Slashdot Mirror
Does File-Sharing Really Hurt the Music Biz?
Phonographic Memory writes "A new study has come out that purports to show a link between file-sharing and decreased CD purchases. Covering the period of 1995-2003, the study looked for a link between owning a computer and decreased CD purchases. The researcher found that 'some US music consumers could have decreased their CD purchases (prior to 2004) by about 13 percent due to Internet file sharing.' In its coverage of the study, Ars Technica notes that the scholarly consensus on the possibility of a link between file sharing and music purchases is missing: 'the dominant impression gained from reading these studies is that finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult.'"
Ok RIAA, I said what you told me to. Will you now drop the case?
It hurts them in that it doesn't line their pockets enough.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Lets do some math..
low paid people + people with computer knowledge (at least enough to fire up limewire) = low CD sales.
anyone care to check my math here? Or could it also be said that we could have all had about 300 more CD's than we currently have now if gas prices weren't what they are?
It's great promotion, the problem is that since so much is easily availible it's also easier to filter through the garbage releases that are forgotten in two months. SO yes, i do think people buy less cds but the same good bands and bands that don't suck get the good sales.
1) I have never downloaded a song for which I don't own a CD already
2) I have bought maybe 2 CDs in the last year, vs. 20 a year in the early 90's
This is mainly due to the high level of suckage by today's "musicians". Has anyone done a study that includes that correlation? Also I've built my collection the point where I have almost everything I want already. How does that figure in?
How can people downloading music for free hurt music sales? It doesn't make sense!
But seriously, does this shock anyone? If I'm getting the milk for free how is the cow gonna get paid? Or some shit like.
You know, that's what the RIAA and the rest of the music industry say -- "You're stealing from the artist!"
When you watch "MTV Cribz" and similar shows, do you feel like you're ripping the artists off? Do you? They live in huge castles with 30 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 2 swimming pools, they own a Hummer just for driving from the kitchen to the mail box.
My guess is: No. It does not hurt the ARTISTS at all.
But of course, increased online digital music sales couldn't possibly have anything to do with *that* could they?
Lots of things have changed in the last 10 years. P2P fileswapping is one of them. iTunes is another.
Said it before, say it again. It's not the Internet, it's the product. Music today sucks compared to years ago. I just have no desire to pay $18 for a CD when I could buy the DVD with full video for the same price.
The same applies to movies. Torrents aren't killing your ticket sales.. Your crappy movies are killing ticket sales.
"Honey, do these jeans make my butt look fat?"
"No, your fat butt makes your butt look fat."
See the concept?
i wrote an albeit sloppy paper on this a few years ago. i found that there were several spikes in cd sales. one was during the heyday of napster. after napster was shut down, cd sales started to slow down. they picked up again as iTunes was gaining in popularity.
personally, i know for a fact that i wouldnt have a huge chunk of my (legally puchased) music collection had it not been for file sharing, simply because i would have never heard the bands before.
And even an inexpensive CD (been out a few years, on a discount site, etc) is about $7.99 today.
That's less than 1 cheap CD a year. That's barely 1 brand new ($15.99) CD every 3 years.
WTF?
And the 80 cent decrease? That's 1 less CD purchased every 10 years.
Right. We download a song from an album that we *think* we want, then we say "Man, this sucks. I'm glad I didn't buy this shit."
End of story. So, yes, you could answer that music downloads hurt music sales, but that only identifies the symptom and ignores the actual problem.
because we all know that those evil people with computers buy them just so they can steal music, and it has nothing to do with the fact that CD's are terribly overpriced, I mean how many other businesses could keep their prices artificially inflated, despite the fact that manufacturing costs have dropped dranatically since the CD came out. It is a brilliant move,
1. inflate prices
2. when people stop buying your product complain that people are stealing from you
3. use the supposed theft as an explanation for your artificially high prices
4. sue anyone who listens to music(cause they must have stolen it, I mean who would pay those prices)
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces -- Murphy's Law of Poker
File sharing is to music sales as VHS and DVDs are to theater ticket sales.. oh, wait, they've posted new records? Nevermind. Nothing to see here...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
I don't think it does purely for the story I'm about to tell.
Three days ago I had no intrest in Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon, but a friend had the rom so I went "WTF, I'll give it a try".. I found out it played just like nethack, some minor changes, but in my head it became "Pokemon Nethack". I played it for a couple of hours and decided that this was a game I'd want to play on my DS rather than on the PC. So today I ordered the game and it should be here in a few days.
Did I hurt the game industry by using a rom before I bought the full copy or buy a game I didn't have an intrest before I played it? Roms and P2P music has become the new demos, people will buy games they think are worth the money or they'll download games they didn't think were worth the money. You could even argument because of the rom I've now told Slashdot that they can get a Nethack like game on the DS now and may have even sold more GBA/DS consoles/games, but that maybe going too far.
Quality will always sell.
I like muppets.
Funny that. In the same period, I've increased my spend on music (and yet I buy less CDs). Of course, what this is really about is the centre trying to control both ends - the centre being the RIAA and its equivalents attempting to control demand and supply - as they do with physical media now. iTunes is great, but it's time that the music buying public and the music producers realised that they can use the web to deal directly with each other, cutting out the greedy middleman for the benefit of all. Or something.
Oh, there it is, the word 'could.' So on a level from one to a hundred, where does 'could' lie? I mean, if this was a rigorous statistical procedure -- no matter how complex, they should be able to give a percent confidence. You can measure deviation from your model and give it to me that way but I'm concerned that there might have been uncontrolled variables affecting the sale of CDs.
And I believe that iTunes Music Service has been out since 2001, is that accounted for? It doesn't seem to be if you search the below linked document. I mean, I assume this study is targeting illegal downloads. iTunes is legal to my knowledge yet it would still decrease CD purchases.
If you'd like to read the paper, it can be found here (PDF alert).
While this study does take into acocunt some variables, I'm just afraid there are too many for it to be conclusive. I would recommend that the article ignore Family Size and find out how many of their users used a legal music download service.
Also, is 2,000 samples per year enough to be accurate? Possibly, but then again, they are talking about an economy of 250 million consumers.
My work here is dung.
'the dominant impression gained from reading these studies is that finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult.'
Proving that a correlation is causative instead of coincidental IS very difficult. You could also blame the drop in CD revenue on other factors during this same time frame. You could make the case that Global Warming is the cause of lower sales.
Not just answers, the correct questions.
We all know they can't sing...
"...the dominant impression gained from reading these studies is that finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult.
How conveniant for us! The first part made me feel a bit guilty, but that last line let's me justify it no problem!
Do you think that just maybe it's possible that people who spend more time at a computer have less time to listen to music?
Do you think that just maybe it's possible that some people people are becoming bored or fed up with popular music and turning to the computer for entertainment instead?
Do you think that maybe the people who are buying more computers and the people who are buying less music are two completely unrelated groups?
I think these guys are still just grasping at straws.
There are many different factors that could contribute to hurt music sales, and now if anything, I actually buy more music than ten years ago. Plus, I've been introduced to many, many bands which I would never have heard of without filesharing, and consequently usually buy their albums. It's true alot of material is available online, but not nearly enough for my tastes.
The RIAA's attempt to shut down filesharing may not save a single CD sale or record store job. So what? It's still their copyright to enforce, whether they save their business model or not. It doesn't have to make economic sense; they legally have to defend their copyright or they risk losing it.
Here's a few little goodies that the RIAA forgot to include with their pet study...
1. Nicholls State University is in Thibodaux, Louisana which isn't exactly a hotbed of business research
2. His study doesn't state where the funding to conduct the study was obtained from.
3. The data came from the Consume Expenditure Survey, which is notoriously inaccurate
4. RIAA has cut back on advertising and promotion for music across the board
5. Their sales were actually better while Napster was in operation, without any additional expenditure on their part.
Just my 2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
Hellz yea, I love Nethack. I never even thought about pokemon mysterious dungeon as a game I might buy, but I checked it out and it looks great.
"They said we drink horse urine and sleep with our own kin. You say it's comedy, but how can someone laugh at that?"
Um, let's see. People with pocket lint + (computer knowlege^10)= reality cascade.
Could it be that since 1995 other products (DVDs, video games, etc.) are competing for the disposable income that people previously spent on music?
I am a huge fan of music.
I used to buy dozens of CD's a month.
In 2001 I started using LEGAL on-line streaming music services (like Rhapsody).
I have bought maybe a dozen CD's since then.
While I have downloaded music from Napster (when it was presumed legal) as well as places like EMusic and Apple, I have never used an illegal service.
I have no problem believing that computer ownership is linked to decreased CD sales. However, I don't accept that that link means illegal file-sharing.
I haven't seen a link for the paper, so they may have accounted for this issue. However, let's assume for a minute that households owning computers are likely to be slightly more affluent than households that don't own a computer. Were those households spending more money on music before Napster? And given that the economy had a downturn around, oh, 2002, would it be reasonable to assume that the total spending on music (a luxury item) across all households approached a more uniform amount? In other words, before 2001 computer owners spent $40/year on music and non-computer owners spent $36. After 2001, though, both dropped to around $35? Or some variant of this data? Anyone have an answer for this hypothesis?
-jdm
A recent study in denmark shows that yes, the "record" sales has gone down to aproximately the same levels as it was before the CD arrived, ie, before people started to replace all their vinyl with CDs. On the other hand, it's very easy to see in that report that the DVD sales increased to fill the drop in CD sales almost exactly. So far so good. Adding to this, the amount of money people spend on concerts has increased dramatically during the time that people has been able to download music for free from the internet, which means that we actually spend much more on music and culture today than we did before filesharing as we know it today existed.
The problem is that this money isn't going to the record companies big stars but to the smaller artists, as you can also see from the report. The smaller artists get a bigger share of the money today than earlier. This hurts their marketing strategy since it's cheaper just having to market one big star than a lot of smaller artists.
c++;
If it is violating intellectual property, it ought to stop simply because the property's owner says so.
And if it is not, why do I care even if it bankrupts RIAA?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've got a computer. I haven't purchased a CD in about 6 months, however, I know that Amazon will still deliver them to me for free, so the cost of driving to the mall has nothing to do with it.
I just don't want their damned music. I don't want their damned music badly enough that I haven't downloaded any of it either.
That CD I bought 6 months ago? It was made on a computer. In the home of the artist. I bought it from her at one of her appearances at a local coffeehouse. It's got a CC license. It doesn't even show up on the sales statistics.
Ya think that might have something to do with the official sales numbers?
". . . finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult.'"
Yeah, I have the same problem counting the number of pixies living under my bed.
KFG
"A new study has come out that purports to show a link between file-sharing and decreased CD purchases. Covering the period of 1995-2003, the study looked for a link between owning a computer and decreased CD purchases.
This could also explain teh drop in 8-track and LP sales, too!
<Homer>Ooooohhh, no more 8 tracks? Darn you computer makers!</Homer>
the study goes on to link reselling used CD's with cooties
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And how exactly to you propose to objectively measure the "level of suckage"?
Seriously, what you say is not true. What sucks is the music that's played on the radio, not modern music. This is mostly a result of the deregulation of radio that occurred in the 90s, paving the way for a few giants to own just about everything.
The effects were somewhat delayed by the "grunge" boom; every major label was so desperate to find "the next Nirvana" that they took chances with all sorts of interesting bands that wouldn't have otherwise gotten major label deals. They have since realized that they'll make more money sticking to the formula, so they push nothing but garbage on the radio and MTV nowadays.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
Anybody else notice the correlation between decreased sales and the so-called "recording artists" that the music industry pushes onto the airwaves, despite the fact that they don't have any real musical talent... or even worse still, they sound just like every other "popular" performer.
Hey Entertainment Industry, get a clue!
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
This analogy doesn't really hold true for media besides console games. The cost to "export" a console game can be high -- buying a modchip, rom cartidge, what have you. On the other hand, with a music CD or video DVD, once you have a burner, as comes standard with most computers now-a-days, the cost to reproduce that media in a portable form (portable meaning away from your computer) is almost negligible. Blank CDs and DVDs can be bought in the range of cents per copy. So while you may be encouraged to buy a game after playing a rom, who is to say that someone listening to the latest album would buy a copy ($15) vs burning a copy ($.05)? I won't say people don't pirate music and then buy it, but it seems like it happens much less often than what happened with a DS game in your case.
And it should. The business models of the members of the RIAA are out-dated, and are in need of a revamp. Piracy creates a natural need for this innovation, which is long overdue. Evolution exists at all levels of our existence, why should our commerce be exempt?
Simply put, it should not and is not.
I for one will be cheering as countless numbers of moronic executives working for these parasitic companies are forced into the real world to find real jobs.
