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Music Execs Stressed Over Free Streaming

Posted by Roblimo on from the buying-less-but-listening-more dept.

itwbennett writes "At the Digital Music Forum East conference, held Thursday in New York, music industry watchers gathered to puzzle anew over the continuing decline in music sales. 'We have lost 20 million buyers in just five years,' said Russ Crupnick, a president at the analyst firm NPD Group who spoke at the conference. Moreover, only about 14 percent of buyers account for 56 percent of revenue for the recording industry. In years past, the blame was put on digital music piracy. At this year's conference, however, the focus was on free streaming Internet services, such as Pandora, MySpace, Spotify and even YouTube."

11 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. What about... by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...free streaming over the air, i.e. radio?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:What about... by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Radio doesn't play the music you want to hear when you want, there's no way to skip songs you're tired of and so on. You might find a channel that's reasonably close but that's it, it's no replacement for owning the song. Spotify lets you play any song directly, save playlists, take the songs offline etc. and is much closer to having a huge mp3 collection on a network drive, owning it isn't that important anymore. Instead of buying CDs or on iTunes to play, people skip the "buy" step and play from Spotify.

      To them Spotify is a huge double-edged sword. On the one side, it brings many pirates to a legal streaming service. On the other side, it brings a lot of profitable buyers to a not so profitable streaming service. But if they make Spotify worse then people will go back to P2P, probably in even greater numbers than before. Not that I think they can stop the move to digital downloads anyway, fewer and fewer use a CD player anymore. Delivering it on CD is just a very impractical temporary medium until you can get it ripped.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:What about... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My guess is that the radio station selection is rather limited.

      I've been scanning the dial only to hear the same song playing on at least 3 different stations at once.
      This is what Corporate Music has done to us.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    3. Re:What about... by Moryath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the music was worth buying, people would buy it.

      As long as most of what they are trying to sell is disneyfied overproduced crap or bieberfied overproduced crap, we don't want it.

  2. people are broke.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and most of the music sucks! What else is there to say?

    1. Re:people are broke.. by Draek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about "I really love Jamendo"?

      Because I do. Just putting it out there in case anybody wants some nice, freely-available indie music to replace the RIAA trash and stop giving those bloodsuckers free advertisement and/or money.

      --
      No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
    2. Re:people are broke.. by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "I have a hard time hearing the music in it at all. Just shouting and a beat."

      It's poetry. The most successful form of poetry in history. Kids on street corners practice their poetry and aspire to be poets when they grow up!

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
  3. Funny... by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny that I bought most of the music in last 3 years after listening on Pandora.

    What they don't get is - digitization has made me purchase just one good song from otherwise crappy album and hence paying only a dollar and not a full 10-20$ they used to charge.

    1. Re:Funny... by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But every generation thinks that modern music isn't as good as it used to be.

      Sure. But the thing is, this used to be something that happened once you hit 40 or 50, when you were old enough to have teenagers of your own.

      Now, almost as soon as you graduate from high school and get exposed to more diverse music in college, you look back at what you were buying and listening to, and wonder WTF you were thinking. Pop music has become so irredeemably shitty that the so-called generation gap is all but gone.

  4. None so Blind as Those Who Will Not See by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We have lost 20 million buyers in just five years," said Russ Crupnick, a president at the analyst firm NPD Group who spoke at the conference. Moreover, only about 14 percent of buyers account for 56 percent of revenue for the recording industry. In years past, the blame was put on digital music piracy. At this year's conference, however, the focus was on free streaming Internet services, such as Pandora, MySpace, Spotify and even YouTube.

    They will clutch at every straw and leave no stone unturned in their quest to increase sales... except for the myriad ways that they are their own worst enemy. It will never occur to them that suing your own customers is not good for business. They will never think that what is in my opinion the obvious "buy-a-law" political corruption (designed to institute perpetual copyright) in which they engage makes people with a conscience decide not to support them.

    They will never consider that threatening tens of thousands of people with lawyer letters demanding they either pay a settlement or face a lawsuit they could not possibly afford, with no regard for the fact that many of them were innocent, might earn them some ill will. Nor will they think that taking children to court and using interrogation procedures obviously designed to intimidate them is something that decent people don't care to reward financially.

    Nope, it's them evil pirates, those horrible music streaming services, etc. Of course it is. That adequately explains everything.

    It's at a base level and I openly acknowledge that, but I can't help but to smile when I see that they are showing signs of desperation. They deserve more failure than they are experiencing.

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  5. Re:Greed knows no bounds by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except the big Wall St. banks. They're doing just fine. Cha-ching! Oh by the way oil is at $112, cha ching! We'll just get our friends at the Fed to keep interest rates at zero forever so you might as well stuff your money under your mattress since that way at least you will save on all the bank fees. You sure as hell aren't going to get any interest even on a CD. But remember to pay your 5-6% on your mortgage, plus all those other hidden fees, and pay your 20% on your credit card. Making money with interest is not for you, it's for us. Cha ching! Oh and we haven't told you what is going to happen to your savings with all this inflation we're not telling you about (believe the CPI because we take out energy and transport costs - hah, I mean, who uses THOSE THINGS anyway). Your house prices are not increasing though, so you're not even keeping up with this inflation. In 10 years or so you won't be able to afford a car, but we'll lend you one in exchange for your first born. After all it's your patriotic duty to save American car manufacturers! Cha ching!

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.