Slashdot Mirror
A Bleak Future For Physical Media Purchases?
KevReedUK writes "The folks at ZDNet are eulogising over the upcoming death of physical media music sales. They refer to the noticeable drop in physical sales of albums whilst digital sales continue climbing (albeit at a reduced rate). Their central argument is that 'the music industry was pillaged by piracy and competition from other forms of entertainment such as video games ... [2007] marked the lowest tally and the steepest decline since Nielsen began publishing estimates based on point-of-sales data in 1993, a Nielsen representative said. The peak year in that time was 2000, when sales reached 785 million units.'"
Nothing can ever replace going to the store and picking up a DVD/CD. Point in case, I had The Killer's compilation album 'Sawdust' three weeks before Christmas. I still got the original CD for Christmas. Why? Because I like to have it physically in my collection. There is just something a bunch of 0's and 1's can't replace.
Spend $18.99 on a cd or spend all of 18 minutes on bittorrent. Hmmm wonder what a young person of today would choose?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The future is bleak for floppy diskettes, Zip drives, and CRT displays. This is simply the pace of technology; more efficient distribution formats wind up winning out in the long run (with a few exceptions here and there, true, but even these are eventually superseded by something more efficient). Even with all the music industry's "late to the game" problems and legalistic maneuvers, the switch to a majority audio distribution occurring via networks was bound to happen. Not really news to most of us...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
If the RIAA didn't deliberately set itself up to be perceived as thuggish criminals, then maybe people could buy CDs without feeling guilty about it.
The music buying public was pillaged by greed and lack of competition.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
2) Most new popular music today is disposable and no one wants to pay for this crap. (Now get off my lawn.)
Poor music industry. Why don't they focus on developing and promoting musical talent rather than controlling every aspect of the music business? Its been a couple years since I have bought a CD. Yes there are some good groups still out there but nothing like it was before. Give us a reason to buy a CD. Britney Spears just doesn't do it for me.
Hang on a sec.. This would be the same 2007 that Oil hit an all time high, a credit crunch of such epic proportions that it's hitting the world wide banking system to the point that Governments are having to bail out financial institutions.. People are losing houses and jobs.. Economies are looking shaky, and unemployment is starting to creep up in a rather scary fashion..
And they blithely put it down to piracy and competition from other entertainments. Don't you think that maybe.. Just maybe.. The fact that people don't have the money to spend on fripperies, and are actually worried about their ability to keep roof over head is also a factor in this?
The only reason for me to buy CDs is that I can't get it online in good enough quality. When I get all the documentaries, pictures and lyrics with a FLAC encoded download, I won't touch a record store ever again.
In the paper yesterday, it said that although a lot of singles were downloaded, 95% of all album sales in the UK were physical CDs.
Summation 2
no bleak future at all for blank media.
Maybe its because their customers are tired of being treated like criminals? It's not piracy that causing them to lose customers it's just their own arrogance in continuing to fight piracy in a way thats inconvenient to their customers. Also the fact they haven't released a record worth listening to in months might have something to do with it.
Suing your customers and generally being asses to them while avoiding moving to an alternative distribution method had nothing to do with it. ;) Sure piracy is a factor, but they've taken nearly ten years to recognize that customers don't want to buy the same album over and over to listen to it on varied players. I'd go as far as calling this an adjustment. Similar to the adjustments that the market experiences from time to time. There were too many groups/bands/artists putting out crap that was more of the same. Now hopefully the real creative ones will continue to shine while the others don't.
.02
My
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
And not a peep out of Netcraft? I'm waiting.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
when i was in my teens & 20's i purchased lots of music, when i got in my 30's music purchases slowed down, not that i am in my mid 40's i do not buy any music partly because i lost interest in what is currently out there today, i have a coupld of shoe boxes full of cassette tapes and i refuse to re-buy music i already paid for, so they mostly just sit in a closet until i take that occasional road trip then i get a few out to take with me just in case there is nothing on the radio i like...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I don't understand why anyone would buy a bunch of mp3s in the first place. I either buy the full album on cd or (usually if the entire cd isn't good enough to be worth my cash) I download single songs (well, I'll also download an entire album to try it out and then go buy it). There was a time when I used to buy a cd if I liked at least two songs on it, but now I'm unlikely to do so unless I like all of them because I simply don't have the sort of money to throw around on crap.
Maybe if the music industry stopped producing total garbage and trying to pass it off as good music as well as attempting to limit what people can do with their music (i.e. putting absurd protection features on cds that don't allow them to be played in anything but the most basic cd player) then more people would buy music.
what's that now?
Hasn't piracy been around ever since cassettes came out? Why is it such a big deal now? Frankly I don't pirate stuff myself -- some it is that I sell IPs myself but in large part because there just isn't anything that I consider worth taking the time to steal. They could give most music away for free and I wouldn't take the time to download it. Come to think of it, maybe all the crappy music is just part of their strategy to stop piracy, i.e. if the music sucks no one will steal it.
Sigs are for losers.
This nonsense of describing downloaded music as "digital" to distinguish it from that on CDs needs to stop.
Did it occur to them, by any chance, that instead of the decades of great music the preceded this one, nowadys "music" is just competely empty crap sung by ex-Micky Mouse club tools like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake or else "hip hop musicians" whose "songs" bear no resemblance whatsoever to actual real hip hop and basically are just excuses for video of people driving around idiotic cars with idiotically large chrome "rims" talking about how "hard" they are or whatever ad nauseum.
