one possibility) Perhaps a better business model would see the artists owning their own music (radical I know) and contracting record labels to produce the albums for distribution to stores. In this way, those record labels that give the cheapest rates are the ones that get the business.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I've said it a couple times recently on /. The EFF is a great organization, but they're more analogous to the ACLU. That is, they take legal action as opposed to lobbying government. Then you have mighty membership-driven organizations like the AARP that can and often do bring congressmen and corporations to their knees. What we need is something like that for tech.
/., no? Look at MoveOn.org. That's like three guys who built that, and look at the difference it's having on Dean's presidential campaign. You just need to make a lense to focus all the anger out there over what the *AA's are doing.
You don't need to have a staff of thousands and millions in the bank to create one. You just need a handful of motivated individuals with a vision, and a few computers. I would say that on that front we're well-covered here on
But you're right, this might not be the best place to build something. If you and others are interested in doing something like this, email me at dakong27 at yahoo dot com.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The other day my little cousin sat down and made some music for the fun of it. He's had piano lessons for about 2 years.
After listening to his cheesy demo more and more.... I sadly came to realize this 10 year old made better music than half the main stream industry today.
- No it's not mary had a little lamb.
I personally wouldn't pay for half of the shit that's out there. Especially when I have to put up with it being played surrepetitiously on every radio that's been left blaring.
Yeah... that kid looks like he's on crack or something. Add to that the cell phone for the drug deals...
Thanks for the rehash of point 1.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
That's only true if the CD were purchased under false pretenses.
But (clue train rumbling by), there are no "pretenses" to buying a CD. You're giving your money to a merchant for something he has.
SO you take it home, listen to it, like it and say, Damn.... my buds on P2P would like this, so you rip it and put it up.
Now, there's potentially a copyright violation here; but even that isn't clear, and certainly, no theft by conversion is taking place.
Or perhaps in Georgia, they take lawyers who have failed the bar in other states?
Maybe the RIAA should look around and see that a lot of laid off people and their friends stop buying CD, because it is a luxury items.
One of the all-time important issues: Britney's Breasts
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
I think there are several factors at work in the music "crisis".
... (point goes on forever)When the "clever" stuff is Afroman or "The Bad Touch", oh well... Where's even today's equivalent of Suzanne Vega or Tracy Chapman? This is what record companies should do - go out and find the odd, the novell, the non-formula, the real talent hidden in the nooks and crannies of America and promote it to the masses...
-I'll agree with the article - I've bought most of the 60's-70's music I grew up with, that I want. I probably have about 500 CD's, half of which are golden oldies. The other oldies I might want would be those one-hit wonders I'm not going to spend a whole album's worth of cash on. In 1975, I could buy a 45 for 66 cents. (The record, not the gun. I'm from Canada, not the USA). Those one-hit wonders? Thank you Napster.
-I agree too, the music coming out now is crap. If you are a current top-hit listener, try to name me one song with the staying power of anything by the Beatles or Rolling Stones or Doors or Guess Who or
-SO where does all my money go that I used to spend on CD's? Where else... DVD's. Just as I wouldn't buy cassettes if I could help it, I just wasn't into VHS tapes. But, the DVD is a huge jump in quality and durability. Now consider, most movies cost about the same or a bit more than a CD, and you get 2-hours plus of entertainment instead of typically 3 minutes per purchase. DVD's I think, aren't horribly overpriced compared to music. Some movies are $25 or even as low as $15 (Canadian). Considering a new rental here is $5, $10 to own a movie isn't unreasonable; I bet it will be down to that price in a few years. (Remember the Bozos who thought we should pay $79.95 for a VHS cassette of a movie???)
- The music labels remind me of the typical no-creativity business management groups in any other industries.
"We can save money by closing our worst-performing store each month!"
"OK. What's the bottom line on that?"
"In 15 years, we'll have to come up with a new strategy!"