I wonder if it was taken into consideration that many people were making the switch from tape to CD at the time? So music libraries had to be upgraded from tape to CD as well, creating a spike in sales. Just a thought
The current issue of the Journal of Law & Economics has four articles dealing with similar issues and analyses. The authors of each of the articles are, as typical in academic literature, fairly cautious in drawing their conclusions and they are a mixed bag. The articles and their topics are limited in scope but they're peer reviewed and fairly interesting. Alejandro Zentner, the author of one of the article "Measuring the Effect of File-Sharing on Music Purchases," seems to have reached a similar conclusion as the article of the article described by Ars Technica.
I mean seriously, I remember the exact year I stopped buying the same quantity of CDs... It was 1994. Yes, my computer had something to do with it, but it wasn't file sharing. It was I found myself spending most of my disposable cash on computer upgrades and games for the next 2 years. Seriously. I still bought CDs, but my guess would be I had cut down by about 90 percent.
Then about 1996, I moved in with my girlfriend, and the focus of my life completely changed. Again, still bought CDs, it's just music slowly fell down the list of important things to do with my money in my life. You end up living together, then you get engaged, buy furniture, get married, buy a house, start a family, etc... I personally just never found myself back in that stage where it seemed like a good idea to toss massive amounts of my disposable income on music.
I can't possibly be the only one can I?
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
Decreased music sales has nothing at all to do with the music sucking and the CD prices increasing, right? Just checking
Before we talk about filesharing, we should talk about the more basic issue: transmissable digital file formats vs. plastic media discs
stored in poorly designed (easily breakable) jewel cases.
Let's face it: CD's suck. And I'm not talking about the music. I'm talking about the medium.
CD's have to be swapped out of the cd player. They hold too little music. They're easily damaged. And the jewel case is one of the worst atrocities
of industrial design to be inflicted upon humanity in the last 20 years. (I'd say 30% of mine are broken).
MP3's by comparison are instantly accessible, contain meta data, are sortable, and can be shuffled into infinite playlists. Not to mention, they're
not breakable.
When the recording industry pushes CD's, they are pushing a sub-par product on us.
The music industry was slow to adopt a commercial alternative, and when they did they gave us DRM infected, vastly overpriced, low bitrate shite because they were
still convinced that if given no other alternative we would continue to buy the sub par plastic discs.
But there was an alternative: An infinitely better, cheaper, higher quality and more accessible alternative. The recording industry attmpted to
control the market at the expense of the consumer. They gambled and they lost.
When businesses offer subpar products they fail.
The message to the recording industry is simple: Sell me non-DRM infected tracks at
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The industrialisation of music has done nothing but harm music.
If the music industry can be driven completely out of business I say bloody good job!
Its all about making money for lawyers and suits.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
There have been plenty of studies done to establish some link between downloading un-licensed music and decreased sales of legit releases.
The methodology of those studies suck. None of them properly isolate for external variables, like: Just about everything else Johnny Download can spend money on for entertainment. And his motivations for shifts in spending habits.
As an aside, most people pushing the idea refuse to acknowlede that Johnny Download's disposible income does not ramp up infinitely, and that Johnny has (at most) 24 hours in a day to play consumer.
I remember when the same sorts of studies were done in the 70s and 80s, along with the stupid tag to sum it all up: Home Taping is killing music. The opposite was found: Blank cassette sales skyrocketed, along with the sale of legit releases, bootlegs, and incense.
Nothing to see here people. Move along.
When you average it out (not the best approach in my opinion, but that's a different thread), the average loss is STILL less than 1 new CD per year.
Think of it as a step function, until the decline equals a whole unit there is no decline.
If they're dividing the group into computer owners and non-oners, then they need to look at the amount of money spent on the computer every year. They are BOTH entertainment expenses.
If you have $100 to spend on entertainment this month, buying a $50 game for the computer means that you only have $50 to spend on CD's. But someone without the PC will be able to spend the entire $100 on CD's (and even their purchases of CD's have decreased).
I don't listen to radio, but one objective example of suckage is the decreased dynamic range of modern mastering techniques. Nearly all music from the last 10 years is so overcompressed as to be unlistenable (and even old music is not safe - "remastered" rerelease versions replace the old versions with much inferior versions).
The RIAA will someday figure the root of this problem. Record companies HAVE lost SOME revenue due to piracy.... but why???? Is it because we're all thieves, or is it because the music they produce really isn't worth 18 bucks???
I've pirated a couple of games just to fill time on select lonely weekends. But these are all games I know in advance I wouldn't even pay $15 bucks for. These are games I get just for a small kick. But there are some games coming out within 3-4 months that I will certainly pay for price for on the release date. Need For Speed Carbon, Halo2 for Vista, Unreal Tournament 2007, etc. These are all quality products that I'm willing to pay top dollar for - I already have a pretty good idea I can get $50 dollars worth of enjoyment out of these titles. How many people really got $18 worth of enjoyment out of the last Nickelback CD?
Why would you ever buy a CD anymore?
Oh, wait, cuz it's the easiest and "legal" way to re-use (rip & burn compilations) and share music. Is borrowing your buddy's CD illegal too?
If you haven't tried it already, get a CD shredder and see how fun it is grind those suckers to bits. Then make a public demonstration out if. "Sorry, I never really like Metalica until I heard their CD shriek as I ground it to bits."
This is nonsense - we have decreased our purchasing because we are older (the boomers are all over 40!) and the stuff coming our now is mostly junk. The bottom line is that I don't down load AND I don't buy music very often any more.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
Second, during that period, my CD purchases actually INCREASED. Let's face it, MP3's are the most exchanged format, and their quality isn't the best. So I actually bought a lot of CD's and ripped them myself. What I didn't do was buy a full CD for ONE FREAKING SONG. I also enjoyed downloading hard to find or out of print songs. It was a goldmine for hard to find stuff. However, my enthusiasm for getting MP3's caused me to get the best quality I could get for albums that had multiple songs I wanted, and I could rip them at the highest quality I could. After I quit downloading, I've probably only bought maybe 2 CD's since then (last 2 years). The RIAA enthusiasm for going after music downloaders just caused me to not want to give them one single cent more.
As far as I'm concerned, I paid them a royalty for the blank media I buy, and probably paid a royalty to buy my MP3 player too. I don't need to pay them twice for the same music.
I've always believed that despite any increase in exposure brought by file sharing, it was going to be a problem for CD sales eventually. The record company exaggerated the harm, but the proponents exaggerated the benefits. But in the end it doesn't matter. Because it's not important to compare CD sales to file sharing; a decade earlier CD sales killed tape sales too and nobody really cared. The real problem is that the music biz didn't get into the new medium fast enough. They were too chicken to just put mp3's up for sale. So people did it black market like. General note: if something is going to happen anyway, you might as well embrace it. You don't get much for standing around and whining.
Now iTunes has demonstrated that people are more than willing to pay for a music download service even when music is available free. Because the key word is service. And the price is reasonable to most people. That's all any business has to do. The only major things iTunes lacks are complete selection (though it's quite good) and non-DRM (which will never happen). Both of these are the last vestiges of the recording industry resisting change. I think they'd actually make more money if they gave up on stopping people from doing things and focused on making their customers giddy happy.
says it all...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of geeks cried out "No! Of course not! I want free music!!!" and then were silenced... cuz it's hard to type and shout at the same time.
Support the FairTax
there's also an aids problem in africa. i'll bet illegal file sharing is cuasing that too. and global warming.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
From TFA: "And academic papers are unlikely to sway those who have either made up their minds on the issue or simply want to justify behavior they think think should be legal."
Kudos to to Ars Technica for presummarizing the Slashdot discussion in TFA. We can all go home now.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Ok firstly, ist VERY difficult to draw any conclusions on this either way, there are too many variables. However, nobody ever mentions human nature when it comes to the old anecdote game.
Slashsot has a lot of this, I've already seen many posts like this:
"you know, I wasnt interested in song X, but I downloaded it for free, and after a few days it grew on me, and what the hell, I ordered the CD, so they got an extra sale"
Thats fine, almost certainly true, and people are being honest about it, and thats great. but the thing is, as well as being honest, its uplifiting, and makes you feel good, justified and a generally fair guy. take anecdote B:
"I was thinking about buying game X, but I was on the fence. Then someone gave me a pirate copy. I played it, enjoyed it, but never got around to buying the full version. Why bother? I already had a copy"
Thats me talking, about 8 years ago maybe. I don't pirate anything these days. the thing is, admitiing this, makes me feel like a bit of a dick, a tightass, and not an especially reasonable guy. You dont hear people admit they pirated X, and listen to it every day, but never buy it, because its not such a cool thing to admit. But that doesnt mean that it doesnt happen a LOT.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Sure there might have been a drop in CD sales (highly questionable, IMHO, until I've seen the report and had a chance to look at how the ``researchers'' got their numbers) but it hasn't got all that much, if anything, to do with file sharing. It's your product, gentlemen. Folks aren't crazy about what your selling. Or how you're selling it. And, especially how you're going after people that you perceive are costing you lost sales. I don't care how many rights you have, suing little old ladies that don't own computers or the parents of a ten-year old that downloaded some music aren't the way to foster a good relationship with the people who you're trying to get to spend their hard-earned money on your products.
On a personal level, my CD purchasing has dropped a lot more than your alleged study shows. Oh, and I'm not into file sharing so don't think that's why I'm not buying as much.
Sounds to me like your ``study'' is little more than something to try and distract people from the fact that you've gotten yourself a little buttkicking from some judges and that more of your targets have gotten tired of being pushed around by your thugs^Wlawyers and are fighting back.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The iTunes music store was started in 2003. When I first read the OP, I was confused as to why they would choose an 8 year time span from which to get their results... on a hunch, I checked to see when the ITMS started. Sure enough, 2003. Anyone want to bet that the company who performed this test stopped it 2 years early, so that their "results" wouldn't be skewed by the ITMS?
Someone like me who stopped buying CDs from the major stores? And I do not own a iPod nor do I download music or share music with others. And I do own a computer and have for a while. The CDs I buy if I feel like it are from garage bands that I see a the local bar scene. There haven't been anything worth buying from the major labels in the long time. I think that is what their problem really is. Like who got the idea that Paris Hilton needed to come out with a music CD?
One thing has always bothered me about this decline in cd sales. Around the same time that they said CD sales began to decline, DVD sales began to skyrocket. Most people have a limited amount of disposable income. If it is used in one area, it can't be used elsewhere. People tend to lump purchases such as CDs, DVDs, and video games into the same entertainment category of their budgets. If I can only afford to spend $50 a month on entertainment, and I start buying more DVDs, then I sure as hell can't buy as many CDs.
When I was younger I would buy a cd every couple weeks, in the past year I have purchased two. I have a huge cd collection but it stopped growing, there just isnt enough compelling music out there. In the past year I picked up a Santana cd and The Wreckers debut album. I havent gone on strike against the record labels, though I do not buy on impulse anymore, and wont just buy a disk for one or two songs. My tastes havent really changed, I just have lost interest. I have a few independant disks that I picked up at shows and have purchased a couple dozen tunes on itunes. My wife has picked up a few disks, but to me most of the bands she is into sound the same. Maybe im just old and cranky but it just seems like the stuff being pushed these days is just so formula that owning one of the bands songs is like owning them all.
Studies aren't usually commissioned to gather evidence and form a conclusion. They usually start with a conclusion, and gather statistics to support it.
I must clarify. I agree with the statement that "What sucks is the music that's played on the radio, not modern music.". That's precisely what I meant. That is also the music in question that RIAA cares about and is likely referring to in their figures.
I doubt that RIAAs figures include sales of independent artists who self publish and sell at their own concerts or via the internet. I'll bet those sales add up to millions of CDs. But RIAA doesn't get a cut on those.
The 2 CDs I bought this year were both self published.
'some US music consumers could have decreased their CD purchases (prior to 2004) by about 13 percent due to Internet file sharing.'
In related news, some Congressman might now be accepting 80% more bribes, 50% of people might be below average, and 100% of statistics prefaced with "some" and "could have" are sensational bullshit. If you've got real statistics, you don't say "some might have."
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Thanks to *cough* downloading *cough* my CD collection grew by about 150+ CDs in the last 4 years. There are plenty of underground, non mainstream bands that put out quality music. Of course, 99% of the CDs I bought are made by bands who play infront of about 500-1000 people max. You just have to look and you will find some awesome music, even today.
If your music reference is MTV or radio, then yes, it's mostly garbage.
Since 1993 purchases of cds has dwindled to 0% of my music buying. Presently, 100% of my music buying is done via Itunes and other legal outlets. Did he count me as one of the pirates?
I dropped off the RIAA's radar 10years ago. Here is the order of events: 1. Started buying used CDs only 2. Traded burned CDs with friends 3. Downloaded MP3s from websites/ftps 4. Downloaded MP3s from p2p services 5. Downloaded MP3s from torrents 6. Now I buy them from a russian website - why? Because the pricepoint is right.
