Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Sees First Revenue Increase Since 1999
Zaatxe writes with a bit of news about the music industry; sales are slightly up (basically flat). From the article: "The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun. The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it's 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement. 'At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music,' said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving music.'"
Because CDs aren't digital. CD sales are declining, and being replaced by the sale of lossy files. I wonder how much more money they could be making if they'd just sell folks lossless music on the open market (not just iTunes) since at least that's all that keeps me buying a CD or three a year (I own way too many CDs personally, and stopped buying music until discovering Bandcamp and easy lossless downloads rekindled my desire to find new stuff).
Make no mistake about it, the music industry still DREAMS of going back to the days when they could charge you $15 for a CD that you had to buy just to listen to one lousy song. Turn your back on them, and they WILL try to go back to a similar model.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
That'll be the `six strikes then you get an email from your ISP` system in the USA kicking in!
Just you wait! Five years will pass and the RIAA will claim this event was the result of the six strikes ISP rule. Given enough time, a little historical revisionism is all it takes to cascade the "truth" to your favor.
Life is not for the lazy.
Only happened because the music industry absolutely refused to sell DRM-free music for a decade. No one wanted to buy music that could go obsolete when the store went away.
I own way too many CDs personally, and stopped buying music until discovering Bandcamp and easy lossless downloads rekindled my desire to find new stuff
Yes, I've commented on bandcamp many times on Slashdot and have been using it for years now. Actually when this article came up I was listening to an album released on 06 February 2013 by a relatively unknown artist half a continent away. They're asking $7 for a 6 track album which I find to be a little pricey but the music is good. I think I'll listen to it a few more times before I decide if I want to buy it. That's something you'll never find the RIAA doing and although I'd found bands that did it on their sites and a few independent labels do it but Bandcamp centralizes it. I've seen independent labels just dump their whole catalog on Bandcamp so it must do something for sales (Boston's Top Shelf Records just did it and I've been enamored with Slingshot Dakota who I had never heard of before).
I think Bandcamp is close to how an ideal music market should operate. Their selection algorithms and rating listings needs serious work but everyone can play and you select your quality when you download.
My work here is dung.
Last time I checked, CD's are digital. Did that change? Are CD's now analog?
Actual quote from executives there. Then they prosecuted, lobbied, internationally legislated any and all innovation out of existence. And they wonder why they have such trouble generating revenues from new markets.
I think these numbers are still better than they deserve. Burn in hell, executives.
Wait, what?
I wonder how much more money they could be making if they'd just sell folks lossless music on the open market
Most people don't understand what this even means, let alone actually care. All they know is availability and cost, along with how many songs they can fit on their iDevice.
You think CD *DIGITAL AUDIO* isn't digital? What planet do you live on OP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-DA Last I checked I didn't have to use a record player to play my CDs.
"Because CDs aren't digital."
Uh..yes, they are.
Funny how the initial release of Napster coincides with the start of the music industry's doldrums (1999).
Anyone else think this may be due to a poorer quality of music signed with the labels? I know everyone always thinks things were better 'back in the day', but that doesn't make it not true.
'At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music,' said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving music.'
Isn't this what everyone at Slashdot have wanted? Adapting the music business to the modern world and new practices. Now we are getting there.
CD sales are declining, and being replaced by the sale of lossy files. I wonder how much more money they could be making if they'd just sell folks lossless music on the open market (not just iTunes) since at least that's all that keeps me buying a CD or three a year
There should be no problem including a FLAC as a download option, and that is what should be done. The full audio master image wouldn't be a bad idea either.
"At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music," said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. "Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving music."
"At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing the music industry," said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. "Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving the music industry."
FTFY
This is where they just don't get it. Music has never been in danger. Nothing in the industry has or will stop people from making and performing great music. They aren't concerned with saving music, just their cut of music.
...with the turbulence created from "CDs aren't digital" whooshing over the ACs heads.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The buggy whip industry still suffers from a continued slump.
I don't understand why an industry that had seen a large part of its service become obsolete, is expected to keep its income.
I'm sure that the poster is quite aware that CDs are digital, he/she is just unaware how to difficult it is to convey vocal inflection through writing.
No one gives two fucks about lossless audio except us nerds and anyone that makes music. The only reason to even own lossless is if you plan on converting into lossy formats such as OGG or MP3. Besides, no one is going to put lossless on their phone/music player because of two reasons: 1) the files are enormous for the small amount of space you have on an SD card/flash storage and 2) the DAC in your phone/player will not be anywhere close to being able to output a sound where FLAC would be noticeably better than a 320 MP3 (not to mention the frequencies that you can't humanly hear anyway.
