CD-Rs and MP3s Not Hurting Record Sales

David Gerard writes "Forget the industry shills' spin - the numbers prove that, for Australia, CD-Rs and MP3s are not hurting record sales in the slightest - based on a recent Australian Record Industry Association survey. It would be interesting to see what the numbers for the US or UK say."

Comments

preaching to the choir

[McDrewbie]

this is basically giving proof for what most of slashdot already knew. I for one bought more cd's in Napster's hey-day then I do now.

Re:preaching to the choir

[fucksl4shd0t]

The bottom line was that everyone made more money, consumers got more choice, and sampling (and buying) of CDs got distributed over a wider cast of artists. The only exposure was with the top few artists at each of the top 5 record labels, which she thought would be very influential on the way the industry would behave. Unfortunately, a significant share of most record labels profits come from very few artists.

Record company thinking is a dinosaur. I have labeled the very last sentence in your post as the "rock-star mentality", and it is identical to the "home-run mentality". :)

Basically, the record-company is stuck in the rut of trying to make rock-stars out of musicians, and pushing every musician they can to stardom. Statistically, this model fails because only a very select few, determined by market forces, will become a "hit". The industry can impact that, to some extent, and they do try, but in the end it's market forces that dominate the next big thing. It always is. I suggest that dropping CD sales is mostly due to the record industry trying to make the next big hit, rather than trying to find out what it is.

I think the record industry needs to drop the rock-star mentality and go for the muffler man mentality. This requires more description:

Back when I did exhaust work, I worked with a guy who didn't want any of the "small" jobs. The setup was this: When a job sold, the ticket would get hung on the wall in shop. We (the mechanics) would take them each in line. When you finished a job, you grab the next ticket in line and start working on it, no matter what it is. We made commission, no hourly or salary pay, so we got paid (theoretically) for what we were worth.

So, this guy decides that small jobs are a waste of time and he only wants to work the big jobs. He did a few brake jobs that day, and one of the higher-priced exhaust jobs. He cherry-picked. ;) He hovered close to the tickets and would slow down his work until the next ticket was a high-dollar ticket. Then he would crank it up, finish his job, and grab it before someone else got to it.

That left all the small jobs for me and the other guy. So I busted my ass and did as many of them as I could.

At the end of the day, I had done $1,400 worth of work (earning 14% of that), while the cherry-picker had only done about $900.

His was the "rock-star mentality", and mine was the "muffler man mentality". It compares nicely with grocery stores who only get 3% profit on gross sales, and take a loss on many of the individual products in the store! Yet they rake in millions each year!

The recording industry needs to take a lesson from all of this and focus more on getting all of their music to sell rather than pushing the Next Big Thing. People have diverse interests, and any investor will tell you to diversify your holdings. Why does the record industry insist on focusing on less than 10% of their total catalog? Because it makes money? I'll bet that they'd make a LOT more money if they focused on getting their whole catalog to sell and worried more about gross sales than they worry about individual musicians. And that's where P2P file sharing becomes an asset in their marketing strategy, rather than the liability it poses now.

Make no mistake: P2P does represent a liability to the record industry. Ultimately it might well result in their downfall. Not through immoral piracy, but simply because customers don't give a shit about the industry, they care about the musicians that make the music, and they will support those musicians. Historically, all of the big rock bands to come out that have shown staying power started by building their own following. Aerosmith wasn't an overnight sensation, neither was Metallica. Both of them worked their asses off for years, making shit for pay, until they finally had enough of a following to be viable bands to the record industry. For all those years, they were classed in the 90%+ of

Wonderful news, but...

[troff]

... will it really help? We face a thousand-and-one lawyers and school or workplace administrators running in fear from those lawyers and they still refuse to hear this new, or disregard it completely. I AM Australian. My workplace IS a school (well, a university) where I also study; last semester, that included a semester of Law for IT students; we had to put up with the Copyright Law 1968 and its 21st Century amendments; in our workplace, they've cracked down on MP3s and the central IT section have instituted semi-regular searches of our Windows XP administrative shares (suits me; 1: I use Ogg and 2: I keep my personal music - yes, from CDs I bought - on my Linux desktop anyway).

As has already been said, 'nuff said, heard it all already. Knew it.

But how does this news get to the lawmakers, to the people whose ears are already stuffed with campaign donations by some other "interested" party?

Exactly!

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

Record Sales are indeed down because people would rather burn a CD of great music than the Bubble-Gum Pop and "Pseudo-Punk-My-Girlfriend-dumped-me-and-I-am-in-p ain" Overpriced Crap the Record industry has available in the Record Stores.