The reason people aren't buying music anymore is that all the record industry does is hold on to pathetic and artless derivatives of a genres that peaked decades ago. Are there any groups like The Beatles, U2, Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, The Doors, basically any good "rock" acts in mainstream channel at all anymore?
That's the obvious difference between now and years prior -- the record industry doesn't have a damn product. They have shit to sell.
Album sales dropping is what their true fear has been all these years. It's the whole reason they are tearing their hair out about apple. The reason they are even willing to dump DRM so they can sell music for ipods outside iTunes. The single is king again and the record industries are going to be forced to swallow their bile and accept the hit to their pocket books.
...I've bought more CDs this year than in any year before. As I did last year, and the year before that.
It's just, they've all been bought straight from independent artists. No tally will catch them. But that doesn't mean the physical media goes away; just that the control over them is finally returning to those who it belongs to.
Deprecate: 1. trans. To pray against (evil); to pray for deliverance from; to seek to avert by prayer. arch.
Well, there's a bit of history behind it. Various 'X considered harmful' articles. 'Evil' also gets heavy usage in the hacker vocabulary, and that moves up into more mainstream IT-speak, and also into non-IT language. Notice how 'parse' has come into common use over the past few years? Ten years ago, I very seldom heard that word in other than a software context.
Language evolves, and I've completely failed to keep the kids off my lawn. Now I reserve serious dislike for words like 'meh', which can mean one thing, it's polar opposite, or indeed anything at all.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meh
Of course, now I'll probably get a reply of 'meh'.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
CDs won't be completely replaced until the music industry starts selling downloads in lossless formats, like FLAC. Currently, there are a few independents that sell such formats, but AFAIK, none of the major labels do.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
If the music industry is going to put a ton of crap on the shelves and only a few albums I really want then I will only be buying those few (since I like 80s music that is mainly oldies compilations).
Nowadays I am more often buying mp3s from amazon as I can get the odd track that has either no longer on the shelf or is only available with a bunch of other tracks I already have/don't want.
Would I buy more stuff off the shelves? If what I like were available. Borders and FYE have been the best of getting album sales from me lately.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Much like a spoiled child, they never look at their own behavior. It's always "some else's fault." I haven't purchased any music CDs in over a year because:
1. It's all crap.
2. I refuse to do business with anyone who considers my fair use as criminal.
Yes, I ripped all my CDs. I do so so I can download tracks onto my digital player. I also have a web interface to access all my music from anywhere I have computer access, but the web page is password protected and I don't give access to anyone. The music industry, however, doesn't want me to do that because they see it as a loss of a dollar for every single track. At the moment I have 1400 tracks on my server. The music industry sees that as over a thousand dollars of lost revenue -- even though I've already paid for every bit of music I possess!
How many times must I buy an album before I can use it as I please? Let's take one example, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". I went through three vinyl albums way back before digital music was invented. I also owned a cassette of it (store bought, not copied). I might even have owned an eight-track version of it during a brief period of insanity. At the moment, I own two CD copies, the regular version and a "special remastered" version. That's seven copies of one album I have paid for. And you want to sue me because I ripped the CD onto my computer? FUCK YOU!
I know what the problem is. The music industry is very unhappy with CDs because they never wear out. Back during vinyl days you had to repurchase an album because they wore out, no matter how careful you were. They weren't too pleased with cassettes because you could record an album onto it and greatly extend the life of your music, but even cassettes wore out and pre-recoreded cassettes were purposely made cheaper to shorten their lifespan. These days, CDs don't wear out so replacement revenue is from the rare event of physical damage. And digital music never wears out.
So the music industry has seen their revenue from replacement purchases completely disappear. This leaves only one option to them, make the consumer purchase a different copy for every single device, but we're not going along with their plan, and they're now in panic mode. A panicked animal attacks anything and everything within reach, without thought, the music industry is no different. So they attack what is most convenient, their customers. We just need to stay out of reach until they bleed to death.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Hilary, is that you?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Ya know I don't expect slashdot to ask, but since music is a global phenomenon. What is the trend globally?
Coincidence?
Bad music = bad sales
Go figure.
How about you list the other definitions of deprecate: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deprecate The word has clearly undergone a change in the last century, as words generally like to do. Additionally, technical fields, or any fields in general, tend to have their own vocabulary apart from that of the standard language. It's obviously not kosher to use these vocabulary items (jargon) outside the context of that field, but it is not uncommon for them to "cross over" and become part of the standard language.
I stopped buying CDs because I refuse to patronize a greedy industry that was convicted of selling overpriced media, that maintains an iron grip on their distribution channels and seeks to eliminate any threat to that control, that uses "Hollywood accounting" to defer royalty payments to their artists, that litigates against their customers using shoddy legal practices and bypasses required steps in the legal process, that uses endentured slavery contracts to strip profits from their artists and enslaves them to provide content, that exploits their political connections to force alternate distribution channels (IE internet radio) out of business through retroactive copyright fees, and lastly fails to provide decent value for our dollar due to poor content ratio - one good song, the other nineteen disposable.
