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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."
Is there any reason to think that this trend might be specific to the Australian music industry (for example because P2P music sharing could help with making making Australian music more well-known internationally), or is it reasonable to take this as an indication that P2P music sharing does not really undermine the commercial viability of the recording industry, worldwide?
-RIAA
Like many others, it really doesn't matter to me anymore.
I've recently made the decision to only buy CDs second-hand if at all.
Don't really care how new CD sales do, since I won't be giving my money directly to the record companies...
(Yes I know I am still supporting the industry, and have indirectly paid for the CD by increasing 2nd hand sales, but you get the point...)
But correlation is not equivelent to causation.. Maybe people are buying more albums for a different reason.. Economies around the world upturned in 2003.. Maybe that's important factor too..
Simon.
that each download is a loss of a "potential sale". That's why they always talk to congress about "loss of potential sales dollars".
The fact they won't admit that there are millions of casual listeners who may like a piece of music, but not like it enough to buy it.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
maybe the explanation is as simple as that: artists creating better music
Consumers are not just mindless fools who dumbly follow economic up and downturns: they are downloading more AND buying more CDs
This is not my opinion. Actually, it's not even an opinion. And I'm nowhere to be seen near it
I have purchased more CD's because of file sharing. I get to preview artists I have not heard, and dont get much airplay. With the high prices of disks in the UK its the only way to go!
The other reason for more sales would be online music shops that keep prices low. However as soon as you go into a high street shop the prices are rediculous for none chart stuff! You looking at 16GBP - 18GBP for a single studio album - this is the record industrys problem else where in the world OTT prices!
The argument that p2p influences music sales either way misses the point. Consumers spend their money, one way or another. When times are hard, they spend less. When times are good, they spend more. If albums represent a good deal they will buy them. When music all feels shit, they won't.
The anti-piracy argument assumes that consumers have elastic wallets but this is simply wrong, and trying to say that p2p increases appetite for music is just entering into a falacious discussion.
The music industry should take an example from the movie industry, which is making record profits from DVD sales. Product, product, product. Make it amazing. Make it collectible. Make it rich. People _will_ buy it, when they can't.
Australia is a boom market for music most probably because the boom in house prices makes everyone feel afluent. Wait until the house market collapses, and wow! the music market will follow.
No news for Kazaa! at all, I'd say.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The problem is not however piracy is in the end good or bad for the legimate buisiness of IP sales.. The problem is the almost complete disregard for IP in the first place.. How many really respect the IP-holders enough not to copy their stuff? I can fire my anecdotes on how my path of piracy could possible be linked to the fact that my dvd-purchases has skyrocked during roughly the same period of time. But its not out of a growing respect for IP, but rather because I happend to enjoy the added value of having a Futurama boxset instead of a dvd-r with all the episodes.. So the only way to combat piracy, is to gain (back?) that respect of IP, (or call it even by fear of retribution) or by enhancing the value of the bought product. I think this is the reason why dvd's are less threatened than cd's; a cd is just an archaic version of a >100mb folder with mp3's, where dvds offer higher quality, extras, audio commentary etc etc DVDs will face the same faith once the treshold of piracy reaches the same ease as with CDs. By that time, I guess they'd like worldwide respect(fear) or at least increased value enough to save their sales.
...that makes people instantly fear it?
It seems that the instant reaction by so many, including the music industry, is to make an enemy of something which could so easily be a potential friend.
The music industry instantly took a dislike to the filesharing apps and p2p networks - why? Because they were causing lost sales...certainly. But so often in this day and age, music (and other) companies fail to see the bigger picture. Loss of sales isn't the only thing that p2p networks cause.
Why don't they also look at p2p networks as massive, global advertising? And not only that, massive, global free advertising. Why does the thing that could help you so much instantly have to be rejected?
