Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't mind pay 15 bucks for a new full feature movie release but I'm not buying another 1 hit wonder that has only one song that I like for something around 18 bucks and listen to it only once.
No there isn't going to be a recovery until their business model is revised.
rampant piracy, poor economic conditions and competition from video games and DVDs.
Hmm.. they seem to have missed "boring bands, unoriginal music and inflated CD prices."
Here's a free tip from me to the music industry lurkers:
Shrink-wrapping dog shit does not create a market for shrink-wrapped dog shit.
Think about that, act on it, then give me 0.5% of the net.
Trolling is a art,
Itunes is selling 2.5 million songs a week. The declining sale of CDs does not necessarily mean the music piracy is going up; it means there are also new means of selling music, digitally, and very legally.
I hate it when declining CD sales is automatically attributed to piracy. The way music is sold is evolving too (and the labels are getting their share don't worry).
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
...the Clearchannel effect - the drivel gets all the radio airtime
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Riiiight. And the introduction of the Compact Disc had absolutely no effect on the sales of cassettes and vinyl. It was clearly completely due to the "file-sharing and CD-burning craze". Uh-huh.
In the US, a new CD is now $17.99, sometimes even $18.99 or $21.99. When I was in college 3-4 years ago a new CD was usually $13.99 or $14.99 at my local bookstore. I was at Borders the other day wanting to buy a new album (that I couldn't download!) and was blown away that they wanted $19.99 for ONE CD. Screw that, I'll search harder and find it online somewhere...
When iTunes first came out I thought $9.99 for a CD was silly, but now 50% off is starting to make sense... (Speaking of iTunes this study doesn't seem to take online sales into account...)
How an industry that makes so much profit can be considered a "beleaguered industry"? I'm sure the gas and cable industries are suffering heavily as well these days, huh?
Just not sold by the RIAA.
There are some great artists. I buy their albums whenever they appear in concert, at the concert. Then I know that at least a fraction of the money will actually go to the artist.
For example, check out Vienna Teng. Great music and even better live!
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
The reason most often cited for slumping television ratings is the ever-increasing availability of alternatives, from satellite and cable channels to DVD rentals to the Internet. People just havbe more choices when it come to how to spend an evening.
The same is true of music. We have satellite delivered content on a couple of hundred channels now, (CD quality, no commercials, and recordable: different from buying a CD how?)
I agree with the other posting most, though. Give me quality content and I'll buy it if I like it. Give me restrictive technologies and outrageous pricing, and I can find other things to do.
An industry that has started a warpath suing children, the elderly, and many more of its potential customers is suffering from poor sales. Shocking!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
With the increased high prices I have almost completed resorted to buying used. I can usually find great buys at amazon, ebay, or half. I seldom pay more than $5.
There is so much good music from the past that I haven't heard yet, why do I need to pay full price for the new stuff.
When I do buy new I try to do so directly from the artist.
Dear RIAA,
HAHAHA! RIAA, the music industry has changed! Technology has allowed greater sharing and therefore we don't need to go to a brick and mortar store to buy your crap!! Information wants to be free, it's everywhere!!! No laws will stop this!!! YOU are the thieves!
Yours truly,
Slashdot Crowd
Dear Congressman,
Due to recent changes in technology, American businesses are now looking overseas to cheap labor to perform what used to be my job. This is economical for them because of increased ability to communicate cheaply and ubiquitously over the Internet.
THIS HAS TO STOP. You MUST do SOMETHING to protect my job. EVIL corporations are taking advantage of Americans by using new methods and technology to their advantage. This is not fair.
Yours truly,
Slashdot Crowd
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Considering that iTunes has a huge market share in legal music downloading, I think that it's safe to say that the reason that cd sales are declining is because you no longer have to buy an entire CD when all that you want it 1 song. I (for one) will never buy an entire CD again unless I'm really into the artist and I actually want the entire CD. From now on I'll be buying my music on iTunes only.
