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Digital Music Enjoys Golden Week
An anonymous reader writes to tell us Yahoo News is reporting that the last week of December turned out to be a golden week for music downloads. From the article: 'In the seven-day stretch between Christmas and the new year, millions of consumers armed with new MP3 players (primarily iPods) and stacks of gift cards gobbled up almost 20 million tracks from iTunes and other download retailers, Nielsen SoundScan reports. In the process, consumers shattered the tracking firm's one-week record for download sales.'"
Looks like the music/movie industry is really hurting now. You would think they would let up on crushing the little guy Nah!
With all this, how can the RIAA still say they're losing money? I don't see how their argument works anymore.
But how many downloads were there on Kazaa?
They're being handed money but I guess they'll still want to jack up prices due to 'high demand'.
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
3.3 million players bought in the run-up to Christmas and only 30 million songs sold to be put on them? Unless everyone bought a $200+ player to listen to the same 10 songs over and over, they're getting songs from elsewhere, which must be illegally.
That's what they'll say, anyways.
Most people still buy, as well as own large collection of, these things called "compact discs." These discs hold music, typically a single album by a particular artist, and can be placed into a computer and "ripped" - the process of reading the digital data on the disc and storing it as a file on the computer.
Kidding aside, I don't buy music online, because I consider a rip-off. CDs have better quality, do not have DRM*, comes with liner notes, and is itself a physical backup. I know many people who feel the same way. IMO, online music needs to be much cheaper to make up for these shortcomings; the only benefit it has is immediate delivery.
*I have yet to run across any CD with DRM, and I would definitely return any CD I got that had DRM on it (or not buy it in the first place).
The space unintentionally left unblank.
And this is why Apple announces new products/services a couple of months before Christmas.
Microsoft, on the other hand, does it after the holiday season at CES.
Go figure.
-ch
I'm surprised so many gift cards are sold*. You are essentially paying for a product and receiving nothing in return. The files don't even fully belong to you (DRM) and the quality on the ITMS sucks compared to other sources. If you're going to buy music, or give it as a gift wouldn't a gift card to a store, or hell, even cash be a better idea? At least then they actually own something.
*I hate all kinds of gift cards, not just for digital music downloads. You are essentially exchanging actual currency for restricted "credit" locked to one store that cannot be refunded. Most stores won't even give you back the change from a gift card purchase. It's an unnecessary layer of complexity to the entire transaction that only benefits the business.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
It's high time for the music industry to wake up. Digital music delivery systems are the new media of choice. They need to stop fighting it and embrace it... before it passes them by. The music industry needs to stop thinking "We're in the CD business."
They are a lot like the Railroad Industry of old, whose narrow vision is what led to their rapid demise... They were thinking "We are in the RAILROAD business". If they had thought "We're in the TRANSPORTATION business", instead, things would have been different for them.
New dance, same old song.
Willie...
That's human nature for you. A guy could buy a new toaster during a great sale for $20 and be perfectly happy with it, but if he finds out his friend Bob down the street paid only $15 he'll feel ripped off. He may have gotten a good deal on the toaster, but just the fact that somebody got the same thing for less money makes him feel like he was at a loss. Similarily the RIAA may sell $40 million worth of music, and they have an idea of what's going on with the piracy, so they estimate that an equivalent of %50 of their sales is downloaded; if there's demand, it will have people buying and downloading. A RIAA executive could look at it and say "We sold $40 million, and around $20 million worth was probably downloaded." He should feel good about the sales, but he would still think "If it wasn't for these damn kids and their world wide web mischief we could be making $60 million!" Even if that's not necessarily true, he'd feel like he actually lost something, even though there were great sales figures.
I can understand that they have to make a good faith effort to get more cash out of Apple, but what are they going to say if Apple refuses? "Apple wouldn't give us more money, so we decided to cut off this money maker entirely."
Actually I can see Sony doing exactly that, just like in Japan... remember these are not rational folk we are dealing with. The very phrase "cut off his own nose to spite his face" may as well have been invented for these people.
So while it's an intersting idea to have Apple seek a higher cut, I don't think they are quite there yet. The next contract rounds I could see that happening; just not now.
Disney would have acted just as irrationally is Eisner were still at the helm - they were prepared to before he left.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course it's about control. And of course it's about artists, writers, developers, etc.
Just because something is being abused, that doesn't make it inherently bad. copyrights & patents are like guns. They don't hurt anyone until somebody with bad intentions come along.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I agree on your view of the two conflicting visions, but I disagree on the possible outcomes. Copyrights MUST continue to exist and artists MUST be compensated. Hollywood and the RIAA are right when they say that if sales stop, so will the product. That does NOT mean we have to be saddled with DRM laden crap. Buy the CD and rip it yourself. Buy a DVD or DVR and timeshift/placeshift to your heart's content. Fair use is not piracy and please don't confuse the two. I envision a future where the corporations provide a product I want at a fair price in a manner that is convenient for me... but my kind of vision is nothing but a dream.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
They know what they are doing and it's being done by DRM and stupid laws. The music industry knows CDs are dead and hates them but will take full propaganda advantage of the demise of the retail store. Record stores have always been shaky and shaken down business and it's very difficult to find an independent one today in the face of Virgin, Walmart and other RIAA dump sites. You could say the fix was already in but they will cry and blame it on the "pirates". The RIAA wants to own digital distribution the same way they owned physical media and radio broadcast. They will get there by making it impossible or illegal to listen to their music on a non-DRM encumbered system. Attempts to close "the analog hole" will make sure you can't even enjoy the public airwaves unless you submit to their will. The FCC and your government seem to be going along with this madness.
