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File Sharing Increases CD Sales
Andrew writes "ARIA have released figures that show for 2003, album sales have reached an all time high. In fact, according to Peter Martin, who recently went on Australian radio, before file sharing and CD burning they were selling 10 million less. Total unit sales were also at an all time high at 65.6 million. CD single sales declined 1.9 million over the year, but as Peter said file downloading is doing a better job. Should help Kazaa's legal problems."
I would believe that this is a very Australian specific tendency. Recently, I heard about European sales figures (Switzerland/Germany) which were about 20% less then 2002.
;)
Personally I buy more CD's then a few years ago but not being a P2P person anyway and so therefore might not be representative.
Maybe, these Australian figures are that good just because of Kylie
No, there is enough evidence at Janis Ians website to support this, and Baen Books have been making the same claim with regard to their free library, see janisian.com and Baen Free Library for more info.
[Note: Bean seems to be down ATM]
Slackware - because apt is for the lazy.
Not really album sales for 2003 where an all time record high in the United Kingdom. Though again single sales slumped yet again. The reason for this is obvious though, they are way to expensive to bother with. Three singles would more than cover the cost of an album. I remember when it was more like seven or eight singles to the price of an album.
It only covers albums sold in Australia. The stats don't include the sales of Australian artists in overseas markets.
I don't know about other countries, but sales in the UK are up as well. Album sales in the UK rose by 7.6% in 2003 to a record high.
Why CD's are slipping down the charts
From the article: "Have you noticed that the singles and albums charts increasingly seem to bear almost no relation?"
and
"The music industry is being sustained by middle-aged men who can't use the internet."
I think there's a lot of truth there.
It actually refers to albums that have left the warehouses, not actually cash money sales.
An album could technically go platinum in its first week if they do a run at the factory of 50,000 (or whatever) and put them straight on a truck.
Vinyl LPs are made from the same master tapes/discs as CDs. CD has a fixed sample rate of 44.1kHz, a fixed sample size of 16 bits/sample {which is not as poor as you think; Brownian motion of air molecules against a microphone shows up in the 14th-16th bits} and a fixed number of channels {2, one for each ear}. There is no good reason to use any other parameters for mastering, and a very good reason not to: digital distortion {caused by bodging one sample rate or bit length into another; not a trivial process in any case} sounds much worse than analogue distortion.
The upshot of which is, that although vinyl LPs have a theoretically broader bandwidth {no harsh Nyquist-limit cut-off at 22.05kHz, reckoned to be beyond the range of human hearing anyway} the digital mastering, with its own limitations, negates this theoretical advantage.
What annoys me is that CDs are sold at a higher price than Walkman cassettes, which cost nearly three times as much as a CD to manufacture.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The radio plays high-cost artists like Madonna and Britney Spears and keeps their record sales high. But they also pay 'play-fees' to the industry. They tried to get away with paying these fees based on the same causation principle the author mentions, but the judges didn't buy it and set up a fee to play songs.
This doesn't necessarily help Kazaa because the legal precedent is there with radio play that the artists and their agents MUST be reimbursed. Using the argument of 'piracy helps sales' offers no legal assistance whatsoever. Instead, it will hurt a legal defence because the attorneys for RIAA will have precedence on their side.
LPs are not always made from the same master as CD. Digital music is also not recorded at 44.1 16bit or mastered in such a format. Mostly a 88.2khz or 96khz (or even higher) is used at 24 bits to give a lot of head room for manipulating the sound before it gets dithered down to 16 bit for a CD. Sample rates are not "bodged" down, and although not trivial, will not produce digital distortion that is worse than analogue distortion - it will be ver small in magnitude if done properly.
However, some modern record cutting lathes include a digital delay line as part of how they work, which does negate any good work in producing a high bit master or analogue master.
Still, if you get hold of old Mobile Fidelity vinyl which was half speed mastered, or some of the DCC (the record company, not the tape format) re-issues that were done on all tube gear, or the recent Dark Side of the Moon re-issue, or anything that Tim de Paravicini's gear is used on, you can definately hear a vinyl superiority.... but those discs are hardly cheap or easy to find.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
The record industry is really worried about artists being able to "make" their own albums with a minimal amount of investment in equipment. Imagine, studio quality CD from your living room for a couple of grand, and you don't need to wait around to "get signed".
Setup your own website, distribute your mp3s, advertise your gigs, sell t-shirts, posters etc.,
You could conceiveably give away music, and sell all the other stuff at a profit.
In the 80s, I remember reading that Iron Maiden made more money off of the sale of their T-Shirts than they did on record sales. Must've been the kewl "Eddie the Ed" emblazoned on every tee.
You could even make your own Music Videos and make them available for download, software nowadays is teriffic, overdub a song over your video and make it streaming or downloadable...no emptyvee to worry about.
The Internet could be wonderful for music if more "unsigned" artists used it more and worried less about "getting signed" and "getting ripped off" from the music industry. More money is to be made if they did it themselves and don't worry about "making a million" on their first song.
I could go on and on about ideas for promoting a music career yourself, more artists should do it, it would free them up from bad contracts and give them complete control over their music.
The record industry may be many things, but it's not a monopoly
The fact that tiny competitors exist doesn't mean the 5 major labels acting jointly as the RIAA isn't a monopoly. They claim to their sales account for 90% of all music sales in the US.
monopoly
n. a business or inter-related group of businesses which controls so much of the production or sale of a product or kind of product as to control the market, including prices and distribution.
Inevetably? You mean this happens in 100% of the cases? Can you give some examples?
Talk to these guys about it. Read some articles. This isn't just made up.