You know, I can't be the only person out there who never really got into music, mostly because the RIAA pisses me off.
If the RIAA ever looked at my purchase history, they would assume that I was the world's worst pirate, because the last time I bought a cd was when my brother asked me for one for Christmas a few years ago. I think I've bought less than ten CDs in my life. My brother occasionally tosses me one of his old cds, or a friend does, but I'm not going to pay $15 for a cd. I play those if I want background noise. I'm also not going to download illegally. I'm also not going to pay for DRM-covered crap that I can't guarantee having permanently. There are quite simply no means of me obtaining music that are both legal and acceptable to me (that I know of).
Until the RIAA dies, and the music business works out a sane business model that I'm willing to spend money on, I won't let myself get interested in music. It's just that simple.
but i personally buy less music now because music now sucks, and my father turned me on to the music he listened to so i have all his cds and albums
I'm sure little has changed with mass downloading over Limewire & equivalents. It isn't always about the freebees that cause a slump.
/I/ would like to hear. I no longer have the free time to "research", and the available sources tie me up with content I am not interested in.
In my case, I pretty much gave up on the downloading years ago, but now find it difficult stumbling upon new music
Regular radio in Toronto offers nothing but playlisted corporate tripe that rarely changes. I am also too cheap to spend money on satellite radio. On line samples from Amazon suck require the Real one crapware, iTunes always seems to shovel regional junk from the get-go.
My purchases are down. In short, the industry promotes music I do not want, and I have heard little I would like to buy.
There you have it. Their product is bad, overhyped, bubblegummy teenage nonsense.
When I find good music I buy it, and in the last 15 years or so the good music is coming out on smaller, independent labels.
Amen.
I buy CDs at shows all the time. The artist gets the money, I get the music, a major label record company gets nothing - everyone wins.
If a decline in purchase of RIAA music corresponds with computer access by the target market, could it be possible the consumers are buying something else...say prefering playing video games instead of listening to music.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Last month i went to a concert... If it where not about a torrent P2P web site listing, I will never heard about this artist (RATATAT)
I download the album (for "free") because of the cool name. I will never spend money only because of a band's name. So because of p2p I went to the concert (with 2 of my friends) and i also bought a t-shirt...
So bottom line: 3 tickets + 1 t-shirt... all this because of the album available on a "illegal" p2P website.
BTW... amazing show!
Sure, suckage is very subjective. Another possible cause is a shift in demographics. For us people who used to buy CDs, but now don't because of perceived suckage, we have stopped buying. Period. We have not started downloading (well typically anyway). The higher volumes of new releases are now more biased away from people like me to those who like rap or whatever. Perhaps the rap-buying demographic has never been strong in CD purchases, so perhaps that explains a lot, perhaps not.
Analogy alert: if you replace a French resturant into a MacD,then expect your patrons to change and expect your sales numbers to change too. The wine bar next door should also expect changes since your average MacD eater is probably less likely to fit the wine bar profile.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What about those that have access to file sharing and just don't buy CD's? Honestly, Scout's Honor, (and despite being an anonymous coward) I just don't buy CD's -- maybe 4 in the last 6 years, and most of those were used. I don't download music (legally or illegally) either. My stepson is another example. He's bought fewer CD's than I during this time, and he has legally gotten the little music he has purchased through iTunes.
Maybe we're just the exception, or maybe the answer is simply that not_buying_cds != illegally_downloading_music ?
Reduction in Pirates is responsible for global warming.
Correlation does not imply causation*
* although in this case it probably does.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Throwing this "Dead Horse" survey on the table as proof of lost sales is pure posturing. It sand bags progress by staking the false claim that damages are owed in-lieu of evidence that a better franchise could serve the needs of the Industry than the legal CD disc royalty extortion.
Give up the sand bagging. The Flood broke through a long time ago. The RIAA were not there. Your Horse is Dead! Take your "Buggy Whip" franchise with you. The Horse and Buggy days are over.
It probably would not surprise you to learn that people in America who own personal transportation (i.e., automobiles) are the least likely to use public transportation.
If you think that the reason they don't use public transportation is that they own a car, then you'd be wrong. Most of the people who own automobiles live in suburban and rural areas. The lack of public transportation in these areas means that they *can't* use public transportation and therefore *must* drive cars.
This is a classic case of correlation != causation. In order to show that file sharing has hurt music sales, you are going to have to control for a *lot* more variables than just owning a computer.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
does it matter? If these lossed sales more than make up for it in new sales, can they still sue for the lost ones?
> the study looked for a link between owning a computer and decreased CD purchases
Yeah -- no kidding.
The people who owned a computer spent more time with it, and therefore had less time for other entertainment products.
This effect has been well-documented for years, and has had a particularly important impact on the television industry.
The rise of PC video games has had a major impact on all entertainment industries. Is this news to somebody?
I have both copied music (not exactly legally - that's why I'm posting Anon.) and bought CDs off the shelves. Now my mp3 player is filled with both the music. Over the years I've found that the music that I copied for free is music I really like and that the music that I listen to more often. The music that I'ved ripped from the CDs is stored in some corner of my mp3 player and I rarely listen the same.
Hmmm... I wonder if it's possible to gather data on what people are downloading. If the rate at which people are downloading 5-15 year old stuff is higher, that could at least indicate that today's music is less appealing in general.
It'd also be interesting to see how many of the songs downloaded are by unsigned bands that wouldn't be accounted for in total CD sales anyways.
- The disposable income of the subjects, and how it changed over time
- The longer you own a computer, do your CD purchases increase or decrease?
- Do new computer owners slow their CD purchases, or were they never buying CDs int he first place?
- Whether the behavior was affected by age and employment status (e.g. is it just a college thing?)
- Overall CD sales trend over time vs a baseline from historical data
- Do DVD sales (comparable media but not as acessible via P2P) show the same trend as CD sales?
- Average CD price over the time period
- Gross sales of used CDs over the time period
- Average education level of computer users over the time period
Plus a lot of other things I might want to test in the data like parental income, gender, hair color, etc. Even with all of this data, you are still not going to be able to privide enough evidence to establish a causal relationship.All music is world music. I ain't never heard an alien sing a song.
There ya'go: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-744011853 6241933678&q=alien+song
...always pleased to help out...
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
And then there's Anecdote C&D Anecdote C: You hear a single good song from an artist, you go to iTunes or whathaveyou and you buy THAT SINGLE SONG for a buck, rather than be forced to shell out $20 for a CD that has 1 good song and 16 pieces of crap. The music industry started getting rid of singles in the 1980's because there were too many 1-hit wonders. For a period of about 15-20 years there was very little way for one to purchase a single. In my opinion, this is what got people trading music online. They wanted 1 song, not 16 pieces of crap +1 song. Furthermore, generation X felt it was payback time for all those times they'd taken their allowance down to the music store, dropped it all on a CD, run home and discovered they had just lost a week's allowance on 1 good song. Now that the hardware companies have forced the music industry into selling singles again, OF COURSE CD SALES ARE GOING DOWN. ; ) Anecdote D: Someone downloads a few songs from a file-sharing site that they had previously thought they'd like because they already like 1 song by the same artist. They figure they'll buy the CD if there are a few good songs on it, but thanks to file-sharing, they discover those other songs are, pieces of crap, and that shelling out $20 is not worth it for 1 song. Maybe they buy the 1 song from iTunes, maybe they don't even care about owning it that much at all now. But regardless, they will now never by that CD. In the '80's, 90's, either you had a friend who already had the CD, or you took a gamble and bought it anyway. Bottom line is, as long as file-sharing is out there, the music industry will not be able to screw consumers anymore with their 1 good song + 16 pieces of crap = $20 that they got away with for 20 years... people now have a way of finding out exactly what they're buying before they spend their money and that's got to make the industry irate.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
Thanks a lot cmdrRetardo
I've actually heard a lot of complaints about this recently. Everbody is in such a tizzy to get their CDs louder than everybody else's they compress the shit out of it. Gotta love clipping.
Not more money, more consistant money. That is a very important thing to understand about these guys-- they are not as interested in the chance to make a huge killing as they are in making a consistant profit. This means a "formula" will work well for them. But what they have not realized yet is that sticking to said formula will give diminishing returns in the long run.
For forgot something 5)????? 6)Profit!!!!!
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
There are 16, or 17 if you count the one that's away at college.
. . .17 if you count the one that's away at college.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Bummer. Couln't be the bastard that's always hiding my socks, Nooooooooo! She'd have to be one I actually miss.
KFG
buying 2 of them isn't the cost of a tank of gas..........
drop the price from like $16 to id say around $5, like indie labels, WHICH I MIGHT ADD I BUY FROM, and ill THINK about buying your CD's, think being now i feel buying your CD's is morally wrong because of you suing granny's and 13 year old kids.
-Noc
1. I buy music on CD.
3. RIAA sends nasty letter to my ISP; sues one of my friends.
4. I realize how evil RIAA is.
5. I buy many fewer CDs.
Genius.
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
Wait... music... on MTV? That can't be possible.
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
Actually, it was established several years ago that it was actually a decline in piracy that led to global warming.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
I find it strange that they think their product is never going to reduce in sales EVER!! Isn't it likely that the CD is not the optimum product in the future? Isn't it likely that the products they them selves manufacture and market would also reduce the Demand.
Pioneer, Sony how many CD Writing capable products have you sold..
I also would like to point out that I have purchased about 45 Music products this year....DVD Concerts & Collections. Sure i bought CDs too but i purchased more DVD music products than CD based this year because i have a big screen and surround sound also.
Why can't they look at the sales of Music PRODUCTS rather than CDs...its not that we less its that we buy multiple mediums also.
WTF - Speak in acronyms already, i can't figure out what you mean otherwise boss
However, what is happening (my opinion, worth what you're paying) is that we are seeing the gradual decline of the major labels, as more and more bands go indie and take control of their own distribution.
Now repeat after me: I want to hear how bad your music sucks at bitworksmusic.com. I sense a new marketing campaign: "not quite as sucky as you'd think". Right. http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
BitWorksMusic.com -- odd tunes for odd times
1) [-] increased prices due to inflation => decreased CD sales
(normal inflation)
2) [-] increased cost incurred from deploying DRM technology => decreased overall sales
(DRM drives cost up; even technology that can't possibly work, it still costs money to deploy)
3) [-] increased level of junk recordings => decreased CD sales
(where pricing no longer reflects value)
4) [-] decreased quality/value of published works => decreased CD sales
(RIAA still forces us to buy a full CD full of junk just to get the one song)
5) [-] decrease in useability of the media format/platform for different devices => decreased sales
(again DRM directly counters profit, not all player devices work anymore)
6) [--] increased cynicism and contempt for the RIAA => decreased sales
(where the customer is always wrong for wanting to listen to what the just bought)
7) [+] increase of tools to counter DRM => increased CD sales
(DRM can't work in the long term)
8) [+] increase of non DRM purchasing channels => increased online sales, but not CD's
This reminds me of some childhood story books:
Ok, RIAA, "what is wrong with this picture".
I actually almost never bought music in high school and only since i have been hardcore into music sharing, ive increased my cd purchacing output by a lot. I now have a few favorite japanese groups who i am subscribed to on a japanese site so i can get an email as soon as something new is put up by them and preorder it. I much prefer to buy a cd from an artist who is smaller and whose new cd blows my mind to buying a cd from an artist who is so massively popular they will sell no matter what. I prefer to support any group i like a lot by going to their concerts and buying t-shirts rather then buying their cds. This is especially because they dont get much money from the cd compared to other things.
"Covering the period of 1995-2003, the study looked for a link between owning a computer and decreased CD purchases." Just looking at this article pisses me off! First off, people with jobs get payed a certain amount of money. after you get payed, you pay your bills, and take the family out etc. The money which you have left over is what you have to spend on items you like which makes you happy. Before we had books, then books and newspapers, now we have the books and newspapers and magezines and television and music and videogames and hobbies like fishes and jogging and traveling. Of course CD sales are going to drop. In my expirience, I stoped purchasing music long ago (since 1992). I was a gamer since the atari era and still am. Now I buy more games, watch no television, no newspapers, some books, alot of games, and i listen to the music i own since years ago. New music sucks anyways and have no intention of purchasing american RIAA crappy music. Even depeche mode released an album with only 2 good songs. So I flip this article 2 fingers up and along with the RIAA with 2 fingers up and 2 foot fingers up as well.
1. Nicholls State University is in Thibodaux, Louisana which isn't exactly a hotbed of business research
2. His study doesn't state where the funding to conduct the study was obtained from.
3. The data came from the Consume Expenditure Survey, which is notoriously inaccurate
You may want to check on ad hominem
I dont know about the average consumer but I know I have purcahsed alot less CDs. Mainly I only buy RIAA CDs if its a band I REALLY like. Back in the early days of ripping it was not uncommon for me to drop $50 every month on CD purchases but now that RIAA has decided to attack its own customers I find my self looking at alternative bands and non-RIAA publishers for my music.
