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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."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
> More grist for the RIAA mill on P2P
Not really. 7.6% is not that much, considering how many companies have moved to an online sales model. If anything this refutes the RIAA's claim that P2P has any significant effect at all. What kinda depresses me was the point in the article that the reduction of top acts helps to boost sales; that the reduction of variety means more concentrated gains in that particular market, is actually bad for the market in the long run, IMHO.
- Lame new music
- Increased prices of CDs
I keep waiting for a law firm somewhere to offer "RIAA insurance": pay $5/month and they offer to defend you if you ever get sued by them.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It should be interesting to see if the DVD sales rose up. If Ive to choose between a live CD concert and a live DVD concert, I get the DVD. Dont you?
You know, I bet if you did a study looking at the increase of air play of songs compared to the CD sales you would see a decrease.
I for one may like a song at first, but when radio stations are forced to play it over and over (every hour...) I get sick of it. I'm not going to buy that CD anymore - thanks radio...
That would be an interesting study...
My sig left me for a younger user id.
If you go to the CRIA web page, you'll see that CD sales (and gross revenue, though not revenue from CDs) were up over the same month in the preceding year in both January and February. The CRIA is the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.
DVD sales are way up in all of the months I looked at. VHS and cassette tape sales are down, which isn't too surprising.
This brings up a good point about what to buy. I've got ~10 free songs coming to me from the Pepsi/iTunes giveaway, and I don't know what to buy with them.
I start looking around for a song I want, and I usually end up buying the entire album instead (latest purchases, Gershwin's Greatest Hits and Buffy: Once More with Feeling). My tastes in music are pretty varied, going from classical to hip-hop, but I'm having a tough time finding music I want to get.
I don't even look at CDs anymore. Too expensive and takes too long to find something you like.
I'm sure every record exec started shaking in their boots with the USA Today article that shows that a lot more youth are turning to their parents CD collection of Queen and ZZ Top. No new sales.
What, me worry?
...bites, from what I've heard. I can count on one hand how many CDs I have that were published this millennium. I'm sure there's lots of good stuff buried out there, but Clear Channel won't let me near them.
Plus, very few people even know how to play a guitar anymore (Joe Bonamassa being a big exception).
I didn't see a "it sucks" cause in the article...
Yeah, I'm geezing, I know....
Amen about there being nothing you want to hear available. I have 40 credits in itunes I need to use before the end of the month, and I haven't found anything good to use it for yet -- FOR FREE.
The other factor bringing down my music purchases, other than higher prices and a lower paycheck, is lack of quality. Most of what I listen too, you would never find in Best Buy or FYE. You're too concerned with "golden money makers" than with providing us with interesting original music. I understand the business principles behind trying to make a profit, but when you minimize your risk, you potentially minimize your return. Think of all the CDs in the past 2 years that you (RIAA) have released? I can't really name any that I've liked the entire CD, except for Coldplay's A Rush of Blood To the Head. One. Oh well, you may learn someday, and someday may be too late.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Pepsi gave me a couple of free songs on iTunes and I am hooked. I have spent over $30 in the last month from groups I never even heard of 2 weeks ago. Between iTunes and Rhapsody I have all the music I need. If there is something I want for the car or on my home server, I buy it(a track at a time). Because of this online model I am going to be buying far more music than I ever did(except maybe in my teen years). Frankly, I don't feel encouraged to by any music at the conventional record stores because it is usually noisy and I can't listen to it in my normal frame of mind while working or relaxing. Sure, P2P probably has an impact, but so does online, quality of releases, and most of all price. I agree that the CD business model is broken now that we have other alternatives for entertainment. I think that for most of us, Kazaa, etc. is too much a hassle when we can get the song we want for less than $1.00. I have better things to do with my time than wade through 2-3 songs to find one that was ripped half decently.
The predictable question here is:
How old are you - really? It definately has a direct relation to this subject. So does: Are you a musician?
As the in-house DJ for our dances here at the school, I can personally testify how far music has fallen - but not to the kids.
I take solace in the fact that in 20 years or so, these kids will most likely view their own music as memorable but cliched (Example: See Vanilla Ice). Many of them will have moved to other forms of music because of boredom or maturity.
