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Digital Music Sales Skyrocket in 2005
Luke PiWalker writes "The market for digital music hit $1.1 billion in 2005, more than triple 2004 sales. But the industry, wanting to wring the maximum profit out of the consumer, remains fixated on piracy." From the article: "The IFPI also called on ISPs to join the fight against music piracy, which it claims severely erodes the profits of its 1,450 member record companies across the globe. The IFPI added that the legitimate music business was gradually gaining ground on digital piracy. It said research showed that in Europe's two biggest digital markets -- Britain and Germany -- more music fans are now legally downloading music than illegally file-swapping."
Pay? For music?
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I for one welcome our legal file sharing overlords!
Now can they please stop suing their consumer base?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
In GB and Germany, they all use http://allofmp3.com/ and http://mp3search.ru/
Of course it makes sence, it's dirt cheap and a hell of a lot easier than P2P.
How are they measuring piracy? How can they possibly get reliable figures on the level of music piracy.
Not that I am necessarily complaining. If the industry is content to consider that online piracy is not as big as legal downloads perhaps they will leave online music alone and look at people who actually make money from piracy (e.g. sales of counterfit CDs/DVDs)?
-- "You never mentioned comets before, Mac. This opens up a whole new area of negotiation." - Gordon Urquart
Aren't CD's also digital music, not just that downloaded crap?
This seems to have little to do with any anti-piracy efforts from the record labels and much more to do with the wide-spread availability of legal markets for digital music for the first time.
When will the RIAA stop these senseless lawsuits and focus on the digital download market. Piracy will always exist, accept that and work on growing your customer base instead of increasing the number of enemies.
http://religiousfreaks.com/RIAA legally swaps you.
Be careful folks, if it's too good to be true, it is.
My work here is dung.
This is just another ploy to try and persuade people to legitimately buy music. They should realize by now, that no amount of sugar coating will make buying music any better. It's still a rip off and always will be. I've downloaded music ever since the beginning of napster (back when it was actually cool...) and won't be buying any time soon...
[Insert Witty Sig Here]
These companies try to prevent downloading illegal music, without providing a platform to download legal music. ITunes was one of the first to cater that and thats why it is a success but more needs to be done especially with files with DRM
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Another tired story about how "good" people are paying and playing ball with the RIAA etc in the first portion while the rest of the story spends its time hand-wringing over how pirates are taking everybody down the path to hell.
No doubt we will shortly hear of another round of single mothers being busted because their children have downloaded some songs onto their computers or more pressure being directed against Apple's unscrupulous pricing policies.
Funny how these things seem to be forming a pattern.
The world would be much more quiet if only digital entertainment industry got some very simple principle: there is very little to do against copies of digital media! Nothing, actually!
With analogue entertainement (tapes, basically) there has always been a quality loss along with the copy process. And the copy has been done with specialised hardware (tape machines).
Almost any PC with the needed (cheap) hardware and software can do copies, play the media and so on.
Entertainment industry should focus more on quality and new ideas.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"...But the industry, wanting to wring the maximum profit out of the consumer, remains fixated on piracy..."
Well, I guess having a sizeable chunk of your expected income stolen will cause a certain amount of 'fixation'. I am an IP lawyer, so I may be slightly biased, but if people want something that someone else went to the trouble of creating, doesn't it seem kinda fair if the creator asks to get paid? I have trouble understanding why so many people seem to condone simply *taking* it... and then playing the 'Evil industry' card on the rightholders to boot! Seems a bit incongruous to me. There's such a thing as free music: download stuff that bands put online for your enjoyment or make some of your own, already.
The audio industry as a whole has exploded, everything from iPods to audiobooks, like the ones for software developers which we are working on http://www.developeradvantage.com/
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Nothing will ever make me pay my own hard earned money for a DRM'd file or CD. It is just not going to happen. I have no interest in buying inferior products.
They simply take the magic "projected sales if internet didn't exist and we were still in the 80's" number, subtract actual sales, divide that by average CD price and then multiply it with their gut feeling.
Personally, I think increased online sales would have to do with the quality and convenience. I don't have any idea how many times I downloaded some song, then when you play it back, it's something completely different than what you expected because some bonehead mislabeled it.
I don't know what bit rate you can get from legal online services but I also got really tired of the crappy 128bit rate that it seems like everyone ripped to. I recently just finished re-ripping every CD I own to 256bit and I can tell the difference. I would think you won't get all the background garbage noise in a legal download either. At least I would hope there are no (pop, crackle, fizz) in the legal downloads.
