Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Thriving In an Era of File Sharing
levicivita notes ZeroPaid coverage of a recent study by the UK music industry's own economist showing that overall UK music industry revenues were up in 2008 (study, PDF). The study is titled "Adding up the Music Industry for 2008" and it was authored by Will Page, who is the Chief Economist at PRS for Music, a UK-based royalty collecting group for music writers, composers, and publishers. From ZeroPaid: "[T]he music industry is growing increasingly diverse as music fans enjoy a wide range of platforms to hear and consume music. Sales of recorded music fell 6% for example, digital was up 50% while physical dropped 10%, but concert ticket sales grew by 13%. In terms of what consumers spent on music as a whole last year, this surprisingly grew by 3%."
The recording industry has lost [CARL-SAGAN] Billions and BILLIONS [/CARL-SAGAN] due to those Evil Content Pirates(tm)!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
How much greater would the reported growth be without losses due to piracy?
I'm guessing it would be something like 3 billion percent.
Required reading for internet skeptics
recorded music is where the juicy profits are though, so profit wise i'm guessing they lost out.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The report does tell us:
Make no mistake; the live music industry grew in 2008. More events, more bands, more tickets and importantly, higher ticket prices. Breaking it down to basic supply and demand economics, and given the scarcity embedded in its model, the live music industry is somewhere you really want to be right now.
My emphasis.
Perhaps the figures include all the tickets all those suckers bought for the triumphant London return of the "king of pop".
Or maybe this year's new music isn't as boring as last year's (I pretty much gave up buying CDs when I found they were all bland and soporific).
That's quite a report, in its gushing marketingese. I note with delight that "heritage act" has supplanted "senior citizen" as the euphemism for "old age pensioner" or "old geezer".
The music industry needs to realize that people are still willing to buy music if they really like an artist and want to support him/her/them.
[ irc.p2p-network.net -> #zomgwtfbbq ][ http://zomgwtfbbq.info ]
This is bullshit! I am sure file sharing and the free exchange of information represses interest of anything if not everything... hold on..
The money flow is going the way it should. More about the artists and less about the publishers. And at better prices. To gain recognition, artists aren't required to sign away all their rights to a giant publisher anymore.
Wow. I guess piracy really doesn't hurt the digital content industries.
Oh wait. Two caveats:
(1) "Sales of recorded music fell 6%" (which means other digital industries that don't involve giving concerts shouldn't expect comparible results).
(2) A recent (July 13, 2009) study of UK piracy says "The analyst firm published a study on Monday that showed the numbers of those who regularly file-shared had dropped by a quarter between December 2007 and January 2009. The trend was particularly pronounced among 14-18-year-olds -- at the earlier date, 42 per cent were file-sharing at least once per month but at the latter date only 26 per cent were doing so."
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb20090713_439306.htm
Ticket sale money doesn't line the same pockets as CD sale money (for one, the artist gets a cut).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
From what I remember, the same increase was seen throughout the industry when Napster was at its peak.
The industry should be thankful for being able to reach a larger audience without having to pay the giant advertising costs!
An album hasn't turned a profit in twenty years. Otherwise they would have to pay royalties to the artists, which would ruin their business model.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Interestingly it looks as though even though the physical products are not selling well people are returning or atleast partially embracing vinyl records
From Wikipedia -
"Figures released in the United States in early 2009 showed that sales of vinyl albums nearly doubled in 2008, with 1.88 million sold - up from just under 1 million in 2007."
The RIAA et al. is screaming about piracy not because money is not lining into pockets. The money is only being lined into the wrong pockets, and they don't like it.
Executives only exists to protect themselves. The facts don't lie.
I like how both the article and the Slashdot submission completely ignore that file-sharing has dropped in the UK, especially among teens. Though I know this was posted on Slashdot to give pro-pirates the idea that sales are thriving in spite of piracy, this story doesn't disprove the effect piracy has on sales--if anything, it bolsters the idea that sales go up when piracy goes down.
No shit sherlock.
Interesting statistic. I am all for pushing digital content out to the masses and being able to pick songs you like. I'd much rather buy a couple of songs that I like off an album and not having to fork out the bucks for the rest of the dross. It also creates competitive drive for artists and makes them dig deep into their creative juices or shell out the money for people who know how to produce stuff that sells better (whether of better quality or not).
But it would be interesting to do a follow up statistic on how much concert ticket prices have changed with the onset of the digital file sharing. I have certainly noticed the hike in prices over the last 5 years. I am sure there will be arguments about recession being blamed for it, and I am not denying it may be true. It would just be worth a second and deeper look into the profit stratas to figure out whether it's really digital file sharing that's causing the profits to soar or if it's something else.
