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UK Music Industry Sees Record Sales
ardmhacha writes "Despite the claims of gloom and doom from the BPI (the UK equivalent of the RIAA) the BBC is reporting that 'UK record companies are celebrating their best ever year for album sales, with a record 237 million sold in the 12 months to September. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade body said albums by the likes of Keane and The Streets had helped drive a 3% rise compared with last year. It also said sales of single tracks were up thanks to the availability of legal download services.' It looks like music sales will continue to climb if the customers get something they like. The article also discusses adding music downloads to the charts."
I read s/Phonographic/Pornographic, time to shut the computer off and go outside, I think.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I thought it was all CDs nowadays, not records.
Now they can stop suing people in Europe.
..but they could have made much more if it wasnt for those pirates eh?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If they have still more profits every year, why still fighting versus a **proven** -at least in the UK- industry healthy potential inocuous acts?
A) Cracking down on P2P apps is driving sales again
B) Good new music is driving sales
C) The economy is picking up so people are spending money on things like music again
D) P2P apps have exposed people to enough new music and now they are all out buying it
Agile Artisans
damn the double entendres!
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
BPI began suing filesharers RIAA-style in October 2003, and this year the market rebounds. This isn't necessarily a testimony to the harmlessness of P2P; it could be a testimony to the effectiveness of containment and harassment.
... in Edinburgh, local cinema managers are blaming declining attendances on pirate DVD's being sold at local flea markets.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"It looks like music sales will continue to climb if the customers get something they like."
Free Sex.
Great! Now they have more money to sue people with!
Oh, wait...
Well I for one am definately buying more albums as a result of exploring new (to me) music on P2P networks. I'd never heard of Vanglis before P2P came along, now I own his entire back catalog. Surely, I'm not the only one like this?
Records are back? Eeek!
"..but they could have made much more if it wasnt for those pirates eh?"
Can you prove otherwise?
A guess is still a guess, no matter what dress you put on it.
"...albums by the likes of Keane and The Streets..."
Never heard of them. Does that make me old?
British Phonographic Industry - everytime I read the word Phonographic, I mistakenly read something else. I think that if BPI wants to maintain good public relations it should, at least, change its name!
I don't understand why the price of a single track is 99p and albums are > £10!
They don't made into CDs with packaging.
They don't need to transported around the world/country in various forms of transport.
They don't need to be stocked in a store which employs loads of people.
Why, with practically 0 distribution chain, is the price still about the same as CD?
When they come down to 25p then I'll start buying this way. Well, so long as there's no DRM.
Auto-check your UK lottery lines
"I guess it depends on which spin doctor you listen to..."
Everyone's a "spin doctor" regardless of what side they're arguing on. It's just a question of "clockwise" or "counterclockwise". None are impartial, especially in the face of "what's in it for me?".
...and see better record sales. Go figure.
This might just be a better business strategy than suing your customers!
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade body said albums by the likes of Keane and The Streets had helped drive a 3% rise
I'd be impressed if the BPI said that they had a 3% increase due to the sales of new, smaller artists.
But the BPI accounts the 3% rise in sales based on a few large pop acts. Undoubtably there was a reduction for all other artists. This isn't a success - this is a long-term failure in the making.
The average pop act has a very short life. If you bet the bank on one or two hugely successful acts, then you're committing yourself to financial chaos.
It is best to have a large number of stable, repeatable acts with long-term purchases that you can depend on.
This article is just some of what I think should be common business sense shining through:
Forcing customers to do business on your terms (buy the CD @ the producer-price-fixed $18 or break the law) while simultaneously feeding them no talent hacks (most anyway) is just begging for them to "steal" the few decent songs produced. Maybe I'm just messed in the head in thinking that suing your customers because you (the producer) won't listen to what they (the consumer) want is just FUBAR'ed.
Note to the entertainment industry: we computer scientists have jumped into the 21st century by getting through the Y2K bug, I suggest you push your business model to the 21st century as well and reap the benefits be earning my money instead of coercing me. iTunes started it, now embrace it.
PS: I'm not the only one waiting for you to do so.
:wq
BPI forgot to mention one important fact. Sales are really up because Milli Vannilli came out with a new album. For some weird reason, British people like him.
::Note: I am, in fact, a rabid Benny Hill fan... although I am not British.::
Then again, British people like Benny Hill.
I think the mere fact that The Streets sell any copies proves conclusively that the UK music industry is in terminal decline!
I mean, Christ. Some chav who sounds like a 15-year-old schoolyard weed dealer whining about his girlfriend, who just talks on his record, can get to number one? Kids today! Never thought I'd say this, but bring back National Service!
You must think in Russian.