Convenience is a huge factor too. I fully understand that one person's fav band is another's most hated. However, I got sick of buying CDs because the group had a couple of tunes on the radio that I thought were really good only to get home and find out the other 8-10 tracks on the CD are crap! The ability to buy single tracks, at least to me, has value.
You can find the real reason why RIAA think they are losing money. Blame the Apple iPod!
The plumber's take on the RIAA and those horrible pirates was:
People discovered that they could do all these cool things with song files -- remix, carry them in their mp3 players, rip, burn -- and there was an enormous demand to do those things. The pressure of that demand caused all sorts of leaks in the RIAA's old pipe full of money.
The RIAA, naturally, started running around in a panic trying to plug the leaks. For every one they plugged, they got more; the demand created that much pressure, and it's not going to be possible to sue every pirate or plug every spot in an entire pipe. It stops being a pipe at that point and turns into something else.
What they needed to do was add a release valve that they could control, but they didn't want to do that. It took third parties like Jobs with iTunes to show them how the pressure could go in a place they directed it. Now that they've let a bit of the pressure out, they're still trying to plug holes though. They don't see that they should concentrate on a workable new system that gets people the water they need rather than setting up a bunch of jury-rigged patches for problems with the old one.
He also included a choice word or two about the "plumber's crack" in the RIAA's thinking, but I won't repeat that here. ;-)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
AFAIK, the ISPs are paid by their subscribers to carry bits between the subscriber and the 'rest of the world'. It is not really the ISP's function to know whether the bits represent music with permission, music without permission, or something completely different from music.
I'm not a fan of steeling, but after seeing stories like this: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/915651 6
I'm not going to cry for anyone. When Mick and the boys can make $162 million in North America alone, who needs record sales?
When they charge you over $100 to see the show, they should give you the CD for free!
who are best compared to kings sitting in chairs on the beach commanding the tide not to rise.
It was entirely predictable too.
Music is a pre-hominid, semi-simian, refexive action/reaction. It demands instant gratification. In the internet age, that means music delivered over the ether.
Because of the medium, the scatter/gather packet distribution, the "priviledged communication" nature of the channel, the end-to-end control, podcasters are going to eat the lunch of the broadcastering RIAA represented.
The fact that podsafe music is incredibly more effective at getting people's music out there cheaply and without requiring compromise by the artists, that the only lazy or stupid people will sign up with them.
The RIAA will go away once enough of their members go broke, like the ticks on the necks of the vampire bats that are feeding off of the artists.
The Pod Safe Music Network, Pod Cast Delivery Network (representing growing legions of 'indy' artists) and iTunes Music Store (representing the drying up pool of major label 'signed' artists and 'aggregating podcasts.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...file-swapping is always going to be prevalent and is only going to become more prevalent as we all become geeks. The reason legal downloading is gaining headway is because it is getting simpler and appealing to the older crowd (finally adopting new gadgets like mp3 players). It takes a certain amount of computer aplitute in order to efficiently file-swap, a skill that is only going to be more common in the future.
I still think the two channel format for digital music should die. I think the RIAA should encourage usage of two channel downloads for free and switch to 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 or whatever. Sound is the first thing to truely be 3 dimensional and yet, they refuse to capitalize on that. Every DVD out there can downmix audio to two channels if needed.
I remember when Steve Jobs introduced the itunes music store, he compared it with all the p2p at the time. He said we can't beat them on price, so we have to beat them on
1. Easy of use
2. Quality of encoding/downloads (quality of music is really subjective/ fast!)
3. Selection (you have to find the songs you want)
Not many beleived you could compete with free.
The RIAA anti-piracy efforts have worked in some regards, in that they make pirating music not as easy and make the pay services better in comparison. Pay service typically have better client software as they have the revenue stream to support developers. People don't want to chance a lawsuit so they lay low, "share" fewer songs creating more leaches and poorer selection.
When it used to just be Napster, everyone was on it so the selection was great. Now there are more services with poorer selection.
I think when people think about it, they want to "do the right thing" and support the bands they like. People like downloading music. People wanted this and now they have it they are using it more.
"But the industry, wanting to wring the maximum profit out of the consumer, remains fixated on piracy."
Wow man that's terrible. Just like those greedy bastards who have bricks and mortar stores go after shoplifters.