When the RIAA cartel collapses, then the distribution channels may finally open to better music from better talent.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If they hadn't cocked up the transition to SACD then maybe people would still care about physical objects. Instead, a format war and idiotic DRM derailed the next obvious upgrade and nobody bothered. Combine that with the ability to download single tracks rather than being forced to purchase a bundle of crap and is anyone really surprised at the outcome?
I can't help but think that Microsoft are hoping for the same thing to happen with the HD video formats so their Live-based download service benefits like Apple's Itunes store did.
http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/home
high-quality MP3s + PDFs
I would bet on FLAC within a year
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Ah, I love uppity AC's calling other people illiterate when they don't know what they're talking about. It's particularly amusing when people use "erudite" in an attempt to appear erudite while making multiple mistakes in their rest of their comments.
A quick trip to m-w.com gives me this as the 3rd entry for "deprecate":
"play down : make little of 'speaks five languages...but deprecates this facility' -- Time"
That's the usage IT has taken on; when features are still around but not recommended (are played down) because there's a better way, their use is deprecated. Your suggestion of "obsolete" implies something is no longer used at all, which is clearly not appropriate here; deprecate is.
It's not a perfect adaptation of the original word but it's not bad; language does evolve. Amusingly, use of "deprecate" as only meaning "to pray against" has been deprecated--m-w even labels that usage as "archaic".
They ARE thuggish criminals. And apparently not very bright. So how could they appear otherwise?
But back to the main subject: there is a genuine problem caused by this continued exaggeration of the real damage done by piracy. Piracy is only a symptom. The music and movie industries have not been keeping up with technology and social change, and so have consistently failed to deliver quality goods at what consumers feel is a reasonable price. THAT is the true problem.
Blaming their failing business model on piracy is like blaming the blood from your cut for causing the pain...
Good to know its still thriving. If they really want to stop piracy they will not start stupid crap like telling us that ripping CDs we legally own is illegal. They get that passed, and piracy will skyrocket.
Meh.
Meh (LOL)
Music != Physical Media
Just like software companies have largely discovered that:
Software Program != Physical Media
Just like several magazines have discovered that:
Content != Physical Media
Just like cell, cable, land line, and satellite providers will soon discover that:
Content != Physical Transmission Media
People don't care how the content is delivered, just that they get the content in the most convenient, usable, and cheapest packaging available. Video, audio, print, and "multi-media" content cries out to be delivered through networks at times of consumers' choices instead of physical media; there should be no surprise when this reality exposes itself in declining physical media sales.
While free certainly does have its appeal, I think removing the word free tells an even more important story.
Doing research on exactly what songs you want takes time. Creating play lists, ripping to an audio format, and then storing them on a media player takes time. If a record label is going to give people a mechanism to get exactly what people want rather than what people want plus 6-8 songs people don't, then most people are going to go the single song route.
I can think of at least two reasons to generate albums. One is that the popular songs subsidize the unpopular songs, The second is that the record labels are trying to appeal to a larger market by packaging up a broad collection of songs.
I've not listened to a lot of pop music lately, but it seems to me that album concepts are fewer and fewer. There were advantages to getting Alan Parson's Project I, Robot, Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick, and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Are there any albums concepts being sold today (regardless of whether you like the music listed above)?
I think if the record labels wanted to be successful, they would do something like the following.
This accomplishes a lot of things. There is less risk per song. Labels and artists would get quicker feedback on their music. Those artists who were concerned about commercial success could focus on that. Those artist who were focused on the art could use the release early, release often strategy to build a following.
I don't know a lot about the mechanics of music (session musicians, recording engineers, sound studios, etc.) although I used to do some recording in college. However, this seems like a workable approach.
What this approach does though is change the dynamics of the music business. A lot of project-oriented people will find their value decreasing. A lot of people who focus on the craft and quality of the art will probably find their stock increasing. For the consumer, this is not a bad thing. For the record executives, advertising executives, and manufacturing executives this is a bad thing indeed.
Welcome to the (new) machine - the Internet.
Distribution of content (music in this case) over the internet, definitely has its advantages from the point of view of the consumer, such as no time wasted going to the store or waiting for goods to arrive, and also a myriad of advantages from the point of view of the content producer.
That being said, there are several tradeoffs that I, personally, am just not ready to make unless I'm forced to by the discontinuation of CDs or by a change in the distribution model. Here are the things we are losing as we move way from CDs:
I'm willing to overlook the last one if they tweak the distribution model to address the first two as they are the real deal breakers for me. Especially the absence of a used market.
- the movie industry has been blowing out DVDs in the sub-US$10 range for some time...
- OTOH, the recording industry has been flogging rehashed recompilations in the US$10+ range over the past few years...
- why does the movie industry 'get it,' but the recording industry doesn't?
"Just maybe.. The fact that people don't have the money to spend on fripperies, and are actually worried about their ability to keep roof over head is also a factor in this?"
Apprently digital downloads are more important than a roof over one's head.
