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South Korean Music Retailers Dying
terrymaster69 writes "According to this Reuters feature, 95% of South Korean music retail businesses have failed in the last year. 'While South Korea is not alone in seeing a downturn, the drop has been greatly accentuated and particularly deep because of the country's high-speed Internet access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated gadgets available.' Is this really a problem or just a natural progression?"
I used to work for Personics.
n et .music.idg/
Late 1980s they worked out a way to allow people to have professionally made audio tapes made up out of whatever single tracks they wanted from a large catalog. It involved a CD jukebox with compression that allowed cutting audio tapes at 8x or so - a 60 minute tape would run out in 10 minutes or less and all the gear to do this was at the record shop.
Detailed auditing tracked per-song revenue and royalties.
The music business deliberately killed this off in order to max out full album sales.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9805/26/inter
http://www.betagroupllc.com/1st-personics.html
In this and a ton of other ways, they crippled innovation.
They're now paying the price.
"CD sales at Jang's Mihwadang Records, once one of the 10 biggest music retail chains in the country, dropped by two-thirds in just two years. Jang now devotes more shelf space to digital appliances, including MP3 players or mobile phones."
I bet Jang isn't forcing his customers to buy the vinyl that they used to need to replace after scratching them, either. If only the record labels would stop fighting voluntary blanket licenses for song sharing, that they allow for lucrative radio royalties, they might survive to distribute content to Jang's new wares. But it looks like instead they're just roadkill on the Infobahn.
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make install -not war
Serious music won't. I don't know anyone who uses downloading/P2P for classical or jazz. There are a lot of smaller labels out there that do a very good, serious, professional job of packaging their CDs for a discerning audience; and a lot of discerning people who buy their stuff. That's why chains like Harmonia Mundi in France are doing fine. As Harmonia Mundi's founder Bernard Coutaz points out (scroll to bottom), the audience is there and growing, and concert goers regularly buy CDs: it's the big labels who are failing to reach out to such customers. Me, I'm happy if the generic Tower Records crashes and burns, give me the small guy who actually knows his stuff. As for South Korea, dunno -- maybe they don't have enough of a market for that kind of thing, they're dominated by the MTV crowd?
I don't know about you but I *LIKE* going around a music store and browsing. Whats the alternative , driving for an hour to the warehouse and climbing over the shelves? Not everyone likes mailorder and lets face it , online retail is nothing more than an electronic sears catalogue that my granny used to buy her knickers from 3 decades ago. I *LIKE* shops , and for some geek like you to say they add no value shows how out of touch you are with a large percentage of humanity.