Slashdot Mirror
Study Finds P2P Has No Effect on Legal Music Sales
MBrichacek writes "The Journal of Political Economy is running the results of a study into P2P file-sharing, reports Ars Technica. The study has found that, contrary to the claims of the recording industry, there is almost no effect on sales from file-sharing. Using data from several months in 2002, the researchers came to the conclusion that P2P 'affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.' 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, according to the study, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. While the RIAA has been blaming that drop (and the drop in subsequent years) on piracy, given the volume of file-sharing that year the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total. Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.'"
Everytime a new study come yet the results differs. /. crowd!
Who uses P2P for something else than piracy ?
Be honest
Smile, don't click...
Impossible! Blaming filesharers is so 2006.
Is this not what people on slashdot have been saying for years!?
Something interesting to note is that this paper is dated March of 2004 (not too new as Ars Technica reported) and it causes me great wonder why I've never come upon this before (or why it's never been cited in the news). I recall reading tons of reports from one of the Associations where piracy is proven to hurt record sales but several years after this one is published, I finally see it.
For those of you interested in the data, pages 34 on contain some very interesting data whereby downloads are broken down by song, album, country & genre (in case everyone was trying to pin illegal downloads on those damned teeny boppers).
For those of you who wish to question the sample size, see Section B. "File Sharing Data and Album Sample" of the paper. You will also be interested in reading Appendix A in which they call into question their own sample sizes and weigh in on how accurate they might or might not be. To quote the paper for some more detail on the downloads samples, To quote the paper on album sales samples, Don't kid yourself, this is a difficult study to do. Both the downloads and album sales must be sampled and modeled correctly to draw correct conclusions. In the end, it would be hard to verify/discredit any studies done on this topic since A) consumers are human and therefore erradic & B) macro economics still isn't well understood.
Now, for those of you who just want the bottom line at the end of the paper, And, from the very end of the paper, Yeah, that's right, the research concluded that "file sharing probably increases aggregate welfare." I'll bet if we all got drills & augers, we could get that into the brains of the people running the RIAA & MPAA.
My work here is dung.
That means they should give back some of the money they've confiscated in lawsuits over their 'losses'.
As if the world were fair.
I never believed that P2P would have a significant effect on the sales of records. Let's face it: most of us will simply go out and buy a record if we really want to have it. If we don't really want to have it, we may still pirate it. But we would definitely not go out and hand over a hunk of cash for it. Most of the music that we warez, I believe, would be the music that we wouldn't otherwise buy. Same goes for movies, games, everything.
It's easy for the large publishers to complain and act as though their sales are declining due to the increasing amount of P2P networking, but you might as well say that global warming is the cause. Afterall, neither have ever been proven to have a huge effect on record sales...
No shit, Sherlok. Condoms have no effect on birth rates either.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
If god himself passed down this information on gleaming tablets 20 miles on a side, the RIAA and the MPAA wouldn't believe it for a second. Likewise the reverse; downloaders don't believe that piracy hurts legitimate artists, and they won't no matter what the evidence says.
Frankly, it's obviously somewhere in the middle. I doubt that p2p does much damage to music sales, but it has to have SOME impact...I mean, when I get some stupid pop song stuck in my head and I download it instead of buying it, that's a few bucks that won't go to the damn RIAA, and I have enough disposable cash that I might have bought it, if I had no other option.
On the flip side, I tend to download songs off CDs I already own, so I don't have to get out the sharpie to scribble over the stupid data track, so I can rip it. That's the definition of a no damage situation.
Neither side is ever going to compromise on this; the **AA's are as convinced we're screwing them as we are that they're screwing us. Eventually they'll just wither away and die due to changing distribution models, and that will be the end of that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The people who base their opinions on available facts have suspected this for years.
Most people prefer supposition and believing what's "obvious" and they will continue to ignore the facts anyway.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
..the tough find a scapegoat.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
architec7ure. My another special asshole about.' One lube or we sell arrogance was
RIAA states that only studies with they have paid for are accurate.
Weapon manufacturing has no effect on world peace.
Maybe people are tired of being sold mass marketed crap. They should try marketing their music to increase erectile function and virility. That will at least get the Asian market. Rhino horns and shark cartilage are in short supply.
This is of the same caliber "scientific studies" that the tobacco industry came up for decades to "prove" no significant correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Or that the oil industry and automakers are coming up with now to cast doubt on the causes of global warming.
What about 10 percent lost CD sales in one year? After several consecutive years of similar losses? Big retailers like Tower Records going out of business, with nobody lining up to take their place? Oh, there could be lots of explanations. How about bad music! That's the ticket. Apparently the only choices consumers now have are George Michaels and Britney Spears and that's crap so that's 90 percent of the reason right there.
Let's all have our cake and eat it too. We can all steal all the music we want and expect a renaissance in the pop music industry with a ceaseless churn of creative energy and hundreds of exciting bands. Right, let me know when that happens.
If I hadn't heard American Edit, there's not a chance in hell I'd have bought the real American Idiot album on CD. Just my 2e anecdote...
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
You know what would shift those 74 million unsold CDs? Robot monkeys. A free robot monkey with each CD. Ones wearing little black leather jackets for the rock CDs, pink tutus for girl bands, green hair for punks. You could call them Andy The Happy Robot CD Monkey & His Fab Monkey Pals if you like.
My pleasure.
The music consumer has wised up, and many of us sample music we are interested in on MP3, WMA, whatever, and find out what is good and what sucks BEFORE spending our money. When I find good music, I generally purchase the CD, but I'll be dammed if I am going to part with money for a disk full of B-sides.
Record companies got greedy, when they could have made a fortune selling CDs for 7-10 dollars.
Right fucking NOW, some stupid record exec is reading the report, and in his mind, sees it as another opportunity to RAISE prices.
Fuck um.
Filesharing HAS caused a drop in CD sales.
Because:
A. File sharing has caused RIAA lawsuits
B. RIAA lawsuits have pissed off customers
C. Pissed off customers look for other things to buy instead of CD's.
A->B->C so A->C
On a more serious note.... This reminds me of the global warming debate.. First you have those that say it's happening and those that say it isn't. Then enough studies come out that Global warming happening becomes the prevailing idea. So the next debate is Well, humans are causing it/it's natural. and so forth.
So we've seen the Cd sales are diminishing debate, CD sales ARE going down, now we're looking at why, the debate is File shareing / not file shareing / impact of file shareing.
I will be quite happy when the debate turns to "Your artists are CRAP, CD sales is dropping because the consumer is moving to buy independent artists' work, where they can find decent music."
