Slashdot Mirror
Legal Music Downloads Increase in 2005
GraWil writes "The CBC is reporting there is marked increase in legal music downloads in 2005. American internet users downloaded 158 million individual songs from January to June 2005, compared with 55 million during the same period in 2004; during the same period, U.S. CD sales decreased by 7%. According to Peter Jamieson, head of the British Phonographic Industry, "the record industry has enthusiastically embraced the new legal download services ... and now we're beginning to reap the rewards". In the UK, sales of seven-inch vinyl singles were also up 87% on last year."
OMG!! teh downloads are bringing down our profits!
I wonder how they conclude these things anyway when they have no clue how many songs were downloaded in the black market to begin with....
I bet you the illegal music traffic tripled as well.
If I had the time I could probably prove that broadband connections increased in number, prices fell, newer technologies connected more people, etc...
This is a piece of not-so-well crafted corporate propaganda.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
that only 14 seven-inch vinyl albums were sold in all of England last year.
[http://it-tastes-so-good.blogspot.com] Are you hungry?
This was inevitable. The popularity of illegal music sites was a clear example of how many consumers loved the idea of downloading digital music. Most people didn't do it to cheat artists, they did it because they had no choice. Now that the labels are catching on they will be rewarded with huge profits. Now if only the TV and movie industry would catch on. There is big money to be made off legal movies and shows, just wait.
Voice your opinion!
I guess the natural connection between downloadable music and 45 RPMs has finally been realized in the United Kingdom.
Huh??
"According to Peter Jamieson, head of the British Phonographic Industry..."
Gotta rehash own brain... read the above as According to Peter Jamieson, head of the British Pornographic Industry
When it's easy to do it legally (aka the iPod), people will do it legally. Why?
Not because people have a great amount of respect for the law, but because we have a great amount of respect for the easy.
The thing to realize is that both sides not only believe they are working towards the greater good but are objectively doing so even with radically different and diametrically opposed 'solutions' to the problem.
It really puts things in perspective to realize not only that each side is right but that there is more to be gained for each to sit down and figure out what to do with the deer in the forest rather than constantly fighting over territory and methodology.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
huh? give ppl a way to give you money more easily and they open their wallets? imagine what could have been if they had embraced the internet back in the 90's instead of fighting it tooth and nail. just like audio tapes, just like video tapes. they fought so hard to stop these scary, uncontrolable, make-copying-easy technologies. and they turned into cash cows.
Heheeh. You think THAT's bad? Look at what the BPI did to cheap CD's on the internet. They make the RIAA look like a drugged out PTA meeting. http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread/t-6362. html
Also people are known to like not having to pay.
I know I would pay for a service where if I paid a certain amount of money I could get access to a BT tracker that was distributing DRM-'ed video files. I wouldn't mind signing up for a "pay-by-the-show" format, in case I miss an episode. Especially now that my favorite shows(Stargate SG-1, Lost, etc.) are trending towards more arc-ish storylines, so I won't get lost with the story. Granted, most TV programming doesn't have enough story to make these kinds of things worthwhile. I mean, why do I care if Jerry gets eliminated on Survivor 2000:The Last Place on Earth We Haven't Filmed In Yet?
eBay, my friend. eBay. I can get numerous CDs that the RIAA is soiling themselves over for a bid that's less than the shipping cost. When the RIAA kicks down my door, I'll kindly smile and show them the album that I ripped my music from.
Ebay is the ultimate yard sale. I can't believe how much stuff I buy and sell there. It's not as good as the old days, but it's still quality. Thankful am I, for I listen mostly to classical music (and I don't live in the UK). It's commonly available in a cheap manner. Ooh...if you like good instrumentals, you should look up Yasunori Mitsuda. He makes a lot the tracks for SquareSoft's stuff. Esp. his stuff for Chrono Cross was good.
I just tried Napster again yesterday for the first time in over a year, but it still suffers from all of the problems that I had with it last time.
The catalog is incomplete, to really replace Limewire, it has to offer ALL of the songs I want. That includes some pretty obscure songs. Basically, my personal library is 1,500 songs or so off of Limewire. Napster's whole library seems to show about 750,000 songs. The legal library is 500 times the size of my own, but I don't like one in every 500 songs, probably only 1 in 1,000, if that, so there are huge gaps.
DRM sucks. It basically turns digital music into something that can only be effectively used while sitting right in front of the computer. I want a standard format (MP3) that I can burn to standard audio CDS, use on my Rio MP3 player, and burn to data discs that will work in an mp3 cd player, or my set top dvd player. DRM makes much of this impractical. Of course there is the argument that everybody would just steal the MP3's provided by the service. But why bother. If they cost $1 each, and I could do whatever I wanted with them, and they were good quality, not to mention legal. I wouldn't hesitate to skip the Limewire hassle and just by directly from them.
