Slashdot Mirror
MP3s Causing Decline in CD Sales?
jocknerd writes "The RIAA is reporting that
MP3 is the
reason for declining CD sales. " God I hope so.
Do you guys realize how convenient it is to have all
audio on demand? I've ripped all my CDs- its just so
wonderful. Why won't the music industry give me
that? I don't think the music industry is totally doomed-
it just needs to change. The radio industry has
more to fear. Why would I listen to WXYZ
when I can select my own music mix for the the same cost
as cable? Thats where I hope this ends.
I have to agree. Most people still have modem connections, I really dont think MP3s will be a huge threat until high-speed connections become common place. I too buy CD's and rip them. Who wants to change a CD when you can have a 40 hour play-list?
-AC
Like the hideous over-pricing of CDs that cost a few cents to make. I haven't bought a CD for more than three years now for precisely that reason; I refuse to pay the prices they're charging. If, on the other hand, I could download MP3s of an album over the Web for a few dollars I might well start buying music again.
Roll on the death of the music industry and the rise of independent bands selling direct on the Web, I say.
Damn straight. Like I'm going to shell out that kind of money when all I want is one, maybe two songs. Usually I can't even find singles anymore, which is even a bigger rip at $5+ per single w/ 5 stupid remixes of the same song. I can have my mp3z play for 31 days non-stop without hearing the same song twice. Now that I think about it, I've been ripping all of my old CDs for years now. I don't think I've purchased a CD in over a year.
Maybe the music industry needs to lower CD prices. Everyone realizes that the manufacturing cost of CD's over the cost of cassette tapes doesn't justify the inflated prices they make us pay for CD's. They just know that everyone will pay extra money for the high quality music that you can easily access all tracks without fast forwarding or rewinding that CD's give us. Now, that mp3's are getting popular,maybe the CD industry will realizing that this isn't fair, and maybe they'll lower the price we have to pay for CD's.
Is this asking too much? Does anyone think that the CD industry will realize this and lower prices?
-OnyxArrow
The 'Industry'
1. Controls what bands are signed (ever notice how they all pretty much sound the same?)
2. Controls what gets airtime (ever notice how they all pretty much sound the same?)
3. Controls (fixes) what CDs cost. (ever notice how they all pretty much cost the same?)
4. Tries (and succeeds) at 'owning' their artists works.
5. Will not be missed (not that I think they'll go away anytime soon, or without piling A LOT of money on Congresspeople to 'stop the piracy'.)
Good point!
I hate it when they say "MP3 will die" well yeah it will die but maybe in the year 2010 or so. But as far as my friends and I are concerned, we haven't bought many new albums since mid '96. Most of the mp3's that I have are cd's I would never buy anyway, but just a few songs from the album that I might find halfway decent.. as long as I have the storage space (which has been relatively cheap) I'll continue to download mp3's and I don't even intend to slow down any time soon. The only cd's we DO buy are artists where their WHOLE ALBUM is good not just a one hit wonder.. I'm not about to pay 7 bucks for one song and 5 variations of the same song.. that's retarted.. and 4% oh boy thats a big deal *sarcasm* it's not like artists are going to go broke and whimper and whine like basketball players on strike, but I think mp3's could HELP the music industry by having artists work harder at making great songs, not just songs to fill up a 60 minute quota. Forget the RIAA I say MP3-IT.
Firstly, I hope mp3s never replace CD's as a primary distribution for music. If they sound the same as CD's you are listening on a crappy stereo! (Wal-Mart Kinyo speakers!) I am hoping CD's will be replaced with 24/192 or 24/96 media. (My hopes on that score are low.) Having said that, I can appreciate the fact that the ability to distribute new music and live recordings (long irrationally prohibited by the music industry) independantly of the industry, well... kicks-ass. CD prices are inflated... how else can you explain 15 bucks for a blues musician who has been dead for 50+ years? You mean that isn't all profit? If the mp3 (sound quality issues asside) can make the recording industry realize that they are putting out crap at prices that are really starting to turn people off and that makes them change, then hoorah mp3. Chances are they'll just ream the artists harder. In any case, I am not optimistic about better digital sound, the recording industry changing, or the mp3.
Well I don't think too highly of your school for that. University professors live and die by publishing works. Research funds schools. All of that is COPYRIGHTED work, which is why so many schools are very concerned with piracy and MP3s on their campus. Not to mention your school could be held liable for the copyright violations going on.
Your school was very stupid.
www.mp3.com sucks, as do most HMTL search engines.
try FTP or IRC
I've got a portable MD player/recorder as well. They are ok, but until Sony releases a model with a serial/parallel/USB port they are on the wrong track. The name of the game is connectivity.
The funny thing is, the same people who say that MP3 will die are ALSO the ones who are saying that the CD will live forever!
Video killed the radio star?
MP3 killed the CD store.
I bet there was a lot of whining in the horse buggy whip circles when the automobile started to hit it big. But did you see the horse buggy whip people lobbying congress to protect their industry?
.wav files on a CD and make MP3's for distribution on the Internet. In this way Mr. K will conquer the world.
The corporate music industry is rapidly becoming as obselete as the horse buggy whip industry. If you know a band, get some good mics and stuff and offer to record their stuff into digital format. Store their tracks in
If radio as a revenue-generating medium goes under, then maybe we'll be able to take back what really ought to be public property anyway.
Imagine...Pirate radio will be legitimized, and FM will become the new format for underground stuff as mp3 moves into the mainstream!
A beautiful thought, indeed.
-ad
I never see CDs for more than $14, and those on sale are often below $10.
I can't believe these industry drones who've never taken a statistics class in their lives. No wonder the music industry is so screwed up right now. It's obvious that the reasons sales are off is because the music is sucking lately.
When's the last time you heard something that made you cream all over yourself like the first albums of Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthew's Band, NIN, or Tool? There's nothing out there now that's fun to buy, and at the same time, the baby boomers are cranking up the sales. That of course means that 15-24 yr. olds are buying less cause it's crap and their percentage is down because the old folks buying went up. These idiots are going to try to make their case to Congress to try and be able to sap money out of every MP3 license granted, and it's just going to blow.
The second 2 things happen, the music business will be dead. 1st, radio has to start playing music that hasn't been pimped directly to them and then test marketed. Right now, you've got a lot of program directors having their asses kissed by record execs. 2nd, artists need to have a centralized way to get MP3 singles into a listening bin for willing radio to pick up on and decide whether or not to play.
The music industry has been huge in controlling the method of getting an artist to the masses. They used to control the distribution networks, but that is changing as more and more indie albums are making it onto store shelves. They used to control the manufacturing method, but anyone can get a CD pressed for a few thousand. Just look at Prince and Ani DiFranco for two artists who can sell outside of the system.
heh, it isnt the artist that makes the music anymore, it is some lame-o producer that sits behind a deskin the control room at the studio and tells the band what to do, and if the band dont follow, they lose the label contract, it isnt freedom of expression anymore.....
Since I can get CDs made for 62pence in the UK
complete with 4 colour artwork and case and they
want me to fork over 15 pounds why do they wonder
at decreasing CD sales. They are just ripping people off. And most of that isn't the store putting the price on (I know that from a friend who used to work at HMV - when they were selling at 11.00, HMV had to buy them at 9.00).
That and crap techno music/crap boy or girl bands
how original. etc
When I worked at HMV many moons ago, every cd & record was jacked up with a 100% markup (and some over 100%)... we got it for $12, we sold it at $24.. payday was lovely, almost 100% of my cheque went right back to the store =)
I don't know if this is the case still, but I'm willing to bet it's still close to that markup.
Yep. Artists have to pay bills too. That's the battle cry of the RIAA - nasty pirates stealing the food from their poor artists' mouths. You bastards.
Say... what percentage of CD sales go to artists anyway? How about tickets sales? Concert paraphernalia (tshirts, etc)?
The Industry takes the majority of the sales. And the pirates are to blame when the artist can't pay their bills. You bastards.
a) The royalties for most artists are between $1 and $1.50 a CD (they actually get less for CDs than for records/tapes)
b) The advance is recouped from royalties.
c) Most of the expenses for producing a CD (promotion, recording budget, remixes) are recouped from the artist's royalties
I, and many other musicians like myself, would say a far likelier cause for the major label sales decline (which has been going on for years) is that the major music labels support far, far less in the way of variety and allow for far less artist development these days - these days, if you're signed, it's because they think you can put out a record that sounds just like that last #1 hit. If you don't do blazingly well first try, you can expect to get dropped. The result is that there's not half the creativity, originality, and variety that can be found independent of the majors these days, and these days more and more people (especially the record label-coveted "young adult" market) is aware of this, and where and how to find it.
Not to say there's not some excellent music on the majors - there certainly is. But it's not easy to get excited about hearing just the same 12 songs all year on the radio (which is how CDs are marketed - that's the business of it).
I suspect that's a bigger factor hurting the majors than MP3 vs. CD.
NO! Where do YOU live? They are usually $15.99 here...
Uh, last I heard the average artist got around $0.50 per CD sold; the vast majority of the money went to the middlemen. One of the best things about MP3s is that the artists can sell them directly and keep most of the money. This is why the music industry hate them so much: the web is making the highly-paid music industry irrelevant.
Artists benefit from direct MP3 sales, only the music industry loses.
Either that, or insist that they turn over their domain name :)
Even if MP3s take over the world, I can see three reasons why you would still want to listen to the radio:
1. Some things will never be able as MP3s. News, baseball games, traffic reports, Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh and other real-time content all come immediately to mind (OK, don't flame me, Howard and Rush are just examples -- I don't listen to them, but someone must since they're still around). Shows like "Car Talk" would also fit into that category.
2. I would think life would be pretty dull if you thought the only kind of music you could ever possibly like, you already knew about. One of the great things about the better radio stations is that you don't always know what's coming up next. (Of course one of the worst things about the worst radio stations is playing the same music, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I don't even like that with music I like -- I mean, I have this thing for 60s music but there's only so many times you can hear the same 50 songs without thinking those groups must have written at least a couple of other songs.)
3. As with many things on the net (Slashdot included), packaging is important. Just as an example, I'm up here in Seattle listening to KPIG in Freedom, California. They mostly do folky, singer-songwriter stuff, but interspersed with old favorites, traffic reports, commercials (some of which are clever and amusing), off-the-wall commentary on music, pig puns and hilarious song and commercial parodies ("just say no to Muzak").
I'm all for MP3s -- in fact, one of my long-term projects is to rip a bunch of vinyl I collected back in the 70s and 80s -- but I don't think they're going to kill radio any more than television did. I will be very surprised, though, if they don't force radio to go through yet another major change.
-- Just Another Anonymous Coward
I agree. I would never have found out about Ron Sunshine and Full Swing without MP3s, and bought their debut CD as soon as it was available.
Get one of the Soundblaster Live! cards. Linux drivers should be out soon, and if you get the more expensive version (not value), you get a SPDIF input with lots of goodies.
Perhaps you're not familiar with Sturgeon's Law. In a science fiction book review column he once stated that "94% of science ficiton is crap, but then 94% of everything is crap." 94% of music has been crap from the time the first caveman plunked out the ballad of how he killed the mastodon on his newly-invented lyre. I have to admit that even 94% of the music I like is forgettable to awful.