Since I'm old now I don't need music on all day like I used to. So occasionally putting on pandora is good enough for background noise, and if I feel the need to hear something specific youtube has everything.
(adjusts onion) I remember not caring at all about napster when it first came out and being happy buying used CDs from the local shop. Then metallica had to make a big deal out of it and I checked it out. And that was the end of my music purchases forever. The concept of paying $18 or even $5 for the used version to get access to a few megabytes of data seems so foreign now.
I ripped my cd collection into a few gigagytes of files then gave it away, since I can get back anything I want to listen to whenever I want. I doubt I'll spend another dime on music for the rest of my life.
Revenue from albums? Actual sales are way up and have been for years:
Here's the 2012 report:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120105005547/en/Nielsen-Company-Billboard%E2%80%99s-2011-Music-Industry-Report
Overall sales
2012, 2011, Gain
1,661 , 1,611 , 3.10%
Even album sales are up in that report.
Here's their Canadian one from 2009 (couldn't find the US one)
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100204007048/en/Nielsen-Company-Billboard%E2%80%99s-2009-Canadian-Industry-Report
Same thing, total tracks sales are way up, album equivalent are also up. (See the 'overall album sales' +2%).
The price hasn't gone up, so the only way revenue has gone up, is if Apple and Walmart and the rest have paid out more of their income for the music.
Now they can stop treating their customers like criminals. Right, right??
I wonder how much more money they could be making if they'd just sell folks lossless music on the open market
Most people don't understand what this even means, let alone actually care. All they know is availability and cost, along with how many songs they can fit on their iDevice.
Exactly.
I hear this repeated in every thread on a geek site about music revenues, but it's so plainly silly. They're leaving hardly any money on the table by not selling lossless music on the open market, because only a vanishingly small minority of consumers have a clue what lossless music even is, let alone care enough to pay extra for it.
So many geeks really, really need to either get out into the real world, or at least watch some non-geeky TV shows (or, heck, even the non-geeky people in the geeky shows; Penny in Big Bang Theory is a decent example...), to see how the vast majority of America's (and the West's in general) population thinks. It has very little to do with studying all the technical aspects of something and deciding carefully which choice has the greatest benefit for the least cost.
Until they do this, they will continue to be frustrated and baffled by the things that succeed and fail in markets, and what's even offered. (Once you understand how people think, you may still be frustrated, but at least you'll be less baffled! :-D )
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
They had their peak when Napster was running.
They dropped revenues significantly soon after Napster was shut down.
What's this "(not just iTunes)" in the summary, do they sell lossless DRM-free music on iTunes? If so, that's amazing! We can't really whine about the music industry then, any geek on slashdot should be able to hack together some VM or Wine to run iTunes, possibly easier than ripping a CD.
I wish I could get a free digital copy with purchase of Vinyl, I love the sound of LP's but I also want digital for, the car, phone, etc etc. Amazon gives you a digital copy with CD purcahses but considering how simple it is to rip a cd, who cares.
I wrote this about a year ago. Copy/pasting because it's still relevant.
So, claims are regularly made suggesting that the music industry is failing, usually followed by claims that tougher laws are needed to protect the hard working people in the music industry.
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Small problem - it's not true.
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The music industry is not in as bad a situation as claims would suggest.ÂHere are some interesting statistics:
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Music publishing revenues are on an upward trend.
Worldwide Music Publishing Revenues (2006 - 2011)Â
http://grabstats.com/statmain.asp?StatID=69
$8.0 billion (2006)
$8.3 billion (2007)
$8.6 billion (2008)
$8.9 billion (2009)
$9.1 billion (2010)
$9.4 billion (2011)
Â
Live music (concert) revenues are on a upward trend.
Worldwide Live Music / Concert Revenues (2006 - 2011)Â
http://grabstats.com/statmain.asp?StatID=70
$16.6 billion (2006)
$18.1 billion (2007)
$19.4 billion (2008)
$20.8 billion (2009)
$22.2 billion (2010)
$23.5 billion (2011)
Â
The entire industry's revenues (*)Âare on an upward trend.