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
Fine the RIAA sucks. But don't punish the artists who's labels chose to be members. It's hard as hell to get signed, and the artist has to eat. The RIAA provides legal services and lobbying forces that would not be possible by individual labels, let alone most artists. YES I dispise the way the RIAA has handled these issues, but they are also looking out for the rights of the artists as a whole. It's kinda like the MikeRoweSoft.com case. The RIAA has to try to protect the artists or else they set a precedent. BTW MOST of the CD's I buy are independent, and if they are under the RIAA I try to buy at concerts, and murchandise, and tickets, etc... I have the beliefs that many BBS'ers used to have about 'piracy'. Try it, then if you keep it, buy it.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
How about a list of every other industry that's down 7.6% or more for 2003? I'm guessing music is far from the only one.
On second thoughts, never mind. The only conclusion the RIAA will reach by seeing such a list is that P2P hurts those industries too! AIEEE!!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The rate of sales for music has been increasing considerably faster than the rate of population increase for many years now. It's entirely reasonable that their last sales values exceeded the amount of money that people really felt comfortable spending on music and that, as a country, we've cut back.
One of the things that a lot of people have been incorrectly assuming is that music sales should react proportially to the economy. This theory doesn't hold true because (even at $15/CD), CD's are something that people can afford one or two of in order to nurse themselves through the disappointment of (for instance) not being able to replace their failing appliances, or remodel their kitchen. It's a small enough expense that people use it as "brain candy", or as consolation spending.
The drop in music spending may just be because more of us are back at work now, and don't have as much time to moon over the music that we don't have time to purchase.
P2P trading continues to be a non-issue (and possible a net positive) in the music industrie's income balance, they're just too greedy to realize it.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I wanted to add my 'me too' to this thread in case anyone from the RIAA happened across /. today.
Between 2000 and 2002 I used Napster to download a TON of songs. But up to 2000 I had only ever bought about 20 CD's. At the end of 2002 my CD collection was up to about 60 CD's. Albums that I've bought since 2002? Zero.
I'm a small business owner. I'll admit that I've been cowed by the RIAA. Since 2002 I've only downloaded about 5 songs covered by the RIAA (and a few tracks from Japan).
There's definately a correllation here.
I'd like to sample some new music, but due to my schedule I hardly ever have the chance to listen to the radio.
I sincerely wish that all the record companies would open up their whole catalogs at high compression/low quality so that I can check out new music or download a song I haven't heard in five years.
*sigh*
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
A look at the Billboard Top 200 is an easy way to figure out, at least on an anecdotal level, that popular music sucks right now. For the most part, it's the same old artists, singing the same old things within their same old already-established genres. It's the same problem with the video game industry that everyone always complains about -- it's a lot easier to go with established acts (or artists or licenses) than to risk capital on something new that has the potential to either suck or be incredible.
This general trend of homogeneity has really been brought to bear over the last decade, from what I can tell. Companies really like sustained sources of revenue...ok, yeah, that's a given and has been since the beginning. Companies need it to survive and to grow. But isn't it good to create some nice challenges so that the companies can grow?
Challenges, like, say, the removal of perpetual copyright? If, for example, Disney couldn't keep making money off of old cartoons, wouldn't they have to seriously start making up some new stories or at least go back to the children's section at public library and read some Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson?
In the end, it's all about how we the people want corporations to act in the context of our republic (both the United States and in the larger sense of the collective of industrialized nations). Do we want to give them carte blanche to not innovate? Or do we want to help them along by pushing them a little? Folks, from what I can tell, will almost always take the road that's easiest and offers the most return for the least amount of risk or investment. Sometimes you have to guide them down that road, or at least show 'em where it starts.
My 2 cents, anyhow...
Is it also possible that the quality of music is not as great as in the past or that a lot of music is "more of the same?"
Anybody who says that the music being produced today "isn't as good" as older music are just lazy in my book. If you can't put forth a little effort in finding new music that isn't force-fed to you by MTV or the radio, then you don't really know the whole story, do you?
There is a ridiculous amount of good music out there, if you just stop by a music news website to check it out. Also, online radio is a great way to find new artists that you like.
I belong to the ______ generation.
Eventually, on-line music distribution will increase quality, as artists will focus on making a couple excellent songs instead of many lame ones.