One could hark back to the days of the first submarine - another invention widely regarded as counter-productive as an example. You can almost hear them saying "A boat that's designed to sink? You're insane!" The fact that these "sinking boats" would become massively useful, widely used, and fulfil their great potential (albeit a potential to blow people up) was largely ignored.
And we have the same today. In the form of global, user-viewable, massively-multi-user (to coin a phrase) free advertising. I never understand why knee-jerk reactions such as "it's losing us sales, it's bad, kill kill kill, sue sue sue", having been shown to be so often counter-productive in the past, can't be avoided, and the full potential realised.
All this article does is try to legitimise unauthorised copyright infringement. Stop it now, it isnt good for the public front. The only way you can legitimise it is by getting the copyright owners permission, not the fact that it just happens to increase sales (which isnt even proven, its simply a cross corrolation of data).
But HTF can anyone claim that p2p is the cause?
I think the entire point is that to claim that P2P is causing increased sales is at least as defensible a position as the record industry's continual complaints over the last few years that P2P was the cause of decreasing sales.
It's actually pretty obvious from reading the article that the reason for increased sales was a decrease in prices, and a less pessimistic economy. People felt they were getting more value for money, and thus bought 8% more units (resuitling in a 2% higher gross after the price reduction was taken into account). But given that the record industry has been ignoring the fact that they were selling an overpriced product in a depressed economy, and have been blaming their downturn on file-sharing instead, it is perfectly justifiable to turn that argument around and assume that any increase in sales is attributable to the same force.
The world makes a great deal more sense if you don't go around taking everything you read literally.
Charles Miller
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
You're probably right here. Whether legal or illegal, downloads of music can enable you to cut out the middle-man - at least to an extent anyway.
This is great news for musicians and also for music-lovers.
However, understandably, the companies whose strength and profits come from a business model built around being the middle-man owing to lack of infrastructure to do without one are less than enthusiastic about the prospect.
They want their market-share. Fair enough.
TiggsThey work for their market-share. Fair enough. But the work they're doing is based on an old paradigm that's fast becoming irrelevant - or in trying to keep the status quo based on an increasingly-obsolete tech-level.
But their market-share is based on being a middle-man in a world where the middle-man is seen as less relevant. The Internet makes it easier to do things with less (visible) intermediate assistance.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
The RIAA will say that the increase in slaes is due to their lawsuits and the publicity that they have generated. RIAA will tell you that these suits have led to a decrease in use of P2P and they have some studies that show this. They are partially correct.
But one other thing has changed - $1 song downloads. The rise of iTunes and other $1 per song services demonstrate what everyone knew and the RIAA kept denying. If users have choice and can buy songs they want at a reasonable price and conveniently, they will buy and not steal. The record industry finally listened to the customers and adopted new business models and surprise, customrs responded by buying more music.
We also have to consider that the record industry is a cyclical business. There are years with little new and interesting music. In years where the new product is crap, people don't buy. Record companies, like TV channels, see some trend and then try to find 1000 ways to clone it, because cloning is easier than creating. Nora Jones is selling a lot of albums. She is original. Yet another gangster rap guy wearing baggy pants and spewing profanity and hate is just boring! We buy new and interesting not boring.
As much as I would love to believe otherwise, this is nothing but a classical example of non causa pro causa informal fallacy, namely: post hoc ergo propter hoc. I am sure everyone who is even remotely familiar with logic (id est a great majority of Slashdotters) will agree that we cannot disprove one post hoc ergo propter hoc argument (RIAA: CD sales dropped after Napster, so they must have dropped because of Napster; Slashdot: No, they dropped indeed, but because of the overall economy trends [economical data here]) while at the same time using the same fallacious arguments when they "prove" our agenda. That would be completely unacceptable for anyone who dares to call oneself a philosopher, or a Slashdotter for that matter. We must have higher standards than the RIAA motherfuckers or otherwise we have already lost. Let us not level the playing field that way. We shall win because our morals are better then theirs, not because we know better refutation tricks! We do not need any low and cheap rhetorical tricks whatsoever! Please let us remember that fact during this and future battles with RIAA. Otherwise we will have never succeeded in destroying them. I, for one, don't want my great grandchildren to ask me a question: "Where have you been when they took the freedom to sing away?" and be forced to answer: "I was a coward using cheap non causa pro causa arguments to get a warm and fuzzy feeling instead of acting, my dear."
