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Game, DVD Sales Hurting Music Industry More Than Downloads
Aguazul writes with this excerpt from the Guardian:
"The music industry likes to insist that filesharing — aka illegal downloading — is killing the industry; that every one of the millions of music files downloaded each day counts as a 'lost' sale, which if only it could somehow have been prevented would put stunning amounts of money into impoverished artists' hands. ... If you even think about it, it can't be true. People — even downloaders — only have a finite amount of money. In times gone by, sure, they would have been buying vinyl albums. But if you stopped them downloading, would they troop out to the shops and buy those songs? I don't think so. I suspect they're doing something different. I think they're spending the money on something else. What else, I mused, might they be buying? The first clue of where all those downloaders are really spending their money came in searching for games statistics: year after year ELSPA had hailed 'a record year.' In fact ... games spending has risen dramatically — from £1.18bn in 1999 to £4.03bn in 2008. Meanwhile music spending has gone from £1.94bn to £1.31bn."
It sure takes a while to get to the point.
What's needed is someone with lots of disposable funds who can embrace the internet as a means of hype and content distribution.
Obviously, no one else has picked it up, so if anyone rich happens to want to start a production label, now's a good time to catch the hearts of lots of bored internet addicts.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
For defining Opportunity cost, and boring everyone senseless at the same time.
RIAA or MPAA?
My webcomic
Let's see.
Games are on Blue-Ray.
Movies are on Blue-Ray.
If only the music industry would put their product on Blue-Ray, it would sell well, too!
Yes, apparently, constant threats of lawsuits might cause people to spend their entertainment money elsewhere. It's kind of like with those Capitol One mailers. On the back of the envelope it says something like "tampering with or changing the contents of this envelope may subject you to legal action." Oh yeah, I am so going to get a credit card from people who start off threatening to sue me (and for what?). Same thing with the RIAA. You sue your customers, we go elsewhere and tell you where you can stick those shiny, plastic discs.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Eminem is suing apple for refusal to pay him for iTunes. Other artists are lining up around the block. MTV also allowed apple to air his commercials with kids humming his beats and did not pay him a dime. That's their idea of fair. Where is the RIAA to get him his money? Oh wait they only get money for the record companies not the artists who get NOTHING for an mp3.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
Every goddamn radiostation plays the same tunes over and over multiple times a day. Why buy the music if you hear it anyways? Instead, buy some other entertainment like Games and movies. The first one lasts longer than 1 music cd.
The article claims:
1- consumers buy games/DVDs over the latest music album
2- consumers don't have enough money for music
3- consumers download music
Based on their evidence, though, you could also conclude:
1- consumers download music
2- consumers still have money
3- consumers buy games/DVDs with saved money
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that downloading a song==lost sale, but I don't think the evidence stated necessarily means that people are choosing games/DVDs over music.
One thing that is not really debatable is that the music industry business model is outdated, overgrown with middlemen, and on it's way out. And the end won't come soon enough.
FUNK!
The rise of zero personality manufacturer bands (The Jonas Brothers... like the Monkees but with out the hard cutting edge) and their cult of multiple product selling surely also has to be responsible. Its not just Games and DVDs its the fact that for a given "star" you can get pens, pencils, school bags, DVDs, 3D Movies and all manner of other crap. Their objective almost isn't to sell the music its just to sell the image and then have people buy lots of things with that image.
Dora the Explorer has as much credibility as these bands and is focused on a similar financial plan.
Meanwhile good bands seem to be going into the live tour set up more and more and being less worried about CDs. So what is killing CDs is that at the crap end people are flogging pens and school bags and at the good end its about the live gigs. Meaning that if you want entertainment at home you go for DVDs (because the Cinema is a rip-off) or Games (where you get to do more of what you want).
The music industry has killed the CD by focusing on bag sales and forcing decent artists to focus (thank god) on live gigs.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
http://xkcd.com/552/
What the RIAA members really need to do is make free pirated copies of games and movies more easily available on the web; then people will have more disposable income with which to purchase music!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
As much as I would like to believe this, the mantra still applies:
correlation != causation. (and I'm not even sure there's enough data to establish for the former)
...wait till somebody tells them that you can actually download video games as well!
because you can get the one song you like off of iTunes/amazon/whatever. Why always start from the assumption that it must be illegal activity that is adversely affecting sales.