The Raven
Exactly. Traditional record companies live and die on their ability to gain exclusive distribution rights to artists' material. This is why they are so threatened by the internet - it provides an alternative means of distribution that lacks the barriers to entry (production lines, physical distribution of product, access to retailers, etc.) that historically have allowed them to maintain their oligopoly.
Unfortunately, they haven't yet taken to heart the fact that a distribution-based business model isn't going to be viable over the long run for media companies, so they continue to fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo rather than adapting their business model to the changing market conditions.
But the fact remains that everyone else likes the music coming out, especially young kids. You guys sound like old fogies--actually, you sound like my parents when I was growing up and they heard my music. Meanwhile, a lot of people DO like today's music, from the Strokes to Clay Aiken to Norah Jones to so on and so forth. But downloading is so easy and convenient now, today's youth don't give a second thought about it anymore. And that doesn't make what they're doing suddenly a-okay.
Yet, you people don't seem to care because you've grown accustomed to the convenience as well, and in order to remove the label of criminality, you've tried to brush it off on to the record label lobbying group that just so happens to be doing the *exact thing Slashdotters said they should be doing* a few years ago--suing individual copyright infringers.
This is silly. There are online stores now. There are services like iTunes. How many knocked-down excuses will people keep using to justify that they've got eMule down there in their system tray right now?
Artists willingly sign their contracts, and I find it hard to feel sorry for them when they shit on gold toilets, have antique car collections, and do movies all the time. Yet, Slashdot pretends they're fighting for the artist by ripping them off and not paying for their music.
What's amusing is that there is somewhat of a stigma when it comes to pirating games and apps simply because a lot of people here are programmers. Are you guys going to talk about "sampling games" when Doom 3 gets leaked a month early (as they all are now) and kids, college students, and people on high-bandwith connections pirate the fuck out of it?
If everyone here at Slashdot was a musician, the message would be completely different. What I find most amusing, however, is the double-standard pointed out in my sig.
But go ahead and play the "b-but the RIAA is *evil*!!! That gives me the right to pretend their copyright was magicaly transferred over to me to illegally distribute all over the place" game.
99% of the users on Kazaa aren't "sampling" those albums. Hell, on eMule they're just RARing up entire discographies now and sticking them online. I'd respect pro-piracy people more if they just admitted what was going on and that it was legally and morally wrong. At least I can debate your position logically because you know where you stand. But this bullshit "it's the RIAA's fault we're illegally sharing all their copyrighted materials!" mindset will never, ever fly.
I just read in McPaper (USA Today) that Americans, on average, are listening to less music. Something like 198 hours (down from 216). This is especially suspicious since the decrease is similar to the reduced CD sales number.
Maybe people *just don't like* the music that is being put out, and as a consequence, aren't buying and/or listening to CDs. Maybe they're out having lives. Maybe they are listening to live music.
Every time I see something like this from the RIAA, it sounds like, "our business plan isn't working! It must be a conspiracy! Piracy on the high seas!"
Whatever.
Maybe you should produce some music that we want to listen to?
Maybe you should make it easier to find music we *like*?
But you're missing the point. You and I aren't the ones the industry cares about. It's all about the kids and disposable income.
Kids want to listen to what's 'cool'. To them, MTV and the radio shows/tells them what is cool and then they share this information with each other to reinforce it. Why is this so important? Peer acceptance - something some Slashdotters who had trouble getting dates will not understand.
I can look back at them and say, "What sheep! Back tatoos, piercings all over your bodies, wearing pants that would clothe 3 or 4 immigrants do NOT make you an individual!" But all of them will invaribly tell you that they are being 'different.'
You know what a joke THAT is, don't you? Or do you? Think back in school. What did you do to be different and how different were you really than anyone else?
Personally, I listened to Black Flag and the B52's (ok, I was a bit eclectic), but did that make me different? No, it put me in a strange minority, but MILLIONS of kids listened to them!