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I believe the argument was that quality of music was dropping, and that was why sales had gone down.
You can't argue over taste.
I think a better way to express this is that the normal ways of marketing music don't promote enough product diversity. This is especially so here in the good ole USA, where unless you are lucky enough to live in a town with a plethora of college stations, the radio stations are own by a tiny handful of companies and have virtually the same format.
If most people aren't particularly interested in what is played on those stations, then most people aren't going to go out and buy music.
So, how are we, the silent majority, going to find music we like, and more importantly from the industry's point of view, are willing to shell out money for?
The problem for the recording industry is that they don't know how to market to the vast majority of people. Probably if you segmented their business, they make a tiny bit of money out of a fair number of songs, and a huge amount of money out of a small number of hits. They're focused on the hits, but the long term growth potential is in expanding the customer base for music. That's a lot harder.
P2p is a double edged sword. It really increases the market for music, but it undermines the revenues. Most importantly it kills the hit revenue model that's the industry cash cow. If I were to put together a solution for the industry to survive and grow, I'd get it out of the business of attacking its customers and do something like this: promote convenient online retail models like iTunes, and promote a healthy webcasting environment with a low cost of entry for webcasters. In other words, you want some college student in his dorm to be able create a hit webcasting service that will promote tons of your music, then you want his listeners to be able to buy that music easily.
This would be an overall win-win. Prices would drop, but volumes would increas so there was a lot more money entering the system.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't care if this helps Kazaa in court, common sense should be enough.
... or what are YOU planning to do with all those no-longer-so-high-tech VHS-cassettes? Floppy disks? Most are going to the landfill, probably, the same will happen with those $20 CDs and DVDs...
Why would rising sales of obsolete technology and non-biodegradable plastic discs be good news for anyone?
In other news:
Bio-energy research increases fossil fuel consumption! Everybody wins!!
The sooner CD:s, DVD:s and all other tangible intangibles fall into the Eternal Pit Of Ridicule and Oblivion, the better.
Actually, you're wrong. I have bought MUCH more music since peer-to-peer than before it. Radio sucks so much I can never hear anything good. But nowadays, any artist I hear about I can sample before I buy.
Also, on a larger level independent labels are selling a lot more music because people actually have an ability to hear their music. For the first time ever radio isn't the only means to hear new music!
The main problem facing any music artist is not peer-to-peer, it's lack of exposure. Peer-to-peer helps those artists who cannot get exposure through normal means, e.g., radio and MTV. Peer-to-peer only hurts those relevantly huge stars that get tons of exposure, and the bottom line of major record labels who relies on huge stars.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
File sharing helps CD sales of good music.
File sharing can help or hurt CD sales of mediocre music.
File sharing hurts CD sales of bad music.
From 1999, until approximately summer 2003, the sole way I searched for new music was by using LimeWire (a java client for Kazaa and others).
The only way I could information (quickly) about a song was to do such a search.
For example: Music from Mitsubishi Commercials. You type "mitsubishi commercial" into LimeWire - comes right up - you type "mitsubishi commercial" into iTunes - you get "The iTunes Music Store contains 0 records for your search, please try again."
Now, this relates to CD sales in that, if I found the song, and liked it, I went out and bought it, sometimes getting them from iTunes (at least within the past year).
So file sharing DOES translate into physical sales - I'm SURE I'm not the only one or even in the minority of users who do this.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Not exactly. When broadcast radio first came into being, it was hella expensive. The arguement WAS put forth that listeners getting it for free would not buy records, BUT there is one glaring difference.