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
tired arguments 1. Therefore there ttok precedence keed to be Kreskin
That's the comment I got from various American youths. The music they are interested in has no long term value, unlike the Beatles/Stones/et al. Partly this has to do with the fact that most of modern pop is programmed on a cold computer and utterly devoid of real feeling; I get the feeling that while the kids are diggin' modern music at the same time they are unable to form a true connection to it, in the same way a human can't truly fall in love with a computer, because one knows it's an inanimate object at the end of the day. (And yes, I have read Isaac Asimov's robot story on the subject)
When I listen to music I'm partly looking to be wowed by the performance of at least some part of the piece. Current electronically generated and produced pop has no real performances to speak of, or if there is one can't be sure whether it's a sample of some old record thrown into the mix.
The point to all of this is that people now feel no reason to want to own the tracks they think they like (so that they can be listened to years down the road with fond memories) as music has become as commoditized and disposable as Gillette razors - only meant to be used for a certain period of time before being chucked in the bin.
There's a lot more to the problem of course, but the above does play an important part. The record companies need to produce artists (and they are out there) who produce real music and do it well. Fiddling with MIDI settings all day isn't producing music - it's computer programming.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.
You mean besides the non-music industry perception that they contain music people are not really interested in or are at a price people are not willing to pay?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Not much.
I was never a huge music buyer or listener really, mostly I just relied on friends music collections to carry me through. Though I understand how some folks get completely wrapped up in their music collections, for me it was mainly background noise to what I was really focusing on. As such, a 1/2 decent radio station would suffice when no friends with massive music collections were around.
Since the p2p downloading craze and the direct download craze that led up to it...though my music collection itself has increased quite a bit, my buying patterns are about the same. Essentially, I have my own personal perfect radio station.
Conversely, I do directly attribute P2P with significantly increasing my spending in one area: live concerts.
Though my effort/money put toward accruing music hasn't changed at all, my exposure to music has vastly increased with the ease of "collection" that p2p has brought. I've always loved a live show, so much so that it probably explains my aversion to recorded music. I love the little flaws in a live performance that gives the music a personality that is often stripped away by significant remastering at the recording studio.
Since a show costs anywere from 10-60 dollars and I'm going to more then ever and in genres I never considered before.....I'd say the music industry is profiting form me more then ever.
Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.
That's the excuse. Sorry, people are buying less CDs because so many of the new CDs pushed by major labels are cookie-cutter copies of other CD's that sold well. Maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age, but all the music *does* sound the same to me.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
9 out of 10 CD's the RIAA is likely tracking contain crap for music that no one is interested in listening to, not to mention how overpriced CD's are now. When CD's were introduced they were about $17 each. During their prime the price dropped to $13 or so, now they are on the way back up. The Internet has made more music available to people than was ever available at any traditional "record store", and much of it is truly free. What CD's teens I know are buying are split probably 50-50 new music and music that is 20 or so years old.
The argument has moved on a little since then, but not a lot. Notably, the music industry "hit back" with a paper called "Piracy on the High 'C's", who's central contention was that students did spend less on music. A barely mentioned acedemic paper that I discovered when researching the issue mayself had a response to that: older people who pirate buy more, and younger people buy less.
This is probably something to do with income, IMO, together with the effect that nurturing an interest has upon one's purchases. Links and further analysis can be found in a post that I made in an old journal of mine.
Wikileaks, no DNS
For all the CD's unsold and rotting on the shelves... they are assembly-line crap... like fast food for the masses, it is bland. Pay attention and you will see that a lot of what kids are listening to is... old fogey music! When I was a kid, I would never have listened to my dad's music because ours was so much better. Now, my son and his friends are hitting me up for ACDC, Led Zeppelin and many other old gems... in fact last night I turned him on to... the Cars!
There is some good indie music out there, but the major companies shun it while pushing out their canned pap. This is what is on the shelves rotting (as it should). No wonder their primary source of funds seems to be lawsuits right now.
No wonder the Police have chosen to reunite. The rockers with walkers are making a killing because the industry today is creatively bankrupt. Bring on Jagger, the Stones and their musical wheelchairs.
contrary to the claims of the recording industry
Remember, that is also contrary to the claims of almost everyone on slashdot too... So many times I've heard that P2P increases sales. Since everyone has an "I found this band and bought the album" story.
Their record sales plummeted because the music they're selling sucks. And because the music sold before is now available in much greater amounts, whether on "classic" (rock/R&B/80s/oldies) radio, much less destructible (than vinyl/tape) CDs, and even downloads that don't get lost as much.
The music biz used to be mainly in the business of finding artists coming from the mass of people, trying them out before "focus groups" (live audiences) who selected themselves from the cultural word of mouth, and cultivating them for a decade or more. The artists getting the most continuing investment were those most successful in either a live audience, or record sales even in a regionally highly varied market, feeding back with radio play. A natural coevolution of the artists and the audience, when mediated best by the music biz people engaged into both.
Now the biz thinks it's smarter than the market. Creating fake "artitst" who are really just spokesmodels in videos for a recorded product tied in with cobranded products like so much anime breakfast cereal. The model is to create as many products that can be most controlled as possible, within a narrow range of those styles best "understood" by the marketers, pushing more money than brains through the network of middleman connections, and maximizing the profit from anything that looks like it's "hitting". Meanwhile, these "smarter than the market" marketers are dumber than ever before, especially about music and the mass of people in the market, because the smarter ones have already fled the sinking ship a decade ago.
It's like the factory farms that breed mad cow. No wonder the music sounds like a soundtrack to the cows' death dance.
--
make install -not war
One possible flaw in the study is that consumers are often not interested in entire albums. If the data is being presented in album units, and most of the download traffic is around popular songs from those albums, that explains some of the discrepancy.
[ ]Because the Music Sucks
[ ]Because collectors are mostly done converting their Cassettes to CD format
[ ]Because the Industry is putting out less music
[ ]All of the above
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
...music currently sucks hard. The reason for falling sales figures is because the stuff the they are foisting on us sucks. Stop trying to create music acts out of thin air with payola and hard sell promotion. The music acts that are worth listening to will emerge on thier own and if they are worth listening to, people will gravitate to them. The music will sell and everyone wins. I stopped listening to the radio since even the stations I like (WAAF in Boston for the most part) don't even play the stuff I like anymore.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
The CD format isn't going to be here forever. How often do you pull out those 8-tracks or cassette tapes and listen to music? CD will eventually go by the wayside much like these have done. Also note that distribution is the right of the copyright owner. Consider a world without CDs and prolific, legal file sharing. Who's buying music now? MP3 files are free for the taking so why purchase another copy via iTunes? There is no correlation in this study between downloading files and actually going out and purchasing the album. There is some anecdotal evidence that shows some people do in fact purchase a CD after downloading the album but that's all there is. One could just as easily go to their local record store and listen to any album available in the store and purchase it if they liked it. Zune's DRM could make it possible to listen to a song for a couple times and purchase it if they liked it or delete it from their MP3 player if they didn't. By virtue of the fact that neither of these is largely accepted practice, it's far more likely that people "just want shit for free". They view musicians as ultra-rich people with more money then they know what to do with and downloading their music isn't going to hurt them any. Legalizing P2P is going to destroy the market for music sales in a digital world because it's going to make it non-existent.