The trick is finding the good 6%.
than to me it will be like HBO or pay perview. I will only pay for something truely excellent.
maybe it's a bit like cable digital radio.
as a customer I will only pay for something which is only truely reflect the cost.
I will still pay good money for good rock concert of excellent quartet concert. I will pay good money for recording which is good.
but I won't be forced to buy the whole album for only one or two song.
There was a story on NPR about how, due to
the consolidation in the radio industry,
there's a new trend: DJ's at *one* location,
who DJ for multiple stations around the
country. Everything is prerecorded,
scheduled, etc. The music is the same
at each station, and regional variation is
snuffed out.
Your local DJ might actually be in Newark.
When the DJ 'talks' to a listener, in
reality, someone else talked to the listener.
The original interviewer's voice is edited
out, and the DJ does a voiceover so it
sounds like a real conversation.
I can't recall if the DJ's used different
names at different stations.
This wouldn't be so annoying if they owned
up to it, but they still try to make it
seem like they're local. I hate that. I
can't stand fake crap.
There aren't but 5 billion on the planet, and unfortunately, not all of them use Linux... :)
The end of radio? Yeah right. You should listen to more radio, maybe it would allow you to break out of your onedimensional mainstream taste. (the Who? puh-leeeeeease)
MP3s are good but indie bands still need an outlet other than just live where people will hear them for the first time. Thats where radio fits in (well, at least college radio)
The real sad thing is that packaging still sells the music, and MP3 won't change it. The major distributors will decide what is popular, not the quality of the bands. And guys like you will still remain in the dark and continue to listen to the Who just because that's all they know and they're too fucking lazy to make some effort to listen to what else is out there. You have someone pre-chewing your food for ya too?
As a matter of fact, I have 56GB of SCSI storage. My place of employment freaked out when a SCSI Seagate 28GB drive "failed" so they replaced the entire system (that had 2 28GB SCSI drives in it) and sold the "bad" system to me for literally pennies on the dollar. In addition to the stock 2x28GB storage, I stuck in 2 older 8.4GB EIDE drives for a total of 72.8GB of storage. HP NetserverLH3 pII-400, 512MB RAM, 72.8GB storage, all for the low price of $600 w/o monitor.
I'd like to see you find a better deal on a similar system. I'll give you 10,000 to 1 odds that you can't, unless it's hot.
And no, I'm not rich. I just score big time on legitimate deals like the killer system I now have.
All these arguments that serious audiophiles can't use MP3's are nonsense. If you think Creative makes good sound cards, you haven't geeked out enough on this topic to even open your mouth. Serious audiophile's do not mind spending the big bucks for the right equipment. There are plenty of high-end professional sound cards out there that make interfacing with a hi-fi stereo no big deal.
I suggest that these critics do some searching on the web for some real sound cards and quit taking the easy cards that are dumped on you through marketing. Seek and ye shall find.
I actually collect MP3s and burn them onto CD? Why? Maybe one day when I'm old and senile I might actually like some of this crap I'm downloading all the time..it's more of a hobby for me I only listen to a fraction of the MP3s I download anyways. The bottom line though, is the software or music companies are losing very little while gaining alot of exposure. A game or music company doesn't lose money when we "copy" thier products. It's not like we took a physical object and stole it. We merely copied something that we wouldn't buy given the choice. I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm particularly impressed by a game or CD I'll dish out the money for it. Of course, most MP3s and pirated games I'll listen/play once or a few days then either burn it or delete it. If there were no MP3s and games were not piratable I think the only outcome would be either I would not buy the product or if I did buy it and did not like it I'd have wasted 15 or 50 bucks whichever the case may be. Oh, and piracy is actually delivers the kind of exposure that sells products. Ok, obviously some people, given a pirated copy of something, would not buy it even if they totally loved it. But the exposure a good game will get not only by word of mouth but by people who play it and decide to buy it most likely outweighs any lost income by the guy who never buys something he has a pirated version of.
Long rant, hope you enjoyed it.
-- Anonymous Coward
This is gonna date me :-)
Back when stereo came out, LPs were $3.98 (mono) or $4.98 (stereo). The record industry promised that stereo would be priced the same as mono once they got the production kinks worked out.
Sure enough, two years later they were the same price -- $5.98.
I want to see a *detailed* breakdown, to the nearest penny, of where the $13.98 price of a CD gets distributed!
I bought a 100-disc CD changer a few years
ago when the price became fairly reasonable.
(Shortly afterward, the 200-disc version
was even less. Oh well.)
It's great - it really is like having a
radio station that plays only music
you like.
The only problems are 1) finite capacity
2) little disc/track info
3) Suck-ass random track algorithm
Hell, it even paid for itself when some
idjits broke into my place and stole
a bunch of CDs. Too bad they only
got the jewel cases.
That said, an MP3 jukebox is definitely a
better solution.
I think more people simply copy their friend's cds than convert them to MP3's. (please, no cries of FOUL from /.'ers....
:)
the technology isnt affordably portable (yet) give it another year and then MP3 may be a threat. The RIAA and the Harry Fox agency should focus their efforts on suing the companies that make the burners, and the software for duplicating cds
Time to blow more smoke. I like MP3 over CD because it gives me a chance to revisit songs that I heard growing up but couldn't afford to own. Sometimes I watch the infomercials for those "Classic Rock" CD collections with a notepad in hand so I can copy down the title and artist of the songs I like. Then, I go hunting. Do my actions tick of the RIAA? Probably. But, if they would release me a mix consisting only of the songs I like, I'd buy it. Since they haven't yet, I don't feel too bad about it. If they'd license their classic rock archives to a commercial download site, like GoodNoise, then I'd buy all my songs legally.
And don't worry if you like CDs. Illegal MP3 won't kill them all off. When you get a song illegally, you have no guarantee of the quality of the recording. If you really care about the song, you'll buy a better copy of it, especially now that you are interested in it. If you don't care about the quality, how's the RIAA going to stop you from just recording it off a radio station? I seem to recall once being told that CDs were priced as high as they are despite the same songs being broadcast on radio for free going along the same lines. With illegal MP3 downloads, you get what you pay for sometimes.
Personally, when I download more than 4 songs on the same album, I consider that album worth buying (assuming I can find it). If the RIAA wants me to lower my threshold, make the CDs cheaper, or provide music on demand. I would be interested to see what would happen if the Record Companies tried releasing a certain genre of their music archives on MoD (like they do on those infomercial collections) and observed the effects on CD sales of the same songs. Maybe if they had some direct SCIENTIFIC evidence to support their claims against MP3, I'd believe them, but they're going to have to overcome some serious mistrust before I'll believe them.
Which finally begs the question: if they're so concerned about MP3 stealing their market, why don't they do some serious research into downloading patterns (what songs/bands are popular, number of download sites per song, etc) rather than just whine about how general declines *must* be due to MP3s.
Geez, that's exactly what we DON'T need, MEGA bands and MEGA concerts. Go out and listen to some college kids or local bands or anything that's not yet the next big thing. You'd be surprised how good these people can be. Hype is no guarantee for good music, you should know that. Just like Hype does't make Windows 98 good software.
Radio also only has to change...switch to Shoutcast, play to a niche market. Voila! New business model.
Hey, it's not easy to shock your parents when they go to Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent concerts...
I think a nice trip to the symphony will show them!
Come on people. Music CDs may be a bit on the steep side but when it comes down to it, there's nothing like having a huge CD collection with limited edition cases and all the CD sleeves with all the words and flashy pictures etc.
Some friends have about 300 CDs and their shelves look SO much more impressive than saying "I have 4gigs worth of mp3s".
Granted I have some mp3s, but these are mainly old songs that I can't get CDs of, or songs that I wouldn't really buy.
Just like Amiga days, I had copied games but it's nothing like owning the original in all its glory. I still had far more original games than copies.
If something entertains me, I'm quite happy to pay for it out of appreciation.
If record companies would just quit manufacturing cds and put everything out on VINYL again, it would be more difficult to copy and distribute mp3's :) :) :)
:)
:)
(it works for me because I BUY EVERYTHING on VINYL, and im too lazy to convert any of it to mp3
--Freq
(vinyl fanatic, dj, designer
I disagree though about radio stations having to fear MP3's. The good ones have enough programming to keep me coming back, not to mention a few are online and offer streaming audio (some even have video into the booths... Howard Stern needs this BAD!). Check out 99X in Atlanta (great mid-day 80's set) or 99.1 WHFS in DC - good alterno-station.
The music industry is who needs to fear the MP3 (and forthcoming MP4). Unless they get off their butts and get up with technology, they're going to be hosed. And let's not even get into the fact that MP3's can significantly ease the load on radio stations to have huge librarys and worry about people stealing CD's.... not a problem with an mp3 server kicking stuff into jukebox player! MP3's can help radio stations.
directory shows empty
Get real: pirating/MP3s can only COST a corporation, if, in fact, the person pirating would have *actually bought* the product in the first place!
SO right. I've been thinking this since FAST started moaning about piracy. At the end of the day if I want something that badly, I'm quite happy to pay for it. If I can live without it, maybe I'll get a copy. If I can't get a copy, then it's not big deal, I'll survive without it.
Face it, major label music today sucks ass.
Same goes for radio. College & pirate radio (Shoutcast, anyone?) are the only things worth a crap.
Just because most of the money doesn't goto the artist you feel that it's OK to pirate? This is still stupid, and does not take into account that most artists CANNOT distribute albums on their own (yet). Right now the distributors ARE actually doing something, although you seem to be ignorant of this. "The middleman must provide value" :) And in general he often is.
:)
Concerts, merchandise, advertising, artwork for the CD, production, distribution (if you've ever seen bad distribution then you know this is a biggie), lawsuits (hey, people don't deal well with satanistic music sometimes, and metal musicians often have to fight censorship), getting radio airplay, studio time, hiring session musicians, and MORE. Now step back and think what a shitload of work all that is, and what average musician will be capable of doing all that? Of course the artist gets a small chunk of the change because there is a lot more going on than you realize. Admittedly, many labels rip their artists off, however there are good ones and you should try and get on those
In addition their demographic survey at http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/consumer98.htm doesn't even MENTION MP3 as a factor. Sounds like they're unsure themselves about what's eating away at the sales of their overpriced and underwhelming CD offerings...
What a bunch of damn crybabies. CD sales are declining, boo hoo hoo. Oh no, recording artists don't have to sell their souls to record companies anymore to get their music distributed. Now you can reach the whole world through the Internet. Marx was right, when you control the means of production, you've got people by the scrotum.
As the old bumper stickers used to say:
"Corporate Rock Sucks"
followed a few years later by:
"Corporate Rock Still Sucks"
Ugh. The fact is, the record labels have been signing record numbers of bands the last few years, but CD sales have been slumping. They sign a bunch of bands that sound alike, promote one single until you're sick of hearing it, and you never hear from the band again. And since the rest of the disc is assumed to sound pretty much the same as the single, people aren't going to buy it.
/*And this is related to MP3 in what fashion? The people who've pointed out that radio is still the main source for finding new artists are correct.