Look, the industry's attempts to combat piracy have been ill-advised and ineffectual. Sony's use of a rootkit, for example, was downright unethical; it's a "solution" they should have rejected. They knew or should have known it would damage their customers' computers.
However, to condemn an entire industry because they're concerned about people stealing from them shows a level of moral retardation just as grave as Sony's.
Insert witty sig here.
The CC processors are why they cannot make more profit on $1.00 downloads. If they'd work with Apple to create a new processing company that charges $0.05/song, there'd be much more profit... around and extra $0.25/song to go around.
CD's don't count as digital because they're technically analog. They store ones and zeros, but the machine that reads them is analog.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
hee haw
"However, to condemn an entire industry because they're concerned about people stealing from them"
Just because you do not like it does not mean it is stealing. Duplication of such music computer files does not meet the definition of stealing. The industry has something to be concerned about, but it certainly isn't stealing. In fact, actual music theft is probably declining as CD stores are closing down.
I don't see why the fact you're "an IP lawyer" should have anything to do with what side you're on. So am I, as it happens. So, for that matter, is Eben Moglen, and I don't seek him rushing to support the RIAA any time soon.
This isn't about people being paid money they deserve - I don't have any problem with the record industry charging for their products, and I don't (generally) make (many) illegal copies of music or have any great sympathy for those caught putting 000s of tracks on file-sharing services
The point is that though that the music industry is turning file-sharing and "piracy" into a scapegoat and using this to at best inconvenience, at worst rip-off their legitimate customers (or even compromise their computer systems - can you say, "rootkit"?). Copy-protected CDs, restrictive licensing/DRMing of music downloads (so that people moving from the US to Europe lose all their iTunes downloads, for example). Twenty years ago if you changed your hifi you didn't have to repurchase your entire record collection. Now? Oops, please tell me you didn't switch from an iPod to another make of "MP3" player? And whaddya mean you bought a copy-protected CD and now you want to listen it on your iPod? Go buy a downloaded version as well, you thief!
The fact is that what makes money for the record companies is good music that people want to buy. It's the failure to find any really bankable, long-term, good quality acts that is the real problem for the record industry, but they prefer to make examples of a few "pirates" rather than address those deeper-rooted problems.
This story only goes to underline this - find the right product, the right price and the right delivery mechanism, and people really do prefer to buy the legitimate goods rather than going for illegal copies.
Actually, the music I listen to is not played on radio or in any visible format. P2P is my sampler. I stopped buying CD's when I stopped hearing any good music (opinions vary) radio or otherwise and couldn't hear it anywhere. Anyone get some Dave Weckl Band on 107 FM today? Chick Corea? Zappa? Funny thing is is that .mp3 is whats actually saving their ass because of it's shitty sound quality. Good enough to sample, for me only a tease of good music because I gotta have the FLAC. Another good way to sample is those "Red Dot" music sample boxes they have at Barnes and Noble in the music section. Try the "Similar Artists" selection on the display after selecting someone you like to listen to and you can hear some samples of those "Similar" artists. If you are really into music, you may find yourself standing there for a couple hours hearing stuff you never knew existed. And probably buying a CD after hearing something "Good".
"Well, I guess having a sizeable chunk of your expected income stolen will cause a certain amount of 'fixation'. "
Words do mean things. No income is being stolen, nor is music being stolen with unauthorized downloads.
"I have trouble understanding why so many people seem to condone simply *taking* it..."
Copying does not meet the definition of taking.
"and then playing the 'Evil industry' card on the rightholders to boot! Seems a bit incongruous to me."
The industry is "evil" because they refuse to sell so much of their music digitally, and they love to harass people with frivolous lawsuits. After their holy war to censor the old Napster, I came to the conclusion that it was immoral to purchase a CD or a crippled unlistenable DRM download. Most of what they sell digitally is hard to use because of DRM (digital rights denial). There's also a lot of out of print music they refuse to sell at ALL. Before the RIAA's frivolous suits against old Napster, old Napster was just about the only place to get music that the industry REFUSED to sell.
If they really want the money, they should sell the music, and in a usable (DRM-free) format, and charge less than 30 cents per song.
"There's such a thing as free music: download stuff that bands put online for your enjoyment"
Kazaa is full of such music.
