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After Brief Respite Music Industry Slump Deepens
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Sales picked up for the record labels late last year, but 2005 has been bleak. The Wall Street Journal ticks off evidence: 'During the crucial Thanksgiving week, for instance, the top 10 albums sold 40% fewer copies than the top 10 albums the same week in 2004. ... Sales of individual digital tracks on services like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store have increased -- but not nearly enough to offset the slide in CD sales. According to an estimate from SoundScan, overall sales of recorded music are down about 4.5%, if one considers 10 individual tracks the equivalent of an album.' The WSJ also lists familiar reasons for the decline -- 'online piracy, CD burning, high prices and competition for consumer dollars from videogames and DVDs' -- while adding, 'Lately, people in the music industry have said the same basic issues have been intensified by the growing popularity of pricey gadgets like Apple's iPod and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, as well as the rising prices for games that go with the new platform.'"
Maybe they should look at the top 10 grossing tours (US) from this year. According to Billboard they are:
1. U2 ($260M)
2. The Eagles ($117M)
3. Neil Diamond ($71M)
4. Kenny Chesney ($63M)
5. Sir Paul Mccartney ($60M)
6. Rod Stewart ($49M)
7. Elton John ($45.5M)
8. Dave Matthews Band ($45M)
9. Jimmy Buffett ($41M)
10. Green Day ($36.5M)
Hmm...I'm not sure about Kenny Chesney, but all of the other acts are at least 10 years old. I hate the Eagles as much as the next guy, but the mass marketed music today is Busch League, laughable.
He hates these cans!!!
Here in the Netherlands that already happens, in some form. For every DVD-R or CD-R (or equivalent). We pay taxes to compensate for copyright infringements. Record industries also wanted to pass an iPod tax here which would double the prices of such hardware. So that the RIAA wants a share of sales is really really something you should all fear. Unless you feel ok in spending twice the money for an iPod.
What about the fact that consumers are becomming sick of being treated as criminals
or the fact that sony execs authrised computer tresspass agaisnt thousands of computer users?
The CD is not dead. It's still a convenient and relatively durable medium
.... Compared to what?!? Your mothers favorite Vase on top of the mantle that your 7 year old nefew isnt even supposed to be able to reach?
Relatively durable? The last time i checked, accidentally slipping on a cd on even a nice carpet with a resonable ammount of dirt (aka sand) is enough to scratch a CD into enough oblivion that at the VERY LEAST impares at LEAST one track from playing successfully without skipping. You act as if most cd's are diamond coated or something. I have YET to find a "scratch resistant" coating on a normal store-bought CD. Not to mention the sh**y quality of plastic found in some (most) cheapo blank cd's. It's almost as if the recording industry figured out that a device which relys upon a defect-free plane of clear plastic was so much LESS durable than a standard audio cassette that it would be worth the money to invest in such a fragile media distribution.. Heck, i STILL have cassettes that are at least 8+ years old that, unless subject to an excessive ammount of magnetic force (i.e. swirling it around on a speaker magnet), will STILL play within the respective sound quality of a cassette tape in any new or old tape player i own.
Now i must admit, CD's do have their redeeming qualities, such as their superior sound quality and the fact that yes, if you treat your cd like your newborn baby's eyes, they will remain clear and true. But i remind you: the first time you drop your cd in the floor of your car, or even a more worse-case scenario, out of your car door onto the pavement in your local toy's-r-us parking lot just after you have tried to buy an Ipod just to find out that even they are sold out (i really dont know if toys-r-us carries ipods, nor do i care) even the act of attempting to pick up said CD, will be scratched to a point where it may just become unreadable by your standard car cd player. (that assumption requires the idea that at least a little sliding occurs before said CD is removed from the contact of the gravel/concrete) whereas if i dropped a cassette tape i could literally jump on it a couple of times and kick it against a brick wall without hampering sound quality, much less inducing any skipping...
So i shall redunditize (new word?) myself: The CD is not dead. It's still a convenient and relatively durable medium
Relatively durable?
- You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
Hey - Jack Valenti - yesterday Beethoven turned 235 years old - and people are STILL buying his music... CATCH a CLUE!!!
I can appreciate the meaning of your message and it's obvious you're passionate about this subject.
But, um, Valenti was the head of the MPAA (the movie assholes) not the RIAA (the music assholes).
And in any case, he's retired.
Dont laugh. This actually happened.
A law was introduced requiring a person holding a light to walk 15 meters in front of a horseless cariage. This was said to warn pedestrians of the oncomming dangerous contraption. It was really about protecting the horse drawn cariage market beaucse this law destroyed all the advantages that the car introduced.
Sorry, I couldn't find a reference.
Keep your cds in the cases and not lying on the floor. I have many cds that are 20+ years old with no issues. Apparently you have no experience with vinyl:) We can talk about that if you want to talk about scratches.
Heh, it won't be long until RIAA either demands a halt in the sale of high priced gadgets such as the Ipod... or demands a portion of the income from the sales
I wouldn't be surprised if it comes to royalties. It's not like it hasn't been done before with blank media.
However, they'd be stupider than I think they are if they demanded a halt to iPod sales. Legal downloads are the only place where sales are growing. And it's not because people want to pirate iTunes. Consumers don't want much really. They just want to be able to find the music they want, not what the retail store managers think will sell. They want to be able to buy just that music. And they want to be able to play it anywhere.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this is good for music, but not necessarily good for the companies that are leading in the industry today.
The logical conclusion is that people will be able to saturate their lives with music. A lot of people are close to the point of needing earbuds surgically implanted anyway. Take those people, multiply their numbers by ten or more, and you have a very happy scenario for producers of music.
On the other hand, the "music" companies are not producers of music by in large. They're mainly distributors of music. They control the supply chain to the record shops. The have scales of production on physical media. They have muscle with radio airtime. All of these advantages are reduced or nullified by on-line distribution, unless they can control the playback platform (which Microsoft won't allow them to, and Microsoft is a key gatekeeper because it controls the majority of PCs).
If a day comes when nearly all music is sold on-line, then the reason for the existence of most of the music company's functions are gone. Local entrepreneurs will provide studios and production assistance for an hourly fee, and bands will offer their work directly to the audience through online services. The only irreplaceable value left in the companies are their portfolio of older copyrighted works. They will not be able to add to the value of their portfolio in any significant way, and copyrights ever expire again they'll be in deep trouble. They may be able to buy some copyrights from bands before the bands become successful, but ore and more bands will become independently successful.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It was a british law.
According to RIAA Radar most of her cd's are unclean, except for the stuff released outside the US.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
But, there were rumours that like radio airplay, the promoters had figured out a way to rig the charts as well. Something like spend a large sums of money on buying back your albums and then sell them back. That way the albums climb the chart even though no-one is buying the CDs.
Yup. It also helps them fiddle the books -- if they ship eg 300,000 copies of a title (that they know is crappy and won't sell) before Christmas, those go in the books as a plus, money that will be coming in. It's not until the 250,000 unsold copies are returned by the retailers that the studio has to account for the loss, which is in the next fiscal year.
This was the standard operation for disco kings Casablanca Records back in the late 70s. It also lead directly to the music industry crash of the late 70s, early 80s as other labels emulated the strategy. The companies all started shipping far more copies than they could possibly hope to sell, which backfired on them once they weren't able to ship enough to offset unsold returns.
Dirty, dirty, dirty business. Read this book to find out just how slimy the business is, and how it's been slimy (and infested with mobsters) from the very beginning.
Actually, TFA did mention it:
They don't necessarily reach the same conclusion, but they do at least bring up the idea music isn't selling as well because current music simply isn't as good or appealling as consumers would like.
Absolutely.
I consider myself to be somewhat of a music fanatic, and while my CD collection isn't big, it's not *that* small, either, at about 300 to 400 individual CDs. The number of CDs I bought this year? Two. There simply isn't enough good stuff on the market, and that which *is* good is overpriced, so one of those CDs was bought used on eBay.
Given the behaviour of the music industry, I'm not surprised they find it hard to sell their crap. Screwing over customers big time (see the recent Sony debacle), treating them as criminals, charging ridiculous amounts for a single album, filling albums with crap so that out of 12 songs, there are maybe two that are really worth listening to, shutting down good and useful services like mp3.com, undermining fair use rights, screwing over bands, suing single mothers and 12-year olds, and artificially narrowing the market to a few "top acts" (not even "bands" anymore!) that all give you the same mass-produced, soulless crap... those are all just symptoms of a fundamental attitude problem that the music industry has, symptoms of a kind of hubris that's pretty much unheard of in any other industry.
Are they *really* surprised that customers aren't willing to put up with all that crap forever? Contrary to what they're saying, I don't think so; they're just looking for an easy scapegoat, so they just scream "piracy! boohoo!" everytime they lose more customers. But it doesn't matter: until they actually change, they will continue to lose, and unless they eventually change, they will ultimately disappear.
When I bought my last CD, I got it directly from the band, who were selling their stuff after a concert. I got it signed by all the band members, and I had a nice chit-chat with the singer, too. It still was cheaper than most "mainstream" CDs; I like pretty much every song on it, and I listen to it regularly, as it's clear that the band are not just in it for the money - they are pouring their souls into their music, and it shows.
When was the last time you could say *that* about the latest Bitchney Spears CD you got for an outrageous sum at the local Wal*Mart?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.