If the music industry would put out GOOD music by GOOD artists, than downloading will only help them . The quality of ripped music is terrible, MP3 compression is crap and damaging to the ear... but if the lyrical content is good, the melodies or beats are good, then hearing a crappy MP3 should encourage the end user to buy the music. I know this is the case for me. The same goes for movies. I think the RIAA and MPAA should focus on the quality of their products before pointing the finger at P2P about the lack of music purchasers and movie-goers... also, when times change, the way people spend their money changes as well, and in a world of instant downloads its simply easier to pay $1 and download a song... but if thats the case, it would be nice to not be tied to a specific piece of hardware to hear it.
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
There are people in the world who will not buy music if they can download it for free.
These people naturally assume that everyone else is just like them. They say "why would you buy the cow if you are getting the milk for free? I wouldn't." So they claim that filesharing is the end of music sales.
The FACT, however, is that there are ALSO people in the world who will buy CDs even though they could download them for free. The reasons vary, but may include a genuine desire to support the artist, a preference for the solid-tangible object to connect them to the artist, a tendency to impulse-buy music while out shopping, and so on. Regardless of the reasons, however, it is undenyable that such people not only exist, but that they are plentiful and that they are still buying.
The artists, and the market, will do just fine in the face of widespread filesharing. We don't need to destroy personal freedom in the name of protecting the market.
If I like a song enough to want a local copy of it, my first step is to check iTunes. Usually I find the song (recent example: Yell Fire by Michael Franti) and its associated album. If I like the other songs enough, I buy the whole thing, otherwise just the one. However...
If the song is NOT on iTunes (recent example: Justified & Ancient by Tammy & the KLF), I click the icon I keep right next to iTunes... Poisoned. It's exceedingly rare not to find exactly what I want on P2P. As far as I'm concerned, I made a good faith effort to pay for it, and my conscience is clear.
"Big retailers like Tower Records going out of business"
There's this thing, I don't know if you've heard about it? It's called "the internet", and while you may be a bit old and codgery to use it, kids today buy *everything* online.
Plus, there's this other thing that the record companies do? It's called "screw retailers". Here's how it works:
1) Charge Tower (and others) > $10/CD wholesale
2) Tower has to charge $18 to $22 to make it worthwhile.
3) Meanwhile Sony/BMG is selling direct to consumers this month for $5.33/CD through their record club
4) Online stores have less overhead, so they sell for $12-14/CD to the consumer
5) The Internet makes used CD sales viable (I buy most of the CD's I can't get from Sony/BMG this way).
So you tell me how Tower was going to make a profit when Sony will sell cheaper to the consumer than they will the brick and morter store.
It's pretty clear you have an old-man's attitude.
Here's another tip... The phone companies are ripping you off for your wired phone line, too. Dont' think about it too hard. This new fangled stuff might blow your mind.
When I bought CDs it was usually just for 1-2 songs then maybe another 1-2 grew on me, the rest of them I usually skip past. iTunes was great when you could buy the individual tracks, but since one of their last deals, in order to get that 1-2 songs I like they made it so I have to download the entire album. I'm not a big music person either, I can't name you bands and songs, but I know what I like and when they won't easily let me get what I want their way, I'm going to look for another way.
OK, here's a shameless plug for local talent... There's lots of great music in the clubs, lounges, open mics and hundreds of other venues around your house (unless you live in Antarctica). Here's a couple videos from a local singer that was filmed in Coral Springs, FL just a couple miles from my house:
Moving On
Original
perhaps they only measured broadband activity in and around my desktop... ?
music sales are subject to the same economic highs & lows like anything else, even more so since music and video are (should be) on the lower end of people's priorities since food, shelter, paying the bills and other more important items comes first...
if the MPAA/RIAA & music/movie industry can not figure this out then they should be going the way of the dinosaur (extinct)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Apparently what the RIAA fears from piracy is not direct losses. They've been shamelessly inflating those numbers for years. What they fear is that piracy allows users a greater preview, which makes them smarter, which makes them less likely to buy the crap that's on the shelves.
Back when I was a kid, the way I "found" new bands was to go to the CD store and randomly buy something. Either that, or the radio. Nowadays I'd be ashamed to buy music sight-unseen (that is, unheard) but it used to be normal behavior.
Filesharing, or tape trading before P2P networks, has always been limited to a specific age range of people whose time is not yet worth the money they save by stealing music. This will be true as long as music isn't free (not something I'm advocating, BTW) so music companies should accept it and move on.
Bootleg trading, of course, is a different story.
I think one issue everyone's missing is the availability of non-mainstream music to almost anyone with an internet connection. Between Myspace, Wikipedia, affordable broadband, and the increasing hunger for new and exciting things, kids and young adults are finding increasingly numerous places to discover and enjoy music in amounts that they wouldn't have been able to find ten years ago. A lot of what we're seeing is the spreading out of disposable income, and the only people who are pissed about that are the ones who hold the rights to the mass-produced, lowest common denominater type drivel that MTV touts. If anything, we're giving more money and exposure to artists than ever before.
I don't buy albums. I buy songs. I'm not going to spend $17 on crap + 2 good tunes. I'd love to buy the 2 good tunes online for $.99 each, but because of DRM restrictions I'm forced to use alternative avenues.
In economics, it's rather difficult to run experiments. For example, we can't ask President Bush to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime 100 more times so that we can get statistically significant data on its effects on unemployment! The next best thing is to look for "natural experiments" that generate data that is just as good.
In this case, the authors wanted to experiment with the supply of P2P "servers". If the number of people offering to share P2P songs increases, then they hoped to measure the corresponding decrease in music sales. Naturally, they didn't actually run this experiment -- the RIAA would have objected to the researchers engaging in piracy!
So, they did the next best thing -- a natural experiment. When German students have their vacation, they share more files. This makes it easier to download songs in the US. They found easier access to P2P file sharing in the US did not cause a large drop in music sales.
Of course, this natural experiment isn't as good as a real experiment:
- German vacations aren't randomly assigned -- but the authors argue that since German holidays vary in each state, that there is enough variation to get robust results.
- The "German vacation" effect on the ease of downloading songs might
be too small to measure anything reliably. Germans P2P users supply only one sixth of all songs that US users download. This "experiment" might be akin to doing a drug trial with a very small dose of medicine. In this case, you need to collect a lot of data to reliably measure the effects.