Well good, I can keep pirating music without feeling bad. But seriously, if the record companies caught on to the fact that people downloading music are doing so because they love music, not because they hate the industry, they could be making a lot of money. Lets say Atlantic records got their own paid torrent tracker and charged $20 a month to download albums at will. There would still be the super leeches taking 10-15 albums a month and after the first download it would be loose for everyone. But I know plenty of people that would pay the $20 a month, get two or three albums a month just because it's easier than navigating the spam and virus party that is bittorrent. When it becomes easier to buy music than steal it, people will actually buy it. But when I can get just about any album days, even months, before they are released in a matter of minutes, why would I go to the store which may or may not have it in stock even weeks after the release date. Until the record companies start seeking listeners where they live, they are going to keep floundering. Just look at iTunes, it took the record companies too long to figure out that people would actually pay the same amount for something that costs half what it does to produce a packaged album. Now some have and -- gadzooks -- people are actually buying more legal digital music. It'll be the same with torrents, hell, smart pirates are already charging for community-driven trackers and take requests for new content. Until then, I'll keep stealing music and spending that money on concert tickets and T-shirts. That way I'm actually giving money to all the actual band members in the bands that I never would have found browsing the local record store.
[T]he music industry is growing increasingly diverse as music fans enjoy a wide range of platforms to hear and consume music.
I do not fsckin' consume music, I listen to music. I consume food. Are MAFIAA pr flacks edible? Are they nourishing? Probably not. Odds on I won't consume them then.
Here you go:
An album hasn't turned a profit in twenty years. Otherwise they would have to pay royalties to the artists, which would ruin their business model.[1]
As someone who works in the music business and works with the major record labels and artists I can tell you that most of the people in the business are now out of work of struggling just to pay bills. Most of the labels are out of business, most of the facilities are closing down, and many of the people in the industry are suffering. It's sad to see so many people touting stealing. I wonder how many would feel if people were stealing from them and taking pride in it. And most of the arguments people here are making are false claims that they are making up simply so they can talk themselves out of feeling guilty for stealing from other people.
All money that's not spent on what is supposedly downloaded instead (rather than in addition to), is still there to be spent on other things. Other media, even.
We are all God's parents.
The PRS is the '_Performing_ Rights Society'. As the article says - 'Consumers spent less on recorded music, down 6% since 2007, but concert ticket sales have grown by some 13% as the industry as whole slowly evolves and adapts to digital distribution.'. They collect royalties for performances, not physical sales of CDs, or royalties from downloads, which are collected in the main by the MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Service). The music industry in terms of the main labels remains slow to adapt, and the ridiculously high percentages charged by download services like iTunes (50% for smaller labels/bands in the UK, plus another 10% to go through a broker if they refuse to deal direct) means that bands are forced to play live as the only sensible source of income.
"Music Industry Thriving In an Era of File Sharing"
Not that anyone cares but the question that should be tacked onto the above is, "in spite of, or because of"?
People seem to miss the point, you can prove that piracy isnt hurting them beyond a shadow of a doubt, and they'd still wage the same war. Why? The real issue is p2p and the internet, and how both empower artists to become their own producers. You don't need a $100,000 recording studio anymore, you don't need to produce records to get music out there anymore, the RIAA knows this, and it scares them, as they know artists will start figuring out that they don't need greedy middlemen anymore who take 99% of the earnings for themselves (and try to push for 100%) This is the real issue. They don't want their little golden geese figuring out that they can benefit from their own eggs.
Nowadays with lower cost production hardware, computers replacing most hardware and replacing it on the software level, and the internet becoming a publishing medium with a very low barrier to entry, the "industry" isnt necessary anymore.
So in the end, this means shit. They will still tout the same battle cry until they get their way.
and so couldn't find these artists to pay them the royalties owed them.
Such unknowns as "Dolly Parton"...
The guy works for a group whose business is *collecting royalties* for artists. Of course he's going to say that sales are up, and his clients deserve more money. If he were saying that sales were way down and had less than 7 degrees of separation from the RIAA he'd be flayed alive. When his position supports the /. mindhive it doesn't matter what his credentials are.
I should know better by now, but I'm disappointed by you, /.ers.
The Chief Economist of PRS was found dead in his home, apparently of autoerotic asphyiation, with ropes tied around his neck and completely naked.