A more realistic example is a known but not super-famous group like They Might Be Giants. Sure, you can get all their stuff on P2P, but you also have the option of buying straight from them on their web site. I like them and want them to keep making music full-time, so I will choose the latter. And since I've only seen them in concert once, they'll end up making more money from me by selling music - which is their primary business.
In related news, Bellsouth has begun negotiations with the RIAA to help pay for the bandwidth that the pirates are consuming.
> Re:pay?
Yup, repay! That's what they ultimately want - for you to continuously repay for music you already 'bought'.
Right now, the guy in the cubicle next to me is listening to his ipod loud enough that I can hear it just a little. I'm sure that BMI, ASCAP et al would like to send me a bill for that.
I'd whistle to mask it, but I can't afford the royalty payments.
The music piracy debate comes up again and again on Slashdot, and there are always similar viewpoints expressed:
View #1: "Stealing music hurts artists."
View #2: "No, it hurts record companies, who are screwing artists anyway."
My suggestion: buy indie music and/or buy straight from artists. Sites like Magnatune, Indieheaven and CD Baby (which also distributes music on iTunes and elsewhere) pay a large percentage of sales to musicians.
[self-promotion]
Suddenly, there's a direct connection: You buy music from me, and most of the money keeps me eating and recording. You get more music, I have more fun, and nobody gets screwed. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?
If you don't like what the industry has to offer, don't steal it; buy indie music. [/self-promotion]
Downloads (and payngs) in legal juke-boxes are per song.
Downloads in P2P networks are nowadays per full discography.
(IFPI's puppet of the day): "Geee the number of files swapped in P2P is lowering. We're cool!"
And insists on suing everyone on P2P, I would welcome the old days of BBS.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
I just use http://www.allofmp3.com/
why pay a fortune when you can pay pennies and still be legal.
CD's don't count as digital because they're technically analog. They store ones and zeros, but the machine that reads them is analog.
I keep trying to tell people this, but nobody will listen. This is how it works: A vacuum tube in each CD player bounces electrons off the disc as it spins, and each time it hits a "1", it creates heat. A thermocouple converts this heat into a voltage, which is then amplified by yet another vaccum tube. Completely analog.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Um, Apple helped lead the way in getting the big Credit Card Companies to accept special, reduced charges used in micropayments.
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
Yeah, wake me when they say, "OK, we have a workable revenue model now, so we'll stop rigging the laws and suing our customers."
What, you don't think that'll happen? Huh, go figure.
Let's argue in circles about what this news means, then. You take the "stealing is bad" side, and I'll take the "sharing is good" side. Or, we can switch. What fun. Let's do this again tomorrow.
Ian Scot's plumber is also preparing his next major work, "Life's Choices: Why Putting Food Scraps in the Trash or Disposal Determines Your Success." It's a collaborative effort co-authored with Dilbert's world's smartest garbage man.
CD's don't count as digital because they're technically analog. They store ones and zeros, but the machine that reads them is analog.
Did you mean for moderators to rate this as Funny?
Why RTFA? It was some ignorant idiot's Slashdot comment that called it stealing. That was what I was referring to.
I've said it a hundred times - people do NOT pay for music. They never have, except for the short period of time when music was only available on phonograph records and cheap cassette recorders were not available. Even then, hobbyists recorded music on reel-to-reel tape drives and exchanged them.
People pay for legal download services only because using the P2P systems is so difficult (search for the music, join a queue, wait for five hours to download the file, get a crappy file, etc., ad nauseum, not to mention configuring the software in the first place, a task some people find difficult.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I can see from my teenage children's attitude that they see music downloading differently now than a couple of years ago. My kids and their friends don't think twice about buying music through iTunes (or whatever service their parents use).
Several things have caused this change in their behavior (that is, a change from "let's just get it from BearShare/etc. for free."): We've made a "music allowance" for the kids. We encourage them to try new music by way of a few bucks a month to blow on any tunes they want. Many of the kids who are friends of my children have parents that are doing the same thing.
Another possible cause is that my children and their friends also see me working very hard for many days to create and record a piece of music - and they can see that downloading music from non-sanctioned sites/mechanisms acutally affects *real* people, people who aren't zillionaires...
Another thing that is boosting "online" music sales is supply and demand. There aren't ANY stores in our area that have more than a rack or two of CDs. You can't just go the record store or the discount store and get a wide variety of choice in our area anymore... The only way (again, in our area) to shop music variety is with music services on the Internet.