If I listened to radio in the 20's I would really have had no way to record the broadcast unless I was hella rich, and very technically astute (very few people had the ability to actually make recordings back then).
But now, I can take that mp3 and hand it off to millions of other people.
The only way that could be done back then, woudl be for you to take your radio (which was usually NOT a trivial thing as most radios were as big as the average television today (heavy and in a big wooden cabinet) and play said radio for a large group of people.
In other words, the arguement back then was that if people could hear it on the radio for free, they wouldnt buy records (that was proven wrong.)
The arguement today is that if people can download a digital copy of a song of album they not only wont buy records, but their friends wont either because the digital copy can be passed along ad infinitum.
Please note that I do NOT believe in either of these arguements. CD sales are down because A: most new music that people hear about is crap, B: it is damn hard in some cases to find the good artists, and C: we all KNOW how much a blank CD costs. AND we all know how much a burner costs. So why in the hell would we pay 15-22 dollars for a CD, when we could make one of our own for as little as 2.50 (figuring in cost of burner and media and bandwidth).
If the record companies would pull their heads out of their asses, drop the prices in CDs to a more realistic level instead of the massive markup they sell them at, and start innovating again (i.e. NEW music, not same music by new artists) they may well see actual sales growth, not growth triggered by the economy.
Simply stated, the best CDs I have ever bought came from indy lables and the artists themselves (Selling their own CDs at shows, on the net, etc).
I cant even remember the last time I bought a CD from a major lable.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Yes. But you have to follow RIAA-logic on this one (kinda like the equivalent of 420 cd-burners...). The explanation is easy, you just need to read any RIAA-statement with fine print.
Okey, here goes. You caused a potential sales-loss. When you downloaded the music (instead just of buying in the first place), you could have disliked the music and left it at that.
Had you bought the cd in the first place, and then disliked it, the RIAA would still make money. P2P prevents this collosal source of revenue.
All new pop-releases seems based on this ingenious system. And any downloading of (especcialy crappy) music causes a potential sales-loss.
Repeat after me, potential sales loss. This is a "real" thing, btw.
Now you got it?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
But in every single one of those cases, the copyright holder made the CHOICE to release their products in that manner.
The problem with the most common, widespread P2P use is that people are distributing products without the consent of the rights holders, removing that choice from whoever holds the copyright on that work.
By all means, support those who make this choice as much as you can, but do not then turn around and TAKE other peoples work, who have not made this choice, and demand that they do, or you'll just keep taking it.
... file sharing increasing CD sales.
I found out about Yoshinori Sunahara because of file-sharing. Really dug one his tracks I'd found by accident.
A few clicks later to Google to look up the artist's Web site, [http://www.y-sunahara.com/] and then to Amazon, and I'm going to be having one of his CD's sent to me in a few days. If I really like the whole album, I'll prolly buy others he's put out.
Now this will strengthen their argument to slap more "theft taxes" on blank media.
Some of us don't steal software and music and why should those few of us that don't engage in theft have to pay for the sins of the many.
Collective punishment is WRONG..
(and there's nothing to be ashamed of, since unlike parent I am not Philosophiae Doctor)
What real person who is not the OP would especially point this out?
and everything in the parent post turned out to be true and extremely insightful. Please mod parent up as +5, Insightful.
I wish everyone could use such a briliant reasoning in future discussions on Slashdot.
Judge for yourself... I'm thinking someone really wants his karma...
The record companies have a monopoly. They illegally collude to fix prices and control the market. Whenever that happens, people work extra hard to find a way around it. There is no sense calling these people criminals for wanting the music industry to be reasonable. That's the kettle calling the sugar black.
I'm sure p2p does cut down on the sales of some artists.
Those artists you hear on the radio or a club in passing, and think "hey, that seems cool." In earlier days you would have to buy the album to discover it is total crap and the artist is a talentless hack. But now p2p gets the word out before you get robbed. The record companies are all upset, because their whole business is putting blind people in fields of shit and asking them to find a rose. That is to say, they intentionally pump up one hit wonders to sell as many records as possible, but don't put as much effort into the whole album, and do even worse by most second albums.