The legal marketplace has changed to benefit the consumer economically, by not gouging them for $6/15 for a single/album respectively, now they can get what they wanted for around a $1. Some will buy more music but many others will move that savings to other avenues of entertainment.
Where is the InconvenientTruth tag? It's interesting how a fresh perspective on an issue sheds an interesting new light. Of course this is to be expected. The music industry and all of "entertainment" have probably been quite aware of this. But when delivering a plea to legislators and making arguments for why various manufacturers should support a particular measure or restriction, it doesn't help them to tell the complete truth.
It seems so obvious it amazes me how many higher ups in these industries fail to recognize that they're not in the record business, or the video game business, or the film business. They're in the entertainment business. If you're going to make it a pain in the ass to purchase your music or to watch your movie, I'm just as happy to spend my time reading a book, or surfing the Internet, or playing a video game. 99% of the time I'm not even going to bother trying to hunt down a pirated copy, because quite frankly I'd rather just spend that time being entertained by one of the other numerous options I have available to me. You're not competing for my money, you're competing for my time, and you're competing against everything else I can possibly find to fill it with. The sooner these businesses learn this the easier they'll find it to get my money.
The argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale was always pretty silly. Obviously the demand for something that costs $0 is going to be greater than if it costs $20.
With ringtone sales approaching $10 billion/year in the US, perhaps the data could better represent the current state of the music industry.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Who is the main target audience for popular music (i.e. the staple of the music industry)? Teenagers. Now, teenagers have a bit more pocket money today than they did in the 80s and 90s, inflation sure took care of that, but they also have a lot more to spend it on.
I was a teenager in the 80s and 90s. What was there for us to spend our pocket money on? Music. Fashion. Junk food. Umm... Arcades, maybe. Besides that... umm... I'm open for suggestions, but that's what my friends spent their dough on (for me it was computer games, but that was me...).
Today, you have cell phones (and the various services that come with it, from ringtones to games), you have computer games, MMOs with their recurring subscriptions, Trading Card games, you have all sorts of markets geared either exclusively at teenagers or at least aiming heavily for them.
The music industry simply has to share the market with others.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have well over 200 CD's that I paid full retail for at legitimate stores. I listen to music all day at work and for many years enjoyed my collection digitized and copied to whatever machine I was working on. That said, I haven't purchased a CD in over 3 years, and I don't download mp3s or touch any torrents of any kind.
/year @$15 each) dwindling down to nothing as of about 2005. Some spending on games (probably 5-8/year @ 50 each) staying pretty consistent with a slight upswing in the last 4 years. Movies, didn't buy all that many VHS, have probably 80 or so DVD's (at probably 10/year) - 20 or so HD/BR movies, all within the last 10 months.
I switched to shoutcast streams many years ago, and as of a little over a year ago I started using Pandora.com and haven't looked back.
I buy and play games for my xbox and my PC. I purchase movies (I still haven't paid more than $10 for an HD movie, MPC + HD/BR player FTW).
Anyway, that said - if you were to graph my spending over the last decade 1999-2009 you would see a lot of money going to the music industry (15-25albums
Lack of quality music hurting music industry more than downloads.
After taking a step back from everything related to music, radio, magazines, and quality of artists, there isn't one thing that isn't failing, Radio isn't playing anything that isn't on their Clear Channel list and doesn't care to play anything extra. Rolling Stone, which is supposedly is a magazine that celebrates music, is failing miserably in content by falling to much on pop music when really good rock bands are out there, but can't get any airplay because the only thing that sells is pop music. Then we come to the artists, maybe I am getting older, but music, in all forms is truly horrible, at least accessible music. Rap and R & B has fell in love with the Cher, Believe voice autotune, Rock sounds like the instruments are played under water because it just plods along. Country even though I don't listen to it, turned into twang pop, and then my favorite is Pop itself, which seems to me can't get any blander, no matter how much sex and edge they try to put into it. I honestly think soon there will be something to make music better than it is right now, but I have know idea how that is possible, any suggestions?