There are many other concerns discussed in the article. But, this is probably the best evidence we are ever going to get.I buy about 16 or so CD's a year. Generally 4 batches of 4 or so. But I have to order them online from Europe (psyshop.com in Germany - great folks run it!), since no stores in Canada sell anything from the labels I buy. Now that's not 100% true, there is a couple of artists I listen to (Delerium, Conjure One) that are actually Canadian, and another artist (Toby Marks ala Banco De Gaia) who has distribution here (though I now buy CD's directly from him, get them sooner than waiting for the release).
I pretty much stopped buying the drivel put out my the major labels in the early 90's, stopped listening to the radio (di.fm FTW!), and most of the concerts I go to are old bands coming back for the umpteenth time - though I did see Coldplay's 2nd tour which was darn good!
To my mind the music *business* has turned into just that - a machine designed to reap the greatest money from the consumer for the least amount of effort/talent/artistry. There are tons of fantastic artists out there, but the vast majority of them record on little tiny labels (twisted.co.uk, ultimae.com are two that I consider noteworthy).
I admit to doing a bit of Nabstering in my day, but honestly all I was looking for were extended mixes of 80's tunes that are not available anywhere. I would not even consider pirating/downloading any of the music I listen to all the time if I can buy it on CD.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
But just so we're clear.
I'm still going to be able to download my Spice Girls and Britney Spears music, right?
You would be shocked to find out how many geezers like me are sucking stuff off torrent sites, that if you could even find it in stores, you might have to choose between CDs or eating.
Everyone I know who does file sharing can't afford to buy the albums anyway.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I have been saying this since the beginning of the whole dirty business! This is very obvious and I don't understand why more judges don't just throw this crap right out the window unless it's a case where the person is pirating music and selling it. Other than that there are very few cases, if any, where an individual downloading music to listen to it is going to hurt the record industry. The reasons are as follows.
1. A person whom downloads music via PVP, most likely, does not have the money to purchase the music in the first place. Therefore, the music industry never would have gained any profit from them to start with. They will however gain profit from the person still listening to the music because they will introduce their friends (providing they have any) that have money to the music whom will in-turn go out and purchase the music because they like the band and want to support it (providing they are honest)
2. He or she wants to preview the music before deciding that the band is worth supporting by purchasing their album. In this case if they are honest they will purchase the album later if they decide that they like it.
3. They don't have a credit card to purchase music over a "legal pay service" because they are too young / their parents won't do it for them etc, etc, etc.
The list could go on for infinity the only case I see where it may actually hurt the music industry is where a person downloads music and then sells it! All other cases should be thrown out!
Over the last 15 years I have significantly reduced my purchasing of music / movies. This is not due to p2p, rather my life is being filed with other things. If anything at all, I have actually bought music that I would otherwise not even have considered.
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
Now if I had to guess, I'd guess that P2P does hurt a part of the industry. That part being the "throw-away" music. The CD's people normally buy because they are "hot" and getting pumped out of radio stations and MTV like fat kids into a ice cream buffet. The kind of music that has 2 or 3 "singles" on the CD, and 10-12 fillers. The kind of music that 6 months later is "old" and never to be heard again.
Now rather then having a dusty shelf of these CD's people have a recycle bin full of MP3's they got because it was hot, and got sick of it before buying the CD which they didn't want anyways, because, well, all they would have done with it is play the 2-3 songs that got stuck in there heads because they where getting played constantly.
Take the Spice Girls, huge band, sold tons of albums, even made a movie. When was the last time you heard a Spice Girls song played anywhere? Now how about a Led Zepplin song? Big difference there.
But on the other hand, P2P lets people download tons of music, much of which they might normally have not bought, or even heard much of. Perhaps even get hooked on, and buy a CD of. Which is going to help the smaller bands, without the multi-million dollar advertising campaign behind them.
I know everyone likes to think the RIAA is a bunch of idiots, but they aren't. They got a lot of money, and give it to a lot of smart analysts and lawyers. They have all the fact. They just choose to make use of the facts that support there interests, which is there bottom line, which is maintained not by sales, but by control.
P2P is not a threat because it hurts total sales, It's because it effects there ability to control the industry, create pop bands that sell regardless of what they sound like, and squash out competition.
As long as physical media has been the only way that is easy to control. It takes a lot of money to run off enough CD's, or Cassettes, or Records, or even 8-tracks to stock store shelfs, get radios playing them, put out a video, etc. If you wanted any chance of being heard, you needed what they had.
Now the smaller studios have a chance, grassroots bands have a chance, and the RIAA is not the gatekeepers in the same way. That is what they want to keep. So, before they can let digital music become dominate they need control. Which means controlling who is allowed to sell it, for how much, and what they are allowed to sell. If all music sold becomes DRM based as a requirement and 95% of it through a few large sites, they will have that.
"Creating fake "artitst" who are really just spokesmodels in videos for a recorded product tied in with cobranded products like so much anime breakfast cereal."
e r%29) These were modestly talented singers who were pushed by the record companies to be stars and sell records to pubescent girls. Or in the 60's all the girl singing groups that came out. Or closer to the present, Brittany (et al).
But think about all the boy singing acts in the 50's/60's such as Fabian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_%28entertain
The phenomenon is not new.
The recording industry has always been sleazy. Always some scheme they're hatching, always trying to get copyright law changed to make them more money, from the time they were selling sheet music, piano rolls, edison cylinders, 78's... always something. But I think post WW2 a lot of actual music guys hooked up with the record companies and along with the manufactured acts there was some genuinely good music that achieved a good following throughout the 50's and 60's.
But the music guys all left the business and what we have now is a bunch of accountants who figured out it's cheaper to push Brittany for 3 albums rather than develop young *talent*.
I mean, how many groups now disappear after 3 albums? And why is that? The record companies don't want to develop these acts because they're less profitable than the 3-album phenomenon. American Idol is the perfect example of what's wrong with the music business. It's not that the people aren't talented singers, but it fits the model that they want to spend a few months auditioning, pick a winner, and then make a hit record or 3 and then they'll be gone forever. It's okay though because next year's TV show will pick the next "star".
Do you think Van Morrison could become popular in 2007? I doubt it. I don't think James Brown could make it big in 2007. If the record companies had their way, the beatles would've had 3 albums, and then on with the Stones, 3 records, and then... I dunno... the cowsills.
But music has a way of renewing itself, with or without the record company's help.