:)
;)
You might be introduced to new bands or styles by friends, but the majority of people don't download new songs unheard any more than they
buy new albums unheard. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, but a lot of us don't have T1 or greater speed at home.*/
Of course not YET. This is in the near future, not now. Currently, most people could probably download 1 album overnight I think because I could almost do the Diablo demo on my old modem I remember
/*Statistically speaking "teenyboppers" do not somehow mystically graduate to metal. Older audiences tend to either stay with what they know
(hence the rise of '70s stations and the increasing popularity of '80s nostalgia shows) or discover less commercial artists like Wilco, Lucinda
Williams, Grey Eye Glances. */
Most people who "stick with what they know" are not heavy album buyers and don't really give a shit about music. They have their Kenny G and a few random classics to make them look mature and that's it. What person do you know with stacks of soft rock around the house who actively comments on and follows their "scene"? All this nostalgia is gathering up what little good there was from past years because everything is so terrible now. Things will burst sometime
/*The amount of money the artist gets when I buy a new CD at Sensuous Sound for $11 is equal to the amount of money the artist gets when I
buy it on sale at Camelot for $14, at Virgin for $16 or full list for $18. This is not a good argument. It also doesn't apply to MP3s if you accept
the premise that they allow people to just buy the "one or two good songs" off an album--in that case, the royalty to the artist will be
appreciably less. (And, of course, the consumer will miss other songs that might actually be just as good, and with current MP3 technology
they're getting subtly but audibly inferior sound quality to CDs.)*/
Ok, the problem is that you're looking at music from a pop viewpoint. "One or two good songs" does not happen in the real music world. Any artist who does that will lose their fan base awfully fast in a world where the number of good songs you make matters. "One or two good songs" comes from the recordmakers not wanting you to hold onto a cd for more than a few weeks.
Of course the money for the artist is the same wherever you buy it, I honestly don't know what point you're trying to make. Also, you're making assumptions that mp3 songs will be sold singly, which may or may not be true. I bet few people will pay for a single song, maybe a bunch of 1 hit wonders, but not just one. Odds are real musicians will not want their album hacked up.
you're right!
we're just about to hit 6 billion
In the future that will work, but currently artists cannot sell that way and the middlemen still do a lot. Try looking at how much an underground label gets per CD. These places often LOSE money OK?
Ok, so the current record industry sucks, and musicians hardly get paid, and CDs are overpriced. Granted.
And it's easy to see how the widespread use of MP3 could eventually do some serious harm to the music industry, by removing their revenue stream.
My question is, if you take down the music industry, what do you replace it with? How do you feed the artists who are recording music? How do you cause the music to continue to get produced? What's the business model for this new world?
I hear you.
CFNY used to be the absolute best.
I'm not surprised by how things turned out over the long run.
Commercial success will do that to ya.
I still listen on occasion though...
Wow! Other people that can actually read my mind and determine exactly what I feel like listening to! Or even better, due to their vastly superior music knowledge, they know what I SHOULD be listening to. Absolutely astounding!
I remember one Sunday afternoon when I was working on a lab assignment for the majority of the day. Someone had brought in a radio and tuned it to the local pop music station (104 KRBE for those in Houston who know it). After about 3 hours I noticed that they had begun replaying certain songs. The ads were worse: They started cycling after about 1 hour. I thought that if I ever heard their concert ad jingle again I'd puke. Radio will never be as good as MP3 for meeting my current desire in music style or genre, and I've yet to get an MP3 with 5 minutes of commercials interleaved between 10 minutes of music. I'll find out about new songs by hearing them at parties or from friends. Radio is too mass-consumption oriented to be able to meet all my music needs at any given time, even with the number of stations available in a major US city.
I disagree. You pontificate about the substantial growth rate of the music industry, but you cannot even speculate about how many CD sales are forfeited due to the blatant copying of CD's. I suspect you might feel contrarily if your income was diminished due to the willful misuse of technology.
duh
IMXO the RIAA and the major Labels MUST specify
the bound for "free music compression bitrate".
No metter what format/compression is used.
So, any MP3's, VQF's, etc with this (and lower)
bitrate must be absolutely legal (as well as radio).
This decision will be the greatest for an industry.
It is hard to introduce all of the good results.
Music samples will be available all around the world.
People will pay money for quality.
RIAA can't stop the process. They'll make
more money by control it.
Music storages/delivery, coders/players are the big business.
I think this bound bitrate must be in between
80 to 128 kbps. (may be 96 ?)
Mp3 is the death of commercial music. For years, the large music industry has been able to weekly release shit simply because people didn't KNOW that the better form of music (metal) existed. Now that the pop injection is being taken too quickly, even the most feeble-minded kiddies will be able to see the banality of commercial music. Now they will go browsing for something more interesting, that is the reason the industry is reacting. They no longer have total control through the radio and TV.
/.'ers would have you believe). Many bands cannot even afford to get a decent tour together, much less pay to get their shirt sold in musicland. Support your artists (they have to eat), or some day all "music" will be randomly generated samples by a computer (like commercial music is today!).
/. editors
By the way, $15 or so dollars is NOT too much to pay for a CD, especially when most real artists currently only sell a few thousand copies of their work. What you pirating fools take for granted is that these CDs don't just come out of nowhere. Real artists actually have to spend time making and crafting their work. They cannot simply make money off tee-shirts and concerts (as many
/* for
I think my post deserves a 2 at least. While I have made many childish insults, they are no worse than the usual anti-MS stuff. I made some points which have not been brought up in previous posts and could stimulate some interesting discussion regarding the future of the music industry.
* The kiddie audience is running out of steam. Hanson and Backstreet Boys have shot their wads, and it's only a matter of time before Brittney Spears and NSync burn out.
* Older acts like REM and U2 put out stinker albums that don't sell. Fewer older, established bands tour any more. There used to be an arena show every other week. Now it's once in a blue moon.
* MTV used to be a 24 hour music channel. Now it's a 24 hour shit channel. When Creed was on MTV live, they were asked if they would make another video. The singer said no, why bother, you guys won't play it anyway. During the 2 hours a day it plays music, it plays rap. No whites allowed, unless you are a total retard, in which case they'll make you a VJ (Jesse Camp should be shot).
* There are no new young bands coming up, and the few that are aren't touring or getting MTV airplay.
* Radio is now in the hands of corporate chains that dictate what bands are played. The DJ used to decide what was played, but not any more. The end result is over-exposure of the same songs by horrible repetition. KROQ here in L.A. used to be a good alternative station. Now it plays Lenny Kravitz, Everlast, and Everclear about 10 times a day.
In short, the industry destroyed itself through corporatization.
When was the last time mainstream music WASN'T crap? I can't remember such a time (I'm 20). Maybe in the 70's, but definitely not in the 80's and 90's. Of course, there is always good music from bands like Rush, U2, etc. that manage to do well without being trendy. I think in the last 20 years at least 95% of the mainstream music has always been terrible. This is to be expected though - the mass public is ignorant, and most people just don't appreciate good music. Very few people who buy CDs are actually serious music listeners.
You shouldn't be discouraged though. There is still a LOT of really good music out there. The Internet has really helped me find some of the really good, non-mainstream music that's out there. I listened to mostly popular, mainstream type stuff for the longest time when I was younger, because it's all I knew about. I really didn't start getting into progressive rock and jazz until around 1994 when the Internet began to get more popular. Now I'm listening to the likes of Spock's Beard, Al DiMeola, etc.
Disenchantment with the mainstream music industry is causing the decline in RIAA CD Sales.
Looking around locally (Albany, NY and NYC), I see the big chain record stores doing poorly, and the smaller independant stores doing well. I like seeing this. The independant stores are offering more of what people want: used music, local artists (often self-published, it's cheap to get your CD burnt in small batches now), and DJ Mixes (also self-published).
Music is all about freedom of expression. The freedom of the artist to make the music they want, and the freedom of the listener to set their style by the music they select. The RIAA and its member companies have been trying to play with this freedom, and it's now starting to backfire on them.
The self-published music industry started the decline in CD sales. MP3 is just another few nails in the RIAA's coffin. The RIAA blames it on the MP3's to divert attention from the real reason, because they don't want people to realize how a talented musician can make it without their "help". You can't really be a multi-million dollar megastar without them, but you can be a respected and fed musician with no help from the record labels.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Declining sales of cd's has very little if nothing to do with mp3. It has to due with the fact that so many stores, especially those in malls, have jacked up the prices astronomically. It's incredibly common to see those stores asking $18 for a CD! The exact same CD that could be purchased at discount or independant store for $10-13!
The RIAA has it out for mp3, and will say or do anything to make it look bad. This is just the latest example of their own FUD tactics.
The music industry must change, or be crushed by the technology it is trying so hard to hold back from consumers.
Rich
Many people, including me, are actually buying more CD's. If I hear something I like, I'll see if I like the rest of the album. There's nothing I hate worse than buying a CD and getting 2 good songs and the rest is all trash/filler. The whole scheme of releasing songs an album at a time encourages this practice. If artists weren't under pressure to release a full 60-minute album, then they would be less likely to release the bad or mediocre songs.
He probably has burned most of his collection onto CDR's....
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
-A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I love having everything on demand. It's great, since I don't have to spend 10 minutes looking through my sea of CDs for one specific title. Instead, I spend 11 minutes looking for whatever cryptic filename I gave the MP3, and which directory it's in. ;>
Try mp3info, I think it's exactly what you are looking for.
I read the internet for the articles.
I feel so bad for them. Imagine, not being able to charge $16 bucks for CDs that have one decent track on them. How will they live? They might have to get jobs!
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The problem is, there are too many radio stations that _aren't_ random. Most of the ones around here, if you listen to them all day, you'll hear the same dozen "new releases" two or three times, with a few other songs and commercials mixed in... and if you switch to a different station, *they're playing the same damn thing*! My MP3 collection is more random than that... I'm easily capable of going a whole day without repeating a song. Pop stations are the worst in this regard, but even the older stations get repetitititive pretty quickly.
I don't have any MP3s, but I have bought fewer CDs in the past few years for a number of reasons, listed below. Another problem with the market is the aging Baby Boomers. I mean, you can only by Hotel California so many time, eh?
1) Lack of good music. I don't mean that there are not good bands around...but the music business is not getting it out to us. There have been no real "mega" groups or artists come along for a long time that have wide ranging appeal.
2) Most albums are pretty spotty in terms of consistancy of songs. Too many albums have two or three really good songs, and the rest suck.
3) No really big tours. Tours sell albums. If I go to a concert and see a band, I am more likely to buy the album.
4) CD costs...retail blank CDs are under $2 CDN. Average CD price is $15-$20 range. But that is about the same as it was a decade ago, when only plants could cut CDs.
In the past 6 months, I have only bought a few CDS, the new Garbage, the new Sarah McLauchlan, 3 Chris Franke (two Babylon 5 soundtracks & one other). I used to buy an CD every couple of weeks. Nothing appeals much to me anymore.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I got a nice hardware rig going. This is partly due to connectors and cables... I took my powermac apart, and ripped off (oh all right, desoldered) the tacky little audio jacks, replacing them with sorta litz-wire-on-steroids cables that run directly from the board to RCA plugs, for both input and output. :)
I took this and my crazed mondo homebrew highend turntable, and my original British SHVL 804 'Dark Side of the Moon', and ran the signal directly into the powermac, recording it to digital and then converting it to your usual mp3 (no special high quality, joint stereo 128).
