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RIAA Sales Compared to Download Statistics

Posted by michael on from the desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures dept.

OneInEveryCrowd writes "According to an article at SFGate, although the recent crackdown and lawsuits have caused a 22% drop in downloading, the drop in CD sales actually accelerated during the same period. My own response to the RIAA crackdown was to get a Netflix account, get into fansubs, and swear off CD purchases for life. If this was mainstream behavior CD sales would have dropped to zero. I was still pleased to see that many people responded in a similar fashion though." An EMI executive has a piece giving the standard industry view, but this piece about Universal slashing CD prices may be more telling.

1 of 694 comments (clear)

  1. Re:CD Sales by Inode+Jones · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Music blanks" are not quite the same as "data blanks".

    Superficially, they look the same, use the same dye technologies, etc.

    To assist tracking, CD-R[W] media has a spiral pressed into it which the write laser follows. The return from the pressed spiral is not strong enough to pose a problem for CD players. The spiral also wobbles at a fixed rate to provide a timing reference. This feature is called "Absolute Time In Pre-groove", or ATIP.

    At the beginning of the ATIP, a further sub-wobble encodes data such as the media dye type, recording speed, laser power,... and whether the media is an "audio CD" or a "data CD".

    Early Philips audio CD recorders will accept only "Audio CDs" as indicated in the ATIP. They also implement the serial copy management system (SCMS) and refuse to make a second-generation copy.

    Your typical burner, OTOH, doesn't give a damn about audio vs. data or SCMS, so you can burn to your heart's content.

    CD players, not equipped to read the ATIP, can't tell the difference either.

    The idea behind "music" vs. "data" was to charge a higher price for the music blanks, and to use the uplift to compensate the industry for piracy, while letting users of "data" blanks get away from the levy.

    Of course, in reality it doesn't work that way at all. Almost no one buys music blanks any more (unless they happen to own a Philips recorder), anyone can copy a music CD using a computer data CD-R burner onto a data blank, and certain countries levy data CDs as well as audio. Oh, well...