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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."
...to mortgage-backed securities -- they get a better rate of return.
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.
also, I want to know a breakdown of what era the music is being purchased from... the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s or the current decade? Im guessing a big reason for the drop in CD sales is people have filled out their CD collections/replaced all their cassette tapes
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
...but this should show them that their previous business model has failed. It simply cannot function in an Internet-enabled society. How are they going to succeed? I have no idea...I don't have any idea. I have no problem paying for music if I like the band.
I just hope their answer isn't "more DRM." That's shortsighted...the answer to this problem lies in their entire business practice rather than a heavy-handed technical solution. Or maybe, if we're really lucky, we'll witness the dissolution of the RIAA and the rise of smaller, independent record studios.
Ride the skies
Now your drop in overall sales is more likey due to the shoddy music that is out on the market today as compared to 5-10 years ago but that is just the music cycle.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I was born listening to 8-tracks, and I will die listening to 8-tracks. And I'll NEVER give them up, dammit!!!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
TFA says 1.5 billion downloads happened last year. That sounds a bit fishy since Apple alone sold 2 billion songs last year (see e.g. techcrunch article).
...the retail store is.
I'm serious. Kodak went thru the same process. Focused on selling physical high-volume goods (photo film & paper), they viewed the customer as the store buying stuff in volume - not the individual actually using the product. As a result, when digital photography started catching on, the manufacturer was faced with threats of retail stores dropping their products entirely. You see, the standard drug-store film-processing model required the end user to enter the retail store three times (buy film, drop off film, pick up prints), thus encouraging additional "well, while I'm here..." purchases resulting from the walk-in photo-processing model. Digital photography trashes that model: no longer must the end user come into the store so often ... which upsets the retailer, who then tells Kodak et al "don't go digital or we'll drop your products entirely". Thing is, by considering retailer = customer, the manufacturer doesn't see that the end user is going to go digital anyway and sales of film will eventually evaporate. Scared of losing the "customer" (i.e.: retailer), the manufacturer fails to serve the "real customer" (i.e.: end user), and isn't ready to handle the transition when it finally hits.
Same problem with music. Big labels see the retail stores as the customers, who complain "if you go to digital distribution we won't have anything to sell, so stifle that MP3 stuff or we'll stop selling your product" - not seeing that the end user is, en masse, going all-digital-download. You're not the RIAA's customer, the retail store is.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
that new amazing thing called going outside. I hear the 3D is amazing.
Oh yeah, heard of it. The gameplay is very difficult to understand when it comes with interacting with NPCs (wish it comes with a manual), but some players succeed and are given access to body surfing the NPCs.
Pandora doesn't even work in the UK for IP reasons...
Maybe it will work on IP6.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
As a business model, particularly for a small band starting out and trying to get tours going where they can actually make their money on their show fees and merch. you can't sell digital downloads as merch, and you also can't have digital downloads signed by band members (I actually have a few signed CDs myself, and it's really quite nice having them).
Basically, from my perspective, digital distribution could lead to the end of music as we know it. So that's a bit extreme, it's really more like music will become harder to make and tour with.
Record labels are something to be satiated and dealt with, in the eyes of an upstart musician who is still trying to get his first band started. They foot the start up bill for tours, which can often be too pricey to deal with, and they also pay for time in the recording studio. Studio time can be really expensive, and there's just not a lot anyone can do about that. There's always the option of at home recording, however, I don't know if any of you guys have ever tried to record at home, but without at least a few hundred dollars of equipment, you're going to have a hard time getting anywhere. Especially if you want it to actually sound good.
You do have to have music available before you can put it up for download, and you have to money to record it before it can become available.
Then there's also a certain factor of presentation. As a fan of progressive rock and heavy metal, I often find myself listening to albums as a singular entity, and when digital distribution has its way, there's no real uniformity to hold that experience together. The idea of the record as a whole rather than the single song is severely damaged by downloading just one song and not getting the rest of the pieces. I plan on writing a few concept albums before I die, and I know that I damn sure want them to be listened to as a whole. To me, the problem is that this artform of storytelling in music is going to die out because of a distribution method. That seems like a gigantic waste, doesn't it?
Something else that's nice about physical media is that feeling of actually having something. I dislike paying for downloads because you literally have nothing to show for it in the long run, as hard drives get wiped and passwords get lost, not to mention that you usually end up paying for a low quality mp3 or a proprietary equivalent thereof. In closing, digital distribution could literally kill off certain parts of the music listening experience (if internet induced ADD hasn't already).
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.
Sales of wax cylinders, reel-to-reel tapes, and 8-track tapes continue to drop. When questioned about the drop of new wax cylinder users from 9 to 7, the RIAA stated that the deaths of those two consumers were indeed not from thier advanced ages of over 100, but rather caused by "Pirates" attempting to hurt their profit margins.
The RIAA was optimistic about the increase in clay pot recordings with the recent fad in "accoustic archeology" and hoped to once again start producing new releases in this format in Q4 2009. Questions concerning the validity of such archaic technology were pushed aside with "If the format fails, it because of the Pirates".
and yet the RIAA says that the industry is loosing $$
They're freeing up money?
Free Martian Whores!
Let's compare buying a CD from a retail store versus downloading, shall we? Let's say you hear this rad Britney tune on some awesome Youtube mashup and you just have to have it, right freaking now.
Retail:
1) Get out of bed. Not something I do willingly.
2) Shower. Or not. Depends on how offensive your personal aroma is. After 2 days without a shower, I smell like roses and candy.
3) Get dressed. Okay, so I don't have any clean underwear. I'll just flip these inside out, nobody can see the skidmarks.
4) Find car keys. For me, it's usually a 5 minute desperate search until I realize that they're already in my pocket.
5) Drive to store. Traffic sucks, gas costs money and if I get another moving violation, I lose my license. No, Officer Friendly, I have no idea how fast I was going. Why don't you let me in on the secret?
6) Park in big box store parking lot. It's a long freaking walk in direct sunlight, and my basement-dwelling geek-pale skin might just burst into flame. Lean against door to rest. Wheeze loudly.
7) Go into store and find desired CD. Lookit that, they're out of stock and I came all this way. Shucks.
8) Stand in long-ass checkout line behind Welfare Queen and her brood. Screaming kids are always a pleasure, the little darlings.
9) Pay uncaring, minimum-wage clerk $14 for your purchase. For 6 bucks an hour, you KNOW she cares what you think.
10) Drive back home. More gas, more traffic, more chances for that moving violation.
11) Open CD. Break out Sawzall to cut through multiple layers of plastic and security tape. Cut finger open. Curse loudly.
12) Rip CD to disc. Can't browse porn while it's ripping or it might mess up. Hunt through 433 cable channels for something to watch while CD rips.
13) Upload to mp3 player. Rock out to Britney's latest. FINALLY!
Elapsed time: 90 minutes, $14 plus gas, plus cost of speeding ticket (if any).
Download:
1) Roll over in bed, open laptop, brush Cheetos dust off sausage-like fingers, click on Amazon.
2) Pay 99 cents for the one track you want.
3) Browse porn for the 60 seconds or so it takes to download.
3) Upload to MP3 player. Rock out.
Elapsed time: 3 minutes tops, 99 cents. No clothing, no shower, no speeding ticket.
- Pithy comment goes here.
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...
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.........
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.
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.
Or maybe they just got tired of buying RIAA produced crap? I have been talking to my buddies and a lot of them have been doing like me and just buying from local artists, which don't show up in these RIAA numbers. Even in a little state like AR I can have my choice of anything from bluegrass and traditional country to death and speed metal, and everything in between. And frankly you don't feel bent over by the local artists.
The last show I went to I got a T shirt, a nice 12 song CD with nice artwork and liner notes, and a bumper sticker for $25 and got a little 5 song EP CD for free. Hell of a lot better deal than what I would get from an RIAA member. I have also noticed that more and more are doing the tricks I used to do with my old band, like having a raffle for a guitar signed by the band. Every purchase of $10 or more got you put in the raffle. It gives the band another chance to sell you stuff after the show and who don't like raffles? We would pick up these Kramer guitars and basses from MusicYo(sadly no longer in business) for a little of nothing, play them for a couple of songs, and then sign one and give it away. I suppose from the looks of them the bands are using pawn shop specials now, but hell it's still fun and a great way to put butts in the seats.
So maybe they just got tired of feeling ripped off and skipped the middlemen? From the shows I have been seeing the local artists are going out of their way to make sure you have value for your hard earned $$ in this economy. And you know that every dime you hand them isn't going to some fat cat or some lawyer suing kids. So maybe like me they have just decided the RIAA crap isn't worth bothering with. Too much corporate MOR garbage for too much money.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Got a citation for that?
Yeah. My EARS.
Yeah yeah, I quoted the wrong bit. It was "it's becoming more popular" BS that I wanted a citation for. Obviously FLAC must be at least as good as the WAV/CD source it was pulled from, as it's completely lossless compression.
But no one is going to use it. Well, no one outside of a very tiny group of people who care. ie, not people who use magic words like "imaging" and "soundstage" (BTW, anyone who seriously uses those terms in casual conversation immediately gets the label "audiophile douchebag", IMHO... the very fact you believe you can tell the difference between FLAC and CD because of "USB jitter" just proves it).