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The Music Industry's Crisis Writ Large
The NY Times has an opinion piece that makes starkly clear the financial decline of the music industry. It's accompanied by an infographic that cleverly renders the drop-off. The latest culprit accelerating the undoing of the music business is free, legal online music streaming. "Since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of those sales, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped by more than half. At that rate, the industry could be decimated before Madonna's 60th birthday. ... 13- to 17-year-olds acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent. ... [T]he percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music 'regularly' and nearly a third listen to it every day."
>>>This reminds me of the Fullscreen / Widescreen discs in some early DVD releases. Made a great 2 for 1 deal, sell off or give away whichever format you don't watch to whoever does.
>>>
FALSE.
Please don't spread misinformation. I have several of these fullscreen/widescreen DVDs, and they did NOT include two discs. Instead they include ONE disc that is double-sided and therefore impossible to do what you claim (sell one disc; keep the other).
As for the music loudness problem, there is an extremely easy fix:
Most studios already release an CD/album version (typically 5 minutes) and a radio/single version(typically 4 minutes) of their songs so all they need to do is release the CD with proper mixing, while the radio version is volume-compressed to make FM studios happy.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Why aren't teens listening to 80's music now?"
Because it sucked. I remember living in the S.F. bay area during the 1980s and there actually was some radio station then that had a billboard annoucing "no Rock of the 80s".
Oh sure, there's alsways some godo music being made at any given time (among the big acts, some good stuff from U2 and Dire Staits), but overall, the 80s didn't produce too much that was too memorable.
Someone may say but that was when Michael Jackson made it big. But I consider that a supporting piece of evidence to my thesis.