So games and DVD sales are hurting music sales? If you take away the fact that people can pirate music, what happens then? Do people take some of the money they have been putting into games and DVDs and put it back into buying music? They obviously think music is worthwhile, otherwise they wouldn't even be bothering to download it.
You can't just say "well, other things are up, so I think it's those things" without factoring in that music can be had for free easily and that may be a factor in why games and DVDs are doing so well in sales (those can be pirated, but the size alone makes it more difficult to pirate than music). It's not as easy as "pirating is the one thing that is killing the music industry" but you have to at least factor it in because it is there.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
It's poor product that is hurting sales. Put the blame where it belongs, with the RIAA cartel itself.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Games, time spent on Twitter, phone, slashdot, reddit, digg, social networking, doing actually something useful with your life, you name it. This list of items that compete to some extent with activities like buying media either proves that comparing DVD sales to game sales is somehow unfair or somewhat uselessness of claims that downloading hurts media sales.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If they had phrased this as "People spend more money on games because pirating them is more difficult than pirating music", I would agree with that.
I've said this for a while.
People only have a finite amount of money. What the music industry has failed to grasp is that it no longer has a near monopoly on entertainment that it shared with the likes of the movie industry for the decades before the internet. It now has to compete with a bigger set of movies than ever before, it has to compete with the games industry and really for teenagers it even has to compete with things like text message costs and so on.
The music industry isn't in competition with piracy, it's in competition with every other form of entertainment expenditure out there. The only way to win that battle is how you would win a single industry battle - provide the most attractive product.
When people can buy their computer games, say, Rock Band, and get their music as part of that, they'll be less inclined to buy the music alone.
The same goes for those developers complaining about people pirating their games but if people can only afford one game, they'll buy the best game, that doesn't stop them wanting to play the other game though, they simply don't have money for both, so they'll buy the better one and pirate the not so good one.
It's simple business competition through and through - again, make a good product and you'll get your fair share of sales from people who think your product is the one worth paying for. Try and sell people crap, or try and sell people the same thing multiple times in multiple formats and don't be suprised when it's not your product they choose to spend their money on.
I'm sure some people will try to argue it's immoral that people do this and that's a fair enough argument, but arguing the morality of it doesn't change the reality of it and anyone with any business sense would realise that and make sure their business factors it in and produces a product good enough to get their share of the finite pool of consumer cash out there.
I totally understand that artists, the **AA, the IP lobby, etc., have a problem with piracy. It may not be "theft" in the same sense as "stealing someone's car", but it is still a breach of the social contract. Artists spend a lot of time and effort creating art (music, novels, TV shows, whatever), and if we all want to continue to enjoy that art, we're going to have to pay for it. Trying to get it for free is cheating, plain and simple.
On the other hand, for the IP lobby to claim that every illegal copy of a $10 CD represents a $10 loss to the economy is just fucked up. That $10 is going to get spent elsewhere. With the exception of a small handful of filthy rich people, everyone spends every cent they make; maybe not the same day they receive their paychecks, but the next month, or maybe next year. If some kid doesn't spend $10 on the latest Britney Spears CD, because they got a free illegal download instead, they're going to spend it on a movie ticket, a haircut, a book, maybe some gas for their car.
We should all be promoting copyright violations, because local businesses would run out of teenage customers otherwise.
Its no revelation that if the consumer is no longer spending for one thing, then it will surely be another. Furthermore, if the consumer finds a better product/service to spend their money on, there will be less demand for the inferior product/service. Is music as a product inferior to other creative expressions? Of course not... but as others suggest, its not about the actual product, but rather the distribution and being able to capitalize on it. When CD players took control of the market share over tapes, consumers stopped buying tapes... How can anyone be surprised that CD sales would be on the decline with the rise of digital format media and players. I'm sure most of you remember the first wave of CD burners to hit the market, media and industry people freaked out about it, ignoring the fact that people made mix tapes all the time. Why is it a surprise to anyone that consumers want to share music? So if I take a photo from a website and share it with my friends, print it out, hang it on my fridge and give a copy to my girlfriend, does the photographer or the person who owns the rights to that photograph also have the right to sue me? Of course not. Now if I redistribute that photograph commercially or use it in a commercial product or claim it as my own, then I'd be in some trouble. The real point of this whole issue is that these money hungry individuals are watching their distribution channel and their rights to profit on the product wane into oblivion and they fear losing control over the consumer's heart, mind and wallet. So they naturally chose to fight it, figuratively kicking and screaming, blaming anything and anyone, but their own failing and antiquated business model.