Remember: A little boy will eat as much candy as you give him until it makes him sick. It takes maturity to appreciate a nice fresh apple.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
As a person with a high level of interest in the music business, I've noticed (and heard, and read) that the actual number of releases from major labels is fewer than in years past. I don't think that CD's are the only thing being "manufactured" in this case.
Also, does anyone know any statistics for how much indie cd sales are up? Of course not. The guy selling his CD-R out of his car doesn't report to SoundScan. I am almost certain they have to be on the rise.
http://cassettefetish.com
Absolutely. Lately, the only CDs I have bought were blues CDs from fatpossum records. Because their prices are reasonable and the music is just what I'm looking for. You can even listen to MP3s on their site before buying. I mean I'm still willing to spend money on CDs. But $20 for a CD? I've got to be pretty sure its good before I spend that much.
Plus, there is something endearing about the underdog look of the fatpossum website. fatpossum.com
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
Its ironic that the article points out how the total revinue of the industry has dropped 200 million so they ONLY have 32 Billion in sales. It does not make any mention of how much of that was pure profit. This industry is by no means hurting and still brings in far more money to some industries which provide more useful things then entertainment.
The 7.6% figure is for Global music sales. The article states that "Global compact disc sales -- the most often cited figure in discussing the health of the industry -- fell 9.1 percent in value in 2003, the IFPI said."
(Of personal interest to me, since I've <shameless plug>just released single on vinyl</shameless plug>: "Total sales of singles, including cassettes and vinyl, which have dipped significantly since the Internet file-sharing and CD-burning craze began in the late 1990s, fell 18.7 percent in value terms between 2002 and 2003." It should be noted, though, that quite probably the majority of independent record labels ' sales aren't included in these numbers: IFPI-related releases compete, possibly increasingly, with small independent labels.)
That's a great point. Just because p2p is on the rise and cd sales are down DOESN'T mean p2p caused it. Maybe consumers are getting smarter. Maybe people are fed up with greedy execs. Maybe I want to be able to have the quality of a Coltrane box set every time! I mean, the same argument could be made as to why VHS sales are down. Just because they correlate doesn't mean one caused the other.
You're right in that the RIAA will get their cut no matter what, however, depending on the size of the band/label/distributor, on who sets up tours, etc. the band might make more money on the cd from a tour. For a most "independent" labels (quoted because some labels called independent still may distribute through major label distribution channels, or may be members of the RIAA themselves), the band sees a larger cut of the merchandise sold on tour. I can't vouch for the specifics (i.e. whether or not it's because merch sold by the artist at shows doesn't officialy enter any distribution channels, and thus they don't get charged distribution fees) of the matter, but from what I've been told, it's generally the case for medium to smaller labels.
--- What
In 1995, CD Prices at the Average Media Play store was $11.99 each. Now the average price is $15-$20 a CD.
The average job in this area pays $7.50 - $10 an hour. Minus taxes, which leaves people about $300 a week to cover living expenses. Fill your gas tank twice a week, there's $46. Pay Mortgage/Rent, Insurance, Electric and Gas, there's $200 a week. So we have about $54 a week left for food, and other life related items.... I don't think CDs are selling too good around here.
Music Industry: Piss Off.
President Bush: Go fuck yourself. Trickle-down economics isn't helping when most of the people with money were born in the 20s and feel the need to pinch their pennies with all their might.
Make America grate again!
... of times that the music on a CD may be listened to? Is the listening supposed to be only the person who actually purchased the CD? Where's the line on using this stuff? How much more money do you want for copies of work that was done in the past?
