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2003 CD Sales Officially Down 7.6 Percent
Lust writes "CNN is reporting that global CD sales for 2003 are down 7.6 percent, and points to 'rampant piracy, poor economic conditions and competition from video games and DVDs.' More grist for the RIAA mill on P2P? I just haven't heard anything new I'd like to buy... how about you?" It's also mentioned that "a strong second-half recovery in the United States, Britain and Australia... has raised hopes that the worst is behind the beleaguered industry", although "evidence of a full-fledged recovery is flimsy."
NYTimes article TechnologyReview article
Yes, RIAA contracts mean that any time a CD under one of their labels is sold, it is either subject to their payment scheme, or is illegal.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I'm a big indie rock fan and I find this site to be a good break down of non-RIAA bands:
RIAA Safe Top 100
RIAA Safe Top 10 Alternative Rock
all based on Amazon Sales
Come on, we're suppose to be NERDS. Do the math. Quit pointing to iTunes as some sort of real cash flow to the RIAA. It's not. Either is the $3000 dollars they make from lawsuit settlements.
We forget how filthy rich this monopoly is. 32 billion dollars is a lot of money. Feel sorry for media companies now? Are we ripping off the artists? Hell no, the music industry has been ripping off artists MUCH longer than we've been alive!
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Don't get too used to that $10 price.
I guess have the obligation to address your issue since your asking a perfectly legitimate question.
Start here at VH1 one hit wonders.
You're kind of correct - the statement was taken out of context. What people are tired of is paying a bunch of money for something that is played over and over on the Radio anyway. So much so that you get tired of hearing it and that Artist then becomes associated with one song and is thought of as a one hit wonder in which cannot ever achieve the same greatness.
If you like 80s music, like Supertramp, then I am guessing that you might like other progressive rock music, like Yes, Genesis (with Peter Gabriel), Jethro Tull, etc.
And I recently discovered, much to my amazement, that progressive rock didn't die in the eighties -- it's still being made today (it just doesn't get played on the radio, or sold in the stores).
There are quite a few Internet-based progressive rock radio stations. For example, I enjoy listening to these two stations:
Delicious Agony Progressive Rock Radio
Canvas Productions
As a result of listening to these, and similar Internet radio stations, I have bought over 100 CDs in the last year. That's ten times as many as I had bought in the previous decade!
You might also like to check out the Gibralter Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock.
Lastly, check out CD Baby, which is an Internet music store that specializes in Progressive Rock and other esoteric music that you will never hear on the radio. Play some of their samples, and I think you will be quite surprised.
Well, almost no impact. According to a new study, "downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero". Monday's NYTimes (free registration) describes the study, in which two economists analyzed file-sharing and sales data over a 17-week period in 2002, using "complex mathematical formulas" to determine that "spikes in downloading had almost no discernible effect on sales", and estimating that "it would take 5000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by one copy". Naturally, some organizations disagree. Also, according to the RIAA's 2003 year end numbers [PDF], sales of CD singles were up 84% from 2002, while overall revenue shrunk from $11.55 to $11.05 billion... which makes perfect sense when you consider economic tendencies since 9/11.
According to this artical on The Register..
l bu m_sales_rise/
1 22 34274.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/29/uk_oz_a
which also links to Syndey Morning Herald.com.au
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/28/10804
sales toped 50 Million albums, for the first time ever *increasing* over the last 4 years despite music downloading etc..
dont listen to all the bull shit that the Music Industry is trying to feed you.
(ps sorry for the txt links, my brain is too mushed for html this time of hte morning )
A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.
r t= rss&tag=feed&subj=news
For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.
"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."
The study, the most detailed economic modeling survey to use data obtained directly from file-sharing networks, is sure to rekindle debates over the effects of widely used software such as Kazaa or Morpheus on an ailing record business.
Big record labels have seen their sales slide precipitously in the past several years, and have blamed the falling revenue in large part on rampant free music downloads online. Others have pointed to additional factors, such as lower household spending during the recession, and increased competition from other entertainment forms such as DVDs and video games, each of which have grown over the same time period.
Executives at file-sharing companies welcomed the survey, saying it should help persuade reluctant record company executives to use peer-to-peer networks as distribution channels for music "We welcome sound research into the developing peer-to-peer industry, and this study appears to have covered some interesting ground," said Nikki Hemming, chief executive officer of Kazaa parent Sharman Networks. "Consider the possibilities if the record industry actually cooperated with companies like us instead of fighting."
The study, performed by Harvard Business School associate professor Felix Oberholzer and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill associate professor Koleman Strumpf, used logs from two OpenNap servers in late 2002 to observe about 1.75 million downloads over their 17 week sample period.
That sample revealed interesting behavioral, as well as economic, data. Researchers found that the average user logged in only twice during that period, downloading about 17 songs. Some people vastly overshot that average, however--one user apparently logged in 71 times, downloading more than 5,000 songs.
The two professors narrowed their sample base by choosing a random sample of 500 albums from the sales charts of various music genres, and then compared the sales of these albums to the number of associated downloads.
Even in the most pessimistic version of their model, they found that it would take about 5,000 downloads to displace sales of just one physical CD, the authors wrote. Despite the huge scale of downloading worldwide, that would be only a tiny contribution to the overall slide in album sales over the past several years, they said.
Moreover, their data seemed to show that downloads could even have a slight positive effect on the sales of the top albums, the researchers said.
The study is unlikely to be the last word on the issue. Previous studies have been released showing that file sharing had both positive and negative effects on music sales.
The Recording Industry Association of America was quick to dismiss the results as inconsistent with earlier findings.
"Countless well-respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, and the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs," RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said in a statement. "Our own surveys show that those who are downloading more are buying less."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5181562.html?pa