Worldwide Music Industry Revenues (2006 - 2011)Â
http://grabstats.com/statmain.asp?StatID=67
2006 ($60.7 billion)
2007 ($61.5 billion)
2008 ($62.6 billion)
2009 ($65.0 billion)
2010 ($66.4 billion)
2011 ($67.6 billion)
Â
* The "entire industry" isÂdefined as "Revenues are for record labels, music publishers, recording artists, performing artists, composers, concert venues and merchandise, companies; includes revenues from sales of physical recordings, digital music services (online and mobile), music publishing and live music."
Â
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What is most interesting about these numbers is it supports what I have felt for a long time - the major players in the music industry have realized that CD sales are nice but that's not how to get rich - the big money (almost 2.5 times the money...) is in concerts. That is why acts like 'N Sync and Britney and Beiber and U2 and Lady Gaga and damn near everyone are regularly on tour. They've realized that people are spending more and more on actually going to the concert to experience the music. They realized that to be financially successful means touring a lot. CD sales makes one wealthy but a concert tour makes one rich.
Â
These numbers show that the music industry isn't failing. It isn't even shrinking. The _industry_ is growing, across the board. Yes, there are individual companies that might be suffering and there are individual bands that are suffering and there are probably specific geographic regions that are suffering but the industry, as a whole, is thriving - it is growing.
Â
One thing I do agree with the music industry, however, is that the internet is a big reason for this - we just disagree on the direction their profits are headed...
It just threatened the Corporate Mafia that controlled every aspect of music and its distribution.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Make no mistake about it, the music industry still DREAMS of going back to the days when they could charge you $15 for a CD that you had to buy just to listen to one lousy song. Turn your back on them, and they WILL try to go back to a similar model.
The people who once wanted to charge you $15 for a CD still want to charge you $15 for a CD. If you actually read the article, it's not the "big five" or any of the RIAA members that they're talking about movin' on up. Instead it's distributors like Apple’s iTunes Music Service, Amazon MP3, Spotify, Rhapsody and Muve Music. Google will join them eventually. But you're not going to see UMG, Warner, Sony/BMG, etc because they're still fighting these models. It's just turning into a really slow and long and painful turnover process as the money changes hands. Singer songwriters and performers are learning they don't need big labels as their music will pretty much advertise itself on social media and YouTube. That means the only big guys feeding off them are the distributors listed in the article. Time will tell if the distributors will hang around or continue to undercut each other (since it doesn't appear to be contractual and exclusive like label contracts). But one thing is for sure: more money is making it into the hands of a more diverse group of musicians. And the industry is more diverse and healthier because of that.
My work here is dung.
If they had just launched a service back in the early 2000s that was "legal", you could choose the encoding format of your choice (ogg, mp3, lossless, etc), the bitrate of your choice, could choose individual songs or full albums, and where prices were reasonable (in summary, a service much like allofmp3, aka mp3sparks), they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble and probably could have kept their business growing. Instead, they refused to see the light and change their practices, and others who actually provided those kinds of services profited instead. Serves them right for ignoring their customers...
The diversity of available music is greater now than ever, as the industry has been evolving, albeit painfully for the older labels. Artists can make a living through hard work, not necessarily through CD sales alone. Hell, some bands make more money from merchandise than from music (I'm talking to you, KISS). This has been true since at least the 1990's when my band the Dharma Bums made a killing on t-shirts and realized that's where the money was.
Never once has the industry blamed CLEAR CHANNEL for fucking up music distribution. Yet through their domination of local radio, nationally, Clear Channel calls the shots, picks the hits, and generally limits the availability of interesting music by focusing on the "stars" it decides to popularize. This is far more insidious than dropping $100 off at the radio station so the DJ will play your new 45.
After Napster came out, the industry stopped selling CD singles and raised the price of CD's to $18 retail. This had a stronger dampening effect than free music downloads, as many of the people who were exposed to new music through downloads would eventually by cd's to support their new favorite musicians. Plus, one cannot claim that 1 episode of free downloading = 1 lost sale, as many downloaders would never purchase music to begin with (financial constraints, stick-it-to-the-man, live concerts not available for sale, etc). Yes, scientific studies showed that music sales went UP in college towns where Napster was popular.
I'm encouraged by new arrivals like BandCamp, SoundCloud, Gobbler, and other new musical tools for the web -- but discouraged by the shitty pay musicians earn from streaming dis-services like Spotify. As a hobbyist musician with many friends in the industry, I recognize that it's hard to make a living doing what you like doing, but for many of them, they have no choice -- music drives creatives to create. And that is what we should support -- the human spirit, not some fucking RIAA executive making $80k/year by prosecuting grampas and teenagers.
Let us not forget that the RIAA and MPAA have forced taxes on all Americans for blank media -- cassettes and CD-R's -- because they assume we're "pirates" who are stealing from them. Nevermind the fact that blank optical media is used for storing computer data that may not have any relevance whatsoever to their claim. Nevermind the fact that I'm more inclined to make cd's of my own songs than to dupe the latest Rihanna (will NEVER happen, boys, cuz I think she sucks #TaintedLove). The RIAA and MPAA have been nursing the public's teat for a long time -- it's time for them to grow the fuck up.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
All digitally encoded analog data is "lossy." Even CDs are "lossy." Any time analog is translated to a storage medium, there is "loss." Even high quality MP3s are considered lossy, but if I copy them from one device to another, the file does not change and nothing is lost. While it is true that the form of compression used to further encode MP3s is "lossy" or "lossier" the encoder (the person doing the encoding) most often determines the quality of the file. Most of the time, there is no effective loss at all. I just love that some people say "I can tell the difference." Most of the time, I call bullshit on that.
So for anyone who seeks to avoid "lossy" formats, please rethink your rationale. It's kind of ridiculous ... to a point.
So, to start off with, I'm part of the transitional generation that is old enough to remember CD's, but young enough to have been in middle school when Napster arrived on the scene. Anyhow, I think that the availability of lossless won't do anything for music sales with regards to the younger generation of music listeners. All the people I know who are that into the experiencing of listening to music in a high quality fahsion just go with the vinyl and use the free mp3 download that often comes with vinyl for their casual listening. Everyone else just doesn't care and goes with mp3's if they want to own it. My girlfriend never buys any music and just streams things off of Spotify. I used to always buy an album on CD and rip it to mp3 but then I realized the CD's were sitting in a box and wasting space. I honestly can't hear the quality difference either. It seems like a waste of hard drive space to rip things to a lossless format to me.
Also, old Slashdot article about how younger people prefer the sound of mp3 over losless methods. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/03/11/153205/young-people-prefer-sizzle-sounds-of-mp3-format
It's all what you're used to or the narrative surrounding the format (vinyl). What people prefer has little to do with science or logic. The mp3 is the standard format for an entire generation and the idea of "lossless" is an ideal that means little to them since they don't have a "CD" frame of reference.
The industry as a whole makes a lot more money. This is just the revenue the classic industry (Sony, BMG, Warner, ...) sees, indie artists that aren't represented by the MAFIAA have been making a lot of money in the mean time, so much that indie artists and their labels are popping up all over the place and being profitable.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
In my younger days, I purchased vinyl 45 RPM singles for hit songs, and LP records for albums. For the car, most people used 8-track cartridges. They sucked, because the tape slides against itself internally, causing "wow and flutter". They also wore out as the lubrication was consumed. I was unusual because I'd record them to cassette tapes. Soon the 8-track got a bad reputation, and people switched to recording their own cassettes. The industry cried foul - we were "stealing" from them. Rather than selling multiple 8-track cartridges (due to wear), they only sold a single cassette or LP, and users would freely copy them. Oddly enough, sales rose.
When the CD came out, the industry raised the price about 50%, claiming it cost more to produce than vinyl records. We accepted that "fact", and repurchased most of our music collection.
A funny thing happened - the CD-R arrived. Suddenly we could make copies of a music CD for $1. People felt screwed. We knew the record companies screwed the bands, and we knew they were overcharging us, but charging 15 times the cost of a CD-R pissed a lot of people off.
Soon, we had a CD at home, and perfect copies at work, in the car and at the girlfriend's house. Wear it out? No problem - burn another copy. Find a new artist? Burn a copy for a friend. In theory, you'd think this would have caused a massive sales drop, since the earlier formats wore out and the CD did not. Yet, while the industry argued they were losing sales, it turned out to be the period of highest sales in history.
Then Napster and MP3 players appeared. Suddenly the industry was in a panic. The MPAA began an aggressive attack on downloaders, and sued anyone they could find as a scare tactic. Even though past history showed that sharing was a form of viral marketing, they wanted to kill it - perhaps because they have little control over it.
To my ears, nothing wrecks a song like Autotune (sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me) compressed to MP3. Most new music sounded too processed and too compressed. In a sea of over-processed crap, I'm finding it hard to find music I want to buy. So I don't.
The music industry doesn't understand the people like me buy music because my music-geek friends would share. Without that discovery vector, I'm simply not exposed to anything I'd buy.
Place nail here >+
Show any one of your "plugged in" friends who have been listening to distorted MP3's
Who listens to distorted MP3s anymore? LAME -V0 or nothing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's just another indicator that the economy is improving. The economy went to crap, and a market the survives on extra spending money had sales cut.
Shocking.
Add to that the price hasn't gone up with inflation, so it seem sales are worse when looking at just money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
'At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music,' said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving music.'"
...and if they had adapted much sooner instead of waging a foolish war against their own customers, this would have been a much different story, something along the lines of "Music Industry Sees Business as Usual, Yet Continues to Screw Artists out of Royalties".
I thought this was a tech site? CDs of course *are* digital. Vinal is not digital which folk use as an excuse to collect old vinal records. lossy/lossless compression is just different ways to compress DIGITAL data. There is of course 'lossiness' when the analogue wave gets digitized too
Six Strikes is working already!
The report celebrates the music industry as the innovator, which not only gets the internet, but is essentially the “engine of the digital ecosystem”. Sadly, this self-boasting image seems to fall apart at the stitches. When IFPI wants to censor search engines, or make ISPs filter the net, it becomes obvious that they still haven’t learned anything from their own last 10 years. Users go to search engines to pose questions, get answers and do a selection according to their own needs. People pay for the internet connection to access people and content which they think is useful for them. I find irresistibly funny that IFPI thinks it knows better what people should be happy with as a search result. It is insulting though that IFPI thinks it knows better what people should be doing online than those, who pay for the access itself. But these fallacies are also warnings, that they couldn’t break those habits that nearly killed them in the last decade.
Because if they think those people who have the money that crave for, should change, instead of them providing a better service, then they are wrong. This is why facing the past’s bad decision would help a lot. If you cannot look into the mirror and say: these were the things we fucked up: we wanted to dictate the terms of access instead of listening to what our consumers wanted; we thought they were notorious pirates who could only be forced to pay by lawsuits, and we were wrong, because we now see that people are happy to pay even if they cannot be forced to do so. Absent of such self-reflection the industry will keep repeating the same mistakes. But it is not only them, who are losing by these mistakes. Artists and fans, the music and the culture also loses. Maybe it is time to be a tad more honest and self-reflective, dear IFPI. But at least try to keep your own story straight. Make sure you hire an editor who is able to spot when you contradict your own story. It also helps if you don’t contradict published research with references to unpublished data
Good luck next time.
"Subscription services are the fastest growth area in digital music, with subscriber numbers up 44 per cent in 2012 and revenues up 59 per cent in the first half of 2012." VS "Illegal free music remains an enormous obstacle to future growth of legitimate music markets." - I wonder what are the growth expectations of the industry if those enormous obstacles were removed? Exponential, they claim elsewhere. How realistic is that?
"Ifpi estimates that around one-third of internet users globally (32%) still regularly access unlicensed sites" VS "Pirate services are clunky and old-fashioned compared to the legal services available. they’re being usurped by mass consumer migration to smartphones and access to millions of tracks from legitimate subscription services. consumers can also tap into their social network and see what their friends and family are listening to. The pirate option just cannot offer that complete consumer experience." - They forgot to ask themselves: why people are still using those clunky and old-fashioned services even if so many excellent, legal and _free_ options exists. They claim better enforcement and not better legal services would solve the problem, despite the fact that they offer the proof to the contrary in their own report. Strange.
"The shift to the cloud could be as significant for the consumer as the shift from physical product to digital consumption. It provides a level of convenience around our content that is increasingly difficult for unlicensed services to replicate." VS "On January 12, 2000, MP3.com launched the "My.MP3.com" service which enabled users to securely register their personal CDs and then stream digital copies online from the My.MP3.com service. Since consumers could only listen online to music they already proved they owned the company saw this as a great opportunity for revenue by allowing fans to access their own music online. The record industry did not see it that way and sued MP3.com c
You realize that just as much of the sound of a record comes from the cartridge than comes from the record itself
Is there a reason that a DSP engineer can't simulate a cartridge using a digital filter?
There is no "different senses" of words. A CD is digital, period.
The term "digital" when referring to downloading a sound recording as a computer file is short for "digital phonorecord delivery", a term of art in U.S. copyright law.