When Disco crapified popular music, Punk music rose up to push it out, almost like a body manufactures white blood cells to destroy an infection. When 80's AOR became predictable, Grunge rose up to push it out. We're about due for another musical correction. We can only hope.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
One problem here. To hear an artist on P2P, you need to search for them, either by name, or song title. While this is great to find other artist's covers of a favorite song, a new artist with a new song title doesn't have an easy road to being discovered, downloaded, and listened to.
Radio, OTOH, will play stuff you never knew existed until you heard it there.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Like many in my age bracket, I was pretty into Napster back before it started getting mainstream press. I think I had, at most, a thousand songs at one point; I saw collections numbering in the 10s of thousands, though, so this isn't an impressive number.
Before that, I never purchased media myself. I was content to listen to the radio, or the infrequent CD my parents would get as a gift.
After Napster tanked, I moved with the masses to Kazaa, continuing to expand my music selection. Somewhere around the end of high school, I had a moral attack (like a heart attack, but longer and less painful), and stopped downloading music. I erased most of the songs that I didn't really listen to or like, and the rest I started to replace with actual purchased CDs. I went from buying 2 CDs a year to buying 20.
However, my music purchases have decreased since then. I buy 5 or 6 albums a year; online music sites such as LAUNCHCast.com allow me to create my own stations with my own preferences. I listen to this most of the time, instead of my own CDs. As well as replacing most of my other music habits, it has also turned me on to new bands and music.
Music purchases have decreased because average consumers are no longer locked in to buying whatever Target or Best Buy decides to carry in CD form.
Going to the show is better for the venues and for the performers - they get a much larger cut rather than selling albums or tracks. If you love a band, don't worry about buying a disc so much. Go to their show, buy the tickets, buy the merch. That is where they profit.
Everything else the band does is their loss and exactly how their record companies make back the production budget, the performance budget, and the promotion budget.
Bands have to sell obscene amounts of albums to break even and make actual cash beyond weekend beer dues. They can achieve the same by aligning with other bands and setting up venue shows with much less effort and promotion, especially with the internet tools out there today.
And the live show is the true test of a musician - instead of the paid producer with his suite of effects and digital editing to smooth out the rough edges or bad playing.
If we don't really want to have it, we may still pirate it.
Yeah? Do people really listen to music that's not great? I can't imagine any reason to do that with the amount of great music that can be had.
After ripping my CD collection and throwing out all the tracks that are just bad, I'm still left with *days* of music. I'd no sooner download a crappy song on p2p than listen to some low-grade track from Tunnel of Love when I can listen to Born to Run again.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I suppose that they only look at downloads here and try to portrait those to the amount of sold records. But what about this scenario, happening on my box several times: I download an mp3 file, I dislike what I hear and immediatly send it back to the depths it came from: /dev/null ?
The music biz used to be mainly in the business of finding artists coming from the mass of people, trying them out before "focus groups" (live audiences) who selected themselves from the cultural word of mouth, and cultivating them for a decade or more. The artists getting the most continuing investment were those most successful in either a live audience, or record sales even in a regionally highly varied market, feeding back with radio play. A natural coevolution of the artists and the audience, when mediated best by the music biz people engaged into both.
I viscerally want to agree with you on this point, but I'm left wondering - if this is the model for success why isn't it being exploited by entrepreneurs in a capitalistic society? The RIAA labels should go out of business quickly, leaving those following the path to profit as the new kings.
But that's not happening.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If the song is NOT on iTunes (recent example: Justified & Ancient by Tammy & the KLF), I click the icon I keep right next to iTunes... Poisoned. It's exceedingly rare not to find exactly what I want on P2P. As far as I'm concerned, I made a good faith effort to pay for it, and my conscience is clear.
One more click for your icon panel.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The RIAA doesn't care that P2P isn't solely to blame for their decreased profits. It's much easier to sue people who've "stolen" your product than to convince people who are no longer interested in your product to buy it. Hell, they don't even have the expense of advertising if they sue.
...bunch of insensitive clods.
guys I think these numbers are completely legit. The point is most people's music libraries would be 1% of their current size because most people have way more p2p music then purchased music. The fact of the matter is, without p2p, people would buy the same amount of music.. their music libraries would just be smaller because no one is going to want to pay for the crap music that they could previously get for free. No. They will just pay for the good music.
As usual same old same old. Anything to back what you all are going to do in it's absence anyway. Anyway here's a question. If someone decides to not become an artist because of rampent piracy? Will that show up in this study? How about people leaving the profession? And as a bonus question, why do people constantly assume that piracy is confined to movies and music?
Why is it that CD sales is the main concern for the RIAA? It's certainly not the only music outlet in the world. Why aren't they going after CD resale shops? Makes more sense to impose a tax on that, but I'm sure it has to do with volume. Not 'what's right' for copyright. Meanwhile American Idol gets more voters than the US President election, and William Hung becomes a national celebrity just because he can't hold a tune any better than the average fire hydrant, while a band like The Arcade Fire sells out five nights in a row in NYC and I can't go because I don't have 150 bucks to drop on a scalped ticket.
My point is that the real music enthusiast (which, in my opinion should be the main target, not the random sale) doesn't just rely on going to Best Buy to buy CDs. He/She goes to live shows. They look for bootlegged live shows online. They talk to other people about music, try new bands that their friends like. I pirate a fair amount of music, mostly people I have never heard of, or at least people I have heard of but that I'm willing to try, either from friends' recommendations or just random searches. I wouldn't drop 20 bucks on a gamble, not unless it's something like a 5-star Rolling Stone album (cause they're few and far inbetween, and I'd rather take a chance on that). I have bought CDs of people after seeing them live, bands that I had no idea even existed before. Most people really have no interest in going outside the mainstream channels to listen to music. And 95% of the time that's filled with ClearChannel payola crap. Does that account for most of the shared music today? Maybe. I would like to take a bet that someone who buys new Ludacris/Carrie Underwood/Death Cab for Cutie has no idea what BitTorrent is. Some pirated music thrives on advance copies which are solidly grounded on hype (like some band's new release, leaked a month early). BitTorrent, because of its inherent volume, is the only interface that lets music enthusiasts satisfy their natural need for new, good music. I think the RIAA should embrace this model (advance digital copies vs. physical CD), hell they should embrace BitTorrent as their main distribution service... Then they could REALLY track what sells and what doesn't (with seeds/leech ratios) But knowing them they would probably charge the same amount as going out and buying that new My Morning Jacket CD and it would flop badly. I am a firm believer that people that share music online now have no interest in changing their ways just because some important figure tells them too. I know *I* am like that. But I would like to see RIAA realizing that people like me are a potential profit and not soul sworn enemies. A shift towards these new ways would certainly improve their image and probably their sales too. You catch a whole lot more flies with sugar.