I have a solution for the artists and distributiors, stop distributing completely. don't try to pawn off copies of work as something it isn't. Don't keep forcing people to believe that a copy is somehow all that valuable. In the olden days, ya, copies of anything were ridicvulously expensive in termsd of time and effort and materials to make, but today? GET REAL. Make your loot from day to day *working* live concerts ONLY,stop milking technology and BSing the people by recording and copying, and make all recordings illegal, then there won't be any conflicts or confusion, would there be? I say, put up or shutup. I will pay to enjoy being in the presence of someone WORKING, I WON'T pay for some vaporus copy of that experience. That's where I draw the line now. Any human on earth can make their own copies now with a pittance worth of gear, so that is where I draw the line, a copy is worth a PITTANCE. Same with movies, make those sorts of fictional representations be done completely live on stage, don't copy them to any media for redistribution. Same with television. Radio re broadcast. If the artist want to dilute their work by copying and distributing, then they can be happy with smaller amounts for a larger wider audience, by doing less work. Right now they want it both ways,sweet deal fopr them if they can manipulate the laws and media brainwashing mind control, big bucks for live honest work, big bucks for trivially copied media and the means to redistribute. sorry, it ain't worth it to more and more people because they can see reality.
When you go to a restaurant, you pay for the food and service, do you EXPECT to keep paying for the service, forever? I don't think so. Do some actual work, bring me some chow, and I'll pay you again. Virtual representations of real live work are COPIES and as such not "worth" what a live experience is, and never will be from here on out given our level of technology now. that's reality. too bad, expensive copies are the buggywhips of the 21st century, un needed, un wanted, and they WILL be ignored, more and more, except as curiosities for museums.
As long as they make up their minds I don't care, I don't download any music or videos, zip, nada, nothing, I could care less about it so I don't got a dog in this fight, but I can reason a little, and there ain't a hardly piece of this "official copy of work long done awhiles ago" stuff worth more than 2 cents to me. I've enjoyed live performances in the past,paid for it, that's cool, but reproduced fictitios representational copies... really... is just..so so, I could care less, it's not even worth unfilled hard drive space to me.
I think artists (and sports stars and movie stars) are tremendously over valued except during live performances, and with the new ways of copying, they are seeing what their non-live performances are really worth, about zilch. Live performance, equals work, day to day w.o.r.k like everyone else does, reproduced is a dilution,a chimera, it's attempting to get a lot of expensive somethings (everyones money) for the same labor, and in todays world, tough noogies. You can't keep pulling that trick.
That's my opinion anyway. And I'm sorry if that is semi offensive to anyone, but really. This is the year 2004, making copies of anything audio or visual is EXTREMELY easy to do, it's just not worth that much money, it's not even worth a bucka song. It's worth maybe a buck a cd, and that to someone to lazy to make their own copy for a dime.
I know I can't keep making "royalties" off the work I did last week, work as in "sweat outside doing heavy nasty dangerous stuff", if I want another check, I need to do the same amount of work. That's how 99.99% of the planet earth makes their living, too bad most "artists" and their le
Note: a lot of this is speculation and heresay.
One thing that hasn't been noted so much in this thread is that in the last few years, the music industry has supposedly been signing fewer new bands and investing less money in putting new titles out.
One thing I've heard is that average per-title sales have been up and increasing the past few years, but when there are fewer titles being introduced, that limits growth.
I wonder if bands are starting to wise up and avoiding the whole label-signing thing, and that is why the RIAA can't recruit as many new bands as they had before. It could also be possible that the RIAA is trying to reduce or slow the number of new titles to help them create their ruse to gain control of internet music.
Was the porn industry down by 7.6% in 2003?
Was the DVD industry down by 7.6% in 2003?
These are both impacted by piracy to a similar extent.
Thanks for that brief history of musical innovation:)
My 2 cents was mainly focused on the larger issue of innovation and how it's difficult to get the desire to innovate, or change or do anything different without constraints. Perpetual copyrights (perpetual, for the sake of dicussion:) do little to encourage so-called content producers to make more content, when they can just grow fatter off of already established streams of revenue.
This behavior is ultimately dangerous for them, though, as you pointed out with your example of Norah Jones. Eventually people will get tired of the same-old distribution systems, same-old musicians, etc, etc. They'll move on (in NJ's case, they have), leaving the industry stalwarts in the dust.
Thanks again for the type-up, very nice and very informative. I hope you get modded up!
I do believe that slashdotters are from all earth citizens... the bunch who are nearer to understanding the problem.
That is however a problem in itself. Do the average Joe or heck.. do even RIAA or the firms they represent, understand the problem? not at all...