It doesn't help that we have people like Neil Young pushing the audiophile snake oil. Vinyl is demonstrably inferior to FLACs and high bitrate MP3s in both theory and practice.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Nevermind the fact that I'm more inclined to make cd's of my own songs
It looks like you're trying to write a song, record it, and distribute it to the public. How do you make sure that the song you wrote wasn't already written by someone else? What steps should be taken to prevent another Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, where George Harrison lost a million dollar lawsuit over having accidentally copied a Ronald Mack song into his "My Sweet Lord"?
It's a totally different kind of loss.
But loss nonetheless. Some people report being able to perceive frequencies above the 20-22 kHz rolloff of Compact Disc Digital Audio, or to perceive the -93 dBFS noise floor of CD especially in pre-Discman material. (The loudness race was ultimately an attempt to overcome the cheap headphone amplifier in portable CD players.) Whether they can actually ABX these differences I'm not so sure.
are gonna party like it's 1999!
an excellent site. The money goes right back to the artist, no quarterly (or longer) payback times. A band can record a song or album at their friends house who has a studio in the back room, mix it and put it up for sale. Still, most people likely buy mp3 or m4a and don't know what a flac is but when they are listening on 4$ ear buds they grabbed at walgreens it dosent really matter. I would like to see a higher quality sound file made available at some time, even a 16bit 44.1 cd is only about 1/4 of what many albums are recorded and mastered in. Last year a band (Bombskare) posted some new songs in studio quality for free download, I think they were 24bit 19,000khz, about 250MB per song.
a bit of the problem is they futzed around with cds (to do DRM) so that you couldn't tell if it was a "Real CD" or not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbook_audio ---- note the lack of DRM in the standard. If they decided to leave things alone then maybe folks would have bought more cds but instead the decided to play "Master Of The House" and that was their downfall.
Now they are starting to Get It so they are getting more money.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Just gotta say, Hollywood Accounting!. BULLSHIT!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
...though they'd like you to think that. That's the record industry. Music is alive and well and making tons of money in ways that are not necessarily bound to sales of small plastic discs.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
A CD is a piece of plastic, covered with silver. A laser is used to focus light of areas of the CD, which will result in different luminosity of reflected light, causing different voltage potentials over a photodiode. This analogue signal will be enhanced, noise removed, before sending though a Analogue to Digital converter.
If A CD was digital, like an MP3 file, there wouldn't need to be this process!
A CD is no more digital than a Wifi radio signal, or the printed text in a newspaper.
Everything the music industry has is SHIT! Grow up in the 60's and 70's and tell me it's NOT all shit because it's nothing but pure, adulterated, pressed, chopped, peeled, steamed, polymerized SHIT.
What? Simply not true. Vinyl is a direct analogue recreation of the analogue source. FLACs are generally created FROM Vinyl sources if the master tapes are lost. I don't think you realize how audio works.
"Karma bonus doesn't seem to work."
Neither does the subscriber bonus. And while I'm OT, would you consider capitalizing the first word in a sentence? It's much more readable than your childish "all lowercase". You may think it's "kewl" but it's not, it just makes you look like an uneducated moron.
Free Martian Whores!
Vinyl is a direct analogue recreation of the analogue source.
Analog copies are lossy. To make an analog copy, you have to measure the waveform, and then you have to engrave the waveform. Both of those processes are prone to error. To make a digital copy of an analog recording, you only have to measure the waveform. That's less error.
There's also the fact that 16 bit audio has a higher dynamic range than you can press into vinyl. And 44.1khz audio has a Nyquist limit above the range of human hearing. I don't think you realize how audio works.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
seriously where did you shop? rodeo drive? typical cassette prices never topped $12 at the peak. even CDs never topped $18 for first week releases
How about Canada.
Om, nomnomnom...
People who use digital and analog to differentiate between online and off-line, or physical and ephemeral, are just plan wrong.
Good luck convincing Congress that "digital phonorecord delivery" was the wrong term to have chosen.
I hate to bring up the inflation rate but odds are they still lost a percent or two when you factor that in.
CD's in NZ are between $20 and $30NZ, which is about $15 - $25USD.
Back in the days when cassettes cost $20NZ, that was around $40USD.
My price isn't $1/song, it's $0.1/song.
I'm boycotting ALL music purchase until it reaches $0.1/song.
