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Music Downloading not Entirely to Blame
Outlyer writes "A recent article in The Economist discusses the proximate causes for the decline in music sales. Of some note is this quote in the article:
"According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. [...] Other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part." The article discusses in some depth the short-term viewpoint of the majors and why that is likely to be the dominant problem, not the internet bogeyman."
I switched from buying new CDs to buying used ones. It saves money and puts dents in the RIAA statistics.
Well, at least we can be reasonably sure that the RIAA higher-ups will read it. Not that they'll listen, but they'll at least read it.
Where I live, everybody downloads, the internet service advertize showow much faster you'll get your music, and the teens don't even think of buying music.
Retailers are in bad shape in S. Korea.
Put identity in the browser.
May I be the first to say ... "No shit!"
Who doesn't like free music?
Obviously "Tainted Love" was the pinnacle of musical creativity in the world, and CD sales were bound to decline.
"Tainted Love ... oh, oh, oh, don't touch me please"
Maybe you should expand your horizons beyond the top 40 then. There's plenty of good music out there, almost always has been. You just have to do the legwork to find the stuff that'll keep you interested.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I am not a big music buyer, mostly because I can't get the music I like to hear (classical, folk and Celtic) at local stores such as Wal-mart, and the local folkie store is off my beaten path and has little parking. I would use a service such as this eagerly. And yet, everyone seems to focus on the indie rock scene and the big rock/pop/hiphop acts, and don't think that online distribution might mean the flowering of genres with smaller fans, such as folk, bluegrass, opera, choral, or whatever!
Frankly, the best way for a business to thrive is not to have a radical change of the business model. Instead, incremental changes and continual improvement (hitting singles instead of homers) will get the job done. One incremental change can be to make sure that downloadable music isn't just for young listerners.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy.
So, one-quarter to one-third of the sales drop is due to internet piracy? I can see why companies might be worried about this. (And everyone who votes me down because I won't subscribe to their "waaa waaa waaa! I want my music for free!" is a wanker.)
Its the economy stupid! obviously those at the top didnt see that millions of jobs were lost because of the economic downturn that was accelerated thanks to 9/11...
hmmm, food or the new Britny Spears CD... tough call
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I think the main reason why music sales have declined is indeed an innovation problem - but it may not be the record company's fault (for once).
In every decade you had technical innovation - whether it was 4 track recording in the 60's, the emergence of prog rock and sophisticated recording techniques in the 70's, synthesizers in the 80's, or rap/rock fusion in the 90's.
Question: What has the 2000's offered that previous decades have not? Answer: Not too much. For the first time, there's no real innovation in the sound itself - there's simply nothing that hasn't already been done, no tech that a generation can call their own.
If the music seems lame, it's because it is - it's all been done before.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
(The boardroom of a major record label)
"Guys, we have a major problem. Sales are at an all-time low, and if you all want to be able to pay for your BMWs and 2-million dollar mansions, we need a new strategy!"
"Now, our attorneys and marketing boys have been hard at work, attempting to pass th blame for this dilemma for months on such things as piracy of all kinds. However, these conclusions just haven't explained the numbers, and we have just recently uncovered a shocking statistic that cannot be ignored. Please consult the chart on the wall to see how the numbers break down."
Internet piracy: 9%
Media piracy: 7%
Any other kind of piracy that we couldn't pull out of our asses: 2%
We sign crummy bands and try to pass their music off on people who actually have taste, despite all of our really expensive research: 80%
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
no harm != legitimate in many people's opinions.
I have bought 2 cd's in the past 3-4 years, not because I am pirating or downloading, but because I firmly believe the RIAA are the biggest crooks in this picture and refuse to support them.
I believe the RIAA will rape their artists every which way they possibly can, and cheat them out of their royalties at every chance. Given this, I find it more than a little ironic that the RIAA campaigns against piracy by boldly proclaiming that downloaders are cheating the artists.