Game sales going up...okay.
Music sales going down...okay.
Music sales going down because game sales are increasing? Where's the support for that? This has all the appearance of two random facts being pulled out of the air and a causal link assumed for no particular reason.
(Especially given that, in the graph in TFA, game and DVD sales appear to have been increasing over the whole period [1999-2008] and music sales appear to have started significantly declining in 2004 -- they appear to have been pretty close to static before that, though its hard to tell precisely on a stacked bar graph -- and the chart has a footnote "methodology for measuring value of music changed in 2004". The best explanation for the change in apparent trend after that point is that what was being measured changed in 2004.)
May Video Game Sales Drop Compared To Last Year
Name...That...Autocomplete!
That people buy games and DVDs these days instead of music because most of the music available now simply sucks.
For some time now(years?), most of the music-money I've spent has been back filling. I've been picking up (cheap) CDs of old albums that I never got around to purchasing in the past.
Finally got a copy of "The Bends" last week. ;-)
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Meh, there's also the physical medium to consider. I suspect more people buy games than buy music because many come on proprietary cartridges, which end up being a lot harder to clone than CDs. This may not be true of some of the newer systems if they use standard DVDs, but it used to be that you had to invest quite a bit of time and/or money to rig up a cartridge writer.
Can't generalize, but a small mobile phone bill is easily equivalent to a CD album purchase.
Assuming they were buying a CD a week (they weren't) - that's just knocked 25% off music sales to teenagers alone.
As has been covered in other posts, I think it's that there's just simply more things to spend money on.
Oh and the ridiculous price gouging that came in with the transition of physical media to digital downloads. Oh and couple that with the 'pirated' version of music actually being of higher quality and easier to use than the legitimate copy. I don't want to photo-copy books, I can't be arsed trying to trick my console into letting me play a game I've burnt online - I would like my music high-bitrate and available to be played on all my kit (and not be tied to a particular platform for the rest of my life). Not saying that's the sole reason for the drop off in purchasing of music, but must nudge the decision on what you won't be buying that month.
People are spending their music money on other things, therefore it's the other things that are hurting the music business, and not piracy?
There is no evidence presented here that suggests that people would not spend more on music if piracy were eliminated. If it were, the biggest reason people would not spend an amount consistent with industry growth prior to piracy is because of the severe public stigma the RIAA has received from its battle against piracy. As well-deserved as that stigma is, it would not have developed had piracy had never existed. All major RIAA losses are in fact directly attributable to piracy, no matter what people otherwise spend their money on.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
1. We don't listen to as much music that we buy as we used to.
2. We buy other stuff.
3. We do other stuff.
Hmm. I'm not typical, but I play a fair amount of gamez, have the TV on in the background, and what music I do listen to (usually at the gym or the car) is either radio, which I don't buy, or classic stuff I bought anywheres from 6 to 35 years ago. And the really old stuff I've just updated from LPs to CDs. Which last a long time now that I use players and rip my CDs that I bought.
Sounds like the market is changing. Oh dear.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In an age where virtually every computer made in the last 4-5 years came with a cd burner, some people actually still point the finger at downloads for the decline in album sales.
(Not even mentioning the lack of creativity and innovation today's radio has...)
The money I would have spent on that crap goes some something more usefull so the market still gets this money.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
big labes have caused it themselves by not selling their music drm free via bittorent and other option. let people decide what they pay, and the net profit will increase to a higher amount than it currently is. eventually people feel guilt, some people respond to it most of them don't but generally the net+ will be higher than nothing.. big labels are just that (too big and fat, and not adjustable for change).
I download cracked games and MP3s to check out the content before I part with my hard-to-come-by money. While I no longer spend nearly as much on either as I used to, I am much happier with the items I do purchase.
