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."
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)
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?
One of the funnier things is that the movie soundtrack CD costs as much as the whole movie on DVD. The soundtrack songs played during the movie might be partial clips and mixed with dialog, but they'll often play 2 or 3 of the soundtrack songs in their entirety during the credits at the end.
Don't forget competition from video games too and the music they manage to bundle with them. The Tony Hawk Pro Skater games have at least a full CD's worth of music as the in game soundtrack. GTA Vice City had almost a hundred 80's songs in its in game soundtrack, but it was mixed in with the fictitious radio stations.
Exactly.
When I buy a DVD, Im not just buying the movie. If I just wanted the movie, I'd download it.
Im paying for a high quality digital video presentation, a 5.1 DD/DTS audio track, Commentary, Bonus features, widescreen presentation, ect.. All for 15 bucks.
Thats less then the cost of the CD soundtrack of THE SAME MOVIE.
I argue that p2p has MINIMAL impact compared to competition from dvds and videogames.
no
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.
A better question here is HOW do you innovate and with what?
Here's a short (very short) history of innovation in the last 60 years:
40's: Swing. The idea of using big band in a fast and fancy musical tone while borrowing from early blues and jazz really took it to a new art form.
50's: Emergence of Rock 'n Roll and the multitrack recorder. This is where tech started to make inroads in music. The Electric guitar and bass finally get airplay.
60's: Stereo rock and studio tricks. This is when the experiementation reached an all time high. Things started to be heard on radio that simply weren't possible in the 'real world'.
70's: More studio refinement and the synthesizer finally takes lead. More sounds no one had ever heard, or heard together.
80's: Early 80's saw better synths producing increasingly more realistic sounds. Glam metal makes a comeback as it is mixed with more attention to sound detail and synthesis. Rap makes it's national debut in the song "Rapture". New genre started.
90's: Rap meets metal. Studio techniques are perfected to a point where any differences in sound quality appear negligible. Synthesizers focus on producing more 'natural' sounds. Machiens are developed to help improve vocal tracks (for those who can't sing worth a damn) and/or create backing vocals (for those who can't AFFORD those who can sing with them). True technical innovation has 'jumped the shark'.
00's: For the first time in over 80 years of music, all forms of music that started this decade were around last decade. All technical innovations in the studio have been minor or non-existant as digital equipment is considered standard issue.
The music companies - more than ever - are pushing personality rather than the substance of the music because there is no more innovation, but they are making a mistake.
When Norah Jones outsells a pop star 5:1 and surprises the hell out of everyone for doing it, it's not because she's hot, it's because her music speaks to people in a way that has not been heard in many years. In many ways, it is music that could have been produced 30 years ago (albeit with primative equipment).
If the music industry wants to survive it will need to innovate, but as you pointed out, this will mean returning to the roots of the music itself and not the 'flash in the pan' futures of personality.
"...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.