A Passionate Independent Musician
Is there any one stop shop that sells lossless audio without DRM? The only place I have found is Music Giants. But the lossless format appears to be DRM WMA files. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I wont ever buy music!
:D
Atleast not from any record company that signed with the RIAA.
When they give me music on my terms, then maybe. DRM-free high-quality music files avaible in in a format of choice, such as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, etc.
It sucks for all the stupid people that buy DRM music, then get their PC infected full of virus and spyware and have to reinstall Windows. And voila, the music dont play!
And if I cant listen to any artist labeled with RIAA, then I rather listen to indie-music or some CreativeCommons (CC) music than pay for their music.
And just wait until it comes high-quality artifical intelligence (AI) generated music with killer beats!
Dynamically, random generated!
Wasn't there an article a couple weeks ago that said the opposite? That legal music purchasing was slowing down?
> As far as I am aware, the only people who've ever got in trouble for the mp3s they had were sharing those mp3s over public peer-to-peer networks.
:/
Yes, that's how they choose their targets right now. Or at least, how the people I've seen discuss it agree that they pick their targets.
That said, having an infringing copy on your HD still isn't legal. Unless you can prove that you ripped it from a CD you still have (and can prove this, having the CD, etc. for EVERY song) you won't get to argue fair use, they will bust your ass for copyright infringement. Even if you're innocent & just lost one of the CDs.
It's like going 5 MPH over the speedlimit--most of the time, the cops won't stop you. But if they pull you over for a broken tail light or some other BS, you'll still get a ticket for it while they're at it.
I feel it *should* be legal and they are draconian, but all not sharing them will do is make it less likely you get "pulled over" for copyright infringement. It won't help you escape the "ticket" if you're pulled over anyway, even if the original charges against you were BS
IANAL, if you get busted, DO get one. Slashdot isn't law school and the statutory damages for copyright infringement are positively insane.
The Problem with the RIAA is that it serves a "Special Interest". Earlier replies have noted things such as: "When will it End", and "Stop suing your customer base". The problem is that an organization such as the RIAA must constantly justify its existence by having a mission, thus the problem with special interests, is that their "interests" always relate only to a "special" usually beneficial relationship for which they were formed in the first place(e.g. serving the record companies interests). In my smallish life experience groups like the RIAA crash and burn horribly, but only after they have pushed as far as possible, in which case the parent (record labels) disown their bastard child (i.e. "they lost sight of their goals" etc...)Anyways that's my two cents.
This is a lot like the war on terra. They won't have successfully "won" until there isn't a single person out there making a copy of a song for someone else without paying. In short, it will never end...
So they don't care if married people pirate music? Rock on!
I enjoyed your comment, but do you happen to write George Bush's speeches?
... and then they built the supercollider.
1) It's not theft unless you are shoplifting the CD from the store 2) Most acts do not actually own their own releases. The labels more than likely own all or most of the rights to the recorded masters. 3) Since the act doesn't own their CDs they would have to actually PAY the record company to give them away. Yes, for every promo CD that is made, the band is charged for it and that money is recouped from the income stream by the label before the band gets paid. 4) Yes - direct income for the artists is in touring and live shows. 90% of artists don't make a dime off of album sales. 5) The labels do more than distribution and fronting money for producing the album. They spend hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars on promotional and marketing activities (which all comes out of the act's check before they get paid). They also have invaluable contacts in the entertainmetn industry and serve as gate keeps to help (sometimes) keep the crap out (although that seems to be less and less of the case). 6) Yes I am an audio engineer and have a degree in the recording industry.
Libertas in infinitum
1) It's not theft unless you are shoplifting the CD from the store
2) Most acts do not actually own their own releases. The labels more than likely own all or most of the rights to the recorded masters.
3) Since the act doesn't own their CDs they would have to actually PAY the record company to give them away. Yes, for every promo CD that is made, the band is charged for it and that money is recouped from the income stream by the label before the band gets paid.
4) Yes - direct income for the artists is in touring and live shows. 90% of artists don't make a dime off of album sales.
5) The labels do more than distribution and fronting money for producing the album. They spend hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars on promotional and marketing activities (which all comes out of the act's check before they get paid). They also have invaluable contacts in the entertainmetn industry and serve as gate keeps to help (sometimes) keep the crap out (although that seems to be less and less of the case).
6) Yes I am an audio engineer and have a degree in the recording industry.
Libertas in infinitum