The UK police are stumped. "We did find a card with the word 'RIAA' on it, but we decided to ignore it and call this a suicide. A sex game gone wrong." Outsiders call this a case of corporatism - the government and the corporations colluding to cover-up a murder. "It be fascism, that's what it be," said a local man who refused to identity himself.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'm told it's virtually impossible to make money running a small venue or festival. Moreover, the not-so-famous bands that tend to play at them are lucky to get travel expenses, never mind actually being paid to perform. The total revenue for live music may have gone up, but I'm willing to bet it's all gone to large venues and famous artists through (in my opinion) ridiculously high ticket prices.
It seems likely that the same is true, though perhaps to a lesser extent, of recorded music: small indie labels (e.g. Sotones, with which I'm loosely affiliated) don't tend to see a lot of revenue through direct sales of recordings. Most of the sales go through the big online stores, and they tend to promote the big/hyped acts, just as the big retail stores do.
This isn't to say things aren't changing in the music industry, but I wouldn't get too excited about the ascendancy of live and independent music just yet.
https://alephnull.uk/
I know it's the cue for endless jokes about profits and comments about industry greed but the real point is 3% is effectively flat growth. When you factor in expansion in emerging markets we're talking about an overall contraction in first world markets. There's a shift to concert based sales which everyone will cheer, and bitch about ticket prices, but there's an ominous twist to that. If profits are so high on live performance why is there resistance to the shift? Well for one concerts are expensive and risky. They can spend 6 to 12 months prepping for a concert only to get hit with an economic down turn and face weak ticket sales. Possibly not even enough to support the tour. You also don't spend millions prepping a tour for an unknown which hurts new artists. Yes give away music until you are famous but not everyone hits it big. Bar bands? There hasn't been money in that since the early 80s. Bands often have to pay bars to play. Depending on concert sales alone is terrifying to music companies and artists. It reduces it to one revenue stream and risks loosing everything each time the economy turns bad. Tickets costs far more than albums so they can drop far worse in bad times. Make the tickets cheaper? No magic bullet for all problems. People like the big expensive concerts just like big expensive movies. Also large venues don't want to book tours that spent nothing on the show. It's far more expensive and risky to tour than it is to cut an album. Technically you can cut an album for 50K to a couple of hundred grand, obviously less but but that's a low end for established companies not Jim Bob in his basement. We have to get over this downloads don't hurt sales. The numbers are obvious and I know plenty of people that don't pay they download and I constantly hear people boast that they don't pay for music and they have song collections in the tens of thousands. Yes they may not have bought that much but given no choice they would have bought some of it. Yes there's an unstoppable shift but it's not a good one. The quality drop in music has largely mirrored the shift. Companies play it safe. Something similar already took place in the film industry. The popcorn circuit died in the 80s. The last hurray of that was the birth of VHS tapes when tens of thousands of video stores needed to stock up on new films. There was an explosion of independent films but that dried up in the 90s and it's nearly died after 2000. They are still making movies but virtually all independent films loose money. Getting a wide release has gotten to be like winning the lottery only imagine a lottery where you had to win in order to get paid. Believe it or not it got much worse in the last two years so expect the quality to drop even further. Now this is before film piracy has a big impact. It was caused by a market shift. The studios stopped filling up on cheaper indy films and focused on high profit big budget films. Now indy films get pirated out of the gate so the studios see even less reason to take the risk. They push for block busters that can make a profit in the first two weeks before piracy cuts into sales. Piracy is not yet the driving factor int hat shift but it will be soon making cheaper films even less likely to find markets. Foreign markets were hot ten years ago but they are dead now primarily due to piracy. In south east Asia films cost a $1. How much goes to the maker? Zero. Virtually all films sold are pirates.
There is a shift in music and film markets but it's unrealistic to think the results will be a golden age of free high quality music and films. What we are going to be left with is the entertainment version of fast food. It's cheap to make and high profit.
... who blamed all those previously reported drops in sales on loss of quality will surely attribute this spike similarly: as a rise in quality? Surely they weren't just coming up with excuses to justify their illegal behaviour, right?
Seriously though, this is all a non-issue. It's up to the copyright holder what they do with their works. Whether sharing is beneficial or not, it's still not up to us to dictate to artists how they should market their product. If the statistics say that sales with sharing are higher than without, then eventually, artists will start allowing sharing. If it works, they'll probably do it again, and others will pick up the trend. Right now, these trends have a far too high chance of being coincidence, or something related to both sharing and sales (e.g. quality, as mentioned before), so this is far from convincing evidence, let alone proof, that the sharing system works.