And yes, I'm aware that Russian music sellers are at or below that price point, and NO, I won't use 'em, because I've also read that the Russians don't compensate artists except in the merest token sense. The only legitimate US sellers are selling at around $1/song.
I also DO NOT pirate music. The music industry can either get $0.1 from me or 0. I don't *need* music.
I wonder how much revenue they could get at lower prices?
--PM
I notice they've killed the "record in" jack on my video machines.....
When CDs first came out, They were priced at $18 to about $25. This was at Soundwarehouse, an old chain record store back in the day. North Texas area anyway.
That was when their entire stock of CDs could be held in two 6 or 8' store gondolas--one held classical music CDs, the other had R&R CDs on one side and every other genre fit on the other side. That was back when you could buy popular, but not new release, vinyl albums for as little as $5. It was a bit painful paying that much for a CD back then, but otherwise your CD player was just a dust collector.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Yes they are.
Consider the cost to make latest popular CD recording (insert name of band and CD here: for my example, I'll use 'The Flaming Groovies' and "Hey Sexy Mama"). No disrespect to the Groovies but it's not that much - their fees, a studio, some backing musicians and then production costs.
Now the same record company (or whatever they're called now) want to put out Haydn's 98th symphony; best orchestra they can find, best choir, best conductor and the best studio. That's going to cost substantially more than the Groovies owing to the number and (no disrespect to the Groovies) quality and experience of the participants. And worse than that - the record company appreciates that there's just no way that the 98th symphony will recoup it's costs of production.
So - options
1) Use money from the Flaming Groovies latest to subsidize the recording of the 98th
2) Don't record the 98th
3) Do a recording of the 98th that will actually make a profit
I wonder who owns the major classical music recording companies? DG, HMV, etc...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I mean theoretically, as in the dynamic range available is greater with 16 bit audio. And the Nyquist limit of 44.1khz audio is above the range of human hearing. And the noise floor is lower with digital audio.
And I mean practically, in that you will not be able to ABX a 16/44.1 recording from the 24/96 masters. 16/44.1 audio is transparent to the human ear. Period. With vinyl, otoh, you might be able to ABX the vinyl from the masters.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
CDs in NZ topped out at around $35 for new releases before the supermarket chains started taking the market away from record stores, and online sales started growing. I do think you've got your exchange rates around the wrong way though. The NZ dollar hasn't been valued that high since before the days of CDs, and perhaps even cassettes (which certainly weren't priced at $20 in the pre-CD days - I recall buying them in the late 1980's for $7.99, although the top prices may have been $9.99 or $12.99 (and later rose to $20, when the exchange rate with $US was around 0.6).
Yes, I got my exchange rates around the wrong way.
MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America
Dammit. You're quite correct. Good catch.
Place nail here >+
It's surprisingly easy to buy lossless outside of iTunes these days, I'm finding. I had the same experience as the article submitter - I stopped buying music for a while because online services all seemed to be lossy and storing CDs is such a PITA (and I was starting to worry about the huge waste of resources in manufacturing and shipping CDs and cases around just so I could rip them to FLAC then never touch them again). But recently I've found all sorts of good stuff available in lossless format from various places.
hdtracks.com gets some flak from the audiophiles because apparently sometimes its 'HD' tracks (above 44.1Khz/16-bit) are upsampled CD-resolution stuff, but as a source of lossless-encoded CD-resolution things it can be useful, I've bought some Andrew Bird and Sigur Ros albums there. The download system is some hideous Windows thing, but works in a VM or wine.
As the submitter notes, quite a lot of good stuff is on bandcamp these days, including Amanda Palmer and Sufjan Stevens (his whole huge Christmas release is on bandcamp in FLAC format for a ridiculously small amount of money).
The new My Bloody Valentine album is available to buy direct from the site in 24/96 lossless.
The new Atoms For Peace (Thom Yorke) album's available in FLAC from XL Recordings' site.
I even got a FLAC copy of Nü Sensae's 'Sundowning' from somewhere or other - their label's site, I think. In general, most of what I've wanted to buy lately has turned out to be available legally in FLAC, some way or another.
Sorry to be a bit off topic, but there was a very good article on /. about how you really shouldn't use Americans as an indication of how the global population thinks.
Was it talking about America vs the world, or America vs the West? Because in my (admittedly limited and mostly American) experience, there's a lot more difference between, say, the average East Asian's perspective on life in general and an American's than between an average German's and an American's.
Dan Aris
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