Here's to hoping that sales continue to decline until the RIAA crumbles entirely out of the picture.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
The article mentioned that large retailers, such as Walmart, are dedicating less and less space to CDs due to the increase in other entertainment media, I would suggest that an easy way to get around with would be to develop terminals that allow you to browse a library of CD's, sample a portion of each song, and then if you choose to buy the album, burns and labels the CD for you on the spot. This would eliminate the need for shelving for CD's, as well as allow retailers to have a much wider selection of music available.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
TFA mentioned a reason why CD sales were dropping is that CDs are competing for shelf space with other, higher-value forms of entertainment.
Which is true (that the OST CD is worth almost as much as the full DVD is puzzling at best), but missed a more important point.
Two words: Cell phones.
Here in Europe most basic plans cost EUR 40 a month. That's a sizeable share of a teenager's allowance. That's at least 3 CDs a month they won't buy.
This isn't exactly a head-on solution, but here's some particularly nerdy outlets for non-RIAA music:
Nectarine Radio - streaming C64, Atari ST, Adlib, etc. music
OC Remix - huge repository of submitted video game remixes
Streaming radio of above
Metroid Metal - Surprisingly well done
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Personally, I find that CD's are just too expensive for me. I don't care that much about music, and can better spend that $15 elsewhere. Also, I just haven't found anything I really like in a while, though unlike most /. I blame this on my own narrow mindedness, and not the new music sucking. If the new music sucked so much, why does it sell so many copies? Most people tend to get stuck in a certain era of music, don't like the new stuff? Don't act suprised about it, you're getting old. Every generation tends to think that the next generation's music sucks, that's not going to change for you, you're not special, get over it.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
H-H is horrid imo - endless, short, electronic loops of intensely annoying sounds, weak and/or stupid lyrics, bad singing (if they even sing at all), it's overly produced, etc. etc.
Any new CDs I buy now are established artists who've been around for a while and have a new CD out; or I'll just buy some 'classic' stuff.
Once uninventive, regurgitated hip-hop took over, the industry pretty much lost me.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
I believe they refer to the people selling pirated copies of CDs (and usually other stuff, eg DVDs as well) on street corners and such...I know someone who was in New York City recently and saw both new-release movie bootlegs as DVDs and plenty of recent, mainstream pop CDs for sale in the sub-$10 range...as long as the cops didn't get too close, at which point the merchants either hid the media or split.
The music industry has a hard time accepting that they sell an elastic good - when prices go up, sales go down. That's really happened to concert tickets. $60 tickets for second-tier bands went unsold all summer. Several major tours were cancelled. Lollapalooza was cancelled due to slow ticket sales.
The endless reissue of "oldies" is self-limiting. By now, everybody who wants any Beatles/Stones/Doors CD presumably has it.
But the fundamental problem is much simpler. The outlets that sell audio CDs don't just sell music. They also sell movie DVDs, which provide more entertainment content at a lower price. Audio CDs ought to sell for about $3.99 to $5.99. There's no excuse for audio CDs by mediocre bands costing more than DVDs of major, big-budget films.
Sure there are re-releases today still but the numbers dwarf in comparison to the beginning to 90's. This was a point brought up during PBS Frontline "The Way the Music Died" documentary on the troubles of the music industry. I seem to remember that Frontline pointed out that sales relative to new albums have actually gone up. But the overall sales have gone down because older albums sales have decline greatly. This Economist report doesn't address this point.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
the one thing that gives them nightmares and keeps them up at nights.
it's not p2p or theft or piracy or even used CD/DVD sales.
their biggest fear is that you tune out and stop watching/listening altogether. that would mean not only no sales, but no advertising revenue either.
if this happens on any scale, i expect the mpaa/riaa to push through 1984/maxheadroom style legislation requiring a TV in every house turned on 24/7, and make it illegal to turn them off.
Time Warp ...
Hey, wow, what am I doing here !