Played back over my full studio monitoring system (includes very serious subs), the result was really pretty respectable. It was like CD quality, only slightly dirtied. That's how I'd describe it. The CD version of a good album with a bit of dirt on the needle- it didn't lose all that much from the CD quality level.
I'm certainly going to be experimenting with ways of compressing the audio before subjecting it to mp3ing, because it definitely sounds like pre-emphasis would help- one thing I didn't mention was that this funky custom turntable has controls for some circuit elements like feedback loops that are normally fixed- so I was able to pre-emphasise the sound to compensate for the mp3, something that would not be possible with ripping straight from CD. I'm pretty sure I artificially enhanced the results for that reason, but what the hell, call it sweetening
Again, the result is really pretty respectable. You can listen for sound quality for some extent, and the tonality comes through about as well as it does on CD, only with a certain amount of added grunge. This isn't too horrible a problem.
Who listens to radio for music anymore? I listen to NPR, Howard Stern, and the CD player in my trunk.
'course, most of the music out today is crap anyway - never thought I'd hear myself saying that....
Well stop using that DOS box as your file server! I have long files names, with spaces even, and the music is broken up into gendre's. Thanks Micros~1!!!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Posted by stodge:
Read the article folks.
Article title:
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Wednesday released a report showing a large decline in sales to young demographics, and the association suspects MP3 trading is a culprit.
Article contents:
"Potentially, the rise of the Internet as a free entertainment center, and the accompanying availability of free MP3 music files, could be contributing factors," said the report.
Even the title of the article is making assumptions. They state that MP3 downloads *could* be a contributing factor, but they don't have conclusive proof.
For me personally, MP3 downloads (legal ones) are a waste of time, as none of the bands I listen to have their songs available. Now I could (and have) download illegal MP3s, but personally I prefer to buy a CD. Why? It's already on a storage device, so I dont have to download a song and stick it onto a CD. Convenience! Agreed CD prices are just plain crazy, but believe me, North America has it easy compared to England. Having moved to Canada from England, my CD collection rocketed because they are so much cheaper over here.
So maybe if CD prices came down then the RIAA wouldnt have to worry about MP3 and piracy.
Posted by US Marine:
Not as long as I am driving my 1967 Stingray.
MP3 ain't much good when you're cruising down the Texas highways. 99.5 The Wolf. This is Texas Country.
Posted by nernin:
there are more reasons than 2 that radio will not die with the widespread use of mp3s.
i work in a radio station, i know the deal. music is only part of what goes on. talk, news, commentary, documentaries, radio plays, etc. are all a major part of radio programming.
radio stations are part of a loop that consumers are not unless they have the time to contact labels and constantly read CHART. i'm not talking just the new cd from virgin or warner or geffen. even the small labels. if you've ever run a music distribution (i have for years) than you know that *finding* the music takes a lot of time.
it's not as simple an issue as MP3s will change the world because i can get some music for free. the fact that people who are into MP3s are creating community to share their music and going out and active finding new music to share, that will change the music world.
Posted by hurstdawg:
Here at my university I know that cd sales are declining because of mp3's. Everyone in the dorms here is connected to the local area network, and quite a bit of mp3 trading, sharing, and downloading goes on.
The only time most of us turn on the radio is to hear songs we havn't downloaded yet. Some of the people in my dorm have barely 100Mb of free space left on their hard drives due to the massive amount of mp3's they have.
Mp3's are huge here, and in the years following graduation I'm sure most will continue to favour mp3's over cd's.
Posted by Terminator:):
Try using time tested and proven formula.
1. Try using Altavista to find MP3 search engines. 2. Use the MP3 search engines to find the MP3 sites.
3. Use FTP to hammer the MP3 site until you get in.
4. Then download all you want.
Posted by Death Rider:
I really seems funny to me that RIAA is really going ape about MP3. They are worrying about piracy in MP3 form, but are not really worried about the $1 burnable CDs. I for one have burned every CD that I had before MP3 came along and gave out copies to friends. It is just like tapes. The only reason they are really pissed is that the MP3 portable players are now out and the non-techies can now have MP3.
Of course this sure sounds like a SPA revival to me and we all know what happened there...
>I disagree though about radio stations having to fear MP3's.
I think radio stations may change significantly as a result of the digital era -- in fact, the changes have started already. Pure digital music can lower their costs; no big library of music to store (even at higher data rates than most MP3s), no huge transmitter required. You may start seeing very small stations as a result, with fewer listeners per station.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>My question is, if you take down the music industry, what do you replace it with?
I think you may go to more of an honor system. Give away one MP3, sell others. Some people will pirate, but many of those people wouldn't buy anyway. If the cost of an album is (say) $2 instead of $15, you should end up selling more, and if most of the profit goes to the artist, the artist earns a similar amount to now. If the cost is lower, places can have a wider selection due to cheaper inventory costs, so it'll still be decent business.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You're right, a good DJ could do so much better than that. For some reason the big stations decided we'd all be better without them and we're stuck with these overhyped wannabes. It's like they decided to take the most popular items on the menu and make a single dish from them and are wondering why "Steak mousse pasta" isn't selling well...
No, there is noise in the cheaper system. That noise muffles what your ear translates into your brain. Artifacts in the source material which are softer than the noise are not noticed. Not noticed unless you are using a good system which has a better s/n ratio.
I am not an audiophile but I know my cheap stereo only sounds good enough. The problem with expensive equipment is that it also points out the flaws. I record my own music and on the CDRs I've made from WAV files, they sound good enough on my stereo and only so-so on a friends great stereo. Whenever I use bladeenc to create MP3s of my music it just sounds like crap at any sample rate below 256kbps.
MP3s are only good for the unattentive listener. If you are trying to really listen to a song, you don't want MP3s.
My Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold has a copper-wire SPDIF out connector. High end pro soundcards probably have optical outs.
is Channel 7/ABC in Detroit, Michigan. I wonder how TV signals sound on a radio reciever?
Don't forget, you still need a place to put all those MP3s! Granted, hard drive prices are coming down, but still. How portable can all those songs be? You need a player for every platform you want to play them on. Personally, I'd rather use MDs. I got one of these a while ago and they're totally convenient (CD-RW in a 4" square that's totally portable!). Until they cram 50GB hard drives into a 4" square that runs on little batteries, I don't see MP3s as being THAT useful. Don't get me wrong, I think they're awesome if you're on your LAN/PC - I'm thinking of portability and general use.
And I thought I was the only one that though music has been getting lamer with each passing year. Bring back the good 'ol 80's music like punk, hardcore and "new wave." At least it was original...
Learn 'em, use 'em, love 'em. ;>
That would be nice - but with optical in/out and analog in/out, that's plenty good... What would you need the other ports for?
My favorite band is the Cure, and I still prefer them to any of the dreck on the tuner these days. :)
There is one particularly killer sound card out there that's pretty pricey, too - and of course, there's the issue of Linux compatibility. I've found that the best card so far is the older SoundBlaster AWE32. The 64 and/or Gold suck - they took out hardware and made it use software more for processing. Just because my CPU is faster nowadays doesn't mean I want to waste cycles on playing beeps and bloops... Friggin' Creative.
Jamie Zawinksi once said that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail." I think this should now be upgraded to ""Every program attempts to expand until it can browse the web."
In your report on the 1998 Consumer Profile, located at
, you wrote:
> The continuing drop-off in the proportion of purchases accounted for
> by 15 to 24 year-olds (32.2% in 1996 vs. 28% in 1998), once the
> mainstay of the market, is puzzling. Potentially the rise of the
> Internet as a free entertainment center, and the accompanying
> availability of free MP3 music files, could be contributing factors.
The increasing proliferation of music files on the Internet cannot by
itself be considered a significant factor to the decrease in music
purchases by young people. Simply being able to listen to your
favorite songs for free is not the only reason why music files are so
popular now.
First of all, there is growing public dissatisfaction with the
exceptionally high price of CDs, a disproportionately large portion of
which is markup and not the cost of production. We all heard from the
music industry about ten years ago that as soon as manufacturing
plants recovered their costs that prices would decrease; prices kept
increasing. I *rarely* buy new CDs anymore. Most people think your
typical mall price of $14.99 or $15.99 is simply too much; the music
industry should indeed be thankful for the existence of discount
department stores that sell them for a few dollars less, and for used
CD shops.
The product itself is also a factor. Ask almost any consumer how many
times they felt cheated when they purchased a CD to find that they
only like one or two songs on it. I've had this happen to me quite a
few times. Generally speaking, we only hear one or two songs off an
album on the radio so there is usually no easy way to see if you like
an album before you buy it. More people (consumers and the industry
alike) should see MP3 files as one way to accomplish this. If people
are able to concentrate their purchasing power on only the material
they like, the music industry would produce a larger amount of more
quality material.
The radio industry itself is also a factor. Conceptually a radio
station can serve very well as a vehicle to encourage people to
purchase music (public-radio station WFPK in Louisville, KY is an
excellent example). In reality most radio stations are doing a very
poor job, and it's only getting worse. In very few communities does
one have a decent choice of music formats to listen to, and most
people haven't heard of but a very small fraction of the material that
is available. Meanwhile, your typical classic rock stations are
playing the same tired 1970s songs over and over again. Your typical
oldies stations are playing the same tired 1960s songs over and over
again. Your typical CHR and rock stations are playing the same artist
every half-hour, when they could devote more of their time to other
artists. They played artists like The Spice Girls, Hootie And The
Blowfish, Metallica, and countless other artists way beyond the point
of saturation.
Younger people, seeking a wider variety of material, are getting tired
of radio stations that overplay The Spice Girls, CD prices that to
them are a reflection of greed instead of production costs, and the
products themselves that consistently fall short of their
expectations.
All I'm asking is that you think of the increasing availability of
music files not only as a cause of decreasing CD sales, but as a
reflection of a far more serious problem. While the factors I talked
about are probably as obvious to you as they are to many consumers,
you need to keep those in mind.
Thanks for your time,
Darren Stuart Embry
owner of over 400 CDs
--
--
This web site will cure all your ailments.
These guys are geniouses. Time to bring in government protection and start banning mp3 advertisements from magazines. That's how business in the 21st century works. If someone makes a better tasting ice cream, sue them. If someone's web site gets more hits than yours, firewall it.
Well, it depends on the compression rate of the audio file. I don't claim to have exeptionally good equipment, but I think I got a reasonable system in the $3000 range. At 128 kbit the diffence is hard to discern on the speakers (for most music - there's one Led Zeppelin recording that sounds bad at anything below 256 kbit!), but on the headphones the artifacts stand out quite clearly. At 160 kbit, most music is indiscernible from the CD, even on the phones. (Tested using "Something happened on the way to heaven" by Phil Collins, from the "But Seriously" album and Bladeenc.)
Disclaimer: Yes, I own both of the mentioned CDs, but I'm too lazy to change discs every hour. (When using the music as background music, not in audiophile mode! ;-))
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
...to males ages 15-24 is that the record companies are promoting increasingly large amounts of truly sucky music.
Personally, I fall just outside that demographic (I'm 27), and while I'm not an MP3 fiend, I go looking for them periodically. Generally the mp3s I look for are stuff that's not available on CD -- live recordings, outtakes, etc. -- or stuff that I've never heard before. I've bought several CDs precisely *because* I DLed an mp3 and liked it enough to shell out for a CD. I doubt I'm unique in that regard, and that seems to be a distribution model that hasn't even crossed the RIAA's puny little minds.
