Slashdot Mirror
Men Spend More on Video Games Than Music
Jakob Paulsen writes "According to research group Nielsen Entertainment, men now spend more money on buying games than on buying music. This adds further credit to the general belief that video games are displacing other forms of media for the attention of young men. Nielsen base their findings on interviews with 1,500 people in January and February."
I think this is more of a product of men being more capable of pirating music than of pirating games as emulation of current consoles is hardly a replacement for the real thing.
Duh. For every game I buy I'd have to buy 4 albums to spend an equal amount of money on music.
It's like saying that people spend more money on their house than on their car. It doesn't mean that they'll own more houses than cars in their lifetime, it just means that houses are more expensive.
Eh.
/me laughs at the thought of actually paying for music anymore.
For the most part, games have a lot more entertainment value for the money. If I buy a CD I'm paying $20 for about an hour's worth of music (not to mention that there may only be a few good songs on it). If I buy a game, There should be at least a few hours worth of gameplay before I beat it, and most games have a multiplayer mode which means that i'll get a lot of play out of that $50 I paid for the game before I get bored with it and need a new toy :). It's simple economics really. Why pay $20 for (at best) an hour of entertainment when you could get an insanely large number of hours of fun out of a $50 game?
It's not really fair to use money as a basis for this. Games tend to cost 3 to 5 times as much as a music CD so it's no shock guys are spending more money on games as games can make more money while still selling less units.
Where do all the people who bought Donkey Konga fit into all of this?
Oh wait a minute... nobody bought Donkey Konga.
Eh, don't overgeneralize, please.
:-)
I couldn't care less if tomorrow the RIAA goes completely bankrupt, and Britney (or whoever is popular these days, I don't know) is found on the street gathering food from garbage cans. It's not like music will suddenly disappear in that case. There will still be modarchive.com and the Unreal Tournament soundtrack.
On the other hand, I'm very much interested in seeing nice companies like Moonpod prosper and make more nice stuff
You know, the fact people decide to infringe some law doesn't mean they can't be selective. And no, it's not theft, dammit.
LOL, you get modded insightful for stating that you think your post is insightful?
At least I can't think of another reason..
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Gender: Male
Time I spend listening to music per week: 0 Seconds
Time I spend playing video games per week: More than 0 Seconds
That was easy.
I don't pirate any music because it isn't worth the albeit slim possibility of a lawsuit for way the heck more money than that music is possibly worth to me. As a result, I don't try out new music the way I used to when my *ahem* "friend" in college who pirated lots of music was around, and thus I don't find out about any music to go and buy. Thus, any non-zero video game spending > my music expenses.
I think the total amount of music I bought since 2002 has been about 3 cds. I average about 1 new game every 2 months. I don't buy games when they first come out because 50 dollars is way to much. You can buy a quality game for 20-30 bucks and the entertainment time for any given game is at least 10-15 hours. Unless I really like a cd (which has about an hours worth of music), I usually listen to a cd 3 to 4 times and then put it away in my collection. I'll listen to it maybe a couple of times a year after that. I think entertainment wise videogames give you more bang for the buck.
-Dipster
I used to buy something like 3 or 4 CDs a week, back in hayday of Napster, mainly because I was exposed to new artists I hadn't heard before at 0 cost, after which I would buy other CDs of them. After Napster was shutdown, that dropped to about 2 CDs a month, at the most. Once the RIAA started suing individuals, I decided I was not going to buy any CDs any more, and have bought 1 CD direct from the artist in the last 2 years. I have spent WAY more than that on games. I buy more games than I do CDs, just volume wise, not even counting the price differential. Most of my friends also don't buy much as far as CDs are concerned, albeit for most of them its not on principle.
The post I replied to refers to it as "ripping off". Therefore, the author acknowledges that it is theft, even if you disagree. Therefore, he is a thief by his own admission, not by my accusation.
In my experience, if a person will steal from someone, he will steal from me as well. Once you step over lines in some situations, it becomes easier to cross over them in others.
Take a look at some "good" folks, like Martin Luther King, who engaged in multiple affairs, Bill Clinton who did the same, or Richard Nixon (if you are interested, take a look at the stuff the Kennedy's did that helped push him over the edge).
So, I stand behind my statement. I did not make it about anyone but the original poster, so, no, I don't think I overgeneralized.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Maybe someone else has had the same life experience as me. When I see someone lie to someone else, I know I can't trust that person. When I see someone take advantage of a situation, I know he will do the same to me if he has the chance. I condense this to "a thief is a thief"
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Non-RIAA music I've downloaded: Mostly stuff from http://www.ocremix.org/
Except that everything on ocremix.org is probably considered pirated because they don't pay the royalty of up to 8.5 cents per downloaded track to the video game publishers, who own copyright in the musical works that underlie the recordings available on ocremix.org.
Time I spend listening to music per week: 0 Seconds
Are you trying to tell me you didn't buy food in the past week? Most grocery stores have some sort of music playing over the speaker system. The royalties for such music ultimately come out of the price of the groceries you bought. Therefore, you indirectly paid to hear music.
So I'm a thief because I download music? I personally don't consider that a thief. My favorite artists (Twiztid, ICP, pretty much anyone under Psychopathic Records) I have no problem buying their CD's, those I can listen to all the way through over and over again. But most albums today have 1 or 2 good songs on them and the rest suck. I'm not about to pay $12-$15 for 1 or 2 good songs. If the artists want MY money they can put togther a decent album. But buying a CD for those select tracks would be more like them ripping ME off. And I would feel bad ripping off video game companies also for the fact that I've had a passion for video games since literally the age of 2 (yes I'm a young'n I know). So I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your statements/oppinons to yourself. Thanks
Clearly, this is the work of internet piracy in a post-9/11 world. We will now sue people for not buying music.
Awwww. you want me to keep my opinions to myself? And you come to a public forum with almost 900,000 registered users? Methinks your logic is not the best.
And as far as the artist putting together decent albums, try iTunes. And if you DON'T find it on iTunes, no one holds a gun to your head and makes you fork over the money.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Last year in music, I bought 6 CD's (around $15 per) and about 100 iTunes. Let's round that up to $200 to make it easy.
Last year in games, I bought World of Warcraft ($50) and a 3-month pre-paid card ($45). Let's round that up to $100.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I will vouch for that
I'm a 25 year old male and I feel that the recording industry has mostly ignored my musical tastes for about six or seven years now. Last year I bought 1 album (Bowling for Soup). I bought 2 albums 2 years ago, but they were both older music (Talking Heads and Human League).
There are very few newer bands that I like. The older bands I like are not producing new music that I enjoy. Also, when new music comes out that I do enjoy, it gets VERY little radio play in my city. I end up finding songs I like in movies nowadays far more often than I find them on the radio.
If the recording industry wants my money, they're actually going to have to do their job. They need to release music I like and find a way to get me some exposure to the music so that I know it exists. That is what they're there for.