And where in the hell is the quality that was supposed to be associated with the pay services. What is stopping Napster from offering up the songs at 512k instead of the paltry 128 that they seem to be using now (yeah, wma makes a difference, but I still want bigger files). I would be happy spending even $2 per song for 512 DRMless MP3's that are legal. Instead, the stuff Napster sells sounds the exact same as the MP3's that came off of Napster 1. Not what I was expecting. I want 14mb downloads at 5mbps+/second, and why not, except for the size I can get everything else off of Limewire.
Further, I have to boot into Windows to use Napster or itunes (not counting pymusique). I don't like doing that, and I really can't play drm'd wmas under linux.
Limewire is still the best option. It's fast for a Java Application, it runs on anything with a virtual machine, can easily max out my download bandwidth, and I can use the files however I want. Of course, most of the files aren't legal, but the legal files can't do what I want so what good are they?
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
so where the freak is iTunes AU???
I'd really love to be into this "legal" download sensation but noone will sell to me (and if it doesn't work on my pod I'm not interested).
There are people in this community who will continue to lobby against legal downloads no matter what the terms or what technology is used. I swear, sometimes I think that if Linus himself started a company that sold no-DRM OGG Vorbis songs for a penny a piece and you got a free blowjob from Natalie Portman with every 10 purchased tracks that we'd still see posts on slashdot justifying P2P piracy because we didn't get to pick out Natalie's outfit when she showed up at our parent's basement to deliver.
There are people who read news like this who are encouraged that market is beginning to respond (as markets always do) and there are people who read this news and get grumpy because it just got a little bit more difficult to continue to rationalize their greedy piracy.
How did you react?
I agree. When iTunes first started doing its thing, a lot of people griped that they didn't think there was a large enough difference between the cost of a CD and the cost of a downloaded album. They argued that you're not getting a physical product, and you're getting a lossy copy, so why does it still cost $9.99 (never mind that this is, in some cases, nearly a 50% reduction.)
I never saw it that way. I always thought that the convenience and the speed with which I could acquire the album more than made up for not getting the CD, and not having a perfect, pristine copy. I had a Paypal balance a number of months back, and debated using it on Ebay, to acquire several albums, or on iTunes to do the same. I chose iTunes - even though I might have been able to get more albums, plus liner notes & the original CDs, through eBay. Why did I choose iTunes? Because I wanted the songs on my iPod that day.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
they sold a few million of them in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I wouldnt download music from these services anyday. Why? The quality is just too bad. When I get a CD, I listen to it for the quality of sound not because of price. For me, I would rather buy music and get a better sounding product, than download.
"the record industry has enthusiastically embraced the new legal download services ... and now we're beginning to reap the rewards"
More like:
"the record industry was lead by the balls kicking and screaming into download services...and now we're beginning to rape the rewards"
Apple has posted record profits ($320 M) for the third quarter. Apple shipped 6.2 million iPods in the quarter. Also sales of computers were up 35%. It seems that there really is a halo effect.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I've experimented with three of the top mp3 downloading services: iTunes, AllOfMp3 and Napster. And of the three, AllOfMp3.com was clearly the fairest with the best selection.
.99 cost per track which is a little expensive. Nice interface though.
I guess calling them "music" downloading services is more accurate, because iTunes distributes songs in the mpeg4 format (I'm guessing only the iPod can play mpeg4's, because my MuVo mp3 player won't). Other annoyances include a circa 20 mg application I had to download and install just to have the privilege to shop at iTunes, the rather weak selection (I was looking for tracks off the new Seether album "Karma and Effect", which they didn't have) and lastly the
Napster is so friggin' annoying, from the splash page to the pathetic selection (unless you like rap like R. Kelly *gag*) that I had to bail. They too didn't have any of the tracks I was looking for.
Happily, AllOfMp3.com did have all the tracks I wanted, and each track costs about 12 to 20 cents! This is by far the best deal I could find. The "catch" is you have to commit $10 from your credit card, but I easily got more than an album's worth of music I really wanted, and I'll continue to shop there for all my fist raising, head banging needs. The interface was simple enough to navigate (could be streamlined more, but I'm nit-picking) and I was able to download in mp3 format at various levels of quality. Highly configurable. IMHO, it's the best music download service on the internet.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
I think we're missing the true tragedy here - the lawyers. They're going to have to go back to...pursuing justice!