--Troy
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Besides, I don't know how the internet connection is in your car, but I'm not very good with RealPlayer in mine. (Most radio listening occurs in moving vehicles.)
--
(sourceCode == freeSpeech)
Just off the top of my head, the SB Awe 64 Gold has RCA outputs. I use a Ensoniq AudioPCI (1371) patched into my stereo (harman/kardon + Infinity = really fsckin' loud) via a 3.5mm stereo to dual RCA cable (about a 15' run). Once I got xmixer dialed in it was plenty loud. Its certainly not audiophile quality, but it sounds a lot better than radio or tape.
That's all well and good IF you happen to have good local radio stations. I used to listen to a lot of radio until my favorite station (KNAC), the only one in the hard rock/metal genre went off the air 4 years ago. Since then nobody has filled the void. L.A. has something like a half dozen rap stations, 3-4 really bad modern rock stations, and countless Spanish language stations. Yes, there are tons of net stations now (including a watered-down KNAC @knaclive.com) but they are mostly poor quality RA streams or require Windows media player or something and I can't listen to them anywhere. What's the point of this post? None really...just bitching about how much L.A. radio sucks. :P
You're probably coming across import cd singles from japan or europe. They typically cost about $9-12.
I just submitted this link as a story, not knowing it was already submitted and had over 200 comments. I guess that's one drawback to the filter system (I filter out articles on Music).
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
One of the greatest advantages to MP3s IMHO is
the fact that from now on, you'll no longer have
the problem of something being out of print.
MP3s allow for indefinite archival and trivial
duplication, making having to search all over for
someone who not only has the CD you want but is
willing to part with it for a reasonable price a
thing of the past.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Both of these are great cards. The cs423x is present on Intel Pr440fx motherboards, and the Advanced Gravis Ultrasound Pro, PnP, and Viper MAX. The Ensoniq cards are now OEM'd by Creative Labs, and their very high quality is untypical of Creative Labs cards.
I spent a few extra bucks on good quality shielded cables RCA->RCA cables, and I use an adaptor right at the sound card to turn the 1/8 connector into something better.
Aside from real professional cards with optical outputs, I think this is the best you're gonna get. Since cards with optical outputs are about 10 times more expensive and recievers with optical inputs are a bit steep, I thing the tradeoffs are worth the money saved.
I listen to techno/trance. The market for music is much smaller than the MTV market, so if I hear something I like, I make a point of buying the CD to support the artist, they need all the sales they can get. I think artists with a limited audience (techno and other smaller niches) can be hurt by people trading illegal MP3s as opposed to buying the CD. On the contrary, I doubt if Mariah Carey or other big-name crappy artists could really notice a difference if people pirate an MP3 rather than buying the CD because the market is so large.
Free music is widely available on the internet. Not illegal MP3's, but legal ones. I run a huge MP3 database called:
http://www.deadabase.com
We have over 70gigs of free MP3's. The RIAA is scared shitless of what sites like this offer unsigned artists. I say "Fuck em!"
It isn't a lack of equipment that makes MP3 less than desirable to audiophiles. MP3 is a lossy compression format. You get those small file sizes because a certain amount of the information is discarded. This is how image compression works like in JPEG or your DVD player as well. The lossy compression also isn't the problem necessarily. The problem comes in when people rip an MP3 for optimal file size and either don't listen to it or listen to it through cheap PC speakers.
As an aside, even a CD is a lossy compression format. You're compressing the audio information with two mechanisms:
1) You're taking an infinite number of analog singal levels and compressing it down to 2^16th discrete steps.
2) You're taking a signal with infinite resolution in the time domain and sampling it at discrete points.
As another aside record albums are lossy too:
Any signal can be represented by an infinite weighted sum of smaller signals. During the process of cutting the LP there is a finite limit to the maximum frequency that can be represented in the grooves of a record. During playback there's also a limit to how quickly your needle can track the grooves. Overall this frequency limits the sound.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that regardless of the technology involved in reproduction if your source information isn't adequately reproduced it still won't sound good. Garbage in, garbage out.
I would say that the statement would be true. However, from my observations at my college its mainly the top 40 songs that are being affected. Which I'm partly thankful and partly unthankful for. On one side it means I don't have to hear all of Brittany Spears' album, on the other side it means I have to hear the same song over an over.
Otherwise here is a theory for you...how about the fact that CD's have risen in price by about 30% since 1996? I know that has affected how many CD's I buy. When a new CD now costs $16 or $17 as opposed to costing $11-$12, that is a pretty big impact on a college students wallet.
Or maybe the recording industry should look at the fact that they aren't pushing artists anymore and only pushing singles. This I imagine has much to do with it too.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
In the UK, the average price of a CD is equivalent to about US$24 at current conversion rates, with "premier" artists charging even more than that. Sure, I can order them over the net at sensible prices from CD Universe or CD Now, but if I do so, I also have to pay
- postage and packing
- 3.5% import duty to HM Customs and Excise
- 17.5% VAT (value added tax) on the purchase price
all of which tends to defeat the original purpose. You guys don't know how lucky you are to only be paying $18 per CD..."The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Perhaps instead of whining about jow much the MP3 format is hurting them, they should consider how it can help them. If the albums were sold on an agreed upon, industry standard flash-rom card for use in devices similar to a Diamond Rio, then perhaps they could start benefiting from the mp3.
Points to consider:
1. Battery life in players. One draw back to CD's and even cassttes is thier lack of battery life. There isn't a single "portable" player that can play for more than 90 minutes at best and only about 45 on the average. In a motorless system (like the Rio) there is not the demand of power that there is in anything that has a motor. It's a sad state of affairs that my digital camera has more life than my sony diskman. and my camera has a flash.
2. Cost vs Value. Sure, $15 for a CD is not a bad price, but only if you like most of the songs on the album. If you only like one or two songs, it just is not worth it. With a flash card based system, a music store could have a kiosk where you can put in a blank card and a couple of dollars and you get the song(s) that you want without getting the ones that you don't like.
3. Whine factor. As was posted, there is a problem with the current system of record publishers. If you aren't really massive/popular/contreversial, you aren't going to get as a good of a deal assuming you can even get published at all. Thanks to the tight fisted, iron handed attitudes of the industry, it's no damn wonder that smaller bands are going with internet publication. The guy who posted an apology about hating the mp3 format admitted that when he posted a few of his band's songs, got more requests for appearences, records,and more interest than he ever got in his band's existance.
to sum up...
If rhe RIAA is losing money on mp3's then it's thier own damn fault for not keeping with the trends and innovations that are shaping the world
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Its not a quality of hardware issue as much as an artifact of compression issue. Soundblaster 16's are very noisy. Some cards are better, and a lot are worse. Anything pushing the line out through a 1/8 in jack is going to sound lousy. If you spend some serious $$$ on a sound card you can get multichannel professional audio card with RCA outs, better S/N ratio, etc. Even on one of these, you'll get clearer sound but not more accurate sound.
My test I did with MP3's used 128kbit and 256kbit rips. I use a program under Linux (can't recall which) to generate 44khz 16 bit stereo WAV files. Those wav files were burned out to a CD, so I could test the quality of the format, not my computer's audio hardware. (Which is pretty good anyway, I do a lot of music production on it -- although I *never* record off the output, its always mixed down to a wav file and burned to a CD...)
I listened to the CD in three or four places. On my discman with the normal headphones it sounded fine. I didn't lose much quality compared to the original tracks.
With good ($100) headphones, it just struck me as being very... tinny? I'm not sure a good word for it. It was hollow sounding, but mostly in the high frequency ranges... it wasn't bad at vocal ranges, but electronic music (I had a Front Line Assembly track on the disk) sounded awful. Lost a *lot* of detail.
I also tried it on my home stereo. Not a great system, a Sony dolby digital setup, Bose 4001 speakers, custom built center channel (which is a lot higher quality than the Bose's -- I just haven't been able to afford to build left/rights yet...) The source was coming via a digital stream from my DVD player into the AC3 decoder, so it was digital straight to the amp. Sounded fine on here. (The lousy high and low end response on Bose speakers I'd attribute to that...)
The last place I tested it was in my car. My car's got about $5k of audio hardware in it. The speakers are custom enclosed Vifa components (some of the highest quality stuff you can get, car or home...) Very expensive wiring, 1000 watt amp, blah blah blah...
Results? Unlistenable. The Vifas are so accurate (especially with that much power able to take hold of them), every little inaccuracy of the source recording is audible. Everything sounded very hollow, there was some wierd side-to-side inaccuracies that I didn't recall noticing in the source material. I could go on...
That's just my results. A MP3 component plugged into most stereos will probably sound great. I'm not sure why I'd want to spend the $$$ for an MP3 component though, when I can get a 200 disc changer for $300, and not deal with the hassle of burning MP3 CDRs, and still being more limited in what I can listen to.
The idea of a portable player like the Rio is good, especially when I'm at the gym or biking or something. Its better sounding than a tape, and CDs are too prone to skipping.
I think you're probably right. The money I spent on the car stereo was excessive, to say the least. But I was young and had it.
The problem is that a lot of formats today (CD, DVD Audio, DAT) have better sound quality than the vast majority of equipment can reproduce. Its typically not, however, better than the studio equipment on newer recordings, so the quality capable in the recording is actually there in the recoding. As a result, you miss parts of the music.
So you spend more money to get better stereo equipment to handle the available quality in the format you choose. The problem you get from that comes when you listen to a source thats not as high a quality. MP3's are one example, but MD, and even old CD's copied from lower quality studio masters are all like that.
Its tough on good equipment to, for example, listen to CD's of stuff from the 80's. Interestingly I've found CD's of older material to sound better. During the 80's so much was being played on tape I guess they just pushed some parts of the recoding harder than they should have. They're all sort of piercing in the high frequencies. A Bangles CD is painful to listen to on real good equipment, but a Pink Floyd might sound fantastic. (Especially I've found the quality on the gold remasters to frequently be excellent)
My reason FWIW for spending all that $$$ on the equipment in my car was that the car was a convertible, and it takes a lot of power to get clear sound with the top down. (Most car stereo equipment takes advantage of the fact that you're essentially in a closed box to produce its sound -- without a top, you need to produce a higher volume, more power, etc...)
I don't know... listening experience... how can you describe it?
:)
:)
I don't expect much from the headphones. I can't hear the inaccuracies in the recording because of the inaccuracies in the headphones. Make any sense?
I'd rather hear lousy recordings on lousy equipment than lousy recordings on good equipment. Lousy equipment tents to muffle out and lose the detail in its own noise and inaccuracies. I'd rather not hear something because of lousy equipment than hear something that doesn't sound "right".
I can't get better sound anywhere than I can get in my car. Does that mean I don't listen to anything anywhere else? No, it means there some stuff I really don't like listening to in my car because of the low quality, and some stuff I don't like listening to outside of my car because it loses its impact. Most good classical falls into that latter category. Most '80s music falls in the former.
I'm no expert on human auditory perception, but personally I've noticed I can tolerate high volumes, for example, when the sound itself is very clean, and not distorted. A similarly high volume coming from a distorted or dirty source causes me headaches and makes my ears hurt.
