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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."
For defining Opportunity cost, and boring everyone senseless at the same time.
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
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One thing that is not really debatable is that the music industry business model is outdated, overgrown with middlemen, and on it's way out.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!
And offers such iron-clad evidence as "If you even think about it, it can't be true," and "I don't think so. I suspect they're doing something different."
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.
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.
This is precisely what people said about DVD's about a decade ago
No it isn't. People looked at DVD and saw:
People look at BD and see longer load times, and a better picture (if you also buy a new TV when you buy your BD player). DVD was better in every way than VHS. BD is not noticeably better on existing equipment. If you bought a DVD player, took it home, plugged it in to your existing setup, and watched a DVD, you immediately got noticeable improvements. BD does not have this advantage unless you already have an HD TV.
The other thing to change is that the durability of DVDs has made rental prices drop and - most importantly - made renting by post easy. These rental services give you access to a massive library of material on DVD. Most of this is not available on BD and even if it were, there is no compelling reason to prefer the BD version; in a lot of cases the source material does not make use of the quality available for DVD.
That's not to say HD video won't catch on. BD has a race to get sufficient market penetration before it's completely obsolete though. I can get a 20Mb/s connection now. My ISP is currently rolling out 50Mb/s, and their competitors are deploying similar speeds. BD has a maximum AV bitrate of 48 Mb/s. The companies that offer DVD rental are now offering Internet streaming as well. Given the choice between a BD player, where I have to get disks posted to me, or a box that plugs into my Internet connection and lets me stream video on demand, I know which I'd prefer. With the introduction of iPlayer, I already watch more via the Internet than by any other medium, including DVDs. I doubt very much that that trend will reverse, certainly not in time to save BD.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This isn't correlation or causality. It's simply painfully obvious.
Those in the game industry explicitly acknowledge this and
freely admit that they have to compete with not just other
forms of paid diversion but of diversions in general. The
game developer has to compete with it all, including sex.
The members of the MPAA and RIAA are probably too complacent
and too "fat and happy" to realize this.
Game developers do though.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.