Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I wonder if they ever thought about the Quality of the music they sell??
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Could it be that the music industry is just putting 40% less desirable music? When it comes to new CDs and artists, there hasn't been all that much growth over the past year.
While sales may be down to last year. itunes still provides a way for lazy people to legally download music, where if they had to go to a retail outlet would probably just resort to a P2P. So in fact itunes has increased profits regardless of amount. Don't mistake greed with reality
10 individual tracks sold in itunes cannot be equated to just a single CD album.
An average CD album will not contain more than two or three good tracks while the rest will be useless. When people buy individual tracks from itunes, they will only go for the better ones and the rest will just not sell. So instead of considering 10 tracks as being equivalent to a single album sale, WSJ should consider 2 or 3 tracks sold on itunes as being equivalent to a single album sale.
This is the market correcting itself. As the stranglehold the labels have over the music market wanes, the proper balance between listeners, artists and labels will be struck. As it is now, the labels wield far too much power. They definitely play a valuable role, and deserve the chance to make a profit, but their current model depends on certain inefficiencies (where they can most significatly exert control) which no longer exist.
This process of seeking a more equitable equilibrium is too slow, but it's definitely going in the right direction.
The WSJ also lists familiar reasons for the decline -- 'online piracy, CD burning, high prices and competition for consumer dollars from videogames and DVDs'
And of course they (deliberately?) omit the #1 reason:
shit product
They'll still blame the #1 reason on piracy though.
From the article:
This year, though, there's little Christmas cheer to go around. 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
All this means is the top 10 albums sold less this year than they did last year, that is not the same as a decline in CD sales or an industry slump.
If this year only 10 albums were available to buy, from anywhere, this years top 10 whould have had huge sales compared to last years top 10, but I'd be willing to bet there would definatly be less profits than last year.
Each year more and more CDs are put out and made available to the public. Surely the way to indicate a slump would be to release the total number of CDs sold in that week, or the total profits made by the music industry that week, and compare them.
For all we know, those same top 10 albums could have had record sales for every other week in the year, and now everyone in the world has a copy, the only people buying them are those that want 2 copies :o
It seems the music industry/RIAA has just employed some statistics experts to check the numbers and find anything that could be used to indicate a down turn, whether true or not.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I don't know about everybody else, but I like the fact that the huge record companies are making less. Music isn't about making money to anybody who gets into it for the right reason. If these trends continue, we can expect less-corporate-MTV like atmosphere. Look back at the 90's with its anti-corporate grunge phase; I think we could use more of that! If anything, I would love it if these trends produced a culture with more independent music. Maybe the next Ashlee Simpson or Christina Augilara will be able to actually sing???
Slash-for-Thought
Funny, if I want to blow 20 bucks, I can go to a wide choice of bars and clubs with local acts, pay the cover and get a pair of beers and a couple of hours of entertainment with good company. I might even find a really good band that I never heard of before, and hell, I'd buy an album from them for a few bucks after their set was over.
.mp3, and maybe I'll buy something from them because I like to hear them.
If music is great, we don't need a leech-like promoter to tell us so. I'll hear them, or a friend will tell me, or a friend of a friend, they can send me an
I just hope in the music companies' death throes they don't drag down our laws with I.P. and DMCA any more than they already have.
The CD is not dead. It's still a convenient and relatively durable medium, much like a book. E-books have been around for years and you don't see them supplanting the real thing. In my inexpert opinion, this sharp decline in CD sales is attributable to a general stagnation in popular music styles, the aforementioned competition from other kinds of entertainment, and perhaps also widespread disgust with the music cartel.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
"Sales of horse drawn carriages have slumped. Horse drawn carriage manufacturers are worried about the increased use of horseless carriages and are hoping to pass legislation making it a requirement for everyone to have a horse infront of their carriage."
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Not to mention that Albums are now a way to take over your computer.
My non-expert eyes are seeing an interesting trend correlation between not just copy protection, but public awareness of copy-protection on cds and the decline of sales.
If you start taking away options from the customer without any added bonus you will start losing customers.
Well, my teenage son and his friends are copying my CD collection dating back to Buddy Holly (before my birth!) and are simply ignoring the current music offering. As a teen, I would not have been caught dead listening to my dad's ragtime music and I still can't stand 1920-1940s music. So it should be obvious - the current music suck baaaaadly.
