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RIAA Sales Compared to Download Statistics
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.
CD sales in Britain are up and most of the credit is going to price cuts.
Who'd have thought it: a depressed economy leads to changes in price elasticity. I demand the Nobel Prize for Economics
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
...don't start suing the crap out of your largest group of customers (college / high school students) and then expect sales to go up.
They can drop the price to near give away but if the talent and quality of the artist\cd isn't there its still not worth the price. Case in point Metallica's St. Anger CD.
My single biggest gripe is that $12 is still too much to take a chance on. The radio plays the same 15 songs over and over, day in and day out. Since I'm not interested in those 15 songs, sometimes I feel the need to take a chance. But aat $12 a pop, I still won't.
Does anyone remember when the RIAA claimed that they were suffering a 15% drop in profits for their artists, after they dropped production by 20%???? Sounds kinda familiar. I wonder if they're going to claim a loss of income/profits for their artists after this price drop, and then blame it on music file sharing?
Most people these days are used to the idea of "try before you buy". Take away that ability, and sales will drop.
The people who download without buying would naver have contributed to a sale anyhow. Those that would have bought are being alienated.
The Riaa has been blaming sluggish sales on people downloading music, but they have been ignoring another reason for the poor sales: The music isn't that good.
I love alternative music, but lately everything has sounded like Creed, or some crappy form of pop-punk.
I haven't bought any music lately, but I haven't downloaded any either.
Once they quit trying to make everyone sound the same, I will probably start buying music again, as long as the price is resonable
Price cuts are a natural result of market forces. It's just a really big deal when it happens to these folks. If the price continues to come down there will be no reason at all to download music. But the speed of the net will increase and at some point there is no price you would pay in a store when you can download it easier and less costly. Perhaps there is already a program that will download a cd label and jewel case ready to print waiting in hiding somewhere also making buying less likely.
How many whacks with a Clue Stick does it take to penetrate the thick skulls at the RIAA? Evidently it takes a lot.
How long have people been complaining that CD prices are too high? A decade? Fifteen years? And they are just now starting to get it? I buy, at most, five or six (if I'm feeling frisky) CDs a year and at that I don't buy anything that costs more than $12.00 (unless it's an import or other non-standard, hard to find item).
Price has always been the problem with CDs. Always.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
$12.00 a pop for a CD is *STILL* too expensive.
The recent price cuts are just like the last ditch effort from Wile Coyote brandishing a lace umbrella to ward-off the falling boulder.
So long, CDs, I'll forever cherish the few ones I've been able to afford...
Uhh last time i checked i cant just go and buy a 50 pack of brittney spears for $19.99 USD. so hmmm, if everyone spent the same ammount they would have on ONE cd for 50 blanks, they would out sell CD's by 50:1.
All lost CD sales are caused by the consumer getting the music elsewhere.
This is pure bullshit. How did they initially combat filesharing? They raised prices. I have never illegally downloaded a single file--instead I've simply gone without.
I went into Borders to pick up a Linkin Park CD. They wanted $20. I walked back out. I did not go back to my computer to download the songs. I've simply lived without them. I'd like to own the CD, but give me a fucking break. $20? Universal's price drop is a good sign. Maybe they'll be able to earn me back as a customer.
Yes! So it wasn't the downloading that caused poor sales afterall. It was the
crappy music + high prices + strongarming.
Crappy music indeed. It seems that the industry after pushing grunge really hard was looking for the next new thing and jumped on the rap bit and engineered music garbage pushing it really hard in all mediums and exposures. I watched part of the MTV music video awards and never felt so out of touch with the music industry which any marketer will tell you is death. Lots of the new popular music completely misses the target for me and I am sure much of the music buying public. For me, I have been focusing on expanding my collection of older bluegrass, jazz and finding all that punk stuff that never made it to CD. Most of those purchases are not from the current RIAA libraries and I am sure many others are doing the same type of thing or ignoring music entirely leading to the current numbers.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
So, wait, your answer is to watch more movies? How does that have anything to do with music?
Once again, we have a false analogy that keeps cropping up in these discussions: that a movie and an album of music have anything in common other than general size and shape. I keep seeing arguments on /. that given $20, people would rather buy a DVD than a CD. Sorry, that's ridiculous! I don't remember the last time I bought a DVD and watched it twice a day for 2 weeks, like I have with some of my more favourite recent albums.
Going further, I can't rip a DVD and watch it on my iPod on the subway or while I'm working, movies take up far more of my attention to enjoy them.
The argument is rather dumb as far as I'm concerned.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Don't swear off CD purchases for life OneInEveryCrowd! You should check the affiliated record labels out at www.riaa.com, and only boycott those CDs associated with the RIAA. If you refuse to purchase any CDs, maybe some of the ones you would have otherwise gotten have nothing to do with the RIAA. In that case you're hurting the artist who has chosen their label wisely, or a smaller record label that is trying to break free from the RIAA!
i was actually talking to a friend about this while we wandered around a best buy the other day: if cds were priced more reasonably, i know i would buy more cds, and i'm sure other people think the same. i own about 300 cds, and i can only imagine how many more i'd have if they were in the $9-12 range instead of $16-18.
and holy crap, i buy cds of bands i like that i found thru kazaa! what is the world coming to!?
Also, congratulations to all who have not purchased CD's in protest. Keep up the good work.
Please quantify this: Don't buy music from big labels. When appropriate, go to see artists in person and buy CD's from the guy with the mohawk and the piercings behind the merch table. Elsewise, buy from the record label, or at the worst, a low level distributer.
Some labels i've bought from recently:
vagrant records
hopeless records
fearless records
and a low level distributer: interpunk
Yeah. If you can give money to the artists more directly, do so. Remember, we're not mad at the content producers, we're mad at the middle men and the big labels.
~Will
sig?
How about those of us who haven't bought new CD's because we haven't been able to use file-sharing to go find new music that we like?
And your black-and-white portrayal of the situation assumes there is no one who belongs to both groups. I would predict significant crossover, actually.
I don't use kazaa, but I've had people play mp3's of their stuff at work, and occasionally these didn't get rigorously deleted when those people left. End result? I've bought a few of those albums, music that I never otherwise would have even tried. I have never wanted an album and gotten mp3's instead.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Back in the old days, when I had my first CD player, I went out and replicated my sizable record collection at $12-$13 a pop (note that I lived in Berkeley, which is blessed with two awesome non-chain retailers - Rasputins and Ameoba) - this took all of my struggling-student-with-no-loans spare cash. Over the course of a year, I bought 80+ CDs. It sucked hard, but I hated records and tapes (no nostalgia for me). Back then, the rumor was that the price of CDs was inflated to cover the cost of retooling manufacturing and would come down below record prices because they were cheaper to make.
.40 a song. Bill me based on bandwidth - that's 5-10 cents per MB (assuming an average of 4min songs). The only real limit to my spending at this price is the availability of good music - better go find some talented new artists fast!
Five years later, the prices didn't go down and my 200+ CD collection was stolen from my ghetto appartment. I was literally in tears. That was more than $2500 and I was still pretty poor due to the early 90s resession. The upside was that stolen CDs were valuable because there was a budding used CD market in the Bay Area. Once Rasputins & Ameoba started selling used CDs in quantity, I stopped buying new CDs altogether. This is early 90's and I already dropped out of the label's direct market. Here I was, a 20-something kid that was so in love with music that I would spend the better part of my expendable cash on CDs and I dropped right off their books because I could buy "Nevermind" for $9 if I waited a month after it came out.
Funny thing is that when I started making serious money, I still wouldn't buy new CDs. I was used to paying $6-9 and there was no way I could go back. I probably missed out on a lot of music, because I was limited to what college kids would buy and return.
Then came burners - I spent many hours burning all of my friends CD collections. Shortly thereafter came MP3s. I was already pirating software on the FTP scene (another economic lesson to be learned for the SW companies, but I'm not gonna stray there), so suddenly, I'm not even buying used CDs anymore.