I also have to say that satallite radio has played a big role in dropping my dependance from CDs. For about $140 a year I have 100 radio staions to choose from, most of which are commerical free. When I want to listen to a certain type of music I typically go there. If I do buy a CD its more for a specific artist or CD I know I want and I avoid RIAA publishers as much as possible.
I prob dont represent the majority of the population but I would not be surprised if there was a decnt chunk of people who are trying to Boycott RIAA on a personal level. Also I would like to see a study on Sat radio vs CD sales.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
A mall was built by my house in 2001 or 2002 (it was right after we moved in in August 2001).
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
The best lines of the article are
"Covering the period of 1995-2003, the study looked for a link between owning a computer and decreased CD purchases"
"During 2002 computer owners' CD sales decreased by $4.79 a year, and by $5.55 in 2003. Those without computers only decreased by $0.80 and $0.22, respectively. On the other hand, in 2001, the year that Napster closed, people with computers increased their CD buying by 19 percent while non-computer owners held steady."
If you notice he's comparing PEOPLE WITH A COMPUTER against people with out a computer. This boggles the mind as to what data you can get from this. If you own a computer you're immediatly less likely to buy CDs?
This paper isn't even ABOUT file-sharing. It's about computer owners and cds. Maybe those with Computers bought games and software rather than CDs. This guy doesn't even try to draw a corrolation between people with Computers vs people with computers and Internet. Apparently by the synopsis you can own a computer and fileshare with or without the internet?
In the end this paper isn't even worth summarizing because there's nothing in the paper about filesharing except a couple dates and a word in the title. This is all about computer owners, and guess what? People have owned computers for 20 years. NEXT
I have to agree, I tend to buy my CDs direct from the band. It's just that there are so many sucky songs nowadays.
That plus no giant album cover art.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I used to buy a lot of music. In college, I had a huge collection for the time - about 200 singles. I even worked as DJ from time to time in the college pub... Later, i got a job and bought albums. I had (still have some) about 4 feet of vinyl. About 1985 I started buying CD's - quality jump was so impressive from records that I was hooked. I even watched for years to see what was coming out on CD. Remember when it was a big deal that The Beatles were finally releasing their albums on CD? I think the music industry confused rebuilding record collections with on-going music sales.
However, they're not making any more 60's or 70's music; or even 80s, a lot of which was good. I will reiterate the previous comments, modern music sucks! As does rap. I bought the stuff I "gotta have" and there's not a lot coming out that I will run out and buy. Once in a long while I buy something, but not what I would describe as "top 20" music. (...and it's not "oh, you forgot the CRAP from 30 years ago". Pick a random year back then, and list the top songs that still play on the Solid Gold stations. Pick the top albums. Now try to put together a similar list for 2005 or 2004. Pretty slim pickins.)
Meanwhile, along come DVD's. Where I used to buy a CD for $20, I can now buy a DVD, often for less. (Yay to blockbuster and the used DVD rack!). I now have several hundred DVD's, since I would pay $10 for a used DVD or $5 to view it once. The really good movies I might buy new.
As for music - those one-hit wonders and other crappola - yes, I'll admit I have downloaded. If there were an easy way to get MP3's (not WMA or AAC - my MP3 players don't support) I might have bought them instead, but it's too late now.
I also wonder about leisure time. With computers, the internet, and cable channels, and even music feed on cable TV (and video games for the younger bunch) - who takes time to sit and listen to an album all the way through, the way I did 30 years ago? Music as a hobby isn't as prominent as then. Heck, I find myself reading books a LOT less than before.
Similarly, the movie industry is missing the boat. They assume their previously high level of sales can be correlated to current releases, but I suspect a large number are people building their collection. I wonder how many, like me, will be content with what they have - I don't need to re-purchase "Peter Sellers' The Party" or "Meet the Fokkers" in HD. Odds are I won't even re-buy Blade Runner or Dune. Also, HD is NOT the quantum leap that CD was over vinyl. So, HD will be a moderate disappointment to the movie indstry with or without stupid format wars.
As I watch movies being RE-released on DVD, I sense an air of desperation to milk every last dollar from a dwindling market instead of creating new content. ("The Little Mermaid, for the first time now as a TWO DVD set!" Are you listening, Disney? Won't work. The first one lasts forever unless the kids played frisbee with it, and then it gets passed around when they're too old... diminishing market!)
There's a moment when you can jump in and grab the market to yourself. You can be the next eBay or iTunes or Google or Amazon. Or you can do it wrong or miss the boat, and be the next Pets.com or RIAA...
I'd be interesting to see these statistics as well. The only file sharing I really do is replacing CDs I've long since lost or not taken care of properly, I'd imagine there are many in that same boat.
I haven't bought a single new CD since the RIAA started these shenanigans. I used to buy 1 - 2 a month, probably about 18 a year on average.
I still buy CDs mind you, I just confine my purchases to used ones; I have some minor moral quibbles with funding racketeering & extortion organizations.
If there even is a bona fide decrease in CD sales (I'm unconvinced), I wonder how much of the decrease is accounted for by those intentionally refraining from CD purchases as part of an anti-RIAA attitude? It has to be a pretty small slice of the pie chart, I know, but hell... I'd be thrilled to know I was part of a group responsible for a 0.5% drop in CD sales.
Pi Ran Out
I really don't see how people can come up with the notion that by owning a PC, it automatically means that file-sharing
is at fault for not buying that latest collection of 15 crappy songs, and 1 good song.
Has anyone thought that maybe people who have PC's are a bit more educated on things such as how much money our
of each cd purchase is really given to the artist? There could be a ton of things at play here.
This kind of "study" almost sounds like deep down, it was paid for by "the man..."
I think that this will be a never-ending debate on the same grounds as "do cell phones cause cancer" - Everyone has their
end-all-be-all answer, until the next study comes out a year later..
I buy more music now, either as downloads or CDs since it became so easy to umm, try before you buy. Maybe things would be different if I was an impovorished student but as a grown up(?) with an income, I have downloaded shedloads of stuff, dumped what I didn't like then bought what I do. The only stuff I don't buy is things I can't buy - remixes, deleted stuff etc.
I've discovered a load of bands I'd never have tried had I not scanned down a list in Napster way back in the day and thought 'that's a great name for a band/track, wonder what it's like?'. One download later, I find I like it and it's off to my local CD emporeum to buy the thing. It also helps that record companies have wised up a bit and started producing CDs with all sorts of nice extras, DVDs, bonus tracks, funky cases etc. Appeals to the magpie in me.
On the downside, my wife complains I have too many CDs and sort of insists I sell some everytime I buy some so even eBay is winning now. Win/Win all round.
I doubt it. I'm in my 40's and I've noticed a distinct lack of cow bell in today's music.
But forcing Blu-Ray on me won't get me to buy the White Album again - I already burned it onto MP3.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And they are doing it LEGALLY.
I buy individual songs (rarely whole CDs worth of them.)
The RIAA sucks, their clients suck and the fucking pap smear that they expect us to buy sucks.
I SUPPORT indie artists AT THE EXPENSE of the "soit-disant" mainstream because I believe in mining the their very source BEFORE they get their hands on them and "Wall*Mart"ing the creativity out of them.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I agree. My buying habits have changed. I still listen to a wide variety of radio stations; but my desire to buy what I hear is zero. So I go to extremes to buy stuff that doesn't suck. I noticed I starting buying more from Amazon 'cause HMV,A&B,BestBuy,etc/etc were all selling the same "promoted" crap. Now I see more indy record companies pushing their own and bypassing traditional distributors (for example, I heard Dervish on FolkAlley.com and could not find them except through their associated on-line store.)
One thing that truly freaks me out is the blatent theft of riffs and complete lack of originality by many of the leading "Pop" artists. Hey... isn't that Madonna butchering ABBA? Rihanna pilfering SoftCell? Gwen and Fergie ripping off children's songs - or each other.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
But the article's also missing a link. It's not:
Increase File Sharing -> Lower CD Sales due to piracy
It's
Increased File Sharing -> RIAA Lawsuits -> Lower CD Sales due to boycotts
I don't share copyrighted material that I don't own the copyright for, but I stopped buying CDs when RIAA started suing individuals in protest over their tactics.
It's a fairly well-known fact that most of the people who pirate (software, music, movies, whatever) weren't going to spend the money to begin with, so it's something of a false arguement to make that every downloaded song translates to a lost sale. Similarly, it's not uncommon for someone who downloads a track from a CD to decide they want to support the artist and thus go out and purchase the disc. Things are not as clear-cut (vis-a-vis the supposed inverse relationship between revenue and piracy) as the RIAA and their mouthpieces would have us believe. Things *are* as clear-cut as RIAA wants us to believe when it comes to copyright law, however, and I have to give credit where it's due. It's their tactics that I protest, not their "enforcement" (outside of reasonable fair use) tactics that I have an issue with.
As it happens, since they started their new business model of suing individuals, it struck me that most of the stuff that they were selling was crap anyways, so I don't feel I'm missing out on much. There's a few things that I've wanted to purchase, like the soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings movies, but until they change their strategy, I'll have to listen to the music while I watch the film or from audio tracks I rip from the DVDs I purchased.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
I may be in the minority, but I download music sort of as a "test drive" before I spend my money on the album. there are many bands i would not have heard of, and consequentially purchased their albums were it not for filesharing. Especially with indie artists who don't get much radio/tv coverage, it would seem that filesharing really should help boost sales. Were it not for gnutella, I would never have even heard of bands like Califone, 764-HERO, Holopaw, Black Heart Procession, Ugly Casanova, Brent Arnold, Process of a Still Life, and many others, whos albums I went out and bought after "stealing" their music and costing them all that revenue. Record labels and their artists have made far more money off of me since I discovered filesharing. Though to be fair, I don't think most indie bands are signed with labels associated with RIAA.
And how exactly to you propose to objectively measure the "level of suckage"?
Does it involve booty dancing videos or angsty emo kids screaming?
No, but seriously.
The reason music sucks today is that all stations are owned by clear channel and MTV doesn't play music videos anymore.
Secondly, most major stars aren't even really musicians in their own right, but rather manufactured acts.
That said... I quote wiki: "In June 2003, Jon Wiederhorn of MTV.com referred to Marilyn Manson as 'the only true artist today'."
And lastly, I have a hunch that more kids are playing video games instead of just listening to music... Or at least putting more income into said devices.
How many CDs could you buy with a PS3?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The article never mentions online music sales, which the RIAA sure as hell benifits from. SOme people might switch from buying CDs to using an online service.
The Gospel according to lolcat
As a musician, let me explain something. In the rock or underground world, you get paid next to nothing for your CD sales. The record company knows bands are hit-or-miss, so keep all the dough to themselves, letting the band make their money from live shows *if they are widely accepted. This is in contrast to the pop industry, who knows that the pop groups are close to one-hit-wonders, and the "artist" gets paid for their CD and tour as a lump sum. The record company rakes in the profits from the CDs and shows. In most cases, the pop groups are built by the industry for this very rea$on, vs rock groups who create themselves.
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77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
Music today is no better nor worse than yesterday. You remember the good stuff and forget the crap, the same way I remember the good 90s music and not the crap.. That is how things work. You remember the good and discard the crap.
Every generation has had its share of good and bad music and the manufactured pop idols, but one thing is different today than it was 5, 10, or 20 years ago.
Clear Channel owns all the radios and MTV doesn't play music videos anymore.
This means artists are chosen by the media cartels payola system rather than a voting system by the populace.
As a kid I remember every year, there would a video that would play at midnight and then it would get popular and play at 10pm and then later it would be playing nonstop at primetime for an entire month.
Now, a band is just manufactured and *BAM* they are on the prime time whether you like it or not.
Mabye all those old bands were manufactured as well, but these days it isn't even remotley democratic.
Do you remember the days when any local band had a chance of getting their demo played on the radio and then making it big?
These days there is no such thing as a local radio station. They play the same lists on the East Coast as they do the West coast. Hell many of the shows are getting the same audio stream.
So I wouldn't say the quality of music has gone down hill, but rather the industry itself and its promotions methods. RIAA and crew are no longer satisfied with taking chances with people possibly making it big. If they sign you then they force it down everyone's throats even if they aren't liked.
Which is of course why we see more one hit wonders these days of people who real job was making jingles for commercials or have a pretty face.
It isn't the internet or piracy nor iTunes killing the industry, but the industry itself.