For the same reason that dogs lick their balls.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
To some people, "record" doesn't just mean vinyl with grooves in. I'm not familiar with British copyright terminology, but at least under U.S. copyright law, a "phonorecord" is a medium in which a sound recording is fixed, roughly corresponding to a "copy" of any other work. Examples of various types of phonorecords, or "records" for short, include Columbia 33.3 RPM LP, RCA 45 RPM single, Lear 8-track cartridge, Compact Cassette, Compact Disc Digital Audio, MiniDisc, MP3 CD-R, and any hard drive containing music files.
Considering how much of the industry has been locked down due to vertical and horizontal integration and oligopolistic market practices it is no suprise that they can sell so much. Just don't believe the lies they tout about how hard their lives are.
I still think that downloading has exciting possibilities for creativity and a line of flight from traditional music channels - especially through the potential of peer2peer networks and so on. But unfortunately there is a real danger of colonisation from the majors who have deep pockets and sharp lawyers.
The Internet offer the possibility of difference and a reterritorialisation of music creativity which is at essence a collective (networked) endeavour. If we allow the major's (few and fewer as they are) to close down this space with DRM and monopolisation of the distribution channels then it will be a very sad day for alternative music.
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
The BPI recently obtained (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3743596. stm) a court order compelling ISPs to name subscribers (identified by IP) who were accused of file-sharing. Anyone know of any developments since then?
It looks like music sales will continue to climb if the customers get something they like.
I understand the first part of your sentence.. but what's a "customer" and why do they have to like the music we sell?
sincerely,
record company executive
too.
To me, "records" will always be vinyl 33 1/3 rpm LPs.
"Album" predates LP's and originally referred to a collection of 8-10 separate 78rpm disks. They were packaged in a binder, shaped like a photo album. ("Like a what?")
I hate it when people steal words. But then, I also hate the word police, so I'm stuck.
sigs, as if you care.
I just love the way her official website message board has lit since her recent SNL appearance. Hopefully some of these sales overseas were for cool British bands. If ever they want to trade artists again (Beatles, Stones, etc) we're willing...
Can't you see?! So much great music has come out in the previous year but there's only been a 3% jump in sales! If you people weren't all dirty rotten smelly pirates, sales would be up 10 fold! The artists would be raking it in and thus could afford to produce more albums! Now, because of you dirty pirates, the artists are going to starve despite sales increases and you'll all suffer.
You people disgust me.
The recent music to come out of the UK hasn't been the usual global tripe.
... White, Welsh comedy rap)
Looking pretty and being able to sing won't sell records anymore, posters maybe but not records.
The fact that bands are back is why sales are up, seeing the guys and gals with the instruments is a good thing, more so when it comes to live performances like V or Glastonbury.
There is still room in the UK for gimic groups, take GLC for example, it put Aberdare on the map! (if you don't know of GLC (or Goldie Looking Chain ) its like a cross between Eminem, Weird Al and Tom Jones
The future is bright, the future is turned up to Whut-ohh!
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Not from me. After the RIAA/etc tried to censor Napster, and lied claiming that file duplication was "theft", it became clear that it was immoral to buy CD's. I feel pretty guilty if I buy one new, and if I must by one, I get a used one (a situation in which the RIAA music-censors don't get any money).
..."Home taping is killing music"...heh heh heh...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Has no one noticed that, for the most part, the people who are hardcore downloading music (or movies, or games, or software, or...), and not using it as an "evaluation" to see if they want to purchase a real copy, are generally broke anyway? The IP industries are not "losing" these customers to downloading, if not for downloading, these people would simply be unable to purchase a copy either. Net loss to IP company, therefore, is near 0, if not a net gain through free advertising to people who have the money and are just previewing.
The premise, to me, that these broke students, if downloads were not available, would begin printing money or something in order to purchase music or other IP seems a bit flawed to me. Somehow, it seems more to me like they would borrow and trade CD's among friends.
The premise that downloading is theft also seems a bit flawed to me. I have seen this equated as stealing a car off a lot, and this seems a flawed analogy to me, there is not still a copy of the car left on the lot.
A more appropriate analogy seems to me that a friend of mine needs to use a car at various times. He is not really interested in having a second car, as he would only use it sporadically, but really has no other choice as his wife normally takes their car to work. This is about to make Ford money, until I come along and offer to allow him to borrow my car when he needs to.
I find it hard to swallow that, in the above scenario, I "stole" from Ford by keeping someone to have to purchase one of their products. I didn't do this by stealing something off a lot, but by sharing something I already have. This, to me, does not indict the sharer for theft, but rather the seller for greed.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The key to this is online sales. It's easier for me to DL a song then it is for me to travel into town.
Admittingly I haven't bought a CD in about 3 years because I don't care for the music. I see no difference in recording a song off the radio by tape and downloading it.
People who don't want to buy a CD won't, they might download the song but thats all of 0% loss to the company since they didn't have the money in the first place.
