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.'"

Comments

Re:What about : increased suckage ==decreased sale

[Mprx]

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).

maybe habits have changed and quality has declined

[grapeape]

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.

Re:The music sucks

[Bull SR]

Well, the way people are exposed to music has changed during the time period in question. Consolidation in the radio industry has led to terrible choice for the consumer. The perceived suckage isn't so much that good music isn't getting made, but it's harder for the non-aficionado to discover the signal in all that noise.

So, now we have the Internet to discover the good stuff, along with satellite radio. The Internet user downloads what he discovers at time of discovery, so no need to purchase a CD. I think the average satellite subscriber probably does buy CDs based on what they hear. However, when you have channels giving you the variety that you crave and you are already paying for it, why would you need to recreate that library when you are paying to have it on tap?

So, we have driven the discriminating listener to actively pursue their musical interests, which is probably lowering the frequency that they bother to explore, and they are possibly already paying for that privilege. All of this leads to decreased likelihood of follow-on CD sales.

The notion that an album needs to exist as a whole seems to be a casualty of this change as well.

Re:What about : increased suckage ==decreased sale

[gtada]

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.

Re:What about : increased suckage ==decreased sale

[micromuncher]

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.

Rock vs Pop

[static0verdrive]

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.

What about married gen Xers?

[zenasprime]

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? :)

Re:Let's talk about plastic discs holding 12 songs

[bennini]

i wouldnt go so far as to say that they are crap.

1. CDs are actually quite durable if you think about it. most can be put through horrible abuse and they still play. and even if they do start to skip, you can often copy the disc using error correction and you end up with a perfect new disc.
2. CDs hold quite a lot of storage for how cheap they are. they may "only" fit about 12-15 songs on an album but thats because each 5 minute WAV file sampled at 22khz in stereo is roughly 50 MB. i can't see the music distributors pushing music on memory sticks anytime soon. that would just boost the cost even more.
3. CDs function as a good media for storing the music over longer periods of time. if you were to rip all your music in full quality to your HDD, most with a decent music collection would require 1TB or more of storage space. its easier to let a friend borrow a couple CDs than it is to hand him a harddrive
4. for audiophiles, the "alternative" (i.e. compressed digital music) is total crap. anyone with a decent speaker system (and i dont mean Inifinity's that you bought at Circuit City in your doors and reardeck) knows that the melody/music itself is really only about 50% of the whole package. Imaging is equally important but is something people never acknowledge (much less know about).
   with a proper soundstage, you can easily A) pinpoint the location of the instruments/vocals within a 3dimensional space, B) decipher what sort of an environment the music was recorded in, and C) hear minute nuances such as lips rubbing the microphone, fingers sliding on strings, etc. with "alternative" forms of music distribution, the majority of the aforementioned is lost. get someone with a nice stereo to show you what music REALLY sounds like....and you'll never go back to an mp3 again. So for this, CDs are great. and that's why i don't buy music on iTunes. Until they get a lossless format, sure, ill download the free song of the week, but overall, no thank you.

as for the article, i think one thing the RIAA often forgets to mention is that while music sales are "slowing"....DVD sales are at an all time peak. people are opting to spend their money on a more "sensory" experience (with visuals and audio).

Throw in the fact that the average american teenager has become so superficial they are only interested in crap music anyways, its no wonder they arent willing to buy the latest britney or Juvenile CD. they may find the music amusing, but i think honestly they know that its something they will get sick of within a couple weeks.

Time is also a major factor. i remember sitting in front of my dad's CD player when i was young with a set of nice headphones and listening to a whole ladysmith black mambazo album or aerosmith classics live. This is not a typical way for a youngster to spend their time these days.

The RIAA has a relatively antiquated (and pessimistic) way of looking at things. and while there may be studies that show that there has been a decline in CD sales since the advent of P2P programs, one thing is for sure: the music industry is interested in one thing only -- making money...and if they were honestly losing money (as these studies insinuate they are), they wouldn't be in the business anymore.

Re:Does File-Sharing Really Hurt the Music Biz?

[Kamots]

I haven't read the study... like you I don't know where it's at.

I will admit that my motivation behind poking at this is due to it not matching what I believe, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of facts; you are correct, I had misread, the study was comparing computer users to computer users.

However, I'm still poking at it... :)

For instance, I'm questioning the assumption that "the motivation to buy other things instead of CDs was the same in 2001 as in 2002" This seems to be an unfounded assumption. The average consumer did not necessarily view the relative worth of CDs to other forms of entertainment as staying the same. The point I made about computer ownership opening other forms of entertainment up is still valid. As an example lets take computer games. If the average consumer changes his/her balance of the relative worth of CDs versus computer games in favor of games (and video gaming acceptance in American culture has been on the rise...), then you will see computer-owning consumers spend more on video games and less on music. However the computer-less consumer won't, as the computer game holds no value to them. Thus you'll see computer owners spend less on music than previously and computer-less consumers spend the same.

Or this may well be related to people with computers downloading music... however the point is that we don't know which of these it is, or if it's something else entirely.

Real World example..

[Technician]

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.

Re:What about : increased suckage ==decreased sale

[BenEnglishAtHome]

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.