So where does this leave us? Well, I'm in my mid 30s, make 6figs, and I like a huge variety of musical genres. I could spend $250 a month on music and not bat an eye, but I don't. The labels have alienated me. I virulently despise them, but I am a music addicted consumer. If they offered me something that had value to me, I would embrace the bastards with loving arms.
So, what can they do for me that would convince me to give them my money again? Simple:
1. Save me time - downloading stuff on Kazaa is work: sifting through the crappy files, figuring out which songs I am missing from a given CD, and organizing the 40+gigs of it all - this stuff takes time and my time is worth money to me. Figure out ways to save me time and I will pay a price for it.
2. Selection - I am limited to what the masses are trading. I like obscure shit and am willing to experiment, but not at $12.99 a pop - no fricking way!
3. Ease my concious - I admit it, I feel bad for screwing the artists by downloading mp3s. The problem is, they are already getting so screwed by the labels. It's kinda like buying Nikes - hard to say whether it helping the poor little Indonesian kid or not. Besides, the less that people give the labels, they less they have to offer the artists who should really all jump ship anyway. I buy Timberland clothes 'cause they make a big deal about how their sweatshops are less satanic than others. Treat the artists well so I don't feel bad about promoting your exploitation of them. Tax the superstars a bit to feed the starving artists - music should be a middle class profession.
So, how can the labels meet these needs? Again, simple:
Give me FTP access to a full catalog (all labels in one place)of high quality, verified, DRM-free and properly tagged MP3s. How much would I be willing to pay for this? Figure 2-4 bucks for 10 songs. That's $.20 -
This would
I wonder if it has ocurred to anyone over at the RIAA that a large part of the fact that their client's sales have dropped is the fact that the products they push the hardest, well, sucks.
You may your taste in music, and I have mine, but what is clear is that the pablum of the Britney's, Madonnas, Christinas, MAriahs, Justins and the like are CD's with just one or two songs worth buying and the rest of the CD is not really worth listening to -- not even by their fans. So why waste $18.99 or $12.99 on music you just don't like?
Most people learn about new music from either the radio or MTV, and to a degree, from what their friends listen to. Go to any typical American city and you'll hear the same music. In the same order. By the same artists. Over and over and over. I guess that's because two companies, Clear Channel and Infinity, pretty much own nearly all of the radio stations in the land of the free. And they make the record companies pay "promotional fees" to add a song. No payola, no new music.
So, instead of hearing a great song by some hitherto great new artist, something that makes you want to go to the record store and get that CD right *now* you never even know about it. And nobody is going to take a $20 buck chance on music they have never even heard.
The system that the RIAA and the radio cartel created is the root of their own problem and instead of blaming the kids that can't afford to spend $100 on five CD's, they ought to look at how they promote and sell the music that they record. Then, if they increase the quality and breadth of their offerings, you might see album/CD/DVD sales go back up.
If it's crappy music, why are people downloading it?
I had the misfortune of seeing that Madonna, Britney Spears & Christina Aquawhatever performance. The people they're now catering to are the ones whose CD purchases will be influenced by how cool lesbianism is.
About the only new stuff I like tends to be electronic or weird, most of what they're pushing now is cookie-cutter crap. Seems like it used to be that musically talented individuals got played, rose in popularity, and sold more records that way.
Now many performers are just products to feed this enormous market, American Idol being a great example. Give me Credence or the Rolling Stones any day!
From the SFGate story:
So, is it possible the full-bloom Napster phenomenon actually delayed a drop in recorded music sales? (Online music file-sharing exposed more people to more music than they were being exposed to by other media such as radio, and this could have been driving demand. More demands meant more sales.)
"This is not a victimless crime; people are really suffering from the impact of peer-to-peer downloading," Sherman said.
You find me one person, just one person who's lost their job because of a drop in CD sales. Am I supposed to feel sorry for J. Lo or P. Diddy or whatever the hell their names are this week? Why, because they might have to downsize to a 12,000 square foot mansion with only 2 hottubs instead of the 18,000 palace they're in now? Is that suffering???