The older generation that buys music as a physical medium already has purchased everything they want. My mom isn't going to repurchase the White Album no matter what new wacky format it comes out in. The new generation doesn't see those shiny metal discs as storing music. They grew up with everything being digital. Even if they burn everything to an MP3 cd, how many songs will that store? 200-300? Their friggin phones can hold that. Their ipods, zunes, etc can hold thousands or more. Do you think they are going to buy an album for 20 bucks that has ONLY 10 songs? The end of the physical medium is here. Open up a web site and sell all of your stuff online for a good price. Oh wait...Apple already is :)
You could blame piracy, sure, for the drop in media sales. But the reason the piracy was so successful was: the pirates were onto new technology right away. They were giving people music they liked, nearly instantaneously, in reasonably high quality (good enough for most college kids, anyway), and, to boot, for free. In response, the music industry as a whole COMPLETELY failed to act. Even now, eight years later, there is essentially only one place to buy music online (the Apple iTunes store), which is a model of success. For the most part, the music industry has doggedly insisted on relying on traditional CD sales, even though probably ever CD sold is taken home, ripped to mp3, and put on an iPod right away. The CD is a relic of the 80s - it's the 21st century. Now people can build digital archives with thousands of albums, easily indexable and searchable. Why would ANYONE prefer CDs to this? If the music industry just got with the program and provided a reliable means of getting albums in free file formats, I'm sure they'd find that sales would pick up instantly. People aren't downloading music because it's free; they're downloading music because downloading music and storing it in mp3 (etc.) files is far more convenient and enjoyable than a bunch of CDs. This same argument could also be made for the movie/TV industry. In fact, from their perspective, they lose nothing by offering digital sales. The marginal cost is almost nothing, and they're only subtracting from the set of people who would otherwise resort to torrents. I know that when I have the means to watch content I want online (as with the new hulu service), I'd MUCH prefer it to torrenting, which is still a bit of a pain in the ass. As to the idea that the music is crap: commercial music has always been crap, ever since the 50s. There's only ever a few gems buried in that dirt - just those are the ones we tend to remember.
You are right and should be modded insightful. Zonk's anti-sony FUD agenda is really getting out of control here, maybe FOX News should offer him a job spreading FUD.
Amusingly, use of "deprecate" as only meaning "to pray against" has been deprecated--m-w even labels that usage as "archaic".
Amusing? That was almost coffee-through-the-nose.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
... people don't want to pay $20 for a crappy cd to hear one half decent song. Maybe it's a quality issue and not that people aren't willing to pay. Piracy just makes it difficult to petal crap.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
We all have heard that the dynamic range of CDs and MP3s pale in comparison to high fidelity tape or phonographic recording. If the recording industry invested some of the money it dumps the the bottomless pit of DRM and lobbying to make something that can reproduce that range (I'm sure the digital technology is more up to speed now then it was when the CD spec was made) they could re-invent audio into some new high-def format and then start doing a repackage of decent sounding audio, equipment, portable players, etc.
Then they can re-package for the new format, and some sort of master editions.
Then they can bargain basement the current crap, and have a new market, maybe even pull in some real talent. Thgen again RIAA is more for just making money regularly whithout much more extra effort on their part, so that idea probably would never fly.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
While piracy is an issue for major labels what is really killing them is the information age itself. I talk w/ quite a few people on the indie/diy/punk scene and most of them seem to agree that their labels have gotten much larger along w/ the scene over the past 7 years. Not only in the US but internationally too. It seems the internet itself has given music lovers a chance to branch out on their music instead of just listening to the top40 which pretty much ruled any area w/out a major music scene for ages.
Most major media companies don't want variety, and don't build their business model on having a wide variety, but tend to focus on major blockbusters, and superstars. Today consumers are striving for variety, and if the major record labels don't adapt they're going to find themselves in a world of financial hurt.
I too a big fan of having CDs/records. The problem is in the city that I live in (pop ~100k) its becoming increasingly hard to buy anything I want. The one big record store in town has started selling electronics and now has 1/10th of the music it had five years ago. All the mall record stores here now have five times as many DVD's as CD's.
A friend and I use to go out almost every Tuesday and buy one or two new releases. In the last year in about fifteen tries I have only been successful in finding the album I wanted twice. The record stores here just aren't bringing in anything except top 40 albums.
Its no excuse, but most of the time I will have already downloaded the music I like months before its release and so if I can't get a physical copy, unless I really like it I'm not going to buy it from iTunes. Don't get me wrong I still buy a fair amount of CD's and Vinyl from the Internet, but nowhere near as much I did before, or would now if I could walk down the street and buy it.
It could be that CDs were probably around $20 when P2P exploded
They were. The last full-price non-discount CD I bought was 'Europop' by Eiffel 65 but that was back in 1999 when the album first came out and mp3 ripping was not yet well-known. I remember paying $18 for it at Tower Records and kicking myself for spending so much on something that probably would have only a few good songs on it. I decided then and there not to spend anywhere near as much on any ordinary CD again.
This is worth a read:
http://theaudiocritic.com/blog/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=41&blogId=1
If the AES say that CD quality is indistinguishable from higher rez formats, it could well be true.
The reason physical media sales are down is very simple. Media formats used to change on a regular basis. Vinyl. 8-track. Cassettes. CDs. Now that music can be digitized, however you happen to get it - ripping your CDs, buying online, whatever - you can finally get off of the media format treadmill. I expect the music files I've ripped to last me for a good long time. I'm not going to buy music I already have because the format changes again.
I think iTunes may prove the exception to the rule. I won't be at all surprised when folks who dumped a wad on DRM'd iTunes files find that the format they invested in becomes unsupported someday.
The music industry can still sell music. They just can't sell it over and over and over again. Except to the folks they sucking into buying DRM.