Some people may go "nah, I wont buy it, I have it now). Yep thats a loss, but some people will also do the reverse. Thats how life works.
Give a little, lose a little. It'll all iron out, if you start sueing people you just piss people off and they revolt.
I like muppets.
Okay, from what I can gather in the article, all they said is that "sales" went up 3% compared to last year. But did they take into account things like the increase in the number of people in the UK? If there were more people who can afford and want music, then obviously more people will buy music. What about the total production of the music industry? No matter how good a band is most people would only buy one copy of any of their given CDs. It feels like of like the industry saying "look we're selling a whole lot more because we rock" while in reality people are only buying the same amount of music as they did last year. Though the singles download thing is actually pretty cool. Maybe companies would realize that unless they pack shiny things and gimmicks into their singles people aren't willing to shell out the price of half a full album for one song--but they will pay a bit more than A/n (where A is cost of an album and n is how many songs they have) for a song that they like.
read the bunni comic
I read it as "UK Music Industry Sees Record(=ALBUM) Sales".
I was like... so... the music industry sold some records? AMAZING!
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
Gee, over here in the US we've pretty much moved to entirely CDs.
Chris mattern
Am I glad I wasn't the only one confuzzled about the British Pornographic Industry somehow having helped raising album sales instead of raising other items. Time to go to sleep, night night everyone.
home
For many people, downloading music ecourages buying CDs. I just got back from Best Buy where I bought 2 new CDs. Where did I learn about the CDs? From listening to downloaded songs from the CDs of course. Both bands (UnderOath and Senses Fail) are smart enough to realise that by putting songs on their website (or Purevolume), consumers to discover their music, and consequently buy it.
...now I'll have to replace my CD collection.
A better headline would have been "UK Music Industry Admits to Record Sales".
Imagine that, labels that don't churn out the same old derivative mass marketed crap are actually doing quite well. I suspect if the RIAA looked at their figures for labels other than Sony, Universal, EMI etc they'd probably find they're doing quite well too.
:wq
Am I the only one who read this:
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI)
as the British Pornography Industry?
Anonymous sources indicate that the Porn Industry Association of America (PIAA) intends to file suit against up to 20,000 illegal file swappers, with the British Porn Consortium to follow suit in the coming months. The new wave of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has allowed pornographic material to be shared easily, causing dramatic decreases in pornography sales. The biggest sources of illegal file sharing appear to be college campuses, insecure wireless networks, and people's basements.
Also indicated, C-Net affiliate porn.com.com reports that in order to fend off the consumer backlash, the PIAA has enlisted the help of the celebrities it represents to endorse the legal purchase of pornographic material. In the coming months, superstars Pamela Anderson and Lil' Kim will deliver spots informing consumers of how stealing pornography deprives artists of the income they deserve. Furthermore, filmographer Rick Solomon will deliver spots on how the decrease in revenue stifles his innovation.
Suggested alternatives to illegal porn swapping include the new Apple-supported service iPorn, RealNetworks' secure RealPorn protocol, and Microsoft's Porn Media 9 format featuring 5.1 audio.
Yeah, P2P helped me with Vangelis, too. Not only did I learn how to spell his name, but after hearing some of his music I now manage to avoid it at all times.
tee hee... Watching the (record/movie) industry bitch about piracy while they're rolling in it is almost as fun as watching Dubya slowly prove wrong every statement that has ever exited his mouth. The correlation is quite hilarious :) Too bad we couldn't fix the entertainment industry with a single .22 bullet and a prison term.
It a big joke, the music artists aren't losing money, its the big corporations that just want to suck all the money they can from the little guy's. Figures! And since the US is just run by corporations now it doesn't look good for freedoms anymore either. One sad situation if you ask me, its all got to come tumbling down sometime and its not going to be pretty.
It's not a "they" it's a "him." Vangelis O Papathanassiou - I think you can see why he just uses "Vangelis."
Anyone who wants to collect his 'entire' back catalog has their work cut out.
Personally, I love Blade Runner but I think his music sounds too much of the same. If Yanni hadn't happened years later it probably woldn't bother me, but now every time I hear it all I think of is hackneyed cliches like the beach running scene in "Chariots of Fire" or Yanni on stage "jamming" with that soulless "na-na-na-na-na" song.
If you like Vangelis you need to hit Magnatune. They have a lot of electronic artists, many of whom I find much more interesting than Vangelis. Also check out Tangerine Dream (who I also find more interesting than Vangelis).
And of course you must get his collaboration with Yes-man Jon Anderson - not to mention Wakeman's solo stuff - which then leads us to Yes's catalog, Jethro Tull...
I don't know if Canada has had record sales, but they are up over last year according to stats published by the Canadian record industry association. Sales up 7% year to date, profits up 1%.
Uhm, I just read Gone Phishing :-).
Perl Programmer for hire
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
2 50 4Madsen/112504madsen.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/11
Wow.
British Phonographic Industry? Not surprised, you know how hard it is to hook up a hard drive to a Victrola?
Don't have anything else to say.
CD's are cheap, drop the prices, send out a couple of free ones with catalogs. In order to survive in a changing market you have to change your marketing stratigies.
fix the title man..
I think Frontline did a fairly good job of explaining why the US music industry is not making money.
h ows/musi c/view/
(60 min: Real Player & Windows Media)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/s
P2P may be a problem, but is not the primary reason for decreased earnings.
Personally, I think this has a lot to do with new music. The introduction and promotion of new genres usually gives the industry a boost. Unfortunately, corporate ownership and quarterly profits have forced many labels to avoid risky long term investments for unproven music. They opt for safe manufactured pop and wonder why sales are diminishing.
But, anyway, watch the Frontline piece, it's good stuff.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
...your mother's got a penis! Wonder how that'll sell in the US :)
"You are so right, about used cd's, but hopefully the RIAA doesn't starting getting onto that and charging money to sell used cd's "
They've wanted to. Also, Garth Brooks a few years ago was ranting about used-CD-buyers being thieves, and he wanted the sales of used CD's stopped. It makes me glad that I don't like country music.
20 trillion Beyonce CD's doesn't really mean anything other than the what people buy is shit, more shit, deeper darker shit piled up to the stars.
Despite the claims of gloom and doom from the BPI (the UK equivalent of the RIAA) the BBC is reporting that 'UK record companies are celebrating their best ever year for album sales
What the recording industry hates is the fact record sales are so fragmented. Sure, more albums are being sold than ever, but it's from a wildly diverse range of artists. With consumers now able to download and listen/sample the music before buying, these monolithic labels are finding it more difficult to manufacture pop artists that can sell 10 million copies. Now they sell half a mill of one artist and 25,000 of another artist... it's more work. The consumer isn't manipulated and decieved as easy.
Why do you think Britney Spears isn't rushing out with a new album? Because sales will be bitterly disapointing. Calculated successes of mindless garbage ala Ricky Martin is less likely now that the consumer has p2p.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
ITunes is anything but cheap.
You don't actually buy a track from ITunes, you buy a license to listen to the track on a single IPod.
This is because DRM prevents you from making a copy of the track, and when the track is out of copyright DRM prevents you from putting it into the public domain.
I would estimate the cost of this license to be approximately 1/10 of the cost of buying a track, which would work out at about 10-20cents.
Now 10Cents would be cheap, so ITunes is at least 10times more expensive than cheep.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Point 1 - If you buy ANYTHING from 'The Streets' I will track you down and beat you with a large metal bat.
Point 2 - I've been a supporter of "try before you buy" for a long time. Half of the crap that is spewed out from the music industry makes me vomit. If I were to pay for all the unpleasantness, I would have committed suicide by now. As it is, I make good use of peer-to-peer apps to find something I like, and THEN spend my cash. The industry may report a gain or loss of profits, but when you do the sums, it is down to the individual whether they spend their cash buying music or not.
But it's just so fashionable to blame piracy if profits are down! Let's not look at what tripe is being forced onto the public. Nope, we shall look at how much money is in our safe, and if it doesn't look enough to make us physically excited, then DAMN THOSE PIRATES!
unlike current pop American music that's mass produced for junior-high-school-kids and college students without taste, the UK actually HAS artists worth supporting. Ms. Spears sure as hell isn't getting any of my $$$ (not that I'd download her music anyways), but bring on some great UK music like Underworld or the Chemical Brothers and I'll shell it out just for pure fan support...anyone remember when it was fun to go to record stores and browse...those were the days
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
Does is stand to reason that if the record companies sue us when they are loosing money, that we should be sueing them when they are getting money?
Quick! Find a frivilous lawsuit to jump aboard!
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
There's a nice application out there called Playfair (aka Hymn), which removes all the DRM from itunes files. You can search Google for it. It's illegal, of course, at least in the US. (But maybe not in the UK?)
...Vangelis never released the music from Blade Runner on a separate album originally. The famous end theme from that movie was best-known by an orchestral version done by someone else until the album Themes was released in 1989. It wasn't until 1994 that the soundtrack album of the movie finally came out.
For one reason: it may encourage artists to be more creative in writing music. By not having to constantly pander to the album format and also allowing for a much wider selection of music genres, you will see a lot more variety of music and and single songs with longer running times (for example Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," both of which wouldn't work in play times shorter than the original versions).
It's about genre. ie "Progress."
r essive.
Jethro Tull -> "Prog Rock"
Yes -> "Prog Rock"
Vangelis -> Proggressive... something.
Tangerine Dream -> Even-more-distantly-related-to-rock-and-very-prog
The part about Ian had totally escaped me until you mentioned it. Coincidence? Or Freudian slip?