Our networking capabilities today are unparalleled, and it can take 24 hours to destroy or hail a new release. The *AA has somewhat embraced that angle (Snakes on a Plane), but mostly they think they can sell a CD/movie through a single track/reallyreallyfastediting because once you've paid for it then it's your problem to like what you bought or not. That's gonna end, quickly. Adapt or die. Right now it's like watching a newspaper fire their couriers because not enough people buy the paper. It surely can't have anything to do with the content cause it's so great...
D.R.M. Especially the shoddy piece of code on my new Bond cd that prevents me from legitimately listening to it on my computer. The DVD side of the dual-disc works fine, but the cd side won't even mount (under windows or ubuntu). I hope the RIAA enjoyes the twenty bucks that I spent on it, because they'll have no more of my money.
Maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age, but all the music *does* sound the same to me.
:)
Maybe you are getting old. There are many shades of crap currently available on the music store shelves - younger folks can discern these gradations.
Hmmm, looking at my iTunes list I only see 4 new albums I've bought in the past 3 years: Jack Johnson, Green Day, Sting, Jason Miles, though there are plenty of singles by the likes of Nikka Costa, Rock 'n Roll Soldiers, Riddlin' Kids, Scissor Sisters, Diamond Nights, Fountains of Wayne.
I admit, that's a small number of current artists, but I'm also not listing the dozens of 50's and 60's Jazz albums I've bought over the same period, most of which probably profited the RIAA. It's worth noting there's no hype machine for Miles Davis - if they can't come up with any good new acts, why not promote the catalog?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And lets not forget that new consoles are coming out ALL THE TIME! XBox, XBox2, XBox360, PlayStation, PS2, PS3, Nintendo GameCube, DS, DS Lite, Wii.
And how about other places young-uns are spending their money? Cell phones, text messages... and ring tones. The RIAA is doing fine on licensing ring tones to the phone industry. And of course, when you buy that cool new MP3 player, that's a couple of dozen CDs you can't buy.
Last, at the same time that pirating has been a growing "problem", lots of services are offering unlimited download subscriptions. I wouldn't subscribe myself, but I wonder how much that "cuts into" CD sales while still padding the bottom line of the RIAA.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.
The CB App. What's your 20?
One problem here. To hear an artist on P2P, you need to search for them,
Radio, OTOH, will play stuff you never knew existed until you heard it there. You'll note that I delved into MySpace as an example of that functionality further down precisely to address that issue. That's the final piece of the puzzle to complete the removal of the RIAA cartel from factory production and promotion of "music" that they've (d)evolved to.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Nickelback sucks. The only reason some Americans like them is because they're pushed down everyone's throats just as much as, apparently, up in Canada. (There's a reason certain groups refer to people as sheep/flocks/lemmings)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
And, to compete with commercial over-the-air radio, we now also have the two digital satellite radio companies plus an uncounted number of Internet streaming radio channels. The latter providing an amazing diversity of content (and quality).
Both choices also provide a running display of current artist and song title, something traditional FM is lacking. (There is some sort of data channel on FM now, but I've never seen the stations around here put anything other than their station name out over it. That's the one thing I really don't care about....)
I did, once, phone a radio station and ask what song just played, but they didn't tell me the right one, so I've never bothered again. (It was a station that liked to tell you what they were going to play, so if you just turned on and liked the song, you'd never know what it was.)
"To hear an artist on P2P, you need to search for them, either by name, or song title."
That's rubbish. There are hundreds of sites that list music in order of date release.
I have overtaken radio. I get every release in my choosen genre and listen to each one at least once. 99% of the tunes I listen to never get played twice.
I decide what's what. Music industry, you are redundant.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I download what I want. I do not pay for it. Why would I when I can get it for free?
Silly people insist on paying some Russian mobster and thinking this makes it all better. Or, they are paying a pittance to iTunes hoping that some of it filters down to the artist. It doesn't.
If you keep paying, they will keep charging. People like me will keep downloading for free. Soon, more stuff will be free for the taking. Some people will probably still be paying. Not the smart ones.
First, these surveys and studies allways look at music sales directly. This is WRONG! We need to look at the habits of the consumer. What has happened to the movie industry for example? Most young people (age 14-35, accounting for way more than 50% of all media purchased) bought a VHS tape every few months and multiple CDs per month looking back 5-7 years. Now, I find people buying DVDs much more often than CDs and multiple reasons for it.
Another point, ask the average person what they feel about the overall quality of new music today vs 5 years ago. Most will agree that the both number of quality artists and the number of quality tracks per CD has drastically been reduced. At the same time, movie quality has been increasing steadily as evidenced by the number of anual semi-blockbusters ($75 million plus box office gross) increasing steadily and a drastic DVD market and rental service explosion.
There is also a strong and steady increase in purchased downloadable music, TV, and movie going on. Due mostly to a lack of great album content (few good songs per album) it's better economically speaking to download music. Even at $2 per song, I would (and have) saved money by buying only the songs I like off each album vs even the discounted rate of CDs which can sometimes be found for sub-$10.
Also add in the MMO phenomenon of subscription gaming either thru game stations or PCs. I spend about $60 per month in my house on subscriptions to games or services I already own, where these used to be free to play games. That $60 used to go to new game/cd/dvd purchases... not any more.
Take these factors into account, and I'm actually shocked the music industry isn't suffering DRASTIC sales drops, on the order of 30-50% per year over the last 3 years. For sales to be only marginally down is a wonder.
Lets also look at other factors: Most households used to have 1 game system. Many now have 3 (PC, PS2/3, Xbox). These cost more to maintan and replace and the games cost more too. Some have monthly costs as well as purchase costs (between internet fees and subscriptions). Also media players (i.e. CD/tape players) used to cost $30-50 and could be expected to last a few years each. Now iPods and other media players cost hundreds, and typically have only 18 month lifespans. Cellphones, ring tones, and text messaging anyone?
Overall summing together game, movie, CD, and online sales together (not to mention certain recent printed book phenomenons and card trading games) the overall $'s per person per month fed into the industry is increasing dramatically each year. CD sales are slipping not because of downloads, but because it's simply loosing market share to other more "valuable" (entertainment per dollar spent) market segments.
I found back in 2000 my annual entertainment budget (games, music, dvd, movie, phone, equipment, copmputer costs, etc) was about $150 per month (and that includes estimates for regular hardware replacement). Right now, my subscriptions and services alone are in excess of that, before I include hardware or media to use with it (internet, MMO fees, cell, and voip). As a parent, i would have to be drastically reducing what funds are availible to my children. As a 32 year old without kids (one in the oven now...) I can barely afford my regular services. I haven't been to a theatre to see a movie in 3 months, have not bought a DVD since September, and have not bought a CD in 2 years (bought about 25 tracks on iTunes last year though).
If someone had the incling to simply conduct a survey of total household fluid spending over a 5 year period covering 10,000 or so individuals, these numbers would be obvious.
The music industry's attempts to lobby that downloads hurt business is completely false. All it's doing is instilling further distrust in the industry, and forcing many new artists to seek nearly equally successful independent labels. If they started signing better artists, producing quality work, and lowered the cost of the media to where it should be (CDs should be about $8.99 each now, not $15) they might experience better results.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Beacuse the ones with the most money control the media. And it isnt us consumers.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's the music, RIAA! I recently bought an album after hearing it on NPR's World Cafe - Nuclear Daydream by Joseph Arthur.
I never heard of the artist before, but really liked what I heard.
If I like it, I'll buy it.
Simple. My collection spans more than 30 years, mostly CD's now, I sold off most of my LP's during a move once (wish I hadn't). I still listen to new music, but the robot playlists of today's radio are not how I find new music. Most artists now have web sites where you can order directly from the artist - eliminating the traditional distrubution channels.
RIAA - wake up or fade away! Ahh...just go back to sleep, everything will be fine in the morning.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
for the drop-off might just be the growth of streaming audio stations that cater to niche markets and that allow the listeners in those markets to purchase music from independant labels and musicians that have no RIAA representation. I can tell you for sure that every CD that I've bought over the last five years or so was recorded by an independant artist that was introduced to me by a station on a streaming audio site (I prefer Live365.com but there are others our there), or I've heard the artist perform live at some local venue and then stopped at the CD table after the performance to pick of a few of their recordings. I control what genres and artists I'm interested in, not the "big media" companies. That fact more than anything else is what scares the hell out of them and that is why they have to try to kill P2P at any and all costs.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
The other study Finds Stealing Has No Effect on Wealth of the Riches.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Ok there isn't such a study yet that I know of, but I believe on average around 3% of music on ipods is from iTunes
(about 22 tracks).
DRM is a disincentive to buy music, from itunes to the non audio cd's being passed off as audio cd's DRM is putting people off buying and the price is still a bit too high.
Pop music should be sold like fast food. lots of it cheap and fast.
whats a track worth?
whats your local bar charge per track on the jukebox? That is the kind of price people are willing to pay for music without thinking.
Thats the kind of model that will work, here within 5 minutes great quality no worries about the RIAA.
no dodgy tracks that sound great for the first 30 seconds and then flip out. ruining the mood of your party whatever, none of this here you can have whatever you want for x dollars a month providing you keep paying it crap.
maybe even do free bonus tracks of unknown artists the RIAA cartel can continue its role promoting new artists
once they are known then they slip into the must pay catagory. They can take out ad space on the online music store highlight new talent...
quick fast hassle free music will sell by the billions and make 'pirated' copys not worth it. The RIAA can continue to shakedown p2p users upload worthless files as they do today.
The right price, fast and clean that will ensure a massive boost to download sales. Sure some people will freeload but then they always have. No amount of DRM on legal downloads will stop the same music being available without drm and without cost elsewhere.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Pandora.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
We download music online, because it is easily accessible and free. I personally would not pay for 95% of the music I have in MP3 form, so they would never have gotten any money from me in the first place. If I like the music enough, I will buy the CD, but most likely not for $20 a CD, unless it's one of my favorite 2-3 bands. If I had to pay for the rest of the music in my collection, I would do without. Period.
"We wouldn't have to put up with DRM if it weren't for pirates"
I'm not so sure. CD's are lacking any sort of copy protection or DRM, as were LPs before them.
The legislation to support DRM was put in place primarily with the DMCA which predates any sort of file sharing on a large scale. My guess is DRM was put in place primarily because of the *fear* of unauthorized file sharing, not from any losses.
But even if what you're saying is true, what do you propose? If people didn't commit crimes, we wouldn't need the police. If people at healthy, our health care costs would be lower. If people paid more attention on the roads we wouldn't need all those safety features in cars, etc etc.
But none of those things are true. The record companies can go one of two ways.... they either tighten down restriction on copying even more, or they remove it, lower prices, and go for higher volumes; at least change what they're doing somehow. It will be interesting to see what path they go down and if they fail or succeed.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Next, the MPAA will admit that TV show downloads does not help to decrease viewership and DVD sales.
In fact, I think it helps INCREASE it. I caught up on Futurama thanks to Usenet when I got into it toward the end of the first season, have since downloaded every episode, then bought the DVD sets, including the extra "Monster Robot Maniac" DVD. Ditto for Stargate; I got into it after it moved from Showtime to Sci-Fi, and am still working on buying the DVD sets.
I think the reason there has been no net gain in MUSIC sales is twofold:
- Most of today's music targets the lowest common denominator, and as such the quality suffers. In fact, it sucks. If you invest tens of millions into a few pop acts which you want to go multi-multi platinum, rather than a bunch of really, really good, but not cross-genre bands, you are digging yourself into a rut when people get sick of seeing Britney's mug everywhere
- Backlash for RIAA's lawsuits. I for one avoid exposure to new music. I shifted my entertainment dollars from buying up to 15 CDs per month to buying 5 to 15 DVDs per month. I do not download music, and my music collection is fairly large because I was buying CDs like mad when Napster let me conveniently try music before buying. I do not expose myself to new music any more because I do not want to be tempted to buy new material from large labels. Oh, I bought a couple of albums in recent years (Pink Floyd's In the Flesh, Gilmour's On Island), and will likely buy anything new The Police produce, but aside from the few bands I follow really closely, I'd just as soon skip it entirely.
For radio, I listen to talk, classical, and classic rock. I have pretty much all the classic rock one can own on CD (I still buy it, but only USED CDs), and pretty good renditions of standard classical pieces can be had for free from various Creative Commons web sites.
Fuck the RIAA, and fuck the MPAA.
Yeah.......... especially if you have 80 gigs of death metal. :)
... I haven't heard of any RIAA publisher publishing what I'm interested in, namely Trance. You can usually get quite a few free downloads off the artists' websites. And that's it. My money is too precious to waste on trash.
How about an open subscription to the entire RIAA catalog...open meaning a spec that can be integrated into any device without royalty...let me subscribe to something like Urge, but play it from my Apple, Linux, or whatever box, a web terminal at the library, my car stereo, home theater, hell, maybe it could be integrated into clock radios using a home server or some such thing to locally store most music...which of cource would be unplayable if you cancel the subscription, but hey, I would gladly pay $10 / month for that, it is less than one mediocre CD...
Radio, OTOH, will play stuff you never knew existed until you heard it there.
In theory, yes, but in fact it doesn't. Word of math, or simply selecting at random is best. Or college radio, that still works if you want something a little out of the mainstream.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Music sucks now and people don't want to buy it. So they have to tell their share holders someething
I was a constant buyer of pre-recorded entertainment media (starting with 33 and 45 speed LP albums and singles in the 50s and 60s) until I finally just had to acknowledge I was being outright gouged. When I saw CDs being peddled for what cassetes or 8 tracks cost, that was clue enough for me to see they had gone full bore into outright greed and their trying to enforce technological luddism on everyone else in various industries but them. Prices just never dropped adequately as regards technological innovation, and what newer techniques would allow. And then they discovered "new shiny format of the year", wanting you to re-buy the same stuff, plus DRM, plus lobby for the laws to be changed for planned obsoletion. They want locked in price structures from decades ago, even though cost of duplication is absurdly low now.
I'd pay double manufacturing costs for copies of stuff, that's it, and I don't want weird "protection" BS embedded. If I am paying for music or movies, I don't want extra-value malware with it passing itself off as "protection". The only protection they want is for their wallets and middleman skimming "business".. I am *not* going to pay 20 times manufacturing costs to protect their business models from half a century ago, because they have this economic fetish that they "need" to make so much per unit. That's just nuts, and flies in the face of other manufactured items. And also shows that by and large it is a price fixing cartel, and needs to be broken up. If they can't live on 100% markup, screw 'em! If they can't grok "volume sales", with selling a hella lot more units, albeit with much smaller net per unit, to come up with decent and fair profit for them PLUS happy camper customers, then double screw 'em! And digital downloads, they want to charge near the same as hard copy on pressed disks??? Sorry, that is beyond gouging into engineering/technical insult.
We have a community station that raises revenue by allowing for SMS queries for song and artist. The only problem is that I only listen to the radio in the car and it is illegal (in Australia) to use a phone while driving. This also allows for me to find names of dance music groups and their songs that I like. Being a non-commercial station they also support local talent and allow user feedback of songs via SMS (spin or bin) to select a better playlist. If more radio stations followed this approach then it would definatley increase their appeal to me.
The thing is, when you shout "it must have SOME impact" you conflate the idea of "impact" with "negative impact", and more-so you conflate "negative impact" for a high profile artist with "negative impact" for all artists, and similarly "negative impact" to a production house with "negative impact" to artists.
Worse, you conflate "business impact" with, "monetary impact", and with "artistic impact".
In honest truth there is no reason to even suspect that the net effect of free music on the net is negative at all. It is more likely to add listeners than remove them. It is also almost certain to add musicians (or at least re-mixers).
I would agree that one near-certain impact will be a reduction in the concentration of money flowing to any one pocket. That is, if there are more artists, and more music is being heard, and the amount of money flowing through the system is constrained by real-world economics involving discretionary income; then it is a systemic certainty that the peak concentration of cash will not be as, well, concentrated.
On the other hand, the current financial model, in particularly the way the on-air play is sampled to determine who is getting played how often, means that many artists are being undervalued.
If free music on the internet has no other impact, it will eventually lead to including the music movement metrics of that free movement in the calculation of which artists get paid. The height of super stardom will be somewhat diminished, but the depth of obscurity will be mediated far more fairly. Which will lead to more music, which, even if music quality were a random function, would lead to more "high quality" music.
Consider the power to tax is the power to destroy. Likewise the power to concentrate is the power to filter. Television programing is "highly concentrated" and the filters suck, so we get "wicked wicked games" instead of "firefly" (in principle) because the filter was essentially one guy with an axe to grind.
So what is the "artistic impact" of a less concentrated financial flow?
Is it greater than the "business impact" of a less concentrated flow of control?
See, its all Apples and Polar-Bears. The comparisons have been deliberately conflated because the people asking the questions are invariably asking the questions in terms of the flow through the tiny opening that leads into _their_ _particular_ pocket.
So the question, as framed, is invalid. The "values" involved have been confused and improperly combined then artificially separated back into "stock positions".
That being said, the real questions, IMHO, are things like: is "Illegal Prior Restraint implemented as Unregulated Technologies" (often misspelled 'DRM') going to fail immediately while the cost is bounded, or much later after economies have been trashed and people have been jailed?
8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
So let's do a little scenario.
1.) A million third-world nation kids get the much-touted '$100 laptop.'. Hell, we could make it two million.
2.) They all get bittorrent.
3.) They all download every crappy pop, pop R&B, and pop-punk crap you can hear on the radio every day. Let's say 500 songs.
4.)The RIAA claims there's a billion(!) lost sales, at a dollar a piece.
5.)The US bombs Kenya, or Thailand, or whoever.
6.) Okay, 5 was made up. But, seriously...
Do you see the flaw in this? Sure, there may be a shitload of people who never buy the movies and/or music. But if they wouldn't have bought in the first place, you have copyright infrigement without a loss of sales. It's hard to imagine (at least for the RIAA/MPAA), but a lot of infringement is costing them nothing .
Now, how to separate the two... that's a question I'll leave for somebody else. But as far as the RIAA/MPAA claims that 'copyright protection must getz better cause we're loosing all our monies!'... Well, a little statistics should be able to put the claim to rest. (Supposing you can find a truly fair study.)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Suppose that the following statement (as the paper concludes) is true: there is no statistically significant correlation between downloads and sales. If we assume that incompetence is not a valid explanation, what possible reason does the RIAA have for so aggressively going after illicit downloads of music?
It's not the first study that claims and practically proves how irrelevant is to say that uncontrolled file sharing'd cripple the music industry. One of the most relevant studies I have read was in fact issued five years ago already, back in 2002. A former executive of la FNAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FNAC), a French competitor to Virgin Megastores, has announced the results of a study based on their sales for the past 20 years. According to this study, it appeared that the French consumer's average budget dedicated to entertainment (in percentage of their income) hadn't significantly changed for almost all this time lapse, independently of inflation. On the other hand, it appeared clearly that the centers of interests (and cash spending) of the brand's customers had drastically spread between the purchase of DVD's, video games, MP3 players, mobile phones, and surprisingly books. Considering that the boom of the CD sales due to the massive purchase in replacement of phonograph records started to be out of breath in the late 90's, coinciding with the birth of the Napster network and premises of online file sharing, here was an undreamed-of scapegoat. Though similar arguments have been told a countless times, I'd in fact fancy some kind of study that proves the beneficial impact of unlegit music downloading toward shoplifting in record shops. For ages, unemployed teens couldn't afford the money to buy all the music they want right? Stealing a record in a shop *does* cost money to someone, that has nothing to do with the virtual shortfall claimed by the **AA.
For your point to stand, you need radios to play unheard music for the sake of discovery, an artistic stance. That happens more easily with internet radios who can better control their costs. So it is an advantage of radio vs downloading after searching by name, not of radio music vs internet music, IMHO.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol