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The State of Digital Music in 2006
wh0pper writes "Designtechnica has an excellent article on the state of digital music in 2006. Digital music accounted for only six percent of total music sales in 2005. Yet even that is a massive increase over the year before, a whopping 194 percent, which is fiscally valuable as the sales of CDs continue to decrease (although even with digital sales, the record labels experienced another downturn in 2005). While the young, usually the first to adopt and adapt to new technology, have been downloading and swapping music for quite some time, there's been a ripple effect into the older, warier area of the population, one that will only increase. Thank--or blame--Apple and its iPod, or any of the many other makes selling like hotcakes in the stores.
I prefer CD's only as I want quality and freedom. I like to have the right to rip them to FLAC and put them on my iAudio X5. DRM and compressed downloaded music just does not make sense. Quality over Quantity I always say.
The only thing that surprises me is how long this industry fought teeth and nails against this. Even now, they are only embracing the online distribution of digital media because they are forced to. Steve Jobs kicked open the online music market and he did the same again with online distribution of videos and now full features. It always takes a visionary with capabilities to take that first step - a smaller company would have been squashed early on. In some ways it's discouraging for small entrepreneurs like me because it paints a picture: don't you think I wasn't dreaming about an iTunes like music store a long time ago? Well, along with power and influence Steve also brought along the iPod, which was another puzzle needed to that piece. He basically had to put all the pieces together, singlehandedly (is that a word?). That's his genius and his vision and that's why he's cleaning up right now. Had I gone to Sony with a software just like iTunes on my laptop 5 years ago they would have just laughed at it. It sometimes takes a lot more than vision and talent to realize a business opportunity, some are tougher to crack than others.
The same can be said about the video distribution business - without Jobs and iTunes we'd still be in the dark ages - just look at the ridiculous blunder of Sony and the PSP - talking about not being able to see the forest before the trees! And in the case of Sony - they even had a content library they could have thrown into the equation. Well, I guess those higher rank managers must get paid those multi-million for their smashing good looks - can't be the types of decision they make or their vision...
I always thought that CDs were digital. Now I hear that digital music only accounts for six percent of music sales? I knew LPs were making a bit of a comeback, but I didn't know it was that big. Everyone must be really enjoying that "warmer" sound.
This story isn't complete without mentioning MP3 blogs and netlabels. Millions of songs were downloaded last week from the tens of thousands of MP3 blogs and netlabels dishing out free music from mostly non-commercial websites. A quick look at a few of the best ones will reveal that a lot of the music being served up is top quality.
- 3Hive
- Gorilla vs Bear
- Clever Titles are so Last Summer
- Music for Robots
Enjoy some free music.MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Remember that 30 years ago, we had vinyl and cassette tapes. Vinyl was easily rippable, although "ripping" one meant something a little different back then. Cassette tapes sounded like total crap. If you think about it, even *with* DRM, we've come a long way in quality and ease of copying. And don't worry about compression for the moment, this is just a passing phase while non-lossy algorythms become more streamlined and connection speeds get faster. DRM is a neccessary evil, unfortunately, because no record company, in their right mind, would agree to selling media without it. Thankfully, there are many quick, and fairly painless ways of getting past Apple's DRM if you're really worried about it (I'm amazed that record companies agreed to FairPlay, it's so easy to bypass).
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Both a MPEG and ISO/IEC standard...
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
The RIAA is over. Apple makes it easy for people to spend their money on music but the RIAA way is not the future. Sales are only a small piece of the picture. More and more, reputations are not going to be built on radio play but on web play. Bands that understand this are going to be here tomorrow and the rest are going to look like slaves to greedy pigs. Portable music devices can hold more songs than the average radio station can afford to broadcast. To the user, it's all killer and no annoying adverts. The "Industry" is fighting back with satellite radio and FM crap flooding but it's not good enough. Players like Apple are going to help transition the industry to it's less centralized and less parasitic future. The free market forces and free software will move in and make life better for everyone, especially the artists.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This keeps coming up. Note that the writers aren't calling CDs analog, but rather comparing the physical media of CDs to (digital) downloads which are delivered absent of a physical media.
As a record store owner and the webmaster for RecordStoreReview.com I have a pretty good read on where things are going. This gradual decline in physical sales is about to reach the tipping point where the distribution model crumbles and downloads increase exponentially. It might not happen in 2006 but 2007 is very likely. At the store level, there just isn't sustainable profit from physical sales.
A couple more might join the fray, but the lines have essentially already been drawn, with everyone gunning for iTunes to take chunks out of its share. That could well happen; the ongoing supremacy of Steve Jobs's baby is far from guaranteed. Once someone else figures out a model that works better for the consumer, actually listening to and providing what customers really want, all bets will be off. And, sure as eggs is eggs, it'll happen.
I don't buy that. What the consumers want is 95% of what Apple is already delivering. Consumers prefer ala carte music tracks to forced albums or subscription models by far. Consumers want ease of use and they want simplicity. They want an all-in-one solution. The only way you can beat Apple now is on price or on freedom (no DRM portability-type freedom). Apple probably has enough clout to beat most competitors on price and the RIAA simply isn't going to agree to any less restrictive DRM or DRM free solutions.
Its too bad "all bets will be off." Apple keeping their dominance is a bet I'd gladly take.
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Elephant Essays - Custom Ivy-league papers at community college prices.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I usually don't feel like supporting an artist unless I feel that the album is worth buying. I don't think it's worth supporting an artist who can only produce 1 good song. Also, most the the CD's i've bought recently have been $15. You can often find old stuff for even cheapter, $10. I find that the quality and freedom are well worth the extra cash.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This is the funniest April fools joke yet. State of digital music. Ipds. ROFL. How do they come up with this stuff?
I mean look at the "news story" -- just a bunch of fluff sayng absolutely nothing new (or nothing that hasnt been repeated a thousand times on slashdot), nothing of any technical or scientific interest and designed merely to get a bunch of Apple fanboys to feel good about themselves to get Apple some good publicity and to get designtechnica (whatever the fcuk that is) some extra hits.
As if that would ever be put on Slashdot. I mean only stuff that matters gets shown here. But it makes for a funny joke. HAHAHAHA
Apple foots all the bill while one measly digital file is duplicated over and over. iTMS is pure profit for the music industry.
F*ck the RIAA! Buy used CDS!
Smart artists would do something like an oscommerce store (or whatever) where you can buy a flac/mp3 download for, say, 40 or 25 cents, two downloads allowed in case your hard drive dies and you're in the 99% of the world that sucks at backups. Cheaper for us, more profit for them, world+dog-riaa is happy.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
It is surprising to note digital music is only six percent of total music sales in 2005. So digital music is just starting and its a good time to come out of the hype see what professionals use.
Everybody now days use mp3. Is that the only music format available? No. There are other music formats available which are far more superior to mp3 but not widely known yet.
Ogg is similar to mp3, but its a completely open and free format. That is, if you want to create audio (eg. Music, podcasts, etc) create in Ogg. You are not breaking the law. The mp3 is a patented technology.
If you are an audiophile, its shame to play mp3 in your HiFi. Consider FLAC. The FLAC is the ultimate audio format, its loose less, high definition and again completely open and free format. There are FLAC players in the market like iAUDIO X5.
I have evaluated the Tomahawk Desktop, its Linux based multimedia OS, you can use it to convert your CDs to either Ogg or FLAC. Its amazing, its just drag and drop! To transfer to your Ogg or FLAC player, its again just drag and drop!
Another advantage of Linux is you can play without getting hit by viruses and worms.
I'm not sure the death of physical media is that close and I hope local stores never go away. Pressed CDs are a better backup than the dye based things I can burn. Cheaper physical media might change that opinion, but I will still enjoy the artifact.
Here's a store to add to your site that I hope people will visit.
Here's something you can visit now.
Getting rid of centralized broadcasting and the RIAA means getting more of the above in one form or another. Excellence deserves recognition and reward. Denying those rewards is the RIAA's crime.
I hope that small and regional music stores flourish. Without the RIAA shoveling s^H hits, a local store can still be a good way to match people to good music. Suggestion schemes can only go so far. Sometimes you need to step into something completely different. Regional music stores can also have a web presence, as noted above, and they can be an important part of local club scenes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Re microphones: see the specs for the Neumann U87 (a classical high-end microhone) on the manufacturer's website:
- Neumann U87 historical scanned specifications (pdf): 20-16,000 Hz.
- Modern Neumann U87 Ai specifications: 20-20,000 Hz.
Where do you get the idea that in the old days, microphones could handle high frequencies much better than now?Apart from the technology, from psychoacoustic research it is known that frequencies above 16-18 kHz contribute extremely little to the listening experience, i.e., music with the range 18-22 kHz filtered out is for most people indistinguishable in double-blind tests from music with that range included. (Although it depends on whether the sound card is resampling the signal from 44 to 48 kHz, producing aliasing along the way) At least that is the picture I get from reading on hydrogenaudio.org.
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