Last thing I remembered, I was reading the inner sleeve of my Madness 7 album which said "Home Taping is Killing Music" while recording it to cassette tape for my buddy.
Now it's 20 years later and Music isn't dead !
Arghgh ! - what's going on !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Then you get bands like Chumbawamba who, after decades of singing subversive anti-corporate rhetoric, manage to prove their point most eloquently by writing a single album designed to be a one-hit wonder -- as a JOKE.
Now it's tough to find their good old albums because the stores only stock the sucky one-hit wonder album. Seems that the older stuff just doesn't fit the band's image anymore.
Irony is lost in the free market.
We are experiencing a Renaissance of locally-produced music, from street performers to small bands. Music is no longer the exclusive domain of a handful of mega-conglomerates, but is being taken back and revitalized on the micro scale. Seattle/Portland (near me) support a thriving community of small indepenent musicans producing truly excellent music. It's like the 60's all over again. Not so much "new" sounds, but new takes on the folk/rock/celtic traditions and a resurgence of interest in vocals and acoustic instrumentation rather than synthesized, reprocessed top-40. Complex, muti-layered arrangements that depend on real musicians, not 20 year old pinups with digitally-enhanced vocals supporting their silicon-enhanced figures.
Personnally, I'm excited by the trend, and am actively building a large and varied CD collection with very little help from the RIAA.
I know, I know... most of the people on Slashdot are probably thinking I've started smoking crack or something, but I can honestly say I can't remember the last time I bought a new rock album. Try bands like Cross Canadian Ragweed or Reckless Kelly, they are more southern rock than country. Pat Green is the godfather of the Texas music scene, although I think he's starting sound more and more "Nashville", check out his older albums. There are too many other names to mention here but i'll put a link on the bottom of the page.
Of all current styles of music this seems to be the only one that doesn't have completely innane lyrics, i.e. the lyrics aren't about how much their life sucks like most current rock songs, doing drugs and having sex like most current rap songs(remind you of 80's metal?, hehe), and finally the lyrics aren't some lame patriotic theme or a corny love song like "Nashville country". Not to mention that the artists actually write their own songs, which can't be said about alot of forms of music popular these days. If you still doubt me, then by all means check out some of these bands. I don't think anyone outside of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana even knows they exist. At the universities here in Texas I don't think I know a single person who hasn't at least heard of these guys. I hope I helped you find alternatives to the RIAA's list of crap....
-Joe
Links:
http://www.texasmusicguide.com/
http://www.lonestarmusic.com/
http://www.patgreen.com/
http://www.crosscanadianragweed.com/
http://www.texasmusicmovement.com/
Not too long ago, there was a slashdot article of an interview with David Crosby on Frontline.
... The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died."
He talked about how at some point the tone and attitude of big music changed from being supportive and developing of young talent for the long term to being adverserial and short term profit minded.
I think this economist article is the conclusion and proof of what he was talking about, his thoughts were mostly anecdotal without concrete evidence. From the interview:
"When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records," he says. "Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
SRC: PBS Frontline
The result of this commercialization and 'selling out' resulted in companies the likes of Sony, BMG, EMI, etc. run by lawyers and accountants. Of course, their first instinct when faced with new technology and a threat is to sue the pants of grandmas and 12 year olds. Way to go corporate America!!!
I'm gonna apologize for my attitude, for this next part but... I got karma to burn.
Evidently, having some lawyer or accountant run a business may just well run it into the ground. There is apparently no substitute, no matter how ivy or expensive your degree may be, for heart and really appreciating the business you work with or work in. Being in it for money will eventually sink the ship. It's love of music that brings out the great music, and brings it to the people, not lawsuits, not cheap thrills turned into overnight successes with the help of Payola (to radio stations -- ahem Clear Channel), over promotion and slick advertising (ahem -- MTV).
I hope Elliot Spitzer rips these companies and the lawyers who run them a new one with his Payola investigation.
M