The only way to fix it would be to break up the RIAA monopoly and force Clear Channel to sell its stations.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
It's important to fight this lie because it's being used to strip everyone of their freedom. The most important aspect of this was covered ten days ago, here, and years ago here and here and again and again. The main things to notice are decreasing procudtion, sucky promotion and high music sales to portable music player owners. From second link,
Gee, don't make and promote new releases don't sell music. From the second link:
Finally, from the latest Jupiter Research,
Portable music player owners are a better metric than "computer owners". You might as well try to corelate typewriter ownership with phonograph sales in the 70s because general purpose computers and music are not related in most homes. Portable music owners, on the other hand have linked their computers to their music are most able of computer users to swap their music. They are computer savy and might have their entire collection in their pocket or on their laptop ready to swap out with their music loving friends. Yet they buy more music than the rest of the population, including "computer owners" who could care less about music.
In the end, this is about control. People exposed to music purchase music. It's that simple. "Piracy" is a smoke screen. The problem for the RIAA is that online music allows competition, which is something their business model can't stand. Music "piracy" does not harm sales, but it will be used as an excuse to force DRM on everyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is baseless, inane trash with no grip on reality. The "study" is 100% pure crap.
What's a simpler answer that would *also* match the observations (assuming that ther's a significant correlation)? Let's see, maybe people with computers buy computer games, War Crack, Ever Crack and other things with their disposable income.
They should bring back medieval style public humilation for people who mis-represent and distort the scientific method.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
while we're on the subject of nonsense, this discussion started with a battle over "correlations" then made its way to "connections" - while everybody is apparently referring to "causality", a long stretch to a mere connection. and looking for one variable to point the finger at. if the piracy/cd sales bs isn't multifactorial, i don't know what is.
and speaking of over-simplifying the details (exactly what the labels want us to do), up here in the frozen north (canada), we've done one piece of math: it's the copyright collectives - most of them not working directly for either the fat cats or* the starving musicians - who are going to grab the lion's share of the revenue in an itunes world. as much as 40% of gross, split 8 or 9 ways. making up new kinds of rights and license fees for middlemen is what we call "copyright reform".
The amount of mp3s downloaded of any particular artist is likely to be proportionate to their actual record sales. Eg, big artists making big $$$ have more of their music downloaded for free. so, britney cant buy another $5000 handbag this week? oh god someone call the police.
in order to do this calculation you would also have to know the units shipped and all those fun facts that are avalable on the RIAA website... but now for the hard to get stats like # of albums release that is the hard to find information not to mention find some corrilation between the # of computers that have internet access and the # of users on file sharing websites and many more factors.
... you would be waisting ur time)
the RIAA has released less cd singles and albums last year then they did in 2004 and they wonder why their # 's are dropping... they are just pissed they are not making as much as they did back in 1998-2000 but the reason for that is not because of people downloading music it is because of independent lables... its just like the fall of the big studios in hollywood back in the day, they were making pleanty of movies its just no one wanted to watch the same shit that they have seen many times before they wanted new material, and in this case no one wants to listen to the same crap over and over.
now neglect the same shit over and over part and add into the RIAA figures alll the independent lables out there and i am sure there would be a increase in sales.... look at fuled by ramen they are not part of the RIAA and they have artists that have amazing lyrics and songs that sell a LOT... that all being said RIAA needs to get more bands and better music... simple as that
(and i dont care about my grammer or spelling so dont bother posting about it i already know and dont care
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
For my part its also that I have a computer, and I have computer games. I only really listen to music when I'm driving, and even then its usually free-to-air stuff. I have far more entertaining things to spend my money on.
I guess it hasn't occured to them that CD sales might be falling off due to the glut of diferent forms of media now available to the public.
Now that they are all getting married off, wouldn't they be buying half as many cd since 2 people only have to buy 1 CD as opposed to 2 they previously bought when they were single?
:)
Variables; do you have them all properly initialized and accounted for?
I know this is an unpopular thing to say among the /. crowd but it needs to be said. How can you deny that there is a correlation between online music file sharing and decreased cd sales? Obviously, a lot of the other factors mentioned in this thread have some merit too but how can you seriously deny that a correlation exists here? Not everyone who downloads a song from the internet says, "Hey! Cool song. I'm gonna go buy the cd!". Most people say, "Hey! Cool Song. I'm gonna put this on my mp3 player." There may be a few of you that honestly will use online music downloading as a "demo" as someone claimed earlier, but the majority of people won't. They already have the song and they got it for free so why pay money for something that you already got for free. And now that you know where to get something cool for free, that's the first place you'll go next time. Why would I go to a store where I know I'm going to have to pay $20 for a CD when I can go online where I know I can get it for free?
/.) has to agree with that.
It's definitely not the only factor but it has to contribute. Any reasonable person (I know not many of these can be found on
Is there a place for parody? Sure. But it's damn amusing to see Wikipedia thump its own chest and claim "more accurate and authoritative than Encyclopedia Brittanica", and have (and actively defend!) steaming turds like this.
Off topic sorta, "This is mostly a result of the deregulation of radio" Can anyone give an example of something that didn't get worse for the "consumer" after it was deregulated?
More like, since 95% of music out these days fuc*ing sucks, natrually sales have declined :P But of course they don't release any studies correleating the ratio of music being trash to sales right-o?
This sig will self destruct in 5 seconds.
File sharing DOES hurt the current model of the music biz... one that is based on the disposable mega-pop-star. It is hard to sell 10 million albums for a musician with one hit song when someone can just download the single they like so easily. For a pop-phenomena, it is very easy to hit the critical mass of people online to share something.
On the other hand, there is a lot of music that is very hard to find on file sharing networks. Whole genres of music are pretty much unaccounted for on file sharing networks. If you can't listen to it on an FM radio station, good luck finding it. There might be a successful business model in selling fewer records of more artists, than selling more records of a handful of artists.
Regardless, it is not the role of the government to be propping up outdated business models. I think it is pretty clear that the automobile was pretty disastrous to the blacksmithing and livery industries... but it created even more profitable industries in the long run. Think of the mess we would be in if we tried to save the blacksmithing and livery industries as large scale parts of our economy. True, file-sharing IS stealing and immoral, I don't deny that: but so is taking my tax money against my will, in order to fund a government agency to preemptively go after file sharing, or to legally harass potentially innocent people, or to legally restrict new technologies because they *MAY* potentially be used for file sharing. The immorality of file-sharing (extremely minor evil, if it is evil at all) is far outweighed by the immorality of the draconian methods required for enforcement.
And specific to the music industry... WE WILL NEVER HAVE A SHORTAGE OF MUSIC!!! Music is one of those things people enjoy doing without payment... and one of those things that garners a lot of non-financial rewards (attention, respect, adoration). Look at all the garage bands, amateur musicians, people making demo CDs, people posting their music free on websites, and tell me that we would not have lots and lots of music, even if the entire industry collapsed. Making music is not like building airplanes, in that it takes vast amounts of capital and can be dangerous if done by people who don't know what they are doing.
The band Syrius Jones went with a Creative Commons Sharing License in May and has since had the busiest summer of bookings in 3 years. True, we have definitely sold fewer CDs, but have more than made up the difference in revenue from the shows.
At best, a die-hard fan buys one CD every year for $10, yet a casual fan will go to show after show dropping $10 bucks for tickets every time. File-sharing == more fans == more revenue.
Just food for thought from the trenches.
And how exactly to you propose to objectively measure the "level of suckage"?
You abviously don't read alt.sysadmin.recovery. The unit of measure is well defined as the Lovelace.
Who is John Galt?
"I still listen to a wide variety of radio stations"
Wow. Where do you find that? I get sixteen flavors of ClearChannel, and NPR. Thank GOD for NPR.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Seriously, lets look at who doesn't own a computer:
1. Econmically challenged - Probably not buying CDs by the truck load
2. People that don't like new technology - Maybe LP sales are down too
3. Kids who's mommy/daddy won't buy them a computer - Will buy whatever junk you put on the radio with their lunch money
Most people that can afford a computer on their own have probably figured out that buying a new CD once a week is money better spent elsewhere. The kids who's mommy/daddy did buy the computer are going to download everything they can, and spend all thier lunch money buying video games. Give you on guess what the video game comes on - A CD. If the record company is going to say that CD sales are down, they need to include the sales off all blank CDs, software CDs, and music CDs. Any money left over is going to the music store or the GAP.
that's not really an ad hominem
I'm sure there's data to be extracted out of that relationship
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
I prefer the quality and physical ownership of a CD, but I love being able check out new songs to see how I like them via the intarnwebs. As such, all filesharing has done for me is increase my CD purchasing. Myspace has also helped in this regard.
due to the fact that I am able to discover actual good bands rather than the shit they force feed via the radio. Maybe if the radio endorsed these good bands instead of the bullshit they would actually sell more cds?
There are a lot of good indie bands that blow anything on the radio out of the water.
I think there was an error in the quote used, "could have decreased their CD purchases (prior to 2004) by about 13 percent due to Internet file sharing." should actually read: "could have decreased their CD purchases (prior to 2004) by about 13 percent due to World of Warcraft." Much better...
You know the RIAA/Big Music Industry is just looking for a scape goat. They won't accept the fact that they are not "making" music people want to hear anymore because it all sounds the same. They are flooding the market with the same thing over and over year after year. They need to stop trying to blame others for what they are doing wrong. If they want to sell music they need to do a few things. 1. they need to make CDs affordable 2. They need to stop playing the blame game 3. Stop filling with CDs with complete shit no one wants. The single is good but if the rest of the CD sucks people are less likely to buy it. This is cutting into your profits riaa, fix it! 4. Perhaps most important, they need to start putting more money time and effort into finding new talent. Half their argument is that they take a big risk with putting music out there and most really does not sell. Sounds to me like they need to start looking into what they are releasing instead of just signing every celeb with some money and a pair of fake tits. Perhaps they could USE the internet as a trial run for their music before they go pressing CDs. You don't see the car industry releasing 9 out of 10 car models as flops that no one wants. Instead research goes in and while there are a couple of flops here and there they are fewer and farther between. It comes down to this i think, the riaa members do not want to work for their money they just want you to buy what ever they put out even if there is nothing on the CD.
brickspeed.net for your old Volvo performance addiction
You know the thing about global warming and pirates, so I won't reheat that ancient joke.
But the same applies here. A lot of things happened between 1995 and today. The economy isn't doing as well, people have less spending money and music is a luxury, no matter how you want to put it. And luxury is one of the first things people start to cut down on.
In comes cellphones and kids having them. Now, as the age group between 14 and 21 is the main music purchaser, and also one of the strongest groups when it comes to cells, those appliances suck away a considerable amount of money that used to be spent on music before 1995.
And, not to forget, the music of today sucks. But that's maybe just my opinion.
Whether music sales have been hurt by downloading can only be seriously determined once the other factors have been eliminated. If you do want to do a reputable study on it, first of all find out how much spending money the main target group (people between 14 and 21) have and compare it to 95. Take into account the change of price, btw. I honestly can't remember spending 20 bucks on a CD in my time. Question whether the kids have a cellphone or other "must have" tools such as game consoles, computers and so on. And how much money they swallow away.
I personally "blame" the dwindling sales simply on the fact that there are more goods currently in competition to music for the kids' money than ever. In 1995, it was mainly music and clothing. Today, kids can (and do) spend more money than they have on a wide range of things.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You've got "musicians" in quotes...what really needs to be in quotes is "artists". I have been wondering when any schmoe who records some music and releases a CD became an "artist".
True artists want their works to be seen, heard, shared, understood. They want to evoke a reaction in people. Of course they want to make a living too, but love of money is not what motivates them.
Lots of people in the recording business are not interested in "art". They want to make gobs of money. They want to be superstars. That's fine, but these people shouldn't be called "artists." Just like Schwarzenegger was a "movie star" but not an "actor."
Penny - plain text accounting
Corporations -- not just music companies, but the very concept of corporations as legal constructs -- were invented to allow people to work together on bigger projects and take on more risk than they could do if they were risking their personal assets. Book and music publishers arose for the same reason: authors/musicians couldn't afford to produce and distribute their own works, so publishing houses sprung up to raise capital and manage risk. But now publishing (either online or vanity press) costs very little, and many musicians can produce and distribute their own music. Publishers, being middlemen, capital-raisers, and risk managers, are no longer required, at least not in the form they have taken up to now. But just like an organism, an organisation's first priority is survival.
I remember a few years ago hearing people say that the last remaining function of record companies was filtering: in a world of self-publishing, there will be a lot of crap and the good stuff will be hard to find, so record companies would find the good stuff and filter out the crap. I suppose the results speak for themselves, in a way... but besides that, there are now enough user-driven filters and recommendation and referral services that this function will also be unnecessary.
Maybe the place where Wikipedia fails is that it assumes that some people have critical thinking skills.