That may have something to do with the whole headphone issue -- I don't listen to headphones as loud as I'd tend to listen to a stereo.
*shrug* I didn't say it was logical, I just said it was my observation.
FYI, that three to four dollars for a cd-club CD, not a dime goes to the artist. Part of the contracts they have with record labels is that CD's sold in certain circumstances don't pay royalties. The reason the CD's are so cheap is the CD-clubs pay a flat licensing fee to the label in exchange for access to its catalogs. They get masters -- and produce the copies themselves. That's why the printing is often inferior, and they usually say things like "Manufactured for BMG" etc on the case.
;)
You can tell the artists with real clout in the industry -- they're the ones that you can't get in any CD catalog. They control their royalties, they decide how their art gets marketed and sold, thus they don't get bundled into flat-rate licensing from the labels.
A CD, with jewel case and printed material costs around a buck. The artist usually gets in the order of a dollar per sold, although that varies quite a bit based on contract.
They're sold to distributors in the 5-6 dollar range. Distributors (like WEA) resell them in the 9-10 dollar range. Stores mark them up from there.
The price from the distributors is why you don't see any places coming out and selling on razor thin margins and selling big-name CD's for eight bucks. (Witness prices at places like CD-Now and Walmart...)
So if you're spending $18 on the CD, the store itself is making 80% on that sale. In mall situations, they have to if they want to cover outrageous mall lease rates. If you think 80% is bad, you should see the markup on the clothing stores...
Big stores and indie stores in lower-rent locations are the ones that you'll find the $12 CD's at. But they simply don't get lower than that because of the cost from the manufacturer.
I try to support the artists I actually think produce decent work -- their CD's come from stores. I have no problem buying CD's from hack bands that happen to have a song I find catchy from clubs... they're probably getting more $$$ than their music is worth anyway
I doubt MP3 has anything to do with declines in CD sales. I'd guess its just the general public getting bored with popular music these days. I mean seriously, among people on here who socialize with non-geeks, how many people do you know who have ever even heard of MP3, much less use it? Very few if any.
This is just a B.S. report from the RIAA to bolster their claims that MP3's are being used to pirate music and its severely hurting the industry. There's doubtfully any truth to it at all. Most people that have a few MP3's probably have them of something they wouldn't have payed any money for otherwise.
Its also silly given the way that CD clubs license music from record labels -- CD clubs hurt profits and particularly artist royalties more than MP3 ever will.
For the same reason the idea of TV tuners in PCs never really took off, MP3s playing through PCs for mainstream users will never take off. And I don't know a single person with a stereo component that plays them. No one wants to fire up their PC and sit in that room to listen to music or watch TV. I know a dozen people who've bought Toshiba or other "name" PC's with TV tuners, radios, etc... and none of them ever use them. These are virtually computer illiterate users. (ie, most of the general public)
On top of that, you've got the audiophiles -- people who tend to spend a lot of $$$ on audio-related hardware. No true audiophile would want to listen to anything on MP3. On anything but lousy headphones or low end computer speakers or stereo equipment they just sound lousy. (And that comment isn't flame bait -- people may disagree, but most people don't have even reasonable quality audio equipment...)
In a nutshell, I think its a growing lack of innovative and creative music in the mainstream popular music area thats responsible for the drop in sales. The big companies (and the companies that are RIAA members) aren't the ones selling the new and interesting music... The RIAA is an association of the big boys, and the big boys are growing old and tired.
Its good to see a drop in CD sales. Maybe one day the big labels will start to take risks again and promote quality music rather than generic clone bands. If the RIAA wants to twist that to their political agenda against MP3, who can stop them?
I seem to recall purchasing my first CD back in 1987/88 for $16.95 + tax. There was an expense justification going around, for why CD's were $16.95 vs. $11.95 for LPs, saying that they'll be expensive to begin with, but as more and more are sold the economies of scale will kick in and the prices will drop under $10/disc.
I'm still waiting...
I am now paying $12.95-17.95, depending upon what store I go to, and what sale prices or promotions are being offered. And, somehow I think the "economy of scale" kicked in a loooong time ago. Consider that to produce one CD only costs (approximately) $1.50, and LPs cost (then) $3.00-4.00/per pressing.
And I am sick about the record companies and agents screaming about artists rights, but taking the largest percentage for themselves.
Ugh.
Can't wait until everyone in the music business receive their just desserts. Another great swath of worthless leeches exterminated with a flamethrower. :-)
Then they took the diverse formats and consolidated them back into tired formulas.
Pearl Jam anyone?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
...is everything out there mostly sucks, IMO. :) Unless you're an NYSNC/Backstreet Boys/Five/Britney Spears fan.
No thank you!
-- haaz.
Declining sales of cd's has very little if nothing to do with mp3. It has to due with the fact that so many stores, especially those in malls, have jacked up the prices astronomically
Exactly. I know that I for one have made a conscious decision to reduce my CD buying due to the outrageous pricing.
$18 is just a crime, but$10-13 isn't that much better considering the actual cost of production. The record companies need to reduce the prices and reduce the amount of the cut they take.
Won't happen until sales really start slumping.
MP3 is the death of commercial music.... people didn't KNOW that the better form of music (metal) existed.
And this is related to MP3 in what fashion? The people who've pointed out that radio is still the main source for finding new artists are correct. You might be introduced to new bands or styles by friends, but the majority of people don't download new songs unheard any more than they buy new albums unheard. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, but a lot of us don't have T1 or greater speed at home.)
Statistically speaking "teenyboppers" do not somehow mystically graduate to metal. Older audiences tend to either stay with what they know (hence the rise of '70s stations and the increasing popularity of '80s nostalgia shows) or discover less commercial artists like Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Grey Eye Glances.
$15 or so dollars is NOT too much to pay for a CD, especially when most real artists currently only sell a few thousand copies of their work....Real artists actually have to spend time making and crafting their work. They cannot simply make money off tee-shirts and concerts....Support your artists (they have to eat), or some day all "music" will be randomly generated samples by a computer.
The amount of money the artist gets when I buy a new CD at Sensuous Sound for $11 is equal to the amount of money the artist gets when I buy it on sale at Camelot for $14, at Virgin for $16 or full list for $18. This is not a good argument. It also doesn't apply to MP3s if you accept the premise that they allow people to just buy the "one or two good songs" off an album--in that case, the royalty to the artist will be appreciably less. (And, of course, the consumer will miss other songs that might actually be just as good, and with current MP3 technology they're getting subtly but audibly inferior sound quality to CDs.)
The quality of any digital encoding system depends on the bits of the sample, the sample frequency, and the compression degredation (i.e., is it "lossy" or not). The Nyquist algorithm states that the highest frequency you can represent digitally is half that of your sampling frequency; CDs sample at 44.1 KHz, so their highest representable frequency is about 22 KHz. The highest sampling frequency defined for MPEG audio encoding is 48 Khz, so its highest representable frequency is 24 Khz. Thus, we're talking about a 2,000 Hz difference at a frequency range above that of human hearing--recording those frequencies is theoretically important for "high fidelity" reproduction to capture high-order harmonics, but that extra blit between 44.1 KHz and 48 KHz is close to neglible--it's the difference between CD and DAT, not CD and studio master tape. And, MP3s are lossy. There will be a measurable loss in signal fidelity between an MP3 and a DAT or CD.
I disagree with this sentiment because one of the main reasons MP3's haven't taken off is the lack of rack components. If it was as simple as placing a CD full of MP3's into a player in your stereo system, you'd see it much more popular with the so called "computer illiterate".
I've personally created such a device and brought it to a party. It played 1 disk for the entire duration of the party and I had to explain to plenty of non computer people what it was. Each of them was very interested in the concept of MP3's.
I agree quality isn't there for the audiophiles (though I believe in ripping tracks from CD's at 256k datarate at the least...you can still fit many hours of songs on a CDR), but then again the same audiophiles also still have vinyl. I don't think the aim of any new technology in the music industry, be it CDs or MP3s is to replace completely high end equipment. There will always be specialized equipment available for those people.
However, MP3's can also support much higher data rates and as DVD-RAM drives catch on (let's hope anyway), you'll be able to fit many more "high-quality" MP3's on a disk. Sure it's a tradeoff for playing time, but once you get to 5 hours or so, there's a limit to how much more you need per disk.
I've even bought a few classics for $3-4. I need a new record player though.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Change := Death (for some) := Life (for others)
Change
Make money? A living? Off mp3's????
1. Direct CD sales. Mp3's can and often do lead to requests for actual product. Record your own album at a home or local studio, sell your CD direct for $5 - $7 dollars. Sell cheap, and people will buy.
2. Vinyl. Press a single. The world-wide collector market for new vinyl is still huge.
3. Gigs, gigs and more gigs. Now you have one more thing to put on that poster before you slap it on the neighbor's dog: "Check out our mp3 at www.free_homepage_.com!" If your music sucks, of course, this will work against you...
3b. When soliciting gigs, you can simply give the club person a url, and they can check out a song without your sending them a thing. Print up band business cards with the url instead...
4. Merchandise. T-shirts and stickers for direct sale...
5. Yes, your Average Listener may stop buying music altogether, but with fewer 'middlemen' between an artist and his/her/their fan(s), and vastly lower production costs for the music itself (home/small studios are now FULLY CAPABLE of producing professional-quality output, for $3000 or less,) a smaller body of paying fans will nonetheless make a larger contribution to an aritst's well-being...
6. Some artists WILL suffer. C'est la vie. Is it any more wrong/tragic for THEM to suffer when the industry changes than it was for your Uncle Joe to suffer when the steel mill closed?
7. The next generation of artists will benefit, in an arena where a LOT of bands and musicians make a living, but only very few become horrendously wealthy.
8. (gotta go home now!)
**>>BELCH
No need. It's re-designing itself.
**>>BELCH
I listen to radio on occasion. It is a good way to be exposed to new artists/music. The trick is finding a DJ whose music tastes are similar to yours.
Mind you one of the few radio stations I like is in a city many many km away. Fortunately they broadcast on real audio :-)
Their web site is: www.edge102.com
My MP3 directory looks like ~/mp3///.mp3 complete with embedded spaces. I have a little script that does a "find ~/mp3/ -name *.mp3" and greps for whatever argument I pass to the script, then it overwrites my standard GQMpeg playlist with whatever it finds. I also have a script that just adds to the playlist. If I know the artist, album, or song title I can generate a playlist in seconds.
Eventually I plan to enhance this by associating other attributes with my MP3s. Does anyone know of a command line program that can read the ID3 tag in an mp3 and output something parseable?
Sorry, shouldn't have used angle brackets. Why do the contents of angle brackets get deleted when I post as Plain Old Text? Aren't brackets text?
My MP3 directory looks like ~/mp3/(artist)/(album)/(song title).mp3 complete with embedded spaces. I have a little script that does a "find ~/mp3/ -name *.mp3" and greps for whatever argument I pass to the script, then it overwrites my standard GQMpeg playlist with whatever it finds. I also have a script that just adds to the playlist. If I know the artist, album, or song title I can generate a playlist in seconds.
Eventually I plan to enhance this by associating other attributes with my MP3s. Does anyone know of a command line program that can read the ID3 tag in an mp3 and output something parseable?