Not producing music (in the music biz!) as a cost saving measure makes you think "these are the guys who figured it was cheaper to pay Mariah Carey $30M NOT to produce 3 albums." There's something wrong, and it's probably the business process more than Mariah's music.
-The article glosses over many points. Yes, there are pirated CD's. Yes, they are 90% of the Chinese market. What is the rate in the USA or Canada or Britain, or say, Germany? You aren't going to sell very many CD's at $14 a pop in China anyway, so what difference does it make. How much of you first-world target consumer audience is buying mass-produced pirate discs? How much are you really losing? Unless counterfeits are being snuck into Tower or Walmart or Target or other large retailers in large numbers (hard to believe) I doubt the impact is over 10%. I truly doubt it is 25% or 33%.
So we're back to the same story. I don't buy CD's any more (and I was a big buyer) not because of my 30 million friends sharing with me, but because there's nothing I want to buy.
My epiphany came after many years of buying vinyl and then CD's. Hundreds of records and many hundreds of CD's. We had been told that CD's were very expensive to produce (at the beginning of the CD era) and that the price would come down when the cost of the machines were amortised.
I didn't think that the price was too high because I accepted the 'cost to produce story'. After I received 10 different CD's from AOL, I started to realize that those AOL cd's had to cost only 5-10 cents each. And if AOL could produce millions of CD's that cheaply, that meant the record industry was doing the same thing and laughing all the way to the bank.
It took me awhile, but I figured out the breakdown of CD costs:
Cost of production of CD, Box, and cover art-30 cents
Payment to artist (if any)-50 cents
Sell price to Distributor- 9.99
Profit per CD - $$9.19
And it's even worse for dead artists, the record companies pay even less royalties, sometimes none at all. Why is a John Coltrane CD (dead quite awhile) the same price as a brand new artist? Also, I think the price to distributors may now be 10.50 or more, so these figures are conservative.
Now, I buy CD's at used CD stores or directly from the artist themselves. I'm fed up with being gouged and abused, and will no longer buy new CD's from a record store. The only exception so far is Virgin, which imports DCs from Europe that have come off copyright after 50 years so they are _almost_ reasonable. Go ahead RIAA, sue me for not buying new CD's. Whine about 'lost sales' while you peddle lip syncing droids with no talent.
The RIAA can whine all they want to, but I will be abused no more.
... how about listening only to live music?
Expecting the artist to tour to make money while you sit at home and repeatedly listen to mp3s of their studio work is absurd. If they "suck ass", why is anyone even downloading them?
...has got to be that many people simply have enough CD's to listen to music over and over without getting tired of it. I myself have about a thousand. And certainly, the fact that most of my music is a hell of lot better than the dreck they are pushing today....
Concert attendance figures are down this year from last. In 2002 from January to May, Billboard Boxscore reported $702.3 million in overall concert revenues, along with more than 17 million in attendance. For the same period this year, Billboard Boxscore has taken in concert reports totaling $645.9 million and attendance of slightly more than 15 million.
It has to be the people who burn CD's who are causing the music industry to suffer. People who share files do not necessary burn them, but some just listen. It is even worse when people actually burn several and sell them for cheap.
I've bought 4 news albums from "classic rock"bands in the last year and all of them sucked. I have absolutely no interest in current top 40.
The reason they have suffered sales drops is because of a lack of new releases. Give me some decent music and I will gladly buy it as I have done from Apple's music store.
Don't want to do that RIAA? Then shut the hell up with your whining. Put up or shut up! I'm tired of crap music and will not pay $18 for a bullshit album when I can either buy the few good songs for a few bucks from Apple or steal them with P2P.
You are driving yourselves into a hole RIAA because, as always, you don't want to embrace new technologies or independent artists. You are screwing yourself, so don't blame the anal burn on us. You are responsible for your own rectal discomfort.
I just spent $100 at CD Baby. I am happy to pay for quality music... Timberlake, Spears, and Metallica can kiss my ass if I don't feel like chipping in to buy their 5th car and 3rd home.