I can see how that might present a challenge for you.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I kinda think that's the nature of p2p sharing... going through my library, it's mostly A) classic rock/folk. Dylan, Hendrix, Zeppelin and such... b) punk music, where the bands themselves have encouraged the downloading of their music when I saw them live. c) anything else I want to listen to. Contains some new stuff, but the new non-punk stuff accounts for 3% of my very large collection.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
...car sales did actually reduce the sales of wooden wagons, would that mean we should compensate the wagon makers for their loss of income?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
did it take into consideration other multi-billion dollar industries that have been INCREASING, such as the video games industry? i did a speech on this (in favor of legalizing filesharing (with or without compensation) and found that videogames sales have been growing by leaps and bounds. don't remember what the numbers were and if it correlated with music sales declines, but there's just more and more toys out there...
This is so good it just had to be answered... heh.
A friend of mine calls this "lying with your teeth in your face." I call it stupid. First off, the RIAA members are public corporations, and the big boys are all growing. In fact, they have been growing for quite some time. You have public records to demonstrate this on any finance site you want to visit. What's changing is the business model. Now, in specific, that "unit shipments have fallen" figure fails to account for online sales and other alternate media formats. This is just bad statistics.
Which clearly demonstrates that music sharing is not illegal. Sharing copyrighted music to which you do not have a valid license or ownership of the copyright is illegal. This is a fine point that the RIAA would appreciate if you simply forgot.
In other words, you are responsible for your own actions. Yes, thank you. Now would you please stop trying to sue ISPs, dead people and little kids?
Music sales are soaring. There, that was easy.
This happens to most communities where people are trying to achieve a goal. Everything2, Wikipedia, et al. It has nothing to do with 'critical thinking' and everything to do with 'appropriateness'. People tried to (and to a lesser extent are trying to, though is seems to have been co-opted into a creative writing site) document "Everything" on E2. Some 'old school' types felt that they had 'earned' frivolity, and such, by virtue of their contributions. They wrote nodes with such stuff as "Lesbians! Monkeys! Soy!" and "Butterfinger McFlurry". The wrote nodes with self-referential garbage such as "Earn Your Bullshit", which they used to justify that "once you have written enough serious stuff, you are entitled to inject a bit of utter crap here and there". They were (correctly) called on it.
You have Jimbo flying around the world, talking about how Wikipedia should be burnt on to discs for children without internet access (replete with all the antics discussed places like here) as a valuable resource, people spouting meta-acronyms like WP:CITE, WP:NPOV, WP:V to chastise others who don't take Wikipedia seriously enough, you have defenders railing that "Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia!" when people query some of the methodology and theorising, although they somehow must have missed that big sentence on the homepage that proudly proclaims, "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
It has nothing to do with critical thinking and everything to do with this selective deafness when it comes to the pointing out of any hypocrisy in worldview.
Is it wrong to have a sense of humour? No. Are people entitled to do as they wish with their creations? Of course. Is it disingenuous to sweep under the carpet all of the issues inherent, and proclaim that the fault must be in that of the viewer, for "the consensus" knows best? Absolutely (ask yourself about how it is that so much gets deleted in the name of "WP:NOTABILITY", and yet there are literally thousands of articles on manga, and every card in the history of the Magic: The Gathering game has its own individual entry).
I hope it DOES seriously hurt the music biz. As in, fatally. Maybe then the musicians could make a buck.
You have a very valid point, but I think there are two things I should offer here that I didn't elaborate on... First, I think beyond simply me as an individual getting older and wiser is that there are just far more hobbies now that compete for the disposable income of young people. FAR FAR FAR more people game now for example. When my generation was in high school, the most popular system was the 8 bit nintendo and it was not generally socially acceptable among most in my peer group to talk about gaming. In my experience, you had your "gaming friends", and you kept them seperate from your "mainstream" friends, because they were nerds and you were a closet nerd. LOL. Insert slashback mountain joke here...
Anyway, my second point is related to the first... Before my generation, you graduated high school and what did you continue to do for entertainment? Music and pop media. Unless you were truly hardcore, computers were in banks, you know? Sure, there were arcades, and they had popularity to a degree, but I don't think it ever really competed for the disposable income of kids the way games have.
This would be interesting to see... A comparison of the growth of the home video game industry(including PCs) during the time of the alleged "file sharing" hitting CD sales. Because honestly, offhand if I recall the marketing crap I've seen thrown around about changing gamer demographics, it was about '96 that they began talking about the gaming segment as 18-34. My gut tells me you will find something statistically signifigant there.
Not just gaming either... A lot of what were relatively small hobby groups when I was in high school, are now pretty mainstream, or at least were for a long time in the 90s. RC cars, planes, computers, anime, etc... In fact, the more I think about it, the more unthinkable it is to me that the growth of other markets that consume disposable income couldn't have an impact on music sales. I mean in high school, and part of college, the one thing everyone had in common was love of music. Concerts were a huge deal. My high school age nephews listen to music, but I've never seen them go to a concert and even if you count all their mp3s, they still don't have music libraries matching what me and most of my friends had built. They're much more inclined to go to a card tournament or an anime convention than a music concert.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
I totally agree with you when you say that true artists care more about making music and eventually having it heard and getting feedback than getting rich and ultra famous. Actually that whole P2P thing is a good greed detector.
However, I don't agree with you when you say that they shouldn't be called artists, musicians or actors. To me, there are two kinds of titles, the ones anyone can have, and the ones that are deserved. In the titles anyone can have, you have : musicians (you only need to hit some random keys on a piano to call yourself that), judoka (you only need go to a judo lesson once to be one and have your white belt), artist, criminal etc. In the ones you need to deserve : doctor, engineer, teacher, O.G., etc...
My point is that it's not hard to have one of the titles anyone can have, but it's not given to anyone to be good at it or successful at it, as anyone can't claim to be a doctor or an O.G., because that kind of title means you have achieved something. All of this to say that as bad of an artist/rapper/actor can be, it's still an artist/rapper/actor, it just may be an aweful one.
You just got troll'd!
Seriously, what you say is not true. What sucks is the music that's played on the radio, not modern music. This is mostly a result of the deregulation of radio that occurred in the 90s, paving the way for a few giants to own just about everything.
True the "level of suckage" is subjective, but the very fact that a few giants can own just about everything in the deregulated 90's simply supports the argument that the "level of suckage" has increased. While its true that majority of "garage bands" suck, its also true that in the long run the cream of the crop would eventually rise to the top.
On the other hand, if only a minority rules (the major brands largely controlling the radio stations) then you'll get extremely few "good" bands that cater to the masses and then the rest are simply supported due to lack of supply and high demand. In the long run, overall sales decline as the market wises up the scheme ('Most music sucks so I might as well pirate it to try-and-buy!') and you end up with the music business and the RIAA resorting to extreme measures to protect themselves. 'Sales are down! It must be those pirates stealing our sub-par, unpopular music! Sue sue sue!'
I think I have a spare suckometer lying around that you could use. It can measure up to 10 kilo-ashlees.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
"My Sharona" is a great pop song. It's a perfect example of the genre.
And FYI, "Sharona" actually exists. There's an interesting article in Sound on Sound magazine. And Sharona now sells real estate in the LA area. She has a website... http://www.mysharona.com/
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
...now seriously people, look at the time frame. Over those same years, music patrons had to endure things like the Backstreet Boys, n-sync, and *cough*Brittany Spears*cough*... There's why 12.8543% of the people in question stopped buying CDs right there.
I haven't gotten a new cd since Christmas last year, and that was a gift to me, not one I bought myself. Nor have I traded songs. I never needed to -- I already had almost all the music I wanted when I got internet access in 2001. I like blues and classic rock, so most of the artists I want to listen to are dead. Sure, since 2001 I've bought a few cds at Amazon.com, but that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 in 5 years, I guess. All of the music files on my computer were ripped from my cds. They claim that makes me a thief, ripping files from cds I legally purchased? Tough. I'd have to be an absolute fool to give a damn about pleasing them since they're not doing anything for me.
So this is an issue that pretty much doesn't apply to me. But with their draconiuan tactics, even if a blues-rock guitarist as good as Hendrix were to suddenly be singed by a company in the RIAA I wouldn't buy his or her cds. Just because they want to screw me doesn't mean I'm going to bend over for it. That's the RIAA's real problem -- they want to screw people over for as much as possible and keep saying they're losing money, but who in their right mind cares about them? They've made it blatantly clear that they're going to screw you over even more if you support them; they're not offering you anything in return for supporting them in any way.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
economies of scale, fuckwit.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
At least that's how it has worked for me with comics. An increase in the comics I download has resulted in a direct correlation of an increase in the amount of comics I buy (HINT: Before I started downloading I bought 0 comics).
I don't see why the same can't be said for the music industry. I'd say the reality is that something else has increased in the years that this study looked at. How about an increase in music just sucking? Naaah. COULDN'T be that.
Just because variable A (e.g. owning a computer) and variable B (e.g. buying less music) occur together does NOT mean that either one necessarily caused the other. This study proves nothing useful, regardless of its validity. Even if you could show that people who actually download music tend to pay for it less, you still have not proved that downloading harms music sales. This is because correlational studies (such as the one FTA) do not rule out additional variables (e.g. socioeconomic status).
Notice the earth getting hoter and hoter?
Come on, someone gotta try this, I would love to see the correlation between Global Warming and decreased CD purchases.
Yes, 100%
I can only take the case study of one person, namely myself, but I'm sure others will have had similar experience.
When I was a teen I used to regularly buy entertainment. I had stacks of CDs, PC games, even VHS, and then later DVD but I was a late adopter. I even bought windows.
When those first generation CD corrupting techniques started to come out to prevent you from playing on computers I stopped buying all CDs. Wasn't a conscious decision, I just didn't want to take the effort to find which ones were defective. Napster, Kazaa et al were offering a superior product so I went for that.
Game copy protection never really bothered me, from monkey island code wheels to the first generations of things like safedisc. Starforce was the end of it though. After starforce and other dodgy driver type protection I haven't bought a single game because I don't want to take the effort to find which games are defective. Bit torrent offered a superior product, so I went for that.
As for DVDs, I got my player after DeCSS was written. I guess knowing that the region coding was broken made me switch from VHS, hence my late adoption. I still buy DVDs because I find them to be value added most of the time. (Nice boxes, menus quality trumps some divx rip for me)
Windows: All my copies from 95 to 2000 were legal. After product activation I've downloaded XP XP64 and 2k3. These VLK versions are a superior product. I don't even want vista. WGA didn't seem to effect XP64 and 2k3. I use those now.
I didn't think about it at the time, but it seems the openness of the format is proportional to the chance that I'll buy. I was right to do this because I avoided the rootkit thing completely. It's only going to get worse and I'll never own an ipod, zune or nextgen DVD.
I like blues and classic rock, so most of the artists I want to listen to are dead. . . even if a blues-rock guitarist as good as Hendrix were to suddenly be singed by a company in the RIAA I wouldn't buy his or her cds.
I'm still waiting for Badfinger's No Dice to come down from full price. Guess I'll wait forever. Anything touched by the Beatles is always going to command a premium. I've got it on vinyl, so I'm not doing without, but the CD would be nice. I've just about worn out Janis Joplin's Pearl though and for some reason don't have Cheap Thrills. The bastards might get me on those. Sometimes I get weak.
I'll have to cruise through the local used shops and see if anybody's been idiotic enough to trade those in.
KFG
Before i graduated high school, I bought very little music. I was a full time student and a single record was a little more than my weekly allowance.
Fast forward a few years. I'm in the Navy and just bought a killer sound system. I live in the housing with no expenses. I find music I like down the hall. I buy a few LP's. I get a car. I get an LP badly scratched so it skips. I buy a case of good Maxell tapes. Make a set of tapes for the car (Can't play LP's in the car) and another set to play to preserve the original LP quality. I get a few tapes tangled in a friends car tape player. No problem, recreated a replacement. Also traded a few tapes (before lawsuits start, the Statute of Limitations ended about 25 years ago) so yes I pirated music in my youth. It also happened to be my peak music buying years. For the music that I really liked, it was worth buying a pristine copy. I bought the Mobile Sound Fidelity Labs copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at a premimum price. It has been played less than 15 times in the years I have owned it. Each time was to cut a tape from it to preserve the original.
If I didn't have a tape deck and a good way to expand my library by sharing, I would probably have just stuck with radio and not have ever heard of Pink Floyd. File sharing is a marketing tool. Learn to embrace it.
The truth shall set you free!
1. Nicholls State University is in Thibodaux, Louisana...
Ok WTF? You think this is a legitimate argument? So much so that you list it first?
Jesus what a snotty, pointless criticism that has no merit whatsoever. In all seriousness, you have no f-ing right to make such a statement, and it makes you sound like an ass.
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
What's the whole goal behind all this compression on CDs? All of the stereos I use have a volume control. Stupid or not, I'm sure there's some reason they do it.
We then get this mass of creative fiction, published among other places as fact
Umm, it's entirely factual that such a body of creative work exists, and the wiki article explains the phenomena quite accurately. The church itself as being real is another story, but the wikipedia article clearly begins by stating it's a parody religion, yet another True Fact(TM). So what's your problem exactly?