I'm sorry, I don't condone stealing, but this is just offensive. You're talking to a guy who was laid off from Nortel in the same year his wife was laid off from JDS, which also happened to be within 2 months of this newlywed couple buying their first house. Trying to make a mortgage payment when your chosen industry is crumbing around you is suffering. Having to sell one of your Escalades is NOT suffering.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I took a couple sociology courses back in college. One of the interesting things I got from the courses was that people enjoy feeling that they are somehow unique, even though population demographics will indicate otherwise. Sure, each person's collective interests will make them unique, but generally, people tend to follow trends and are quite easily grouped.
What's interesting is the choices that the music industry are making when it comes to marketing their product. The 15-25yr old demographic tends to have less discretionary income than the 25-40yr old group, yet the music industry churns out lots of product for the fiscally challenged group. OK, the idea may be that this group tends to buy more music and is more influenced by MTV and radio. Therein lies the problem. With everything else competing for the teen to young adult market, the slice of the pie that goes to the recording industry gets smaller and smaller.
So what to do? Hell, why not legislate some profits then. There's an apocryphal story about candle and gas light manufacturers suing to ban electric lighting and similar ones about horse-drawn buggy folks legislating some ridiculous traffic rules. Why? The new technology would make obsolete their business. But you see where that got the candle makers and buggy builders.
How about this wacky idea: Why doesn't the music industry start marketing and producing product for the 25-40 year old group. We long-toothed, graybearded, geriatrics would enjoy something newer than the constant stream of old Beatles, Stones, 80's era U2, and re-gurgitated 70's "classics" that bombard us. Try something new. Introduce something exotic so that we can talk about it as we quaff our Samuel Adams with our other 30-something year old friends and talk about our 401Ks. We can't exactly listen to Britney Spears or Eminem, you see. We like to feel important, still relevant, and nothing makes use more relevant than being able to "discover" some interesting sounding CD. What'll really shock you is that we have DISCRETIONARY INCOME. How about that! We can *buy* your music. Hell, we'll even pay $18 a CD to be able to be able to put it on our coffee table.
What's even more amazing is that many of these old people enjoy MUSIC. We like interesting lyrics. Some of use are even accomplished or semi-accomplished musicians and appreciate an interesting melody or a novel interpretation of a classic. Heck, even something as trite as musical virtuousity can impress us. I know this is complete anathema to your current marketing philosophy, but what can you lose?
I don't think it is entirely true that music sucks any more than it always has; the real problem is that the music that gets promoted sucks. Radio plays only top 40; the only variety is what decade top 40 music comes from. Music videos are a similar waste of time.
I used to find CDs to buy through hard work. I regularly checked record stores for stuff I might like, and bought stuff when it was a good deal. Unfortunately, record stores are stocking fewer titles and prices increased to the point where I almost never found anything worth the price; so I stopped even looking.
If enough record companies lower their prices, I might just start making the effort to shop for CDs again. That is, of course, as long as the CDs aren't copy-protected; which I refuse to buy.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Let's face it. Most people are now used to visual as apposed to aural stimulation. Think of the mid 20th Century. When people relaxed at home, they were talking, reading or listening to the radio or a record. During the last third of the 20th Century, people were watching TV instead. People prefer to watch moving pictures instead of listening. And now the DVD is providing the same video sales revolution that the CD did for audio sales. Add video games to the mix and even less "entertainment" money is going to be spent on audio CD's. And that trend isn't going to stop. Ever.
When I went to a Large-Media-Store yesterday, I did a quick comparison of the CD section and the DVD section. The DVD section was mostly around $20 with a bunch of older titles at $10. DVD sets were around $40. So let's say that I went to this "L-M-S" with $40 and wished to spend it on something to entertain me. Among the bundles I could buy were:
I don't know about you, but those last two look pretty fucking anaemic compared to the first five. That is why CD sales are down. And why they aren't going to ever recover to the levels they were during the 80's and 90's.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Re #1: No radio, no MP3 downloads... no purchase.
Re #2: Tons of this crap on radio (i.e. hear it but don't like it) because radio isn't an open forum, it's bought and paid for and it's hard to find variety if you don't like what radio is doing right now. Okay, let's face it, there's a lot of crap in MP3-land too... but the barrier to entry in MP3-land is lower, so artists that can't get on radio or that haven't been played on radio for years can be found in MP3-land.