I am currently a postgraduate student in Economics, and I am writing my dissertation (Thesis) on all of this. Several top schools (Chicago/Harvard) can't even agree by using postgraduate economic measurements if there has been ANY impact of P2P on CD sales.
What are we to do then? The problem is, as I said, a monstrous amount of misinformation. The all time cliche that we fear what we don't understand is specially true now. Two centuries ago Luddites smashed machines in England to *prevent* technological progress from displacing artisans... and of course, the government supported them... until they needed the machines to combat famine and other economic shocks...
Is piracy wrong? of course. Are we, users of kazaa and bit torrent, to blame? partly... the other persons responsible to that are the record labels themselves that didn't provide a business model before Napster came along. Had they understood the market.. they would have invested on it ages before and we would be enjoying new technological progress on music.. and later movies and software...But no.. they decided to sit on their comfortable sofas and watch the eternal kingdom of CDs.
But businesses that forget to watch technological trends are just too many. And we never learn. Of course a natural answer is to use the law or some other means to savage whatever is left of what they don't want to believe, but definately is, a sinking ship... I can safely bet that if Kodak could sue digital camera users they surely would.. that is certainly less expensive than investing tons on R&D and assesing the new tech threat.
Our children will still be complaining of how a company should stop protecting its old business model instead of promoting innovation. It always happens.
The answer lies in the record labels themselves.. the CD market is a gonner... they have to provide new ways to entice users to buy content... Did anyone care to buy the same CD even if they had an old vynil record? of course not... Did anyone complain in buying the same DVDs again in order to update your VHS libraries.. of course not... and that is because there is extra value on the new technology... (nonlinear search and extra features anyone?)
Come up with a new idea to sell content, *that is your job* spend on Research.. and customers wil surely come in droves... just see the i-pod...
Just my 2 cents...
Personally, this is what I have tried to do. However, I generally expect that as a product ages, its price tends to go down, CD's just don't seem to do this. Having been stuck in the 80's, musically, now for quite some time, I tend to look at the prices of CD's of artists I like from time to time, and am shocked to see them at $15 or more. While I will grant that the distributor needs to make money on the sale, I simply will not pay that much for a CD, new or old. So, the end result, I do without. I only listen to CD's in the car during my commute to and from work, and can put up with not having anything new. Also, half my drive is covered by a radio station that isn't horrible, and one that used to be ok but is starting to suck. The radio station's problems can mostly be blamed on the trend towards more talk and less music. Afterall, when a radio annoucer says, "comming up this hour" followed by snippets of three songs, and they aren't kidding, those three songs will be the only ones you hear for an hour on this station; there is a problem, in my view.
In all, I think the RIAA labels are just facing the results of more competition, in the form of games and movies (I know that I don't listen to music much at home), and also people not spending as much on luxury goods right now. Also, as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, the buying from conversion, from tape to CD has probably just about ended, so sales are going to go down. Now, should this absolve P2P and piracy for its role, no. But, I somehow doubt that dumping millions of dollars into chasing down the pirates is going to have a very good ROI. Even ignoring the PR aspect, are they ever going to recover that money? I doubt it, the pirates will simply fold up shop, move to a different street corner, and re-open. There may be a short term slump in piracy, but long term it won't matter. Better yet, they are also educating people in how to pirate along the way. Personally, I had only heard of Napster in passing, before it became national news. And it was in one of the articles about the Napster case that I read about Audiogalaxy, Kazaa, etc. Also unknown to me at the time. I have to wonder how many pirates got their start thanks to those articles?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
You get a shiver in the dark
It's been raining in the park but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowing Dixie double four time
You feel all right when you hear that music ring
You step inside but you don't see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down
Too much competition too many other places
But not too many horns can make that sound
Way on downsouth way on downsouth London town
You check out Guitar George he knows all the chords
Mind he's strictly rhythm he doesn't want to make it cry or sing
And an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing
And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene
He's got a daytime job he's doing alright
He can play honky tonk just like anything
Saving it up for Friday night
With the Sultans with the
Amd a crowd of young boys they're fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles
They don't give a damn about any trumpet playing band
It ain't what they call rock and roll
And the Sultans played Creole
And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
And says at last just as the time bell rings
'Thank you goodnight now it's time to go home'
and he makes it fast with one more thing
I have purchased more CDs this year than in all other years of my life combined. I attribute that to three things:
sig != null
I have illegally downloaded music and never once thought it was right. However, I don't feel bad about it because almost all of the time, I download music that I would never pay for. So I don't view it as a lost revenue stream for the RIAA. It doesn't make it right, it's just my justification. I've done the same thing w/ expensive software programs (think Mathematica). I've had assignments that require me to use it and my school only has so many copies of it on public cluster computers, I want to use it from my computer and am not going to pay for it. Granted, I should not have the opportunity to use stuff I don't pay for, but if I would never pay for it, it's clearly not stealing and fails into a moral gray-area for me where I default into doing what's in my best interest.