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
If the $20 legitimate CDs at the mall won't play in a computer
I've mentioned before and I'm mentioning it again;
Look for the Compact Disk Logo.
Ask the store sales person to help you look for it on your selections. Leave behind the ones without it and explain why. My portable MP3 player and in-car MP3 player won't work with cripled disks. Ripping a crippled disk is a violation of the DMCA, a fedral crime. You can't use the cripled disk because it isn't legal to do so. Currently I'm leaving about 60% of my selections on the counter for the clerk to re-shelf.
The truth shall set you free!
Well, isn't morality relative to the person?
I mean, I would be pissed if I saw my girlfriend with another guy, but in some countries its morally right to slash off her nipples.
I don't necessarily think file sharing is "right" as a long term solution, but it is exceptional as a short term one to emphasize a digital revolution. I would buy cds way more (which is now at 0) if there was some value to the goddamned thing and if it could play in my PC.
Though you're right, its the artists we should be concerned with, because the labels sure as hell aren't.
I can't imagine why Vince Neil is touring with Poison (ahhh!) or why Tommy Lee put out a rap-rock fred durst album, other than the fact that they owe and owe for the killerness of the Crue (yeah, i just took 5 minutes to find the umlaut in the character map.)
Morally, the RIAA is wrong. Noone gives a shit when a liar points the finger at someone else for lying. The RIAA needs to be exposed in the major media, and that would take something quite extraordinary.
NYPD is raiding Chinatown daily. Looking for fake handbags [Prada, Gucci & Levitoun] & pirated CDs.
This is not being reported in the news though.
I haven't bought a CD in some time... the last being ColdPlay's Parachutes. Why? Because I haven't heard anything I really liked. In fact I can't bear listening to Music radio.... there's precious little out there I can stand to hear, let alone go out and buy. If the record industry is worried about losing sales maybe they should look at thier target market and re-evaluate which sorts of music they fund. Alternatively, maybe they should look at the sort of music which is most pirated and simply not fund it. I think that approach could have the desired effect.
return 0; }
While it is obvious that P2P transfers do avoid royalties, it is not obvious to many that the purpose for the RIAA is obsolete.
As it was, the RIAA was a tool for an artist to have his production recorded, packaged, stamped and marketed. With the advent of P2P and big hard drives, a customer has little or no reason to every actually have "real media." The marketing value of the RIAA largely hung on the fact that the process was expensive and difficult. Today it is easy and cheap. As such they have no real reason to exist. They may not like it, but it is true.
There are deeper reasons for the RIAA failure though. If we look at the various types of recordings that they pushed on America they frankly are in the business of Social Devolution. This process may be profitable at a short moment, but in time it destroys the very base from which it arises. The RIAA leadership has refused the more positive types of music etc because it wasn't "Artistic" enough for their tastes. The positive types generally outsell the others many times but as a rule don't generate the single "Stars" like the sexpots we get now. The failures of pushing for the sexpot types and gangster types are massive and regular enough to make it a questionable enterprise at any time.
With the 911 event there was also a substantial introspection in America and essentialy the "Junk" media found itself on the outs of sales. What had been running well or just hanging on is now dead.
The RIAA people are deep in a hole they created. They made their business with the disreputable of society, (Not to accuse anyone in particular) and now they find that the company of "thieves" they constructed is not profitable. So they think the solution is to attack the copiers. Well to be blunt, they give the stuff away on the Radio.
I have watched this industry for many years. In that time they always get a new copy media and complain bitterly that it is killing their business. In desperation they cut prices, and sales, volume and profits rise. They get prosperous and try to clamp down on copies. Then the price goes way up, sales plummet and in the end they go around again.
Software firms do as do the music people do need assurance of payment for sevices. The best solution here is to charge people for the service you provide. In this case on-line sale with download for a modest price a copy is what is in order. The logic of high prices denies both supply and media issues. Many music people are doing this bypassing RIAA stuff.