My Soundblaster 16 (that I originally bought for a 486) sounds OK with cheap computer speakers and lousy through my stereo, but does this have to be the case? I thought about buying a new sound card but I was completely bewildered by the vast array of options. There must be a card out there that makes MP3s sound great at an adequate bit rate. With all the MP3 fans reading slashdot there must be at least a few of you who really know sound cards.
If I knew which sound card to buy I bet I could stick an old headless K6 box next to the stereo and have it sound fine at most volume levels. I might still use the CDs at high volume and I might want to buy an extra quiet power supply.
I've often heard people say this, but never understood it. People spend vast sums of money on audio equipment and then complain about things sounding awful or unlistenable. If something sounds fine on a several hundred dollar stereo I'd expect any more expensive stereo to sound at least as good.
I realize that the sound is only as good as the source, but given the same source a more expensive piece of equipment shouldn't sound worse than a less expensive piece.
I think I'll set myself a hard limit on stereo system cost and never buy anything of higher quality (price). Audiophilia seems to be a bit like a drug addiction, the more you spend the more you need to get your fix.
If it were up to them, CD burners would be illegal... They've really have to get it together with their technology. Digital audio is here now, and will be for quite a long time. It doesnt matter what they try to pull, it won't work
Its absolutely ridiculous. You'd think over time the prices would go down. Hah. I dont have $19 to drop on a CD because I want just one song. If they kept their damned prices down, maybe we would buy more.
i finally started using them at work. excellent. don't truck cd's back and forth, no wondering if the cleaners'll pinch cd's on my desk. great stuff.
they really can't stop it, they're going to need to spend the time creating a new economic model. even the idea of watermarking mp3's is silly, there's no way that will stop reasonably clueful "pirates."
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
The simple fact is that coporations which have made their money by packaging and selling information (of any kind) are obsolete (or quickly becoming so). They are no longer neccesary and serve no useful function in society. They have enjoyed such tremendous power; and they've abused it so horribly that no one is sad to see them go. This is truly a good thing.
The thought of seeing these dinosaurs get burned within my lifetime makes me just giddy.
support gun control: take guns from cops
I love watching the industry squirm. You know how much bands make per $16 CD? Roughly $1 per CD. And that's high. Guess who's getting the other $15.... Hopefully, this will result in bands making a lot more money instead of being whores to the record suits. GO MP3!!!!! There is no WAY to stop this.....
F THE RECORD INDUSTRY!!!
I talked to one of the DJs at WXRK in NY (Home of Howard Stern) a few months ago because I was pissed off that they were not playing anything from the new Judas Priest albums. What it comes down to is the fact that the major labels MAKE SURE the singles they want played get played, and the songs they want to be hits become hits. Plain and simple. Big bucks talk. It's f**king lame, and I hope one day they all collapse. Local bands or bands on independent labels have NO chance on radio or eMpTyV, hence they rarely make any money. Unfortunately, this model does away with most of the talent. All we get is bullsh*t, flavor of the day kind of garbage that the suits have determined we will hear. Down with the industry!!!!
My impressions of the 1371 were the same--really nice, for something so cheap (you can pick one up for about $35.) My current card, the Montego A3DXtreme, has the feature I like most on the 1371: A really low signal/noise ratio. If you're going to a real amp (I'm not), keeping the soundcard at a low to medium level will not give you any noise on the line. Then, crank the amp up and boogie.
The higher end sound cards are probably even better that this--but, as noted, they are gonna cost you _quite_ a piece of dough.
Does any true 'audiophile' listen to lossy compressed audio, anyway?
I agree, radio isn't just music. Theres a whole load of other stuff going on too. If people only wanted the music, they'd just listen to CD's, yes?
I don't see MP3's affecting radio at all. Many radio stations are already broadcasting accross the net anyway. They are already with us on this digital medium. Why should MP3's change this?
Well... is the problem with the hardware, or with the format? The only time I've tried listening to MP3s on my "real" stereo is through the headphone jack of a laptop, and it sounded noticeably worse than a CD (as you might expect).
Has anyone gotten a nice hardware rig going? How does the MP3 format sound when there's no hardware problems holding it back?
Huh? What are you smoking? They have analog and digital (optical) input. What more do you want? Get a real soundcard for your computer; the higher end ones now have a TOSLink connector on them for digital reproduction.
I will concede that I just might be getting old...
...But I can't listen to CFNY for any length of time nowadays.
They were great in the 80's, but with the exception of a couple of brief periods in the 90's, they are really just as bad as AOR.
Oh for the days of Marsdon...Waking up to Ivor Biggun's "Has Anybody Seen My Cock"
Regards,
Tom
IP: 24.2.89.71
PORT: 555
Login: ween
Pass: ween
Tons of non-album studio tracks, 4 track demos of some of the albums, Peel sesion cuts, all of the non-album B-sides, and mucho live tracks.
WEEN!
pronoblem
It is not my site, it is down for periods... I will check it and repost when I get home.
pronoblem
hmmmm
pronoblem
IIRC, they (being the music industry) tried to blame stores selling USED CDs as a loss in revenue in the not so distant past. Today its MP3 trading. Always someone else to blame for their inability to keep their finger on the pulse of today's consumers.
Actually, they may have been closer to the mark with the used CD accusation. Of the 800 or so CDs that I own, more than half were bought used. Why? At most stores I can listen to the used disks before I buy them. Weed out the garbage before it gets purchased. Besides, $5-8 per CD is a lot less painful than $15.95+.
Heck, buy old LPs. They're more enjoyable than 99% of the garbage on the radio and in the music stores anyway.
Some of us border folks were considering stocking up on shloads of CD-Rs at $1 US apiece and smuggling them across the border - making a bit o' profit and saving you guys the bad evilness of paying a tax to the RIAA...
I have 48 hours of mp3s (most all at 128k/44khz) on my computer, which equals out to 3 gigs of files, 1.5 gigs for each 24 hour day. You have 31 days worth of them on your computer. 31 days x 1.5 gigs per day = 46.5 gigs. You have 46.5 gigs of mp3s? Unless you happen to have a stack of scsi hard drives (and nothing scsi is cheap) sitting next to you , I seriously doubt you have 31 days of mp3s sitting around. And if you're rich enough to have that many hard drives hanging around, why are you complaining about the cost of a $15 cd?
Here is the problem: I can see how a couple of little companies like Goodnoise can make a few bucks as long as they are essentially novelties. Lots of people will probably buy a few tunes from them as long as they feel like (1) they are supporting a nascent industry and (2) they get most of their tunes for free anyway.
But as soon as the tech gets a little better--ie, MP3 boxes for regular home stereo systems appear, and there is high-bandwidth access for all (to make distribution a breeze for non-geeks), your average listener will probably stop paying for music altogether. I certainly would.
Now that sounds great, except that musicians are not going to work for free. So as I see it, MP3 must be stopped at all costs. Even though I have about a hundred megs of the damned things myself.
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I am just hoping a few of you out there will stop to make a rational argument to me regarding how the music industry as a whole can survive mass-based (not boutique) MP3 distribution. An argument taking account of the economics of the music industry.
\
Thats what they say, yes. Thats like the old claim that the authors of Autoroute lost a few million on the ST version (which may still hold the prize for the nost heavily pirated piece of software ever). They did not, because 99% of the people who pirated could not afford, or would not have paid, the extortionate retail price. Same goes for CDs.
What makes you so sure these penniless kids
would be "BUYING" anything except beer?
I never bought a CD my first 3 years of college,
and that was because I didn't have enough DOUGH,
not because I had other ways to get music.
MP3 is another way for people to get music.
People not involved in the process of making and
marketing music don't give a RATS ASS how the
noise hits their eardrums.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Pricing of software is based on the price the market is willing to pay AND the size of the market. Example 1 : Quake 2. Produced by a smallish number of people (No more than a dozen? Not counting the soundtrack.) Market : gamers, most of whom are low-income individuals. market size : Millions. Price : ~$49 ;) Market size : 5 billion. Cost : Free.
Example 2 : MS Office. Developed by hundreds, if not thousands of programmers. Market : Many. Market size : Millions. Cost : Varies by version, ~$300.
Example 3 : Pro/Engineer. Developed by a few dozen people. Market : CAD Designers. Market Size : Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands. Cost : $20,000+ Some installations can cost $120,000 per seat.
Example 4 : (Just for fun.) Linux. Developed by god-knows-how-many. Market : People who use operating systems
Quake is cheap because it has a large market, and low production cost. Office has a larger market, but it cost more to produce, so they have to charge more. Pro/E didn't take that much more effort to produce than office, and their costs are lower, but their market is tiny when compared to that of Quake or Office.
Keep in mind, I got C's in marketing and econ in college, so I could be wrong.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I meant potential market. ;) World domination, one desktop at a time.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Most of the bands I actually like don't get played on the radio, and most of the new bands I've discovered were from word of mouth or internet newsgroups.
If a band I like actually gets airplay (Sixpence!), it's like a miracle.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
In my experience, trying to find the songs you want usually brings you to sites that have your songs in a list of MP3s that they will send you via email if you request.
I tried MP3 for the first time the other day, and spent about two hours searching for a couple of specific songs. www.mp3.com didn't have them. Other high profile sites didn't either. Altavista turned up some references to them, but I never found them.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
My understanding is that it's cheaper to (mass) produce CDs than it is to produce cassettes.
I think CD media costs pennies a piece in bulk (This is real CD media, not CD-R)
CD prices are kept artificially higher because of the better sound quality of CD over tape.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
>2. Controls what gets airtime (ever notice how >they all pretty much sound the same?)
Well they arm twist the program directors, (You've got to add this song every other program director in the country has added it but you..)
Anyway what I really hate is the "top 40" format, they have a playlist of about 10 songs which they play over and over. If I have to listen to it at length I go insane.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Another brilliant posting from an AC. University professors don't make money from publishing works in the trades, fool. They publish their works so anyone can read them in order for peer review to take place. Research takes funds from grants to fuel itself. So your assertion that research funds schools is foolish.
Schools are concerned with piracy and MP3s only to limit their own liability. A better way to limit their liability would be to shut down their law schools so the silly lawyers would be forced to come up with another way to breed, but I digress.
Is it still the case that cassettes cost more to produce (from the same master) than CDs? Yet CDs cost more to buy. The record companies take the view the audio quality is higer on CD so we should have to pay more than for the same music on tape.
First: A public forum in which the masses get exposed to new music is essential to the industry thriving.
Second: I, for one, don't have time to orchestrate the soundtrack for my day from my MP3 list. I find that, by knowing the radio "landscape" in my area, I can fill in any given part of my day with appropriate music.
Radio fills these two slots simultaneously: it gives me variety and novelty that I might not have otherwise been exposed to had I chosen all the songs for myself.
Whether radio's current formats can survive or not is another matter... however, I'm not aware of "cable radio" stations putting any broadcast stations out of business yet.
Thatis not fair as CDs cost more than vinyl & tapes.
I didn't see any mention of this here on Slashdot, but I *do* see how the internet has cut down on cd sales, at least for me anyway:
;)
1. With so many cd stores that have realaudio samples of cd songs, I get to preview more of the cd that just hearing a song or two on the radio. I'm finding that in many cases, the rest of the cd just doesn't interest me, whereas before I might have impulse bought it before figuring that out.