[And no shite I won't pay for what I don't like and don't ever plan to listen to again-- repeat listening is after all, the express purpose of recorded music.]
Re #3: Every now and then something I like is on radio (and then I buy it), but mainly I find it through downloading MP3s (and then I buy it). But the point is, if I like it, I buy it. Because I want to do my own, high-quality rips instead of the net-quality stuff. Because if the three tracks I've heard are good, the other four might be worth having as well. Because I want the artist to make more. Because I want to have media around in case my hard drive dies and I need to re-rip.
Discourse:
I've bought at least 75 albums over the last two years that I first heard as a download or when someone emailed me a 128k mp3 file and said "wow, listen to this." Before the MP3 "era" I bought maybe 5-10 discs a year and often was dissatisfied with those. After MP3 started to happen, my CD purchasing increased exponentially and so did my level of satisfaction with each purchase.
I have 60+ gigs of MP3s, and I can show you an original CD to back every single one of those tracks up. Happily, I can put all those damn CDs in boxes in storage rather than having them take up space in my living area thanks to MP3. And yes, sometimes I do email one to a friend and say "wow, listen to this!" and I know that I have generated a number of CD sales this way.
Here's the kicker that drives RIAA crazy: probably 50% of the CDs I've bought after listening to MP3s are indies. Often I have to write the band after tracking them down on the 'net just to buy a copy because they're not out there in marketing channels. I know for a fact I've sent people to live performances... More than once I've emailed a friend an MP3 track along with "Hey man, this artist is going to be at XYZ in your town." Friend listens to track, likes it and *boom* another ticket is sold to the performance (and the artist makes a buck)... and nine times out of ten, the friend also buys a CD at the performance-- *boom* another CD is sold also.
The problem isn't that MP3s hurt sales of all music. The problem is that MP3s drive only the sales of good music-- and with barriers to entry (ala radio and RIAA contracts) removed, artistic expression isn't something the RIAA can get any kind of government-sponsored monopoly on. That is of course in contrast to, say, marketing and distribution channels in a particular commodity (i.e. crap music).
P.S. Please do not respond with an Ogg post.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Right now, the most "noise" is coming from the record companies, because quite franky, it doesn't require nearly as much bandwidth and time to download music as it does a movie.
As broadband technology becomes more prevalent and inexpensive though, the MPAA will be in the exact same boat that the RIAA is in today. (They're already in the first stages of it.)
The whole controversy about "is it right or wrong to download music" ignores the larger reality; technological changes are causing a lack of interest in purchasing music on prerecorded media. 5 years ago or so, the multi CD changers were a big deal. I remember being jealous at the people who got the fancy 200 disc CD changers for their home stereo. (I even ended up buying one for myself eventually, near the tail end of their popularity - on a closeout sale price. It's a Kenwood with a wireless IR keyboard that lets you type in the names of each disc, so it shows up on the changer's display.) Nowdays, these things are selling for $25-45 in the local "Surplus Electronics" hole-in-the-wall stores, along-side beat-up old speakers and Atari 2600 game systems.
People are realizing that it's more beneficial to have the music in digital form, stored on their computer, than stuck on a plastic audio disc. The people I see buying music CDs nowdays are immediately ripping them into MP3s, and storing the originals away as a "backup". They're not even playing the purchased CD itself anymore!
This can and will happen to movies on DVD, as well. PVR's are the first "mass market" example of technology headed that direction. It's just that right now, the sheer amount of data on a double-sided DVD (8 gigs. or so) + the cheap prices on set-up DVD players keeps the format viable for a little bit longer.
Until the MPAA and RIAA come to grips with this, and quit trying to keep a business model centered around providing music on overpriced tapes and discs using a proprietary format, they're fighting a losing battle.
And here are Billboard's Top 10 albums for this week!