If there was a correlation between CD sales dropping and computer ownership rising, it could also be attributed to, oh, I don't know, SPENDING MORE TIME ON THE COMPUTER? Like gaming, porn, email, research, etc. etc. etc. As "they" say, "40% of all statistics are wrong.". Or was it 30%...who's counting. This is a sign of not getting the big picture. Lucky for us; I hope nobody tells them what is actually going on.
Of course it doesn't! Let's be real here. Most people buy music from groups that they really care about. I know that if a new album from any of my favorite bands comes out I go and buy it. If I were to download anything (which I am not saying that I would) it would be from groups that I would not have bought thier album anyway. Groups that maybe have one song I like and that's it. Not to mention that most people that download whole albums from groups that they like don't have the money to spend to buy the albums anyway. In these cases the music industry would never have seen that money anyhow. Not just that but piracy has always existed even in the 70's my parents would record songs from the radio to 8 tracks to listen to later. It didn't hurt the music industry then any more than id does now. The music industry has just gotten more greedy. Even as a kid I recorded songs from the radio to cassette or even dubbed whole albums from friends. You didn't see the RIAA complaning about it then. I think when I was 10 I must have had 40 or 50 cassettes that I had recorded from friends and no one came knocking on my door saying we are going to sue you for dubbing a copy of someone elses casettes. I think that all of this is really stupid. I mean really all they really would have to do to get people to start buying more music is lower the prices of CD's by like 5 or 6 bucks. Sales would sky rocket if they did that, but instead the want to piss and moan. Not just that but do they really think that they are going to get $100000 out of someone who can't afford to purchase a $18 compact disc? I mean they might see $10000 at $5 a month over several years but in the long run what good is that going to do them? Anyway I am done rambling. zero
Back in the twenties and thirties, records were used as a means to promote concerts and appearences at clubs. Nowadays is the opposite, ie concerts are organized to promote new (or old) record releases. But in the Internet age, the music gets commoditized, ie no-one really appreciates a record enough to pay $20 a piece, because of sheer abundance. Records of the future will be like radio. Buy a song or a record at nominal price (or for free), and come to our club on saturday. As much as the record companies resent that, that's where their future lies.
The motor car killed the horse and cart industry, and the Internet will kill the music industry.
Why not answer the question "Should customers morally purchase CD's in leu of stealing them from the Internet when they are supporting an industry that wastes billions of dollars (both consumer and tax payers) in the legal system in an effort to keep the control they have by squashing any innovative competitors?"
Well, maybe the only 'huge' money-making artiste.
Seriously, there are many bands out there, that only appeal to a smallish part of the listening and record-buying public. These aren't small numbers of people, but they are too small to appeal to Warner etc.
For example, Emma Pollock is great, and her old band The Delgados were just fantastic, but there's no way they would be picked up and screwed by Warner, when Warner can take 5 hot-looking idiots and milk them for all they are worth, and in fact *recoup* all the band's advance by back-charging them for making and distributing and promoting the record. 'Music Fans' will lap it up, then clamor for the next spoonfeed of musical gruel.
The more you look at it, the more the Record Industry at large is just a huge cesspool of fat-cats and scumbags. I've voted with my feet and wallet and listen to and support, and buy mainly indie music. Make an effort to listen to something different.
Try it. You'll like it.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
...if he posted on Slashdot. He makes his bias very clear, and is not reluctant to call file sharing theft and morally wrong. That said, all of these studies suffer from serious methodological problems, no matter which side they swing. Here's an interesting comparison
-Wendy
Ok, I'll agree that taste is a highly subjective thing. And I will agree that every generation has it's legion of crap played on the radio.
However, from an analytical standpoint, with a few exceptions, what is played on the radio has become less musically interesting in recent years.
What do I mean? Well, take for example two vocal groups: the Pussycat Dolls and NSync: the music in the background is pretty boring in both, yes, but the Pussycat Dolls sing in monophony, while NSync actually sung harmony, which is more musically interesting - 5 people singing one note (monophony) vs. 5 people singing 3 or 4 different notes (harmony).
That has been the trend as of late with most vocal groups - get a bunch of people with pretty-ish voices, put a machine behind them, and tell them what note to sing vs. get a bunch of people with some training, put a machine behind them, and tell them what notes to sing.
Again, taste is subjective, but how musically interesting / complex a song is, is not.
theres no place like 127.0.0.1
I know I download my music AND buy the cds afterwards. Downloading gives me the opportunity and flexiblity to sample the music.
That doesn't count, he's lip synching ;-)
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
The results of the study are spurious. The real reason for decreasing cd sales is crappier than ever music starting about the same time as widespread computer use.
Don't hold back so much now. Tell us what you really think.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
when the prices never came down. I watched them on sale at stores long since gone out of business, at prices only a buck more than now. One occasionally listenable song buried under a pile of crappy ones I don't want to be within ten miles of, on a media that children can burn copies of, by bands that your average child could write better lyrics than, still costs pretty much what they did twenty years ago. And the music has actually gotten worse.
I only buy when I really want what the band is putting out. Sadly, Stabbing Westward went out of business as did Creed and that introspective rock phase is over with me anyhow as I reach Crochety Old Bastardhood. I buy Weird Al. I don't really listen to anything other than whatever plays on Yahoo Launchcast and I can skip bad songs in record time. If they bothered making what I want to hear and sold it at a price I found not to be too big an insult, I'd go shopping for music more.
So it's download, listen for a bit, chuck it. I'm not putting money in the pockets of record execs with no musical talent so they can give 5% to the even less talented artists and claim that their huge cut is to pay one-handed women in Guatemala to press the discs and fantastically color blind alleged artists to design liner notes I'm not reading. Maybe some day I'll pick up one of those iPod things, but I'm not going to buy a disc unless it is really important. I've bought a lot in the past, but in the recent time, not so much and I don't miss it.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Definitly, and I think that is largely a symptom of the first problem. As long as the majors have a stranglehold on the airwaves, they'll keep pushing bad music, and that's all most people will be familiar with. There are plenty of real musicians out there whose music would be heard if DJs still played music they were passionate about, instead of having playlists handed to them by headquarters.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
That when you own a computer you have other things to spend your money on? Like your ISP? Software? Games? Video Doctor CD-ROMS? Porn Sites? If someone was spending $50 a month in disposable income, I could totally see spending $7.50 less a month just as a result of owning a PC.
The perspective of youth I sez. Without in any way slighting the band, Nirvana's discovery was a big last nail in the coffin to a huge and vital genre of music then known as 'alternative', and not the diluted swill of angst-lite power pop that term has come to denote. Throughout the Eighties, staffed by ladder climbers, lawyers and hangers-on incapable of innovative thought or musical taste, the major labels one by one bought up all the great, risk taking indie labels and ground them to dust. The RIAA members set out to kill the competition and control distribution, by law in stores and on-line and by graft on the radio. They are the complete moral antithesis of the original reasoning behind the establishment of copyright and a scourge on culture and, by extension, society.
Because people are too busy browsing the web to buy CDs?
http://4sure.co.nz/downloads/MPAA-P2P-advert-small .jpg
:)
Enjoy
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
face it, the huge difference now is we spend a large chunk on dvds. much more than we did on vhs which was obviously a poor value. cds are ok, but still devalued by the fact that they are obviously inferior technology we have to settle for because the riaa scuttled the launch of sacd+dvda with the paranoid drm schemes and overpricing. so now every dollar spent on cd is just a reminder we are buying inferior stuff, and thats just discouraging. not to mention the overpricing that still goes on to some degree. i haven't bought a cd in a while because of this. i wanted to spend on new higher quality audio that would last me for quite some time, but they totally bungled it. the value isn't there anymore, there is no satisfaction, we are buying second best, inferior quality product. and itunes, while a nice concept is even worse in the area of quality. i know most don't care, but i'm sure on some level they realize the cd is not the value it once was. its no longer premium tech, but they still want premium price.
Source: Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
I used to buy lots of CDs, back when I was in school. I had even less money then, so it has nothing to do with my account balance. I like CDs, because I get a) something solid, tangible that I can *own* and have as part of *my property* and b) I get all those nice things like linear notes and photography with it. Yes, I do appreciate those things too.
Not all of my digitally stored music, but a great deal of it, comes directly from those CDs. Ripping them to OGG and playing them on my iAudio M3 (like, the only player left in the world to support OGG?) means they sound practically identical to the original CD audio.
Now, let's consider this "problem" the RIAA is having. They claim that their sales are down due to "piracy", and therefor they invent this stupid thing called DRM. Where do people get their songs from, when they're pirated? It's not from me or my own, personal music collection. It's not from my MP3-player. It's from some dude, over in asia or the middle east, getting a CD and ripping it, before putting it on some major torrentsite. This dude doesn't care about DRM. There's ALWAYS a way to around DRM.
Me, on the other hand, I'll still be buying CDs to hearts content. Until the day the CD won't work. Hmm, I say. My CD-player won't play this CD. It must be this new DRM the RIAA have come up with, that crippled my store-bought CD so that I can't play it. Oh well, lucky that I can just go out on the internet and download it then!
What does this mean? It doesn't mean that the RIAA are shooting themselves in their collective feet. No, it means they're basically blowing their collective brains out with the equivalent of an atomic bomb!
Seriously, if they just for five minutes took their eyes away from those "studies" and actually contemplated exactly what people this whole scheme is going to hurt, I think they'd turn around. No store I know, no company in the history of the world, actually benefited from continually selling customers crap that didn't even work properly. In the end, customers go somewhere else.
Customers go where they're wanted, it's as simple as that, and the RIAA is sure as hell letting people know they really don't want them...
Blog -
I've actually bought far, FAR more CDs since the advent of file sharing technology. Y'see, it used to be that buying a CD meant chancing that each song would be worth the money. I've bought CDs before based on one good song only to find out the rest were crap and I'd be out CDN$15-25. Now, I download the CD, and if it's worth it, I buy it. If not, well, I don't need crap music on my computer, so I delete it.
CD collection before discovering newsgroups (and later BitTorrent): 5. CD collection now that I've been downloading them first and later entirely legally purchased (at their exorbitant prices): 75.
you forgot free radicals (I do not meen the ones in vests packed with explosives but the ones causing cancer).
I hear many people give an argument along the lines of:
"Most people download things they wouldn't bother to buy if they had to, so is it really damaging the music or film industry??".
The thing is, if NO music or films were available to download illegally and for free, people would no doubt realise that in fact they would be willing to pay for a few CDs and DVDs, rather than rely purely on TV, radio or the cinema.
Of course, we live in a world where it IS available. Which invalidates my previous point.
I buy more CDs than I used to before music appeared online. I'm constantly exposed, online, to artists I would never have heard, even if I heard of them, before. I couldn't open the shrinkwrap, and most music stores didn't have anything I listen to on listening stations. And, online, I'm reminded of stuff I always meant to buy and never did. My quick estimate is that in the past 5 years I've bought 4 times as many CDs as I did in the previous 20 years.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
I wouldn't say that music sucks more than before: it's far too subjective. But there is one figure that would be objective and relevant: the number of titles that are released each year.
decreased choice == decreased sale
I don't know where to find these numbers, but I read a few years ago that the choice had decreased more than sales had. It would be interesting to check with recent numbers.
They probably forgot about those, didn't they?
- CD prices doubled during those years
- mainstream producers do not try anything new, so all the offline stores have is crappy or old
- As you said: games already have background music
- Normal CD's don't always play right. If you download and burn you have more certainty of quality
- Et cetera
I believe that if downloading wasn't there most lables and indies simply wouldn't be here anymore.
Anyone buy DVD's? So many of my friends are hooked on DVD's, they buy DVD's and not CD's. Not me... I still buy CD's (I don't even have a standalone DVD player yet) In the past, would many people have bought hundreds and hundreds of video cassetes? No. But DVD movies yes. That's where all the sales have gone. Even music retailers are full of DVD's Next the RIAA will be suing the MPAA
It makes a CD seem louder, therefore better. The logic is totally lost on me, I must be one of those hifi freaks who love "dynamics" and other audio voodoo. The effect can be reduced by using replaygain.
"Does it involve booty dancing videos or angsty emo kids screaming?"
You've hit the nail on the head without realising it. The "suckage" level of music went up at as videos became a more and more important method of promoting an act. Prior to that, non-photogenic artists could become extremely successful if they sounded good, but this changed (albeit gradually) until, some time in the 1990s, an artist's appearance became more important than their musical talent.
"most major stars aren't even really musicians in their own right, but rather manufactured acts."