I'd buy music if I could find somewhere that sells to Australasia - and that is actually legally allowed to sell these files. And no, don't point me to that dodgy Russian MP3 retail site. Until then KLR it is. :-)
"the record industry has enthusiastically embraced the new legal download services ... and now we're beginning to reap the rewards"
Only because they were dragged kicking and screaming into it. They have done EVERYTHING in their power to prevent even the LEGAL downloading of material. In addition, they have used their might to stop or at least slow down acceptance of new media devices. I need only point to such debacles as:
- The Cassette tape
- The DAT/Cassette DAT
- The CD-R
- The digital MP3 player (remember when they tried to stop those?)
- The Napster ruling
- Internet Radio
Etc... In short, they hate any technology they do not have 110% control over. If the music industry thought they could charge by the minute, they would.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"I'll be so glad when you vinylphiles finally all die out.
:)
...only on excellent vinyl playback equipment. It tends to be tougher to produce a mechanical device like a turntable cartridge with the same level of consistency that can be expected when producing ICs and the like. That (along with other factors like simple supply and demand) is why decent vinyl playback stuff tends to be quite a bit more expensive than decent CD players do. I have a reasonably high-end turntable and I enjoy using it tremendously... but I have to admit it wasn't cheap compared to digital gear in its league.
Hey, I tease.
But seriously... Nyquist and all that."
Nyquist and all that? All that the Nyquist theorem says on the subject is that a sampling audio system like PCM should, in theory, be able to reproduce signals with frequencies up to 1/2 of the sampling rate faithfully. But in the real world, there are at least two problems with that:
1) The low-pass filters used on the signal path are physical devices, not theoretical concepts. As such, they can't be absolutely perfect... they introduce phase distortions and begin attenuating at frequencies somewhat lower than 1/2 Fs.
2) Even if the filters were "perfect" (not attenuating or introducing phase distortion until 1/2 Fs, at which point the attenuation becomes infinite)... well, the jury is still out on whether 22050hz (the theoretical upper bound given the 44.1khz sampling rate of CDs) is really high enough. There's some evidence to suggest that even if we can't "hear" frequencies above 22.050khz, they can have an effect on the way we perceive lower frequencies that we can hear.
Just to be fair to both sides of the argument though...
"CDs are still far worse sounding than vinyl."
To return to the digital downloads aspect of the article a bit though... I have to completely agree with the poster who shuns download services for poor quality. The only times I've extensively used iTunes were the Pepsi free song promotions, and if I found any songs I really really liked... well I went on Amazon or to my local record store and sought out the CDs to re-rip as DRM-free Apple Lossless. Better sound quality and the ability to use the format of my choice will make CDs the clear winner in my book for a long time to come.
-Frank
Sales of singles have been on the decline for years, long before downloading became an issue, but nobody really cared much because album sales were still strong. Now we all know that most albums contain maybe 2 or 3 songs we want to listen to and the rest is filler. Yes there are exceptions but not many. If the shift in legal music sales is away from shops to online distribution and people no longer feel the need to buy an album to get the songs they want then what's the point of making an album? What's the ROI if only a couple of tracks actually turn a profit? Is this part of the reason the "Music Industry" is afraid to move online? Bands get corraled into deals that give them money up front that's then used to pay for everything including studio time, producers etc etc. If the costs to manufacture your profitable product (a track) is slashed and you no longer waste time on unprofitable "inventory" doesn't that empower the musicians? You don't need all that upfront money to make an album because you won't be making an album.
is support sites like eMusic. They off high quality, legal, non-DRM mp3s for 22-25 cents (depending on your monthly plan). Right now they are offering 50 free downloads from their very unique catalog (of which you can cancel if you like, but I'm sure not going to). Some of the stuff you can get from iTunes (so it's cheaper from eMusic.com) but a lot of you can't because it's from mostly independent labels or back-collections. If you like great music no-one's heard of, this is your site. The user-base seems pretty knowledable about what's good, so their "list" feature is nice. They also have incorporated some social networking/clustering features which allow you to see who your "neighbors" are with common interests. Supporting a site like eMusic, allows them to expand their already great selection, so check them out: eMusic.com. At least try it out, get your free mp3s, and then decide. They are offering 50 free because they believe that once you try it, you'll want to continue using the service; it's the best kind of advertising gimmick there is: offering a good product.
That one made me laugh. I'm not sure which is the funnier word, enthusiastically or embraced.
Nice try making it look as if the industry was the one which ushered in the age of downloadable music. They did everything to stop it and when it steamrolled them over, they 'accepted' it and made it look like it was their creation.
I wish I could warp to another universe, Trance Gemini style, where there was no napster, no kazaa and no BT and look at how enthusiastically they had embraced it there.