It's the bands stupid...
Oh well, what the hell...
Perhaps the problem is that you keep buying average albums instead of above-average albums. I am constantly amazed when people on Slashdot point out how little they appreciate their music. I look at my own collection and I don't have a single album with a hit-rate that low. If I disliked the artist that much I wouldn't have bought the album or the single in the first place. I'll reserve my money for artists that I actually like.
This is exactly the problem the record companies are pointing at. The most important group (for them) does not buy music anymore: young people.
When we were younger we used to buy CD's (or records for that matter). We bought more than our parents. We still buy CD's, but less than we used to. This is known phenomenon: the older one becomes, the less music is bought.
Youngsters should buy more CD's than us older folk, according to pre internet expectations. That used to be the case. Nowadays, young people don't buy CD's anymore, they download. The older people's acquisitions still make up the tops of the charts.
The record companies obviously want to reverse this process. The above mention of horse carriages is spot on in that respect.
the pun is mightier than the sword
They forgot to mention the other reason for low sales, being that popular music, for the most part, sucks. If they improved the quality of the crap they play on the radio's maybe they'd make some more sales.
Broaden your horizons. I gave up on most pop music years ago. I started listening to Swing, classic Jazz, Opera, Folk, Qawwali, Klezmer, and anything else that was interesting. Much of it recorded before I was born. There is a lot of great music out there if you are willing to try something new.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You know something? That's not a bad idea! We should show them our appreciation. We could chip in and buy them some really nice vehicles. But... (MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!)
First, we need to build in some special safeguards, yes we do. We need to weld the passenger doors shut, for starters. No, these cars are just for these music industry executives, no free rides for their friends. They probably already have their own cars anyway. We add in a fingerprint lock on the ignition so only one person can start it up, and that should have the angle of no unauthorized riders covered.
Next, let's look at authorized use. We wire a GPS system directly to the engine and the lock on the gas tank. That way we can make sure the car isn't used to drive on any of the wrong roads, or fill up at any of the wrong gas stations. How it's maintained and driven will have an effect on its lifespan, so we have to make sure they take appropriate cautions.
Because we're buying the cars for them, we get to pick the color. I heartily recommend turquoise, teal, periwinkle, lime green, or peach with mauve racing stripes. Music industry executives like distinctive colors, don't they?
It'll take some effort, but I'm sure we can produce (or at least buy and modify) a car for these music industry executives as satisfying to drive as their companies' music is satisfying to listen to.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Face it ... you can't manufacture art. The music coming out of the pop-formula organ grinders hasn't been worth buying lately. Both my teenage daughters are telling me they prefer music from one or several decades ago, so it's not just my aging tastes.
If the music isn't any good, people won't buy it, and there will be a downturn in the music industry. Duh.
The most important component in any sound system is the human ear -- everything else is fluff. Get the content compatible with that element first, and there will be an upturn in the music industry. Whether they deserve it or not.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I don't know about others, but one reason I'm buying less music than I used to, is because I absolutely refuse to buy a "CD" with copy protection on it.
Given that more and more CDs are being crippled by this, I find myself putting more and more of them back on the shop shelf.
As far as I'm concerned, the music industry is cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Sometime in the 60's, record album sales began to increase, as people realised that most of the songs on a popular group's albums were being released as singles (on the smaller 45 RPM records). I remember quite a bit of discussion in the industry about this, and the record companies began pushing the sales of whole albums on pop recordings. I believe previously, only a few types of music sold whole albums in any number. Classical music comes to mind.
Groups like the Beatles were particularly consistent in their output, and their albums sold a lot of copies, even without a lot of hits on them (many of the hits were only put on albums later on). The question I and my friends had back then was should we buy just the singles we liked, or the whole album. After a while, we learned that many of those albums were well worth the added cost.
I believe those days are now over. The CD's that are currently available just don't have enough good music on them. The available of singles through services like iTunes and others will erode what little popularity the CD has left.
The current music industry is based on a short-lived phenomenon (people buying whole albums/CD's) that peaked years ago. In a way, the industry realises this, and wants to make more money on each single, knowing the whole album will probably not sell enough copies to maintain profits. The market is going back to normal behavior, and this means the industry will be forced back into a 1950's model, when singles ruled, and radio (including now Internet) broadcasts the key tool to selling those singles. The artist as well as the customer have both changed too much in the last decade or so to maintain the old business model.
It's not about piracy, it's about the product and the customer, just like it's always been.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Stop comparing people who FileShare with thieves. A thief is someone who walks into my house and takes my stuff. FileSharing is like sticking a sign outside my front door saying feel free to clone anything in my living room but please leave the bedrooms private.
If you want to talk specifically about an intellectual property thief then I consider this to be someone who profits from another's works without giving fair pay. Like say a record company who locks artists into unfair contracts.
In my controversial opinion it doesn't matter if you download a track from e-mule of buy a CD from a store, the artist, in my opinion has not been given fair pay for their work.
At least those who download choose not to expose themselves to malware DRM rootkits or support corrupt cartels. Only legal persecution.
And no I do not download music. I also don't care people do download music or buy music from a shop. I hope one day the creators of these works get fair pay for their contributions without middlemen getting fat from someone else's talent.
The Billboard 200 Album Chart shows us the current top 10 consists of:
1. Eminem: Curtain Call--The Hits
2. Lil' Wayne: Carter II
3. Korn: See You on the Other Side
4. Various Artists: Now 20
5. Carrie Underwood: Some Hearts
6. Kenny Chesney: The Road and the Radio
7. Nickelback: All the Right Reasons
8. Mariah Carey: The Emancipation of Mimi
9. Black Eyed Peas: Monkey Business
10. Enya: Amarantine
Who did what now?
I think that the decline in music sales is down to a number of small effects that on their own seem harmless but combined have led to this massive fall in sales.
This is going to be a long ramble so bear with me.
A number of factors have combined to make us listen to music in a different way and thus reduce the attractivness of buying cd's in your average limited selection store.
People used to play records (for the kids REALLY big black cd's like objects) and because of hardware limitations the music was usually played from the beginning of the album to the end. You needed an advanced record player if you wanted to play albums back to back (playing A and then B side without getting up was extremely difficult).
If you just wanted to listen to a wide selection of music you either had to record your favorite music to tape and then play the tape (wich until quit recently still forced you to listen in the same order over and over) so the radio was the only way to get a wide selection of music without you after a while being able to predict wich song comes next.
Now with CD-changers or worse mp3 players people can listen to a large selection of their own choosing with still enough randomness in it that it doesn't get to repetetive. My own collection of mp3's is big enough to last a week without repeating. You can now play your entire collection at random or any order you desire without being limited by hardware.
MTV doesn't play music anymore. Neither does the radio. Oh they get the occasional "promotional sound clip of the week we repeat every hour" in and when the D.J. needs to take bathroom break but mostly it is commercials. Dutch tv has no music program anymore like Countdown or Top of the Pops. Simply put, the programs that used to introduce us to a selection of new music have disappeared. There are alternatives available but they are often to alternative to be accepted on the workfloor. You need something middle of the road, not to extreem not to mundane to play during the 9 hours you are at work.
With the decline in radio a lot of people seem to have decided that an mp3 player is a better way to get a bit of background music. Hookup an mp3 player to the company soundsystem is lot easier then everyone bringing tapes to work. We listen to less and less radio. But if you listen to your own music you will not hear a new artist you might want to buy.
The walkman still suffered from giving you a very limited music selection in a pre-arranged format. A decent Mp3 player can easily hold a day worth of music. I am sometimes shocked to find that I haven't added a new album in months. This is different from my minidisc player where I would buy new minidiscs now and then or at least regurly record a new collection. I got 20gb of mp3's on my player and frankly I so far don't get bored with it.
Finanlly regonized by the music bizz the simple fact that the money that used to buy L.P.'s (other word for the big black cd like things kids) now goes to games and dvd's and my mobile phone etc etc.
Of course some people will like the "new" music and some young people have a violent reaction to oldy music BUT the simple fact remains that the newer bands do not have the selling power of the oldies. Just google for top album sales and you will find that the top hasn't changed in years. Worse the newbies that do make an appearance lower down are all of the oldie sort (Shania Twain is hardly pushing the envelope). Or simply put Gan
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.