Some of them will.
I can document the exact moment of my musical maturity. It was when I suddenly became aware, listening to an oldies station and hating what was playing, that there's nothing special about it. it was just popular music from the 50's0-60's. Maybe that's obvious to some people, but I was a late bloomer to music appreciation. The vast majority of it is crud, just like now.
Yet, people have elevated "oldies" to a freaking GENRE, like it is somehow better, that the music from this period will be remembered now and forever for its artistic integrity. I suspect that as the older generation dies and the current one ages, the same fucking shit that gets played in heavy repitition right now will be living on in brand-new format "oldies" stations.
I guess my point is, if people 60 years old right now haven't figured out that pop music from their era was mostly crap, the current generation is probably going to do the same thing.
This is how I view it. Is the (mostly) shit that gets played on oldies stations right now the majority of music that got played on the radio in its own era? There's certainly a lot of good stuff from that time period, but a lot of the "pop" stuff isn't any better than shit today.
CD sales are down 7.6 percent. What about MUSIC sales? To my knowledge most European countries have MiniDisc as their standard music format these days; so globally yes CD sales should be down... right?
The only problem with the "artists should do live performances" and "there should be no royalties" is this: incentive. The industry would collapse, and a whole lot of other industries dependent on that business would be hurt, too. So, great utopian theory, but no. It goes back to the argument, "Why should I pay for someone's software?" Because they gotta eat, that's why.
This idea is not a brilliant leap forward, but rather a backslide to how things were in the Bad Olde Days hundreds of years ago, when artists didn't get paid crap to do what they did. Limiting reimbursement to live performances, etc., is a sure way to accomplish two things: put the artists out of business, thus reducing our cultural heritage. Also, by limiting their exposure, you again reduce our cultural heritage, since without those vaporous media previews, nobody will have ever heard of them.
Why do artists get paid royalties? Usually, they're not that high, and if you don't like the royalty, you don't have to license the work. If the royalties demanded are too high, the artist simply can't get any contracts. On the other hand, it doesn't do for the distributors to make money hand over fist for sales while the artist gets paid only a pittance (which seems to be the actual fact in the music industry.) If you can't get paid everything up front, then get paid back in smaller installments over time. You know, like when you sell copies of software, you get reimbursed for the development costs. Same idea.
The better argument is, "Why should we pay high prices for complete crap?" Easy answer: don't. Nobody's forcing you to. There is a lot of so-called art out there that is truly drivel, but enough of it is good (despite the best efforts of the suits) to justify spreading it around. Bet you paid to go see Lord of the Rings, didn't you?
In the end, art is a luxury item. You can argue all you want that the prices are unfair, but since it's not actually a necessity of life, you don't actually have to buy it. I don't like the RIAA and I don't like the high prices. I think they have a truly retarded attitude towards copying and file sharing, as, despite their bitching about loss of sales, they're still raking in obscene amounts of money.
I've lived in Germany, the US, and Japan, and I have a pretty good idea why the sales are going down. In the US and Japan, the prices are simply too high (Japan is double that of the US, for absolutely no good reason at all.) Germany is actually half the price of the US (in other words, a fair price), but has the highest piracy rate in Europe, be it software, music, or movies.