So I really want to know where these $19 CDs are and why I can't find them
Out of curiosity, it's been years since I last bought any music (and I don't pirate music either, I just don't listen to music much anymore), I searched Amazon music for Norah Jones. On the first of three pages there are two albums, vinyl LP records, that are $30. Barnes and Noble has the list price of her "Come Away With Me" as $19, as is "Not Too Late", and The Little Willies".
I picked Norah Jones because the last CDs I bought were from her and Neko Case.
FalconShould there be a Law?
art
Oh, especially the drum solo "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".
FalconShould there be a Law?
No band subsequent to Led Zeppelin has been better than them. The record companies are simply discovering that even with young people discovering Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin isn't producing any new good music, and neither are any of the current bands. And you can only sell one complete copy of the entire Led Zeppelin corpus to everyone.
Modern music sucks.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
CDs natively have the ability to play a much higher dynamic range than vinyl, about 85 db range compared to 45 db, if memory serves. The reason that current cd recordings don't make use of that is due to the studios' decisions about how to make the recording. Basically, cramping the range makes CDs play better in cars, portable disc players, and other high ambient noise situations. It isn't a technical problem, it's a product design issue.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
You mean, like, DVD Audio? A dual-layer DVD stores significantly more data than a standard CD, and you know something? A few years back the record companies tried releasing audio on DVDs. It supported up to 24-bit 192kHz sample rate (versus 16-bit 44.1kHz for a CD), and was backwards compatible with existing DVD players, or up to and including 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound.
Nobody bought it. And after a few months, titles pretty much dried up. These days, very little audio, if any, is released in DVD-A format. But it's been around since 2000. If you look *really* hard, you just might be able to find the occasional classical title in DVD-A format... but for modern pop, the music itself is so shitty that you'd never hear the difference between DVD-A and CD.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
for $100 for christmas. Spent that +$15 on 8 or 9 CDs i'd been meaning to get for a while. Went in with a list though and made certain none of the CDs i purchased had anything to do with the RIAA.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The real reason for the decline in CDs isn't the physical format but the brick-and-mortar stores. As a DJ, I buy plenty of vinyl* but most of the stores that sell new vinyl have shut their doors. The ones that have survived have become online importers and distributers without physical stores, and in recent years there has been a huge increase in online vinyl retailers. Some of them even let you download mp3 clips before you buy the record, and most also sell high-res mp3s for download alongside vinyl, but even DJs who spin CDs spin CDRs so the demand for CDs as a format just isn't there. I think this more than anything shows that it's the distribution system that has jeopardized CDs rather than the fact that it's a physical medium. As a digital format, there's no real benefit to buying a CD from a store anymore because there's no loss of quality in a download, you get the instant gratification and convenience, ipods have replaced walkmen, and CDRs are there for when you must play a CD. Vinyl offers more than just a digital storage medium, so it fared better with online distribution, but the physical stores are still shutting down. So CDs faced a double whammy of being physical (costly to retail) and digital (doomed by teh internet). * Before you get all upset, I never said vinyl sounds better, but since you can touch it to adjust the playback (as well as do fun tricks) DJs much prefer it ("digital turntables" are still wonky and overpriced). Since artists need DJ support when they put out new material, they'll keep pressing new vinyl until digital DJ gear gets significantly cheaper and more responsive, and since there are many vinyl snobs in the DJ community, probably even after that. So please put down that tire iron, this is not some analog vs. digital sound quality voodoo thing.
2) Most new popular music today is disposable and no one wants to pay for this crap.
This is correct. Teenagers today are so fickle, they are in-and-out of music faster than a politician making a political stop in Iowa. The music industry knows that (and I think those who are smart realize that they only have themselves to blame for creating it). That's why their business model is basically to sell old wine in a new bottle. As long as the industry continues to change little with what they distribute but continue to promote it as new, they think they can continue to feed the demand of the adolescent behemoth. Unfortunately, what they haven't realized (and what no one hear has brought up yet), is that it's not the wine that's the problem. It's the bottle.
Look inside any school or any place where teenagers hang out, and you will be lucky nowadays to find a CD player. EVERYBODY has an MP3 player. The only reason not to have an MP3 player is if you don't have a computer, but on the other hand, everybody knows someone who has one. And why not? If you have a CD player, you eat up tons of money in batteries. Assuming you get 3 hours of playtime on a pair of AA's, that's at the least $2 that you spend to hear 3 hours of music. Listening to music for just one week will cost as much in AA's as buying a 512MB MP3 player at target that can last for 15 hours on a charge, and be recharged overnight on a computer or in an outlet. And that's just the battery issue. MP3 players now are as small as a stick of gum folded over in half. There's more mass in a set of keys than there is in many MP3 players and a pair of earbuds. Size matters, and in this rare case, smaller is better. And in the industry, NOBODY GETS THAT! Why buy a CD, upload it to your computer, then let the CD collect dust, when you can just download the music that you like for free and copy it to your MP3 player?
Believe it or not, the CD now is where the floppy disk was five years ago. The reason why the floppy disk stayed around for so long was because there was nothing there that could really replace it's function: it was universal, it was portable, and it was re-writable. CDs were universal and portable, ZIP disks were portable and re-writable, but nothing else was all three...until the USB memory stick came along. Now, that's what everyone's using. What the music industry has been so stubborn about is that they assumed for too long that the optical disk would last forever. Now, it's too late. Teenagers know how to get music online, they know how to download music online, and they know how to get it onto their MP3 players. And since the industry never changed their business model to embrace, support, and regulate this new method of distribution, they now have lost control.
(One thing the industry should have done right away at the start: charge royalties on all MP3 players based on the data they could hold, then let kids download for minimal cost...say $0.25 or $0.49 per song...right from their website.)
There's plenty of good music around; stop being holier-than-though "I listen to what my parents did so I'm better than you" jerks. It just doesn't get popularized as much because the majority of the population likes bad music. I really doubt much has changed in regard to the quality of music in a few years, either. I think the problem here is that the CD companies aren't lowering their prices enough to compete with new technology. CDs won't become extinct by a long shot, just like radios didn't become extinct when the TV was invented.
How many times must I buy an album before I can use it as I please? Let's take one example, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". I went through three vinyl albums way back before digital music was invented. I also owned a cassette of it (store bought, not copied). I might even have owned an eight-track version of it during a brief period of insanity. At the moment, I own two CD copies, the regular version and a "special remastered" version. That's seven copies of one album I have paid for. And you want to sue me because I ripped the CD onto my computer? FUCK YOU!
It sounds like maybe it would have been a good idea for you to do what I used to do myself. Back when I bought new vinyl records the first tyme I played the record I'd record it on my Reel to reel tape deck. I could then put away the record for safe keeping and listen to the tape. When the tape wore out I still had the record so I could rerecord it on a new tape. Now you could rip the record or the tape to play on an mpg3 player. I've noticed stores are now carrying new turntables, and some of them have built in USB ports so you can easily connect it to a PC.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You forgot number three. According to the RIAA ripping CDs and the like is unauthorized. If you can't rip the music from the CD/DVD to put on your iPod or into your home media center then why the f*** would anyone pay for a f***ing CD/DVD that they can't use in the first place. Who the hell wants to carry around a diskman and a backpack full of CDs when you can stuff the equivalent into a device the size of a silver dollar?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Are there any non-physical media sources that provide a real selection of losslessly compressed music? On my system I can hear the difference between many 192 kb/s mp3s and the CD version, and in a few cases, even 256 (I used the abchr tool to do blind testing). I strongly prefer to have lossless version of music, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Second, a digital file never wears out, so there is no point to a "used market". On the other hand, it is easy to make unlimited perfect copies of a file
Oh but digital files do wear out. Media, both analogue and digital, wears out. And when digital files are duplicated random errors are introduced.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Where to begin, where to begin. Back in the 60's and 70's, a Gold record was a really really big deal. The baby boomers bought a bunch of records and based on sales of a million records (very big markets), companies would issue performers a gold record. As more boomers came along, and more music (real music) came along, sales boomed too. Platinum and double platinum records (mult-times gold) records became more the norm. As the article states, boomers fueled sales in 2000 to an all time high. GenX'ers could not and can't possibly buy as many records. Couple to that, the abandonment of real music for spoken-word and percussion-only foul-mouthed bullshit. The record companies thought that 'they will buy anything'. What do I see on TV late at night? You know, really really late. I see infomercials instead of late-nite movies, and what are those crap-ads pushing? Old, old, old-timer music from the 60's and 70's. Most of the artists are dead. Most of the performers in the infomercials are dead. But the record companies have the distribution rights and back catalog rights, so they are pushing the dead people. Hopefully they can sell more old music to the Boomers. The artists sure are being represented there (oh, maybe I really meant exploited, even in their graves). Record sales are dropping because 1) new artists don't want to be exploited, 2) the internet means all of the benefits of a mass-promotion and distribution network are irrelevant, and 3) based on the concept of what 'music' is, the record industry has NO! idea of anything called 'entertainment'.
My mom isn't going to repurchase the White Album no matter what new wacky format it comes out in.
If and when I ever get a new turntable the "White Album" will be one of the first vinyl records I get.
FalconShould there be a Law?
maybe if the majority of new music didn't suck so hard this wouldn't be happening as bad as it is? Who wants to buy $18 for a full album when you only like once song from it?? I dunno, just a thought. Side note, I'm so glad I bought into the whole satellite radio thing. I much prefer being brainwashed by Sirius than by Clearchannel these days.
There is simply too much glass..
Since I was cheering through the parents post, can someone please mod them up a whole bunch?
Digital downloads come at $1 a pop, not $20 a pop.
It's a lot easier to spend $1 than $20.
It's a lot easier for 2000 to spend $1 than for 50 to spend $20.
Even singles on vinyl are more of an impulse buy. Why the industry tried to kill singles is anyone's guess. It really defies explanation.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'd be curious to see what the carbon footprint of physical media actually is. Between the packaging, the actual hard media, and the shipping costs CD/s and DVDs can come off as being really UNgreen. Having a virtual replacement should be lauded not litigated into a pine box. Big media needs to move into the 21st century.
There is no security when liberty is sacrificed.
On one level there is certainly that "I don't want to fund my
enemy's warchest" thing going on. However, that still leaves used
media. Now I was indulging in that for quite a while. I had done
this in college with audio cassette when my motivation was "lack
of money" rather than political. This went on for awhile unitl
other media started getting more competitve.
The RIAA's main threat isn't the pirates, it's Walmart and
their $5 DVD bin. It's really hard to get excited about a $15 CD
purchase when I can get 3 reasonably good movies 10 feet away for
the same price. Even new-ish releases are competitive with CD's at
that pricepoint.
Something that needs a 200M production apparatus vs. something
that can be recorded in someones garage (and probably would end up
better if it was).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bio-sounds and bio-gas - just what society and the environment need.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
They used to do the same type of crap with vinyl too especially on 45's but no one remembers this.
Hell, an educated, well-informed, 20-something friend had no idea what an LP was and thought that 45 referred to the size of the record...
OP here. Citing an entry in an American dictionary is an instant fail, a fortiori if the dictionary is Dictionary.com. You also all failed on other bases, such as thinking an obvious mistake (deprecate for depreciate) by reason of illiteracy an appropriate mutation of the language. Thanks for playing.
Mass-produced recorded music has lousy production quality (Too LOUD. It devolves into NOISE. Watch yer peaks and lay off the compression!) and is tainted from decades of over-hyping mediocre acts; an industry that notoriously spends gobs of cash lobbying for new criminal laws and suing their customers to protect their flagging artificial legislative monopoly; and performers who depend more on ProTools plug-ins and "live" vocal tracks than talent.
If there were more market-demand there'd be profit. If music companies were reputable and produced quality products, there'd be more market demand.
If the big recording companies' execs had acted with principles and professional standards (worked towards making quality products at reasonable prices... didn't treat their customers like sh!t...), the industry might still be in a decline, but they'd have a lot more years of opulence and time to exploit emerging markets.
Show me a specific example with music worth inhaling fully that has this problem, otherwise stop with the FUD. I will give you an example of how screwed up the argument on this was from Rolling Stone. The author gave a Lily Allen version of Smile as an example. Problems: #1: There were two versions, and the one he quoted sounded horrible on any piece of audio equipment, and that defeats the whole argument for loudness and iPod usage. #2: Why the heck quote her anyway for a high quality audio discussion?
"Why the industry tried to kill singles is anyone's guess. It really defies explanation."
Since the advent of CDs, albums and singles cost the same amount to manufacture, but albums sell for a lot more money, so they're much more profitable. Studio and post production time is a one-off cost that artists have to pay for out of their advances, whereas manufacturing, distribution, etc. are recurring costs that the labels themselves pay, so they're obviously going to favour the option that gives them the highest possible return for each unit they produce.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
'...the music industry pillaged themselves by releasing a bunch of crap music that nobody wants to hear. Everything released sounds like what was released a year earlier...'
i'm sure the environment is really upset over this.
Another 'media' assumes that anything that is physical cannot be digital, and uses the term 'digital' to distinguish something thats distringuishing feature is NOT that its digital.
For the millionth time, for the cheap seats - PHYSICAL MUSIC CD's CONTAIN (and always have contained) *DIGITAL* MUSIC.
The distinguishing features of (eg, iTunes) are that you are paying for the right to make a copy by transferring it over the network and storing it on your own media (eg hard drive), instead of on physical media, as well as the fact that instead of in a documented open public format such as used on CD's, it is usually in a 'special' programmed format which prevents it from being played anywhere other than on the original machine that downloaded it, in special proprietary software that only runs on proprietary, closed OS platforms and is under the control of the publisher/seller who may for some reason decide to revoke your right to play it, or if your 'PeeCee' gets 0wn3d (as proprietary, closed OS platforms tend to do) and you have to reinstall you've lost any record of ever having had the music and have to pay for it all again.
There is nothing physically preventing you from taking a physical CD and copying its digital music into an iPod or an MP3 player, or onto a computer, or anywhere else. You can even make a backup copy. No one can arbitrarily revoke your right to listen to it, or any of the copied you made. The only downsides are that CD's cost slightly more, you always have to buy 10 to 15 tracks, and you have to go physically purchase it (or order and wait for it to ship).
It's been a decade since I bought a CD or paid any money for music. So it sounds odd to hear people still talking about CDs as a current technology, almost like stumbling across a spirited discussion of vacuum tubes when the rest of the universe has moved on.
But why does anyone bother paying for any music anymore? Even without p2p there are more sources for restriction-free music than you can shake a stick at. KEXP, IndyFeed, and NPR's Open Mike are just a handful of excellent podcasts that feature fantastic tracks from independent artists, free of charge. Then there are the thousands of MySpace pages for new bands.
There's just no reason or argument for doing any business with record labels on any level.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
- " I have downloaded several albums from emusic.com and even though they *say* they use lame --aps to encode their mp3s it is quite obvious that some of the albums are very low bit-rate. "
From my downloads at eMusic, I found some of the albums were VBR encoded using older revisions of Lame, like v3.92 (april 2002). I found albums from 2006 encoded with the same relic version of Lame. From various forums and newsgroups, the Lame lineage of 3.96 (april 2004) and higher (v3.97 released September 2006) is where the mp3 encoding quality, especially for VBR, excels.
I guess just because they use Lame, does not mean they take extra care encoding the tracks using modern revisions of the encoder.
QUALITY: Especially if you're converting the disc from digital (which is is to begin with) to another digital format at a high bitrate, I don't believe you can tell the difference with regard to quality. That's going to depend intensely on you having hearing sensitivity that exceeds 99.9% of the population, coupled with a high-fidelity setup that can actually reproduce the difference. As for your hope for better than CD quality sound in the future, the human ear can't hear outside that range. So good luck with that.
BACKUP CONSIDERATIONS: How hard is is the install a secondary hard drive in your rig for doing mirrored backups of your audio? How hard would it be to install three cheap drives? Hard drive space is ridiculously cheap these days; I've got dozens of albums backed up in this manner, on redundant media.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
So let's review the march of progress: I was connecting to various BBSes in the early 90s with a 2400 baud modem, later on to the Internet with a 28.8 modem, later on the Internet with a DSL modem that did 1.5 Mb/s, and am now sitting on a relatively cheap business class cable connection that does 6 Mb/s x 2 Mb/s. My dad's got fiber to the curb in his neighborhood in GA (getting 50 Mb/s). Progress sure is slow, huh?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
If the format war persists for too long, there won't be a winner and a loser. There will be two losers. Now, I don't know that folks will be downloading movies in HD anytime soon, but I'll bet it will be done sooner rather than later. Frankly, if the movie studios are smart, they should just bypass HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and offer their HD catalog online. What's needed first though is a reliable, high-capacity set-top box. Perhaps a next-gen Tivo that comes with a subscription to a [insert movie studio name here] online store.
Just my $0.02. Personally, I find video laden optical media slow, unreliable, and the UDF filesystem full of shite.
That you personally like older music tells us very little about its quality.
More importantly, though, your point about the dynamic range of music - while true - clearly doesn't explain the drop in sales since 2000. As you point out, that change was pretty much complete by the early 90s, but sales continued to rise for quite a few years until their peak in 2000, so that change is highly unlikely to be responsible for the drop in sales.
It would be interesting to look at the demographics of the US and see if some particular cohort that tends to buy music peaked in 2000.
Hmm - the number of people in the 20-44 age group is flat between 2000-2010, as is the 5-19 age group; from the looks of the 1990 data, I'd guess that the prime music-buying age groups have stopped growing to a substantial extent. Couple that with the significant increase in people at or near the poverty rate since 2000, and it's hardly surprising that music sales are down.
Indeed. And please explain to me why I should pay to hear some cretin shout "YO! MAHAFAKA!!" over and over again? No, sonny, fuck you. I won't pay for your shit.
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
Arguing that Piracy caused the decline, as a primary factor, is unfounded. It is a factor, undeniably so, but I don't think it is the major cause at all. It is only mentioned, since it is being used as a scapegoat and for sensationalism. It is also being used for a much deeper and nefarious purpose. ZDnet should be ashamed of pushing this propaganda.
The CD, as a medium, will die for the same reason that Buggy Whips stopped being produced in very large numbers. Obsolete technology and a shift in consumer expectations. That is really the single largest factor by a long shot for the death of CDs and physical mediums in general. A CD will hold 700 Megabytes of data. That's it. You can get far more data, in far less of a footprint. While you are it, why even buy the medium in the first place? It's not possible to reuse the medium at all. It is only useful to store the purchased music.
This is not even a big deal at all. The sales ARE shifting to online sales, instead of sales in retail outlets. Why should we care? As consumers we don't have too. The death of the CD, or the physical medium, is just an interesting paragraph at most in a history book in 2075.
Moving on..... If the medium is a problem, why not allow a customer to fill up a piece of flash memory with all the music selections that they make at a store? It would allow a customer to have added value to their purchase by giving them a whole separate product that has intrinsic value.
That will never happen for 2 reasons:
1) The consumer can more easily obtain the music on the Internet, by either the use of online stores or bittorrent (Piracy, I know).
2) The Music Industry does not wish to give up the control over *replacement revenue* (the evil surfaces).
I am not that interested in going into a store (if it even existed), and making selections of music that I wish to have them transfer to my portable storage device. The whole idea is kind of unworkable from many aspects. I can do it from my couch through iTunes or Amazon. Physical Mediums also wear down eventually and I have to purchase them again and again and again and again and again and again.....
Now that I can download that music in a digital fashion without being limited by any storage medium, interface, or distribution channel I FINALLY have control over MY MUSIC.
Or so I THOUGHT.......
If you really think about it for a minute.... DRM is not any different then Replacement Revenue. They cannot rely on you buying a new CD when you lose it, break it, or just plain wear it out anymore. The digital nature of it allows you to make infinite backups with 100% perfect reproduction EVERY TIME. So they need to CONTROL when you DO IT and HOW YOU DO IT. Hence, the transfer limitations that I hear are on DRM. I wouldn't know personally, I have never put up with it for a second. I only hear people bitching about it.
1 Copy for the house, 1 Copy for the car, 1 Copy for work, 1 copy for the kids DMP, and so on and so on.
So they mention Piracy (Lions and Tigers and Bears OH MY) as if it had any real contribution to their problem, while not stating what the REAL problem is. There is no problem for us. People ARE buying music. Replacement Revenue is going away. The theoretical maximum revenue for a song is the price*population. That's it.
So that is the REAL reason they are so panicked. They KNOW DRM is dying and the ability of the public to break it, bypass it, or otherwise nullify it grows EVERY DAY. That is why they covet CD sales so much. They perceive that people that buy CDs are used to the old order of things and will still be their nice little pets.
Although people may not realize it, they are now separating the licensed right to listen to the music and the physical object used to transport it. They may not understand it that way, but they know the technology exists to allow them NOT to buy so many damned copies all the time. I just wish they knew WHY they should not have to buy so many damned