So, in the end, what are you going to chose - a free system without popular culture or a non free system with commercial crap? With Apple and M$ help, you won't have a choice on new hardware.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
With movies, we don't even want to see most of them, so their blaming things on piracy will just get worse when no one goes to see movies again in 2006.
It's a good point.
All the BS about piracy impacting sales at the box office for the 2005 year were a complete joke. Take a look at a list of box office revenues by year.
The movie industry was all up in arms just because the trend showing up to yearly 10% increase in sales wasn't continued. While the increase streak came close to ending in 2003, it is interesting to note that 2005 will be the first year since 1991 that movie sales haven't increased.
Damnable pirates! It's just not possible that rising ticket prices and poor movies have anything to do with it! The public is stupid. We tell them to go see movies and they do. It must be pirates, and draconian DRM is the only thing that can save us!
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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"To the music industry, and the RIAA in particular, the internet envisions a future [...] with the promise of unlimited profit"
Jinkies. The internet makes publishing music (or almost anything) cheaper than the traditional method of putting a CD in a store. As bandwidth and computing costs continue to fall, this will become even cheaper, putting online publishing into the grasp of more and more people. Given time, this Radiant Future will inevitably lead to competition with the oligopoly that is the RIAA. If they push copy protection to the extremes you suggest, someone will realize the millions that a non-DRM alternative would provide - and that alternative is getting cheaper to create with every passing day.
[C]opyrights are not about artists, writers, developers, incentive, or "property", or even profit, they are only about control
I would've believed any of those, minus "control." I sincerely doubt the idea that an entire industry is out for enslaving people to iTunes instead of $money. The industry's interest in "control" is limited to how it can increase their profits - the one and only legitimate goal of any business.
The truth is that copyrights, patents, and other forms of intellectual property protection, when properly implemented, can be great incentives for innovation. The debate should be on whether or not these artificial burdens on the consumer are worth the extra innovation of the producer.
DATABASE WOW WOW
CDs have better quality, do not have DRM*, comes with liner notes, and is itself a physical backup
I'll give you that CDs have prettier packaging, but the rest isn't really true. Whether or not CDs have "better" quality depends on what service you use. The CD format in and of itself is pretty low quality compared to some other digital formats available.
online music needs to be much cheaper to make up for these shortcomings
$1 a song may seem pricey, up until the fact that you consider the average $10-$15 CD has around ten songs on it - meaning you pay $1 (or more) for each song on the CD anyway.
the only benefit it has is immediate delivery
Nope. With iTunes and other services, you can listen to clips (or on Yahoo, you can "rent" as many songs as you want and listen to them in their entirety) before you buy the full song. Or - here's the biggest benefit - if you don't like the entire CD and only want a few of the songs on it, you end up paying $15 for your one song and the privilege of owning garbage. With online services, you buy only the songs you want and don't get railroaded into paying extra for the rest of the trash on the disc.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I know plenty of people who do artistic things for free or at a personal loss. They do it in order to share things with the people around them. The truth is that most good art is underground and most corporate "art" is not worth anything, much less the exorbitant price tags it carries. You're trying to equate artistry with employment. Most of the world's artists make very little money through their avocations. Even the "art" or entertainment that is being mass-marketed provides very little benefit to most of the artists involved. So basically, the most elite (re: popular) of musicians and actors, and the label/studio bigwigs - a small percentage of the entertainment industry - have much to lose, while people serious about their art, who do it for personal reasons and will likely never see significant profit, are either unaffected, hurt very little, or *helped* by the kinds of things that seem to bother a few rich people who really don't care the least bit about the people who consume their products. It would be nice if everyone were compensated according to the combination of his/her talent and the amount of work he/she puts into a product, but that isn't the case anymore, and so the artists of the future will be poor but committed idealists who will pour their hearts and souls into their work, and the art/entertainment world, and the consumer, will benefit as a result.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: That averages about 660,000,000 of each kind.
"Precisely what was the point of mentioning that the MP3 player most bought was the iPod?"
The fact that these numbers were examining sales at the iTunes Music Store? A vendor whose product doesn't work with the other players?
Just why is it that every owner of a non-Apple portable music player feels the need to drone on about how the media is biased toward the brand that dominates the market, anyway?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I'm sorry for all the nay-saying Slashdot Geeks: But consumers just don't care about DRM. Everyone I know who buys music from an online music service is getting secure WMA or FairPlay music files, copying them to their MP3 players, and whistling with happiness. I have yet to hear one of them go "Oh My Gosh! You mean, I can't copy those files to another MP3 player? Or to my friend's MP3 player"
Now, maybe in 3 years when they go to buy new MP3 players they will complain that their music collection is useless. But more likely, they will burn those music files to CD, then MP3 them again and be fine with it. I can hear the screams of anguish from the audiophiles talking about the loss of quality from the MP3->CD->MP3 conversions. It won't matter since most of those MP3 players come with cheezy earbuds anyway.
Right now, DRM is winning. This is really bad news for those of us who don't want to hack their BIOSs to install Linux in a few years...