And no, you can't really get a feal for whether a game is going to be worth playing on your home system from a demo at the store. Aside from that, the only game demos I see running are on consoles, not PCs.
Some music stores let you listen to a select set of albums before you buy them, but usually it's limited to the current top 10 or 20 CDs, which are rarely what I'm interested in. For that matter, I find I just gave up on shopping at the local CD store and go straight to the internet to order new CDs -- the stuff I want is rarely stocked by the local stores. (Ask them about Blind Pig Records and you just get a blank stare.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Bad product...pure and simple. It has been years since I have bought a commercial CD. I do buy individual or small studio published cd's. Their assumption? Oh, I must download it (since it is impossible that anyone would not listen to their music). In fact, I do not download music or copy music at all. Now their assumption is that the reason is because I play games instead of buying CDs and music. No, I buy products of quality with my money, and do not waste it on crap music produced by the studios associated with the RIAA. There are a lot of game studios that put millions of dollars into amazing games with great stories.
I'm tired of being insulted by this association by their assumptions that I listen to their crappy (and popular, but not all things popular are good) music at all cost...frankly, I don't care if they do well or not, though I would gladly support any movement to get them out of the news (by their going out of business, not by my wasting money.) With that said, I have pretty much already boycotted the RIAA because of these antics.
Games are harder to pirate than music and films. Therefore more games are sold.
Games are large in terms of data, and cannot be lossily compressed like mp3/DIVX. Games have strong copy protection. Games need to be cracked, which is an uncertain process and often conflicts with patches/updated content.
Well, why not?
...and the music industry is struggling to keep up.
Think about the last album you bought. For me, I watched a video meem on youtube, followed a link to an actual video, thought the song sounded cool, and proceeded to amazon to listen to the song blurbs. I liked most of the blurbs and felt the album was worth my $10, and bought it.
20 years ago, it would have gone more like: heard a song on the radio, liked the song, went to the record store to 'check out' the album. Upon 'inspection' of the album - likely cover art, and guessing at the content of songs by title - I might buy it for $15 and give it a try, crossing my fingers throughout the first listen.
I think technology has made it easier for the majority of Americans to make smarter decisions about their money. It has also made it near impossible to guess at a common method of advertising. This means smaller margins for large corporations, and plenty of business opportunities for smaller, focused companies. The music industry is struggling with all its might to hold onto a model it understands and trying to force everyone back to their old spending habits. But it's too late... Adam has already bitten that tasty fruit from the wisdom tree!
I saw a commercial for the zune I think
anyway , In the ad it said that at a dollar
a song it would cost 30,000 bucks to fill it
well I do not have that kind of disposable income
do you?
It made me think how the hell do they expect to make any money if legally it is out of reach for most people.
Just a thought
Becasue epeoplem only ahve a finite amoutn of money, so when they spend it on one entertainmen,t it's less then another.
So it is certianly plausible, even likely.
The amount of money I spend on music has gone down, but the number of songs I listen to hasn't. This is becasue I only buy the tracks I want. I wonder how many other people do the same thing?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Which is to say, they are competing against the internet itself. Email, facebook, youtube, slashdot, wiki, flashgames. All of the free legal entertainments and timekillers online effectively chew into paid entertainment sales aswell.
But his opening idea, that people who download illegally often download a LOT more than they could possibly buy, should seriously be taken account when thinking about this issue.
An excellent point about how the music industry is cooking the books. Here's another point they refuse to discuss: You can illegally download games too, and it doesn't seem to be hurting the games industry one single bit.
No, really! You can. And yet the games industry is booming and the music industry is not.
I wonder what the difference could be.
Could it be that suing your customer base is a bad idea? Could it be that the games industry is putting out a more appealing product? Could it be that music and games both compete in the entertainment arena and people only have so much money to spend on luxury items in a recession?
Nah, couldn't be any of that. Clearly it's P2P that's killing the music industry.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
If you have the skills to not pay for music or movies, you have the skills to not pay for games. Yet game sales are increasing and music sales are diminishing.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that games of today have orders of magnitude more budget than they did 10 or 20 years ago, hardware to match, etc, and it makes a huge difference. Combine the increase in immersion with a good story and you are golden. The other thing is that entertainment companies are also competing for your entertainment time budget. If you are playing Evercrack 24/7, you don't have much time to listen to music. And even if you did, Pink Floyd/Nirvana/Tool/Metallica/Beethoven/$GENRE_DEFINING_BAND still sounds as good coming from the discount rack as it did when it was created. OTOH you can't really compare Pong with say, Bioshock.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Its identical for me, same counts for movies, games, music, etc... The only exception being that I'm not buying movies in HD. I'm happy with DVD for mat and my old skool 4:3 TV. I'm watching HD on my PC though - mostly through Hulu.
I can't see spending near CD prices to get MP3 quality music. Sound-wise they seem similar enough, but I'd prefer to have the uncompressed version that you can get from a disc. I also have issue with DRM and the RIAA lawsuits. Both have had a significantly negative impact on my willingness to spend on music.
zZZz
.. went the same way. You could buy a blank C15 tape for around the price of a comic, then copy a mate's ZX Speccy game onto each side. Those of us lucky enough to have a part-time job could buy the originals for around a fiver each. Who wanted a comic which you could read in about ten minutes?
.. I know which I'd get more hours of entertainment from.
A budget DVD game at AUD $15-$25 or a music album with maybe two decent tracks for $20-$30
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/12/npd_video_game_sales_may_2009/
"Video game sales hit three-year low in US
23 per cent tumble"
Hm, must be all those CDs not bought causing this. Hm, must be from ..... all those iphoners doihg podcasts. That's the ticket - podcasts are to blame for the video game slump, which itself is responsible for the CD slump, and not rap crap doesn't sell in Peoria.
I think that one thing that is being overlooked is out gigantic the guitar industry is. A lot of people play guitar and a lot of them are extremely good at it. In fact, there are so many people who can rock axe that being a "rock star" has been reduced to cheap commodity status. So those guys, instead of signing multi-million dollar contracts like they would with their talent had they been around with it twenty years ago, are now recording themselves with Logic or Pro Tools or whatever. Go to a bar and you'll find better music than you will on the radio. On top of that one has to consider how easy pop music is to make with programs like Logic. Music just isn't a multimillion dollar industry anymore. It's been reaching this point for a while - the whole rock star concept is selling a personality before music. Blame Elvis :P
Anyway, I don't know why everyone finds it so peculiar, as a musician I find it bizarre that people think that their ability to do what the guy in the Free Credit Report commercials does is somehow awe-inspiring. The only reason music was a multimillion dollar industry was because recording technology was expensive and distribution methods were cumbersome. Now with Garage Band and the internet any dimwit can create a song that would have made him famous in the eighties and go to one of the many websites in which amateur musicians swap songs. I predict the music industry will continue to suffer because not even the personalities are selling anymore (unless they have a t.v. show or license their music to a video game). With the internet - YouTube, MySpace, ect. - an advertising firm or movie studio or whatever can find the song they need without the middleman recording industry.
As a guitarist, I don't buy music often, but when I do it's off iTunes (what do I need a disc for?). I don't have a radio in my car so I have no idea what's out there but I don't care. I'm not a kid anymore, I don't idolize rock stars. I'd rather play a gig at a bar and enjoy myself than deal with the stress and pandemonium of a sold out arena.
Hell - the Jonas Brother's and Hannah Montana are the most successful acts out there - doesn't that tell ya something?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
"US video game sales took a 23 per cent tumble in May compared to the previous year, dropping below the $1bn sales mark for the first time since August 2007."
The register
Sell more video game soundtracks.
The theory still holds if the music sales drop even higher than the video game sales drop.
Because the theory says that games and movies are competing with music for the same entertainment $$$$.
If the economy is bad the available entertainment $$$$ drops.
Lots of people have already lost their jobs or have had to take a pay cut, or have cut spending because they expect bad times.
Actually a 23% decline is nothing in the big picture. Personal bankruptcy rates are soaring - 40% more people filed for bankruptcy per day now than a year ago[1]. GM and Chrysler are bankrupt. All the major US airlines except for South West have lost money. The bank stress tests were a joke.
If someone wanted to take their mind off their dismal economic condition, it's actually cheaper and more effective to buy a video game and spend hours playing it.
[1] http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/06/may-bankruptcy-filings-climb-to-over-6000-per-day.html
Nah... it's really a matter of which form of media you choose to pay attention to the details on the most.
I'd argue that especially in the case of a feature-length movie on DVD, you're getting a heck of a LOT of value for the price, if you're considering all the time and effort put into all the actors and actresses memorizing all those lines, dressing into appropriate costumes, reciting those lines over and over on camera until they were just right ... special f/x people doing all of their work (much of which requires many hours of labor on complex pieces of computer software), sound engineers mixing everything just so, adding background music where appropriate, etc. etc. .... not to mention the script-writers who had to put the whole story together in the first place, and the producer and director putting their expertise into the mix.
But even with music compared to games? You're really blowing off the amount of work that goes into any half-way decent album.... You might think it's little more than "hearing someone sing for 3 minutes", but the musician probably spent hundreds of hours rehearsing that song before it was ready to record in the studio for the CD. The recording had to be mixed down and mastered too, by people who again spent FAR more than the 3 minute length of a song to get it ready....
Well said , and with that thought in mind i'm off fishing. The Mackerel have been showing up occasionally this week and if not watching the sun rise and getting some fresh air and exercise sets you up for the day.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Congratulations on finding a link to ( presumably) support your theory. Unfortunately, since your mind
was already made up, you didn't feel the need to READ the linked article.
Let me give you the short story - several factors are blamed for the drop in video game sales.
But, ahem, *cough*
P2P / ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING IS NOT, ( i know, highly illogical to your penetrating insight ), I REPEAT,
NOT ONE OF THOSE REASONS.
This has been a public service message from your friendly neighbourhood article reader.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Buy a CD and you have 1 hour of music. Buy a DVD and you have more then one hour of film or even music AND you have images that go with it. Not only sound. A game adds interaction to that as well.
The few times I buy music, I buy a DVD version. e.g. when buying the Guano Apes DVD, it contained the live version, all their clips AND the previous album. This was for the same price as the CD.
Also people still have only 100% they can spend, just as they used to in the good old days. I had to spend on rent, food, fixed phonebill and such. The rest I could spend on drinks and music. No VCR at that time.
Now a person in the same situation who spends an equal amount on drinks will have about the same percentage that I spend on music, but has to spend it not only on music, but also on his movies and games. Oh and let us not forget his internet and such.
Now as there is not enough time there, the place where money is taken away from is from the drinks. I live in a Student city and you can clearly see that cafe's and pubs are less busy then they used to be. This means less money for the local economy as these are eitehr privatly owned or owned by the brewery and I live in the hometown of the largest brewery company in the world, Leuven.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I am surprised no one else noticed that it's about when World of Warcraft was released that the "money spent on games" start to rise like mad.
And I am not saying that World of Warcraft is taking all of the money, but wasn't it the great success of WoW that made more and more games with subscription fees appear?
Im pretty sure they know it but it is very convenient to have a scapegoat and then to say
we have a problem but we are doing something. That will work at least for another 10 years
thanks to politicians who sell out for small amounts!
I wrote a letter to "Wired" stating essentially this... two or three years ago, in response to some article or another discussing music piracy.
When I was a kid (back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, of course), home entertainment media was pretty much your choice of LP, 45-single, cassette, or 8-track. In short, all products of the Recording Industry. Today, you have CDs, LPs (rarely) and downloads from those guys. But that same entertainment dollar is now also split between electronic gadgets, videos (DVD, Blu-Ray, that one guy still buying VHS), and gaming (console, pocket, online).
Then add in the fact that digital downloads re-introduced the single, and the whole industry plan that removed the single back in the 70s in favor of the whole album is gone... only now, they've grown dependent on selling whole albums. Then add in discounts on digital downloads... I've bought direct form the artist, from eMusic.com, and from Amazon.com. I only buy full albums, but if the digital version is near the CD price, I'll just buy the CD. When I can get an album for $2.00-$4.00, I probably buy the download.
And that's perhaps a good thing in the long run for the music industry. They'll have to adjust, and stop paying their relatively worthless executives so much. The new point of stability has a CD selling for under $10, so that it's seen as competitive with DVDs at $15 or video games at $30-$60.
They also need to acknowledge the actual role of record companies in the 21rst century, and price accordingly. There was a time when these guys were responsible for all sorts of artist development... they hired the backing band, they owned the studios, etc. It was very much the same artist management model use in Hollywood of the 40's and 50's. But today, you don't get a recording contract with a major label until you have a fully produced CD to show them... they're not even remotely part of any creative process at that level (they may get involved pushing established artists... after huge cuts to their rosters, due to cost reductions and mergers, they're more dependent than ever on a few big hits every year, despite the fact you can't really depend on that).
So the Big Label really has a purpose only as a publisher and distributer... the same thing book publishers do. Only, when I buy a Stephen King book, I see his copyright on the backside of the title page. When you buy most CDs, you'll see the record company claiming copyright. That's a projection of just how important they think they are, and when that starts to change, you'll know that there's maybe some hope for the industry. The big labels, or their replacements, will catch onto this... the only question is whether or not a record label still makes any sense, or generates any money, by the time they do. It's easy to see folks like Apple, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best-Buy, and Starbucks replacing Sony, Warner Bros, EMI, etc. if things keep on their current path.
-Dave Haynie
1 download is not 1 lost sale...
that would be equal to that everyone that listens to a record in a record store buys it....
and that have never happened....
I see a simple relation between "illegal downloaders" and the rights of the record industry...
While the RIAA claims to be losing a dollar (or 150x that, depending on the court case) for every file downloaded, there are legal users of services like Rhapsody downloading just as much for less than $0.50 a day. Obviously in both cases if the user had to pay for every single file they would download far less music - iTunes store users don't download anywhere near as much or as often as Rhapsody users, right?
So I propose in these court cases the RIAA should identify how long the illegal downloading was going on and require that the user pay the $15 per month cost of Rhapsody to cover the illegal downloads. That would be a much more realistic cost.
The other problem with the RIAA's lost sales claim is that people flock to free stuff. Think of the free gifts at sporting events and conferences/expos - at sporting events you get a souvenir bat or ball or hat; at conferences each vendor has a mug or toy or pen for you - nobody in their right mind would claim that all these freebies that people take are "lost sales". If I didn't go to that baseball game would I instead have purchased a quarter-sized decorative bat? Heck no! Freebies are given in the hopes of generating future sales.
In the case of music, some artists have already discovered giving music away can help generate interest for concerts. If all bands gave their music away then people would be more free to find and acquire the music that interests them, identifying bands they especially like, and would thus be far more likely to spend money on concerts in support of their favorite bands. We hear all the time how many bands, even big name bands, survive only on their concert tour earnings - so why bother making their fans pay for the songs anyway?
Most music is shallow, unimaginative shit aimed at the lowest common denominator. Is it any surprise people don't value it?
1. State a conclusion and put forth your premise 2. Quote at best a barely related statistic, relevant facts are for academic types 3. Become a Slashdot author and gain user cred by advocating the "You're not doing anything wrong by pirating the music you want instead of paying for it. 4. NonProfit!
It makes sense, but I'd even rather have a $30 DS or Wii, or used PS3/360 title than buy a blu-ray or DVD at full price these days. I just get my movies used for cheap.
Twinstiq, game news
My collection of music spans stuff written across more than two centuries. Yes, I have a focus on what was coming out when I was young, but that does not preclude me from enjoying stuff that was available 100 years before I was born, nor from enjoying tunes produced after my first grandchild was born.
What does stop me from enjoying(and here I repeat and emphasize) *most* of what is coming out or is otherwise popular today is that *most* of it sucks.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Oddly enough the category that did best is also the easiest to copy: PC game sales only dipped 17% compared to the 30% dip in console game sales.
The obvious conclusion of course, is that had it not been for pirating, PC sales would actually be UP 10% and laughing in the face of all those difficult-to-pirate console games and such.
Right?
AmIright?
No?
Oh. ;)
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
"Finite", perhaps, but not fixed over time, which is what the argument you present requires.