- Mary J. Blige, Love & Life
- Hilary Duff, Metamorphosis
- Various Artists, The Neptunes Present... Clones
- Alan Jackson, Greatest Hits Volume II And Some Other Stuff
- YoungBloodZ, Drankin' Patnaz
- Beyonce, Dangerously In Love
- Evanescence, Fallen
- Soundtrack, Bad Boys II
- Chingy, Jackpot
- Coldplay, A Rush Of Blood To The Head
I think we've located the problem.The last 5 times I've attempted to buy a CD at an actual store in my area I have not been able to find it. Each time I check the tower records, the circuit cities, or even the used CD stores around here I can't find what I'm looking for. I'm attempting to pay money for music I want, but it's not there.
The stuff I'm looking for isn't terribly popular, but it's not obscure either. A lot of it is from the mid 90s and not from this month. Apparently the stores have some sort of problem keeping stocks of stuff from only a few years ago.
I could always order them from Amazon or something, but I want my music the same day the impulse to have it comes. I don't order a burger online 5 days before I plan to eat it. If I'm going by impulse, why not just download it instead of waiting? If they won't supply the product why should I waste hours of effort trying to pay for it? Is this just their way of forcing people to buy newer inferior music instead of the older stuff?
This is the kind of thing that a decent legal downloading service would help with (for Windows). Impulse purchases with the same instant rewards of downloading, and no more driving all around town trying to find an album only to end up wasting gas and time.
Copyright law does (now) carry criminal penalties. It used to be civil only, putting the burden on the victim to sue people for infringement. The change came about mostly from lobbying by SPA due to software piracy, not from music piracy. And who's going to lobby congress saying "no! don't make the pirates go to jail for copying software!". It was a shoo-in law, and had a pretty good effect on reducing software piracy and driving them further underground.
A wise man once said that there are "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statitics". According to the RIAA, they are "loosing money" because all of us are burning not buying. Now, they are spending less in recruiting new acts, promoting CD's, promoting tours, and generally doing less of everything that generates revenue for them. The kicker is that now they want to complain because they are making less money. In my workd, when I work less I make less. Hmmm, guess the RIAA thinks that they should be exempt from having to work to earn a living?
I suppose that they have decided that they are going to make up the "difference" by taking it out of the artists pockets. The most telling piece I have seen was an independent audit conducted on 1000 randomly chosen musicans/groups by a music magazine. All of the musicians/groups were represented by the RIAA. All but 2 of them had been underpaid by the RIAA. The amounts ranged from $163 to over $500,000.
If I want to buy a song, why can't the band just post an reduced-sample rate mp3 on the internet and make me pay a minimal fee to download it? If I want something of higher quality, I'd be willing to go to the store and buy a digitally mastered CD. But I don't want to pay $16.99 for a CD that has 1 good song and 14 other bits of cheesy crappy filler that you slapped together and tossed on the CD so JUST so that you can call it an album and go on tour with it.
They are too smart to make their entire catalog digitally available at the record store. I can't just walk in anywhere and get Etta James or Chee-Yun or Ledbelly or Complete Mushroom or any of the other stuff that I'm really interested in. If I could walk in and get them to burn me a CD with the tracks I want, include the lyrics, and let me pick my cover art, I'd be probably be quite happy to pay.
Instead, they are hide bound dinosaurs that offer nothing of value either to the artist or the consumer.
They take a perfectly good artist, repackage them into some generic format that "will sell" and turn out one hit wonders by the truck load. People don't eat cornflakes all the time. They like things that are a bit different. This is unfair to the artist because they have now been robbed of their intital following and since this is not their style, they are now unable to follow up with anything of merit. They also extort unbelivable percentages of the gross, net, concessions, etc. in exchange for screwing the up like this. It's as unnatural as "Processed Cheese Food".
It is unfair to the consumer because we end up with a 1000 Brittany Spears wanna-be's and very few artists of substance. It's like trying to live on McFish Sandwiches. In 10 years, who is really going to care that Brittany "did it again"? or that NSYNC went "bye bye bye"? If you don't want your stuff downloaded and passed around, maybe you shouldn't cater to 12 year old little girls that have no taste yet??? not to mention no money! You should try catering to segements of the population that are gainfully employed and have disposable income. We're less likely to download and more likely to buy....
My 3 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank