Slashdot Mirror
17 Million People Stopped Buying CDs In 2008
Houston 2600 sends along an Ars Technica writeup on the continuing downward trend in the traditional music business: NPD's annual survey found that 17 million CD customers dropped out last year. Among the good news is that streaming services such as Pandora are growing fast. "While overall music sales were up 10 percent in 2008, the year saw a drop not only in CD sales, but also in the number of customers actually purchasing music. But according to a new report, the act of listening to music is actually on the rise. ... NPD's annual Digital Music Study found that there were 17 million fewer CD customers in 2008 than in past years. CD sales have been dropping for quite some time, and while 1.5 billion songs were sold digitally last year, the number of Internet users paying for digital music only increased by 8 million in 2008."
Retail sales in general are down because nobody wants to spend money on luxury items.
I am surprised that people even bothered to do research on this. I could have told you this without looking at any metrics.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
because 8 million people finally understood that they could buy single tracks online and not have to waste 20$ to get the two or three tunes they really wanted.
The other 9 million either went broke, discovered illegal file-sharing or simply got tired of the crap the industry is producing and moved to other things like books, movies, videogames or that new amazing thing called going outside. I hear the 3D is amazing.
Really, I haven't heard a decent mainstream track in the past year. At least, not one that made me want to go out to the store and buy an entire album. Last year, I got most of the singles I wanted via Amazon spending Pepsi Points.
New York just lost it's biggest rock station, which switched to be yet another top-40 "pop" broadcaster. Everything else is classic rock -- and really, how is playing Led Zeppelin twenty times a day going to boost record sales? The state of modern music is so bad that radio stations can't find enough songs to play to fill up an hour's commute with songs made in the last decade.
I think where the RIAA goes wrong is using CD sales as its only metric for profitability. In reality, CDs are essentially a dead technology. The only places CDs are still widely used are car CD players, home hi-fi systems, and DJ booths. Otherwise people are going digital. If I were to purchase a CD (I am one of the 17 million, except I dropped out years ago), I would buy it, open it, immediatly rip it to FLAC, convert those files to MP3 V0, and drop it on my MP3 player. From that point forward, if I am at my computer, I am listening to FLAC, and if I am away, I am listening on my MP3 player.
CDs, at this point, are simply are not required to be purchased because if you can get the music in FLAC(whether it be through a legit source or not), you can just make your own CD. The music industry desperately needs to come to grips with the fact that no one is lugging around bulky CD players anymore, they want MP3 players that fit in half a pocket and hold 1000 songs and have 8 hours of battery life (all of which are advantages over the CD model). Factor in the cost of a CD vs. its digital counterpart and its really not a choice anymore. It's really not surprising at all that CD sales have declined, even while music sales are up.
Crackin' Wise - Blogging about whatever we want
Serious, who uses CDs as their main music source. They do not fit in my MP3 player. They do not fit in my cellphone. They are a pain to put in my PC where I only rip them to have it available for my stereo at home.
Now digital music OTOH. Direct download on my PC. Put them from there on SD card for my car. On my mp3 player. On my phone
Sure, there will be people who mainly use CDs, just like there are people still using LPs. Many people moved from LP to CD and now to digital. This should be a business opportunity to re-sell the LPs and the CDs I already have. Those are things they can just put online at almost no cost and cut out the middle man. Say 10USD for all of Frank Zappa's music. Copyright? To protect the artist? It is not as if he will be making a new album very soon.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
where the RIAA goes wrong is using CD sales as its only metric for profitability.
I wonder; is this really a mistake? Either the music industry is truly ignorant and incorrigibly stubborn, or they've realized that they can make a better case for subsidies/bailout/public sympathy/whatever if they can be all "ohhh, my cd sales"
The last CD I bought was 10,000 Days by Tool. That was 2006.
Since then, I've either listened to what I already own (as it's better than what's been recently released), I've listened to Creative Commons licensed music, or I've listened to streamed net radio for recently released music.
I stopped buying CD's based on the attitudes of the record companies and their affiliates. I don't care who it harms; I'm not supporting that method of business, and anyone with links to it deserves to fail.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's a bit of both: a CD is how the RIAA stays alive, as they make very little money on tours or merchandise sales (at least not if an artist has structured his contract correctly). If artists start recording their own music and releasing their music digitally, the need for a label to back CD pressing suddenly disappears, which, by transitive properties, makes the RIAA suddenly disappear. The RIAA needs to adopt a new business model based on these reduced recording costs and the digital age. Something tells me they could make huge amounts of money by offering their artists music, in FLAC, for a cheap price all in one repository, thats DRM free. However, its "cheaper to keep her" and changing their business model at this point is expensive. It's easier in the short-term to just try and litigate people into CD sales. Hopefully they will see that their bottom line is not improved by a business model thats based on litigation.
Crackin' Wise - Blogging about whatever we want
However, more and more, people are realizing that FLAC is just as good as CD quality,
Got a citation for that? I mean, sure, you and your audiophile buddies favour FLAC, but something tells me the average consumer on the street has no idea what the hell a "FLAC" is, let alone why it would be better (or worse, depending on your requirements) than MP3/OGG/<insert your favorite lossy codec>. Hell, just start off with the phrase "lossy codec" and watch their eyes glaze over.
Seriously... you're just living in a world of confirmation biases. FLAC is still a niche product, and it will probably always be a niche product.
Shit, I don't even DOWNLOAD music newer than 5-10 years old. Nothing in the last decade has really caught my attention.
I'm an old man already at 22. :(
GET OFF MY LAWN!
The sue-your-customer mentality of the **AA has put me off buying CDs. The last ones I bought were from a Goodwill store. And I don't download music, either. BTW much of the music I've bought over the years has been from the performer, at the concert.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
The younger generation isn't interested in having physical copies of the music and older farts like me have already fleshed out our collections.
*sigh* back to work...
Yes, you are, because there's nothing more wrong with music today than there was in whatever glory year you are pining for. Stop listening to crap music if you don't like it, there's still plenty of amazing artists out there producing music. Go look for them like you always had to but seem to have forgotten.
> what I already own (as it's better than what's been recently released)
Everyone starts to think that when they reach middle age. It's not actually true though - plenty of good stuff has come out recently, it's just that your mind has gotten narrow and you dislike change.
Not that this gives you a reason to change your buying habits! If your mind is narrow, you should by all means buy records like a narrow-minded person would.
Sure...listening is on the rise...people are desperately listening to hope to try to find something WORTH listening to, and possibly buy to keep.
So much music today, is dispensible.
When I bought music, it was something I bought to keep and listen to repeatedly. I hear kids today buy songs...listen for a few months, and hardly ever return to them again? I still listen over and over and over again, most all of my music collection from over the years. I have songs from my parents' time. I have stuff when I was a kid (very young) in the 60s and early 70's. I like the stuff my my teen years...through college and all. For the most part, I quit finding new, good stuff I wanted in the early 90's or so.
I have a pretty decent sized collection. I don't have any throw away music....
What is the deal with that today? Is it due to the lack of quality/musicianship?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
no one would buy the new format, 78s->LPs->Cassettes->CDs was a logical path, as the formats either became more convenient (cassette over LP) or the quality was better (CD over cassette). there is no valid reason to change formats on the consumer side, even Blu-Rays are having trouble, even though they are "better", because to most people there is not enough of a difference from DVDs.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The parent ironically is quite insightful. The record industry's actually targets marketing to males between the age of 18 and 25. As I've edged towards 25, my CD purchasing has fallen off a cliff. I believe the reason is that I'm not actively searching for new music anymore. Graduating college had a lot to do with it.
The people that are still in the 18-25 group are the kids that grew up with MP3's. It's not in the culture to buy CD's anymore.
FACT: lots and lots of great music is made all the time.
FACT: human beings "bond" with music in their teens as music has an emotional component and the flood of hormones wreaks havoc with ones emotional make up and ordering. As a result: people "focus" on the music of their "coming of age" or maturation.
FACT: there has been no decrease in talent, nor has there been a decrease in creativity.
So, as people age, the hormone disaster retreats, and they lose interest in music as it is crowded out by careers, marriages, kids, and mortgages. Combine that with a multiplicity of technologies demanding one's attention (TV, Wii, XBox, Movies, Internet, etc.) and it thusly comes as NO SURPRISE that people think "music these days sucks" and "there's no good music anymore", when in fact, it is simply one's perceptions and hormonal predispositions have changed.
I'm an Older Geezer - I saw Genesis with Peter Gabriel, Yes, and King Crimson with Wetton on bass. I saw the Gang of Four, and the Clash, and MX80, Blondie, etc. Then I graduate university and I continued being fascinated by music. I also got married, and I saw my (now ex) wife lose interest, and my friends lose interest, and in the mid 1990s one of them said "yah know, Ralphie - music pretty much died in 75 and 76 when Disco and punk came down the pike" And I responded, "No, dumbass - you graduated high school in 75, and got that soul-deadening job at the air conditioning factory that drained all the life out of you."
I continue to listen to new music, even as I lose my hair and go ever grayer. I have thousands of CDs and LPs (most of which I have digitised or collected digital versions of) and I listen to music all the time and I am always listening for new good music, and I am never disappointed. There's TONS of great stuff gushing out of the world every single day. It's Art. It's WHAT WE DO because WE ARE HUMAN.
so when you say "There hasn't been any good music in 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 years", I say FUCK OFF and OPEN YOUR EARS.
Wanna learn more? get "THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC". Read it.
nuff said.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The real problem, I suspect, is that while the cost of the right equipment and software for a home recording/editing studio (emphasis on editing and post processing) is dropping down into the (somewhat) affordable range... The cost of the equipment to sound that good while playing live remains high.
Not to mention that you need musical talent to start with (a rare commodity), and a source of songwriting talent (equally rare) as well. You're only going to go so far as a cover band... Then there's the real killer in our ADD/Instant Gratification age, you need to practice, self critique, and practice some more. You need to sound good to more than just your friends (even if they are sober).
The problem is depending on the airwaves to find new music. That worked (sort of) in the past if your tastes happened to include the few genres of music that commercial radio catered to.
If what YOU like isn't represented by commercial radio today you have to do a bit more work to discover the artists that are making the sorts of music you enjoy.
It isn't all that much work, though. iTunes, MusicIP, Pandora, Last.fm and countless other services will recommend music based on what you DO like. In my experience they have gotten quite good at this.
There are also a mind-bogglingly large number of music blogs that you can follow (or use a blog aggregator like Hype Machine) that cater to certain styles of music. Most have mp3s you can download or stream to see if you like the band/song.
There is still a ton of great music being made today. Just don't count on commercial radio to spoon-feed you something you like.
Maybe it is due to the dearth of good music coming out these days, that anyone would WANT to purchase.
This has been said several times in this discussion, and every other one about music.
But, I still see gigs, concerts and festivals selling out. Recent statistics from the UK showed live music income overtook recorded music income for the first time in the UK last year. Sure, big artists still draw massive crowds (just look at how many nights Jackson has sold out in London) but there's a lot of new artists too.
I quit finding new, good stuff I wanted in the early 90's or so.
90% of my music is from the early 90s or later, and I've been listening to it for over 10 years now. Maybe you're just getting old.
*Jumps on lawn*
I've been fanatically buying music for the past twenty years, and I now have access to much much more quality new music than ever before.
I'm not trying to be rude, but stopping buying/finding new music seems to generally be a function of age ( I'm 36 ). Music which soundtracked your most hormonal years seems to sink in deeper ( playing things on the radio enough that it hits a *special* moment for people seems to be a large part of how the music industry works/worked. )
Listening to music from their earlier years seems to be conforting for people, but to say that the quality of music and musicianship has declined is just another 'the kids these days are shit' statement. Your position and emotional needs have probably changed, but it's still true that your all-time favourite band you havn't heard yet, and right now they're probably about 3-4 clicks from where you're sitting.
Sign of for Last.fm, or Pandora, or whatever. People who've grown up around the music you love are now making music themselves.
And turn the damn radio off.