Be patient. If sharing produces a superior culture, then it's only a matter of time before demand, and eventually supply, will reflect that. Until then, to aid the process of change, I strongly suggest that you don't pirate, lest you start muddying the difference between the two systems. If we stick to sharing only shareable works, then full cost of restricted media will become apparent, as will the value of (or perhaps lack thereof) what restricted media creates. Right now, pirates get free access to everything that restricted media created. We have to each make choices: buy restricted and stick to it, or buy free and do what you damn well please.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Even if their "mainstay" of physical media continues to tank, this just goes to show that they'll make it up elsewhere. They'll likely continue to increase the price of concert tickets to offset the revenue loss (and to continue the modest increase reported this year), but that will only be sustainable for a limited time. Music remains an overpriced product through most outlets.
I find myself buying a lot of Amazon MP3s when I see album specials for $3 (USD) or less. Sure, I'm not picking up the newest artists or releases this way, but, because of those deals, I've purchased more music in the past year than I did in the preceding decade.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
The simple reality is: most people who pirate aren't going to buy anyways. It's not a loss if someone downloads your content and tinkers with it 5m and then never touches it again and that is what happens with *a lot* of content. Nor is it a loss if someone downloads your content (because they can't afford it) and likes it and 5 of their friends go out and buy it even though the original person never does.
Shadus
I still contend that 90% of all illegal downloads comes from people who weren't going to buy the music anyway. The problem for the music industry is that piracy opens the world up to a larger variety of music. As a result, it's almost impossible for the industry to dictate the music trends. In this modern world it's much harder for the industry to ram "She Bangs, She Bangs!" down our throat. My cousin was so happy when he got a six record deal ten years ago. Then they promptly shelved him for the duration of his contract. Turns out my cousin sounded too much like their cash cow, Marc Anthony. These shenanigans happen all the time. In 1998 the record company shelved Chuck D, stating that market research showed that no one was interested in Public Enemy anymore. So he circumvented the record company by releasing the album on mp3.com and it went on to become, up to that point, the most downloaded album of all time. though he lost the battle with the record company, he was able to, thanks to digital downloads, rub egg in the face of the label execs. What the record labels are most afraid of is not piracy, it's the fact the digital era and the internet is going to render their services obsolete. Who needs a record company when you have the internet? The recording industry needs embrace piracy and re-adapt their business model to one that embraces the advantages created by piracy. As this article clearly shows, though album sales are down, concert sales are way up, and so are sales of paraphenilia. If you don't think the piracy model can't make money, then take a look at the Grateful Dead. They asked their fans to pirate their songs and to make bootleg tapes and distribute them freely. Then they went on to make a fortune on sold out concerts, t-shirts, books, magazines, etc.. They became the highest grossing act of their time! One last thing, another reason for more sales is that now you can buy your music unencumbered. That's major. DRM is terrible in that it severely inconveniences those who are trying to do the right thing. Meanwhile, the people using pirated goods have the freedom to play their music anywhere and on any machine or gadget they want to.
Isn't this exactly what the entire geek community has been saying for over a decade ? We don't give a fuck about the shiny discs, we give a fuck about the music and the artist.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I'm told it's virtually impossible to make money running a small venue or festival.
You don't get rich, but you make enough to make it worthwhile. That's why we keep seeing more and more festivals popping up. Personally, I think that's a good thing. I'd rather go to half a dozen cheap small festivals a year than one huge expensive fest like Bonnaroo. As long as the staff and musicians get paid, and the organizer gets enough to make it worth doing again, it's a success.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When you buy music, make sure to check http://riaaradar.com/ [riaaradar.com] to see if the album is from a company that funds the RIAA. If they do, don't buy it and stick it to them a couple dollars of lost earnings at a time.
I don't understand the Slashdot voodoo accounting. Piracy is not "marketing" and never has been. In the 80's we'd copy tapes or record it from the radio. Everytime The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry" plays, I still hear in my head some random female DJ say "No, but they sure snivel a lot" over the last chord in my radio recording. The only person that got my money for that song was Maxell. I never bought it EVER. Anecdotal yes, but I believe I'm in the vast majority.
Sales have gone up because it hurts less for joe schmo to pay $1/song, so he's more likely to buy it. Shit, people pay $.50/song ALL night at the bar jukebox, why not buy it for $1?
The industry has offered a product more consumers will buy, and it's catching on more and more. Don't kid yourself that piracy has somehow helped.
Paging New York County Lawyer. Here's another brick for the wall you're building on how the recording industry lies and lies and lies about all the harm that evil filesharing perverts are causing them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."