Manufactured acts are nothing new in the pop world. The so-called "bubblegum pop" that became popular in the late 1950s and 1960s consisted largely of manufactured acts, and most people know that The Monkees were the first manufactured super-group (and also the first one chosen primarily for its appearance due to a TV series being used as a launch vehicle). Few of these acts could play instruments or sing, hence the fact that they either avoided live appearances, or mimed to recordings. Quite a few people thought that they and their usually forgettable music was crap, but this didn't stop it from being very popular in its time, although most of them are now forgotten.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
here
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds... that is when the world will end.
Serving Suggestion: Defrost
So, not having a chance to read the study this morning, does it take into effect the price of CDs, the record company insistance on them being shorter and shorter*, and the Bush Depression?
No, no, don't pay your electric bill, buy a handfull of CD's....
mark
* I have Phil Och's "I Ain't Marchin' Any More", from around '68... and it's about 15 seconds too *long* for a 45 min. tape. How long's your current favorite from the Big Name Band - 27? 25 min? While a CD can hold an hour?
I didn't reply to a specific thread because just about everyone is whining. I'm sick of hearing everyone say there's no good music out there, no good movies, no good games. You're all high! Sure, if you listen to the corporate playlists it's gonna suck. But don't say all media sucks today. Go to Pandora.com or research and find the music you like. Same goes for movies. If I watch HBO it's gonna make me puke. Instead, I use Netflix and even view foreign films if I have to. But saying all content sucks is ignorant.
Sadly, all replaygain can do is save you from having to reach for the volume control if you're listening to musics with different loudness. Dynamic range compression is destructive editing, once it's gone it's gone. It also occurred to me that maybe this is the reason for people saying vinyl sounds better. Maybe they still use old fashioned mastering for old fashioned media?
I think the artists are hurt more. I have several CD's with 3 out of 8 songs that I like and listen too, but the band should be compensated for the crappy stuff too. If not, then bands may not be as creative and only go for the "hit song" that all the kiddies want to hear (read download). I do think it is ridiculous to charge $19 for that CD, even if I liked ALL the songs, and that is the problem, IMHO. If there were more mainstream places that sold virtual CDs for, say $3-$7, with no BS DRM, in multiple formats that the downloader could choose, then I think people would be more apt to pay-up. Will this nick piracy in the bud? Nope, but I bet it would help.
I have the opposite problems, sorta and sometimes. I'm old and my hearing sucks. In a quiet environment, at home, listening to my LPs, I love wide dynamics. That's what real music played in real space tends to have. In most places where I listen to music, though, this isn't the case. In the car or in my slightly noisy office, lower dynamic-range passages get lost in the background noise. I find myself turning my car stereo way up on some quiet things then way back down on loud passages.
A theory: commonly overused compression may be an artifact of poor hearing on the part of the person running the controls, the target audience, or both.
Personally, I wish I had two things. First, I wish I had my hearing back. Second, I wish I had a car radio with user-controllable compression. Yeah, I know it's anti-audiophile, but there are times when I'd just like to hear everything over the ambient noise so I'd *choose* to compress like crazy. If a radio existed with a control to do that (and, of course, the ability to turn it off), I'd pony up some bucks.
Okay, I'll answer that one. I hardly ever download new stuff. Mostly it's old, hard to find music. By that I don't even mean VERY old stuff, I mean 70s/80s. For example... I couldn't find anything by Information Society at any store around here, so I got what I wanted from the net. Or Chris Isaak. Or Alphaville. Or videogame soundtracks. Hell, stores here don't even have Meat Loaf.
Maybe the true danger (for the MAFIAA) of file-sharing is that people will be more likely to check the old stuff, come to a realization - "hey, that's better than the crap they're churning out these days" - and refuse to buy the current trendy crap.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I agree the problem here is the music industry, not the music itself.
I blame a lot of it on music videos and MTV, too. When a band needed promoting in the past, it would go on tour and play a bunch of shows. This required the band to have a "sound" and a "stage presence."
Now when a band needs promoting, they put out videos or become the star of some reality tv show. This requires the band to have a "look" or a "personality."
When I think back on the bands I really like from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, I couldn't tell you the first damn thing about what they're like as people. I couldn't tell you anything about Geddy Lee's personal life except that he's a member of Ayn Rand's Objectivists, and I learned that from reading about the Objectivists, not Geddy Lee.
But Nelly! Oh, I know that Nelly wears that band-aid on his face because one of his buddies is in jail, or something. I know who's dating who in today's R&B scene and I just have to wonder, wtf does any of it have to do with their music? 50 Cent was shot 3 million times, so I know that he's tough and authentic. This, however, does not change the fact the he can't rap worth a damn.
The music industry's main problem is they have completely lost sight of the product that they are attempting to produce. I'm not going to buy a CD because the artist has an interesting personality. I'll buy his biography instead.
- the Blow Leprechaun
One thing I've thought about that I haven't seen mentioned, and if it is, I apologise, is the Baby Boomer segment of society. The record industry has built itself up over the last 4 decades through a lot of sales to the Baby Boomer generation. I'm sure Boomer sales are slowing down as most Boomers have other things to spend their disposable income on. I'm in that weird "non-labelled-Generation" that was born post-Boomer and pre-Xer (1965), and I know that my music-buying habits have slowed down a lot. Has anyone considered that there simply aren't as many consumers in the target audience as there were say, 20 years ago? The impending Baby Boomer retirement is affecting all segments of society, why not record sales as well?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. There are known knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
Wait ... was the study crafted to take into account the demographic shifts during this time period?
Even if we take as a given that file sharing = fewer sales (when most anecdotal accounts say the opposite - the ability to sample music leads to many CD sales), there are two trends I see little mention of.
Trend #1 is the artificial increase in CD sales as people replaced cassette and LP media with CDs. By 2003, I imagine most replacement purchases that are going to be made have already been made, and the sales boost of replacement media would have trickled to almost nothing. These purchases, too, would tend to be "keepers" - CDs people want to keep forever (or they wouldn't buy the same music in a new format) - and not casual purchases, so they would tend not to contribute to the glut of used CDs.
Trend #2 would be remastering. Because the record companies have done one or two rounds of remastering for their big back-catalogue artists, to sell the same thing to people who already own it, there is a glut of used CDs. There are the original CDs and the first round of remasters which people who buy the second round no longer want. This has led to a huge market (half.com, secondspin.com, etc) of used CDs which are sold at a discount so deep that they're normally cheaper than online music purchases, and DRM-free.
Unless a study takes into account the wider demographic trends, what is it telling us?
Plus a lot of the stuff I downloaded from the original Napster in its day was stuff you could not buy in a normal music store - b-sides, rare tracks, etc. I haven't used file sharing in some time, but are these tracks still available? How much shared music is actually purchaseable and not in some way out of print?
Does anyone have the data for the number of library CD checkouts during this time frame? I bet the library checkouts have also increased.
I know the reason I haven't purchased any music CDs in the last few years, its because I absolutely refuse to give them any more money. I am perfectly content listening to the music that I've had for years (its my personal preference for the most part anyway) but those RIAA folks will not get another penny of my money if I can help it.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Back when you could get new cd's for 11 or 12 bucks I bought em like crazy. Now days? not so much.
Just FYI, Dr. Michel's written on similar subjects before:
. cfm - Hollywood, Values, and P2P Lawsuits by James L. Gattuso and Norbert J. Michel, Ph.D.
o logy/bg1790.cfmInternet - File Sharing: The Evidence So Far and What It Means for the Future by Norbert J. Michel, Ph.D. August 23, 2004 (Backgrounder #1790.) - Internet file sharing threatens artists' ability to sell their music through digital downloading because the digital files available from artists are virtually indistinguishable from those.
o logy/EM835.cfm - Self-Defense: A Different Tune on Copyright by James L. Gattuso and Norbert J. Michel, September 25, 2002 (Executive Memorandum #835) - in defense of Representative Howard Berman's radically different approach to solve the digital copyright violation problem: allowing copyright owners to use digital self-help measures to ...
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Regulation/wm609
November 11, 2004 (WebMemo #609.) - MPAA's filesharing lawsuits are a sensible alternative to regulating technology.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternetandTechn
http://new.heritage.org/Research/InternetandTechn
they'll never find me
It has been proven that there is a distinct correlation between the amount of disposable income and how much money a person spends on entertainment, media, and all other non-essential purchases. (No, I don't have a link to back this up, but common sense will tell you that when you don't have much money, you're going to spend it primarily on food and rent.) One of the largest groups of people with disposable income is teenagers (i.e. part-time job although Mommy and Daddy are still paying all the bills -- or Mommy and Daddy just keep forking out the cash).
Now, the people who were teenagers in the late 80's and the 90's (the heyday of CDs) are now adults burdened with the responsibilities of raising kids, paying mortgage/rent and other bills, and keeping their family fed while at the same time hopefully putting some funds away for retirement and their kids' educations. They have little funds to go and buy new music. They often don't like the music on the radio as it's mostly targeted at a younger demographic, so the urge to buy the stuff that they hear just isn't there. But they still have all the CDs from their teenage/disposable-income years. So instead of re-buying the dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of songs that they like in (usually DRM-ed) digital format, they'll take a little time and rip all of their music to mp3 and play it on the player of their choice. This is usually the most economical way for them to listen to their old music on a new device. Oh, and although the RIAA seems to have forgotten, this is also totally legal.
Essentially, the people who were the main purchasers of CDs in their heyday have moved on to a new demographic and are unlikely to buy what they consider to be the crap that's on the radio. But they're still able to listen to the music that they had previously purchased on the newest devices without re-buying the media. (Note that this option never used to be available -- if you wanted something on CD that you used to have on record or audio cassette, it was usually cheaper, less time-consuming, and produced a better audio quality to go out and buy the CD.)
The majority of teenagers in what used to be the CD-buying demographic are downloading their music. Even if every teenager spent their disposable income on music from online stores instead of downloading stuff for free, CD sales would still go down. This doesn't mean that the music industry is making less money (after all, a lot of the info online points to rising profits); it just means that CDs don't sell as well anymore. But the RIAA sees the decline in the sale of CDs and other physical media as the decline of the music industry in general.
Give me a break.
I do think it's a legitimate argument since it ties in with #2 on the list. I'm guessing that you're a Nicholls State University alumn....
/.
Calling people names is never constructive and I really don't see a reason to curse at people on
Perhaps you should remove your head from your transverse colon....
Another 2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
The attitude these people have just boggles the mind sometimes.
Not all random numbers are created equally.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Correlation does not imply causation.
So, in other words...
Correlation does not imply causation.
Sure, declining CD sales may be correlated with usage of P2P software. However, it's inconclusive whether CD sales dropped BECAUSE of increased usage of P2P software, or if P2P software use increased because of unwillingness to purchase CDs, potentially due to the cost of purchasing CDs or other factors.
The point is that ultimately, even if you COULD perfecty correlate P2P usage increases with retail purchase declines, you would NOT be able to establish a causal relationship in one direction or the other.
Now with more sodium!!
The library carries a surprisingly complete collection of music. You can also usually go out of system for a particular title. I have not yet met a CD I couldn't rip. And I get the satisfaction of knowing I screwed the RIAA out of a few bucks.
Ah... It is a good feeling.
If you think 'music nowadays sucks', then you probably haven't really seen much new music. Either that, or you've already fossilized, and your music tastes are stuck in the past. Radio sucks. Get over it, and go out there to find the new places where you can find good music.
My favorite is eMusic. Songs without DRM (straight mp3), from tens of thousands of independant artists going it alone or with smaller labels. Many of them suck (Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap), but there's definitely some cool artists out there that you won't find on any radio, or even in many stores. At less than 25 cents per song (at their lowest and least-efficient plan) you really can't go wrong trying out various artists.
Another option is Garage Band, where you can download music for free, as long as you review the music so the artist can see what you liked or hated about it. I haven't looked at it much, but I bet there's a ton of cool artists, mixed in with all the idiots too... that's what reviews are for, and you can see the artists that everyone else liked.
Music isn't getting worse... the big distributers are. Fuck 'em. Do an end run around the major labels and ClearChannel, and look at places like eMusic and GarageBand for your new music. The major labels are just gonna have to deal with the fact that they no longer have an oligopoly anymore, and they're gonna have to deal with a (*gasp!*) value and price driven market like everyone else.
The Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Stop listening to the radio!
Stop watching MTV!
Find your music elsewhere!
More good music is available today than 10 or 20 years ago. You're just looking in the wrong place.
No actually, I'm not an alum. I'm just someone who happened to notice your blatantly elitist, moronic attack on a university and decided to call you on it. You can claim it is valid, but you're wrong, and you sound more like an ass because of it.
/."
"Calling people names is never constructive and I really don't see a reason to curse at people on
Who cursed at you? I called you an ASS, as in a donkey.
Perhaps you should stop pretending that you're anything other than a vitriolic hatemonger who can only get social interaction by posting imflammatory comments on a web board.
Do yourself a favor, save the response. You'll just prove me right (again).
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?