Those that are truly different - the true innovators and pioneers of our time are shunned or ignored, plain and simple. You can't be too different after all, then you're 'wierd', right? If it could happen to a guy like Tesla, you know it could happen to anyone.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
For starters 250m/32B = .78%.
.4% of 32 billion.
Second, 2.5 million songs per week times 52 weeks = 130 million songs at $.99 each, or about
Third, $130 million spent on I-Tunes could be 130 million CD's not purchased at $15/hit (especially for the one-hit wonders they're publishing these days). Even after adding back the money for the itunes themselves, that's $1.82 billion in CD purchases, which is 5.6875%, which is pretty close to the entire decrease.
Although it is impossible to precisely determine how much effect iTunes has had on this number, it is really poor math (and thinking) to think that it had no significant effect.
Careful about criticizing other's nerdliness, for you bring your own failings to light.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
"b-but the RIAA is *evil*!!!
Yeah, it is. So? I never said anything about copyright, but you bring up a good point.
How long should a copyright be good for? You know there's this Elvis revival going on in Germany right now - know why? They have a reasonable 50 year copyright law. All of his works are starting to come out in compilations and it's free and legal to do so.
I'm not suggesting that breaking the law is the answer. I'm suggesting that CHANGING A BROKEN LAW is. The 55 MPH speed limit was broken by many (were you a nasty-wasty law breaker yourself?) That law was found to be stupid and fairly unenforceable (especially out West), and so it was changed.
I'm a musician myself. I've personally watched the struggles of others who have tried to make it. I also know that 99.5% of anyone who signs a contract with these music company bastards commit themselves to being BOHICA'd.
With the self-serving record labels and the RIAA re-writing copyright law every decade it will be a miracle if ANY music ever again sees the public domain in this country. Don't think that you can take a superior tone with me or anyone else just because we don't agree with that fact and want to 'fight the power', so to speak.
If you can't see how one-sided the whole industry is, I would suggest that you report back to your corporate overloads and request more instructions on how to deal with people like me.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
> Speaking as an artist: Full time jobs cut into
> your ability to create good art. It's not an
> ideal situation
Speaking as network admin, Full time jobs cut into your ability to do anything.
I took 6 months off in the dot-com-crash. Ended up learning another language, a musical instrument and wrote the best part of a novel that, not suprisingly, two years later I'm yet to finish.
Work kills creativity. Full stop.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
- Internet Sales
- Cassette Sales
- Total Sales
- Number of new CDs produced
- The Economy
I think that once you add all those up, you'll find that there was an actual INCREASE in profits.CDs is a medium that is slowly being replaced by mp3s & other digital music players. I would fully expect the sales to drop. Soon, it will be the same as vinyl records.
Get over it. Move on. The world keeps turning even if you refuse to come along.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
"Timberlake helped boost the business in the second half of 2003."
Is that a fucking joke? That's the problem right there!
Here are the reasons I'm not buying as much:
1. Um, the economy is in a slump, stupid. I'm not spending as much on anything I don't need because I don't want to be caught flat-footed in a layoff the way I was after the crash.
2. There hasn't been much new music in the last year that I've liked. What I have liked, I actually have bought.
3. I'm so disgusted by the RIAA that I've made a conscious effort to spend my spare change elsewhere. Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and Borders have been the primary beneficiaries of this shift. They have these neat-o products called books that provide days and days of quality entertainment for less than the cost of a 74-minute CD. (Lately, for example, I've been rocking out to Ursula K. LeGuin in the cross-platform paperback format.)
4. CDs are still too expensive. For $15-$20, I expect to see the band live. In fact, I've been patronizing a lot more of the relatively unknown bands that roll through town because they're not regurgitating the same focus-group schlock as the big-name "artists".
Since four items is a bit much for the RIAA to absorb, let me summarize: "I don't have much money these days, your products suck, and I don't like you."
Please note that I did not say, "I am downloading MP3s happily," though that's what they will surely hear.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Why are these numbers reported year after year without taking into account the shift amongst comsumer dollars between DVD, CD, video games, etc?
So if CD sales are down 7% and DVD sales are up 10% is it a crisis due to file sharing or is it just consumers spending their money where the find more value for the dollar?