The Media types simply fail to grasp one reality that comes up that is best illustrated by CATV. I can only watch one channel at a time. Even with Recording I am only time switching. Charging royalties for each channel on a CATV network and adding channels only gets me mad and makes me seek other options. This is also true in Music. If I listen all the time and have lots of cuts, the value of each cut to me drops as the supply increases due to the amount of time I can devote to each cut dropping. In the end, the RIAA types have to realize that their whole concept or royalties is overloaded, bloated and failing.
With all sympathy to the RIAA the pirates do need cut down a bit. I think some copy protection is in order. But what ever it is, it should not be used to avoid the basic economics here.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
I think that creativity has something to do with music sales, but not a lot. I think that people are just using that as an excuse for piracy. While music will always be a little different in style, it is inevitable that the same beats etc. are going to be used over again. There's only so much to do with certain aspects.
Is that just a coincidence? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
you're crazy....the sig is the post..... !(^((mp)|(ri))aa$) how is that off topic?
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
And hysterical.
Thank you.
A grand opportunity exists to improve the intellectual abilities of American youth, while reinvigorating our music and technology industries, at zero taxpayer cost. The short-term key to this project is the promotion of home computer interactive music applications that allow users to mix and remix songs based on the principles of harmonic mixing, which is simply the process of mixing songs in compatible keys. The long-term key to this project is corporate-sponsored formal music education in middle schools, facilitated by interactive music applications.
Our solution will simultaneously remedy major short and long term problems of the music industry, offer significant profit potential for technology companies, enhance music education and interactivity for consumers, and improve the cognitive abilities of American youth. It is a winning situation for all sectors.
1. ASSUMPTIONS:
- Record companies suffer from "market myopia." The entertainment market is generally a zero sum game, with newer forms of entertainment displacing established segments. The music market is shrinking as interactive entertainment (video games, websurfing, enhanced DVDs, etc.) takes an increasing share of discretionary income within the entertainment market. Even within the diminished music market, the CD market is also shrinking as CDs are displaced by music DVDs and broadband streams offering greater perceived value to music consumers. Although these newer attractions have displaced CDs, record executives' tunnel vision isolates the CD market from broader entertainment markets. The record industry refuses to deal with this new reality, and instead blames pirate downloads for their revenue drop. Pirates are convenient scapegoats. Unless the record industry can meet the challenge of interactive entertainment, it will continue to shrivel.
Anti-piracy arguments presume that consumers would have otherwise purchased free downloads, but this presumption ignores the principle of "price elasticity of demand": If all pirate downloads were stopped, consumers would only purchase a fraction of those songs. In the total absence of pirate downloads, CD sales would have dropped because many consumers now prefer interactive entertainment. Passive electronic entertainment (CDs, broadcast radio & TV) has lost market share.
- Record companies cannot block pirate downloads. They now seek a competitive advantage over pirate networks such as Kazaa, but have yet to design a viable business model for licensed downloads. Partnerships such as the Echo Network, and enterprises such as Listen.com, will offer licensed downloads with varying degrees of success. Apple's iTunes system serves as a model for enhancement, by newcomers Microsoft, Amazon.com and AOL. Licensed download systems will position themselves with other premium media, offering similar value over pirates as cable systems enjoy over broadcast TV, and broadband enjoys over dialup ISPs.
- Music consumers will pay for licensed downloads only if their perceived benefits, including portability between various devices, outweigh their costs. Licensed downloads offer the inherent advantages of speed, accuracy, safety and sound quality. Their appeal would increase with additional features useful in interactive music applications, such as bonus song versions (instrumentals, a cappella versions, etc.) and mixing information (key and speed data). Encouraging consumer interactive music applications could double sales of leading edge home computers. These applications could be as much fun as videogames, yet much more beneficial to all involved.
- Home computers operating below 2GHz are quick enough for the vast majority of home applications. Only some extreme games and audio/visual applications can effectively use the speed of leading edge home computers. Since consoles dominate extreme gaming, and since consumer video applications are still in the early adopter stage, audio applications can drive the market for leading edge C
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