It is in their interest to make money on talentless hacks, because while a talentless hack may be capable of producing a one hit wonder (usually with a longtime producer working with them on the track), they won't be able to achieve long-term success or the power that comes with it to demand reasonable percentages from the record company and creative control. Hence by having ten artists sell 10 million records a piece, they make more money than on a talented band with staying power who sells 100 million records.
It is a pump and dump but for music instead of the stock market. And just when they get the scheme nearly perfected, p2p comes along and lets people preview what they'll be getting in advance. At which point reasonable people pinch their noses and walk away from what the record companies would prefer that they buy.
Furthermore, those in the record industry that bitch and moan about the artists being robbed are a bunch of liars and hypocrites. They steal from their artists in numbers that p2p can never touch. They make it almost impossible for an artist to audit independently how many records they've sold, but inevitably when artists do audit (usually in a very limited area), they discover they are being paid even less than the lousy terms in their contracts. No part of this argument is about the artists: that is just a smokescreen for what's really going on.
It is the record companies' feces trade that they are worried about: they want to continue getting you to trade the money earned with the sweat of your back for fertilizer, meanwhile all their cows are starving in the field and they claim it is your fault for not buying enough sewage.
That business model, like all pump and dump schemes, eventually has to fail. Right now they are just trying to legislate a delay for the day of reckoning, while they can try to come up with a new scheme to sell us formulaic shit we don't want.
Notice that creative, independent, offbeat, artists invariably seem to make up the examples people use when they need to point to somebody who successfully leverages the Internet and p2p. Artists, in the grandest sense of the word, often can do very well in that environment.
When people can sample music freely, and be picky about the artists they will support, the music industry can no longer control the market. And that is what they are afraid of. So stop calling it stealing or copyright infringement. The only thing being stolen is the RI's ability to sell stuff people don't really want to hear (not after they've heard the good music out there).
If you took away this monopoly, instead of 5 gigantic record companies that fix prices and control the market together illegally, you would see 500 small record companies become medium sized. Smaller record companies benefit the consumer, because now there is competition. The cost of producing, promoting, and distributing has fallen way down thanks to technology, but the big record companies keep taking more and more for this service, both from their artists and the consumers.
At least in some countries in Europe there is a special tax on CDs. That money goes directly to the music industry etc.
So by buying CD-Rs and now DVD-Rs you actually pay the industry money for music and movies you are going to put on them.
The DVD tax in sweden is about 0.4 Euros. Quite alot considering that most people by 10 or 100 times more CD/DVD-Rs than normal original CD/DVDs.
My point being that we already pay for the music/movies that we download.
...or is this storying suffering from a classic logical fallacy?
I mean, I don't believe the RIAA either when they say that file sharing is the reason sales are down. But then again, I thought most slashdotters felt the same way. Why is the RIAA (rightfully) chastised for false cause in that argument, yet slashdot publishes a story with the same logical error and people lap it up?
Simply because filesharing is out there now, and record sales are up in Australia, doesn't mean filesharing caused the increase. What will they say a year from now, if sales suddenly slump? Certainly not "filesharing killed Australian music sales".
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
own sites? A LOT Of bands these days have music samples, and videos on their websites, they let you sample the music on the CD's all you want, without violating their copyright and downloading the entire CD.
If you can't find samples provided by people who own the rights to distribute them, don't buy the music, and let them know that you didn't buy the music because they had no samples available.
Maybe that'll lead to more positive change than using a P2P app to commit wholesale piracy, which only fuels their perception that people just want their music for free.
There are constructive ways to seek change, and destructive ways to seek change. Wholesale P2P fuelled piracy is a destructive avenue to the change you, and all of us are seeking.
Economics is like that. Always yin and yang. What's bad news for EMI is good news for Memorex.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.