Japan has one situation that makes piracy even more likely, and is pretty humorous: rental stores not only rent CDs, they actually put the play time and how many tapes or MDs you'd have to buy to record it, so no surprise at the problem there. Not exactly discouraging people, are they? "Let's charge some of the highest prices in the world and then encourage people to pirate the media!" Interestingly, people are still willing to buy the original when it's someone's music they really like.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
... on your major points. Right now we are barely even entering this paradigm altering time frame, so of course we need to sort all this out. I fully acknowledge that an artist in a lot of cases has years behind say a performance or a painting, years of skill developing for that few hours performing, etc or that one painting, or one..whatever.. Guess what though, so does the plumber, the carpenter, the mechanic, etc, and they don't charge royalties or get residuals for their work. Lots of training, lots of skills, applied effort, one check, done. Skills +native ability+ applied effort= something built, you get paid. You can't realistically keep insisting on getting paid over and over again for the same thing, or a weal copy of the original..
Yes, that's how things happen. The difference is, the artist makes it all at once for that effort, then he wants to keep getting it, and keep getting it, ad infinitum, the other sorts of employments build to it gradually, but there is never a residual.(patents are exceptios to this rule, and another discussion, although somewhat related),
The other point is, the artist knows in advance that even giving it his best shot, he might not be well received, and his efforts,past the origignal, will become intangible products, except for copies, and now, those copies can be reproduced very cheaply. My postulation is- we need to accept that, and get on with adjusting. We can't hang on to past levels of what those copies represent in terms of skill+ native ability+ effort, but it's orders of magnitudes easier now to make those copies. That is the central point.
ART is now a cheap mass produced product in it's copied form. In it's original form, it is little changed since way back in history, this is a given, and why today still originals fetch so much more, as they should. The business models around the COPIES though are skewed way out of prtoportion to their actual value, at least to untold millions they are now. You are being told, shown, and you can see it happening, wishing it wasn't so will not alter it. The two distinct data points need to be dramatically altered to reflect the changes in technology. Being drug kicking and screaming to the reality table does not bode well for the acceptance of the artist (and his retinuie of expensive copy peddlers), going willingly and accepting the changes as they exist and as they are rapidly changing is the correct business plan.
Again, IMO of course.
And like I said, just as soon as the tech is there, I mean the minute it's there, as soon as the combo of my skills + native ability + effort is cheaply replicable, for the use, benefit, advancement and pleasure of anyone else who desires it, anyone can have a copy,can trade it, share it, expand and expound on it, whatever they choose to do, gratis, my treat, have at it. I'd like to make a few clams off the original, then next week I'll do another original. but the copies, cheap, have at it. That's the best I can do now, and if I think I might like your work, I will purchase an original, or attend a "live" original, but don't expect me to pay much of anything for what I know for a fact are very inexpensive copies. I might pay a small sum, but nothing more than perhaps double the construction cost of the replication media + distribution, or perhaps double the bulk rate download bandwith. I think anyone should be happy with doubling their money with little effort, seems most reasonable to me. But 10 or 20 times? Magnfied by other millions? Nope, not for me. That is gouging, plain and simple.
For a long time, I couldn't figure out why the RIAA was so upset about P2P. It really, honestly didn't seem to be hurting their sales numbers significantly. Maybe they kept worrying about future losses, but as time wound on, that seemed less and less likely.
Based on your actions, P2P does have a good reason for worrying the RIAA:
(a) makes it easier for indie artists to get exposure
(b) thus makes marketing (the primary incentive the RIAA has to offer artists) less valuable
(c) because pop artists are the most common, they are the easiest to pirate, and thus probably suffer the greatest sales reduction -- some of this money may be spent on hard-to-find albums for lesser-known artists.
So, while an equivalent amount of money might be spent on music, it drastically decreases the effect and influence of music publishers, and damages the marketing-driven idea of the "pop star".
That doesn't mean that I think that P2P is necessarily *good* for artists as a whole, just that it finally manages to explain something that's been nagging at me for a while.
May we never see th
What the hell is going on today? Everyone misspells "definitely" and puts it as "definately". It became some sort of trend on slashdot already...
Seems like bying CDs used to serve educational purpose as well - at least one could read what's written on the cover. But now kids just download, and have nothing to read. You can't even call them "read-only users".