Dolemite
_____________________

What can we use this "proof" for?

[mbrix]

Why is this important to prove? Even though downloading music doesn't hurt CD sales, does it make it more right? If downloading music becomes legal, *then* it will hurt CD sales. Without doubt.

Re:What can we use this "proof" for?

[Crypto Gnome]

Because the corporate machine that is the RIAA is lying to you, the customer.

All the time.

Every Day.

And if that isn't bad enough for you, they want to stop legitimate use.

Specifically, you might want to rip and encode that Music CD you purchased in order to listen to it on your MP3 player (a reasonable expectation) - but the RIAA will do *anything* to stop you from doing that.

WHY do they want to do that? because

1. people ONLY rip and encode to MP3 in order to pirate music
2. music piracy decreases sales
3. decreasing sales hurts artists
4. hurting artists will produce less music

Of course, it's been shown in many/most cases that only #4 is true

1. Some People rip and encode to MP3 for legitimate private use, not for piracy
2. in many cases Music Piracy is in actual fact encouraging people to broaden their music tastes (ie buy stuff they'd not previously consider)
3. decreasing sales are often a myth, or at best "decreasing sales of actual CDs" (ie because there's STRONG UPTAKE in legal and legitimate digital downloadable music sales)
4. The RIAA already screw most if not all artists as hard as they can, so who are the RIAA to whine about "save the hurting artists"?

Does it matter?

[Richard_at_work]

Copyright infringement is wrong, just because its not having a negative affect on sales doesnt mean its ok to continue copying. Im not against fair use, whether implied or granted by the government, but wholesale copying of music, which is what is going on via kazaa etc, is just plain immorally wrong, regardless of what the RIAA or the ARIA or whoever does so people can "justify" it.

Re:Does it matter?

[Crypto Gnome]

As much as I disgree with prople infringing on copyright (ie breaking the law) here's my personal take in the situation.

----- Don't flame me, I'm posing a moral question here -----

There are countries where The Music Industry has pressured The Government to apply a FEE to all and sundry users of a Particular Recording Medium (eg the CDRs in Canada).

The Music Industry argues "*ALL* users of this recording medium are PIRATES, therefore they ALL should pay ME money".

Ok, so if I've done the time, then looking at this from a purely moral standpoint, why should I not do the crime?

I've *already* "paid for" the criminal act of pirating music, so why should I not go out and perform the criminal act itself?

----- It only stands to reason.

On the other hand,if they want to treat me with the assumption that I'm basically a good law abiding citizen, that I want to rip my music to MP3 for my own private listening, and that I use CDRs for storing backups of my own personal original digital photography, then why do they need to impose a *blanket* CDR fee *as well as* doing their best to technologically prevent me from riping CDs on my computer.

---------------

You ask "does it matter?" I say yes it does because the Music Industry Associations are arguing from a "morally right" standpoint (eg infringing on copyright hurts the artists), even though they're very clearly morally wrong (ie by assuming that *all* CDR sales are for piracy , and that *anyone* who rips music to MP3 is always/only doing so for the purposes of piracy).

Re:Does it matter?

[Richard_at_work]

Nope, it may be illegal but it's not immoral. IP law is totally broken at the moment and civil disobedience is entirely appropriate.

Civil disobedience in these cases is where you publically declare that you are going to break the law, state your reasons why, and publically do it. Civil disobedience stives to raise the public view of the act you are campaigning against, and it does it by demonstrating why it is wrong, and why you are against it, and giving the chance for the act to be taken to court, so it can be demonstrated there as well. People downloading off kazaa, copying off friends etc etc are not doing this, they are hiding in the shadows and not performing any civil disobedience at all, and until someone does im sorry but this arguement does not stand for me.

Re:Interesting

[mshiltonj]

"CD sales are down 15 percent from last year, while legal online services like the new Napster and Apple's iTunes have taken off, especially for the holidays. Apple's iTunes sold more than $1 million in download gift certificates since October."


I'm curious to know what is actually selling on iTunes, etc. Is it new stuff? Or classic, older stuff from the labels' catablogs?

I don't by any CDs now because most new music sucks, and I've already got my preferred CDs in my library. I may be a White Stripes or a Jet disc. But, of all the material being released in the past few year, almost none of it appeals to me.

I have to wonder if all the iTunes sales are for Zeppelin, Stones, Floyd, etc. (or artists from your genre of choice).

Eventually, iTunes users will have filled their iPods with the older music they've heard and know they already like.

When that point arrives, the industry will have to convince customers that Britney is more deserving of space on the iPod, and more deserving of one's listening time, than Jimmy Hendricks and Janis Joplin.

Good luck with that.