2. The 4% drop is no doubt for *new* record sales. With the internet, it's *much* easier to find used copies up for grabs, reducing the odds that I'd pay full price and buy it new. So cds may still be getting sold and bought, just not new from the big name stores any more...
3. I think it's just may be a convenient scapegoat for coincidental statistics... Notice that cd sales have dropped as *Furbies* have come onto the market? *gasp* Maybe *they* are responsible for the decline in sales! Sheesh. One line going up while another is going down doesn't mean one caused the other....
I don't pirate MP3s (only rip my own) and I haven't bought but a couple cds in the past year (due to #1 and #2 above), so I don't see that the RIAA can pin any of this on *me*..
moo.
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
If you look more closely at how the RIAA phrased things, the 15-24 age group accounted for a smaller percentage of overall sales. This says nothing about how many total CDs were purchased by this age group, or how it compares to last year.
The RIAA press release brags that record buyers are increasingly older and female, as a general trend. Somehow, though, in one little bit of the greater trend, MP3 (their favorite scapegoat) is to blame.
--
I think that mp3's are doing a mix of helping and hurting. For some they will promote the sales of CD's. If you find a great mp3 off of a cd and you cant find the rest of the cd, what do you do?
Buy the CD! MP3 will also hurt the CD industry for those that just download the entire CD (Like me). The bottom line is it all depends upon how you use the format.
They said it dropped a mere 4% in the 15-24 age range. Big freakin deal.
;-)
I know the reason I haven't bought many cd's lately is cause there isn't anything good coming out. It has all been crap lately in the mainstream record industry. Formula bands that target demographics make me sick.
As far as mp3's go, if I like the music enough, I will buy the cd. I like to listen to music while I drive and I don't think that I will be getting a computer for my car any time soon. It would cost more than my car itself.
The record industry is just fishing for something bad to blame on mp3's. They know it. We know it.
They need to get over it. They can't stop mp3's. There is no technical solution for some guy in his basement ripping all of his cd's and uploading them somewhere.
Long live mp3's!
This sig is false.
Presumably if only crap music is coming out, then only crap mp3s are coming out.
Yep. The growth my mp3 collection has dropped off sharply. Most of the new ones I get now have been ripped from my own cd's. And since I find it hard to find non-crap cd's, very few new mp3's have been ripped. *sigh*
I'm just waiting for the new Dr. Octagon release--been a while since 1996. Even tho he is going more mainstream now.
This sig is false.
I could go on for years. Basically, they *have* to change if they *ever* want my respect. If the "record industry" can't deal with declining sales because of their *arrogance* then tough crap for them. That's all I have to say. And I'm a musician most of my life. I just don't happen to be Jimi Hendrix (oh--he's dead) or Janice Joplin (oh--she's dead) or any of probably *thousands* of people they've *milked for everything they could f**king get.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
Again, who does the RIAA (or any number of other big business ventures) speak for? Ceartainly not the people who actually *make* the music, otherwise the *art* of music, especially in this country, wouldn't be the sleazebag joke it has been for Heaven knows how many years? How do people like the RIAA view musicians' unions, for instance?
I remember back in the early '70s, you could practically walk into a studio with an instrument and play, and you'd get recorded. Now, you're lucky if these jokers will even let you in the front door.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, as many times as I have to to get my point across. They've made their own bed. Now, they are going to sleep in it.
I will know that the music "business" has reformed itself when I turn on my radio and want to leave it on because I'm not stone *bored* with the same *old music* over and over again, from such as Jim Morrison (oh yeah--he's dead) and John Lennon (oh--he's dead, probably killed by Nixon's friends--another big business...
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
So now it's MP3's that are destroying the music industry. The fact is that the suits are shoveling out the same old song (pun intended) and then wonder why no one is buying. Back when the cassette first came out as a new technology, the industry cried out for regulation to stop this threat to the God fearing, money making, legal owners of the intellectual rights to songs that would be stolen from the record companies and the artists. It was just too easy for someone to buy a record, then copy it to cassettes and pirate it off to everyone else. If these idiots don't figure a way to embrace the current technology (like the industry did with the cassette) , I hope it buries them...
The recording industry has been ripping off the public for so long. It is just normal that the public rip their CDs in return. Play fair and you shall enjoy the Game.
M.
THIS is the actual RIAA press release regarding consumer statistics for 1998. Half way down the document, it says, and I cut/paste:
Configuration: Accounting for 74.8% of the total market, full-length CDs were consumed at a greater rate in 1998 than in the past four years.
This, ofcourse is purely demographic information. Demographics are only useful for marketing.
What that article says is that the 14-24 year old range accounts for 4% less of the total 100% of sales than the previous year. This can be interpreted as meaning that 14-24 year olds are buying less music than they used to be, in comparison to other age groups.
Therein lies the beauty of statistics. They say whatever you want them to say, depending on how you look at them.
However, if you look at the PDF of the actual numeric data, HERE , you will see that the total dollar value of the record industry is up 1.5 Billion dollars over 1997, up to 13.7 billion total. (12.2 billion in 1997)
That still doesn't say anything at all about the total number of recordings sold to consumers, but 1.5 billion more in business sure sounds better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, doesn't it? I mean, I wouldn't turn THAT away at the door. Would you?
The RIAA has never been able to produce any evidence that MP3 distribution hurts record sales, other than the simplistic logic that a song downloaded for free is a song not paid for.
On the other hand, as the PDF illustrates (badly, but still readably), record sales have been increasing. They increased rapidly from 1989 to 1996, dropped almost insignifigantly in 1997, and then increased again in 1998. The drop in 1997 was entirely within the margin of error for the statistics, and could be taken as a leveling off of the sales.
If anything, mp3 distribution probably helps record sales, for a number of reasons.
First, quality. According to the standards set out by the MPC folks, yes, the people who put stupid logos on boxes and certified cdrom drives all those years ago, "CD Quality Sound" means "12-bits 22 khz Stereo".
A 128-kbit MP3 is at best, roughly the same quality as a near-by FM radio station. This, for many people who are not taken with the geek value of MP3, is simply not enough.
Second, the sense of artistic value and permanance that comes with an actual distributed media. a CD, with it's packaging and artwork, is something much less likely to disappear, in many peoples minds, than a file on their harddrive. And for some, the artwork on the CD and on the casing and in the insert can give the owner a sense that they own something that gives them some connection to the artist beyond the music alone.
Even if i could download every Twilight Circus album in existance, I would still buy them. I would buy them because I've met Ryan Moore and talked to him, and i think he's a great guy. And I know that he individually numbers all the CD's that ever ship out, stamping them with his own rubber stamp and red ink, and that he often signs them too. From time to time, he even does the artwork by hand, on each and every one of a particular release.
Third, and most importantly, mindshare. People are today buying music they would have never heard of before, because the record companies pick and choose who's albums they will promote and who's albums they will ignore. This probably accounts for the steady decrease in "rock" sales as detailed in the press release.
MP3 distribution is free advertisment for the band. Aside from the top 100 or so artists or bands in the world, most musicians make the bulk of their money off touring, and the sales of merchandise at the shows. For decades, the record industry has given the artists a raw deal on the profits from record sales, with the argument that without distribution channels, nobody would hear of them, and nobody would come to see them play, and nobody would buy anything. The artist no longer needs the distribution channel for advertisment. Only for the actual act of distributing their artistic creation in the form of an album, which is something many musicians will always cherish, regardless of electronic distribution.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I guess it's time to play Pass the Blame. Go ahead, continually raise the prices of cd, while, at the same time, reduce the amount of music I get with a purchase, and the blame the MP3 groups for your losses.
It's always seemed readily apparent to me that the amount of piracy in any industry is directly proportional to a product whose price far surpasses what would seem to be a reasonable fee, based on the demand.
Granted, a CD could cost $10.00, and you'd still have MP3 piracy. But MP3 can't be solely to blame , IMO.
Or they would comfiscate my computer. Pure bullshit.
I second that motion!!! How are you going to find out about a song, look for it on the Net if someone hasn't told you about it already?
Besides, radio is more than about just music, it's about community contact (by definition, radio is local). It's about hearing the DJ shoot the shit and give useless triva about the songs beig played. :-)
Most importantly: radio is portable and cheap ($500 Rios aren't exactly of mass appeal, IF you know what I'm saying).Third World Women's Bibliography http://tww.tao.ca
Much easier than MP3 is a CD Recordable, which also plays in your home equipment, without any quality loss at all. So apart from MP3 let me give three more reasons no-one buys a CD anymore:
/. articles are a few activities i rather prefer.
1. At up to (sometimes over) $20 per CD, you may think about gathering 10 friends and spend $3 for it each. $2 for the original, and $1 for the CDR copy. No-one ever explained me why i pay more for a CD that costs about $0.50 to produce (including jewel case) than i ever paid for a much harder to produce vinyl album.
2. Most modern music is total crap, that nobody would buy. So all they sell now are the "few good CDs" that happen to come out. Come to think of it, most CDs i (and others) got lately were "best of the 80s" and similar titles. They're cheaper and have better music on them.
3. Modern society offers a lot more than just listening music to spend your free time. Browsing the net, watching TV, playing 3D games and commenting on
GCS/MU d- s+: a- C++$ USH++$ P- L+> E W++$ N o-- K- W++@ O-- M- !V PS Y+ PGP- t+ 5(+) X- R tv? b++++ y++(+++)
Overall cd sales have doubled in the time period in which they record the drop in youth sales(1990-1998). And somehow, they're still not getting enough.
-lx
I agree, but the minidisk is even worse. Minidisks use mp2 format stuff, unless i'm mistaken. And one CAN tell the difference between a cd and an mp3, even a high quality one. I still buy cds because I like having the highest quality possible, and the widest portability. Plus, mp3's never have cover art or the lyrics printed inside.
I'd like to use mp3 to back up my cds, but I just don't have that kind of storage space.
-lx
No wonder my Afx/Autechre/Squarepusher imports cost so damn much! Cut that out, you guys!
-lx
Since when does the radio play new music, much less cutting edge or innovative music? The only thing I listen to on the radio is talk(i feel so ashamed...). Who wants to hear your "best mix from the 70s, 80s, 90s and today"? I think with the growth of mp3, interest in pop music has declined, and that's a good thing.
-lx
In fact, the only thing the statistics actually say is that, over the last decade, more old people, who tend more to be technophobes, have figured out how to use a cd player. After another 10, maybe we can get them to use a vcr...
-lx(envious of your smaller BeDevID)
seems like supply and demand:
john: i wanna request some new music from a new band
DJ: you heard it guys, this is the NEW release from TOOL......Sober
mary: can i heard a new song?
DJ: THE BEST NEW ROCK STATION, Here's a new one from AC/DC.
cheeze: can i hear the latest one hit wonder from the main contributor to your radio station
DJ: uhhh....sure...Here's a new release from WhiteSnake.
This is happening in texas, not sure about the rest of the country. the ignorance of the music industry will be it's own downfall. no-talent bands, loser DJ's, greedy businessmen running it all. to me, it sounds like what happened when 8-tracks came out. the record company freaked out. it happened with tapes, and then cd's after that. with tapes, you could record your own cd's, and then listen to them later. i imagine they had the same problems then.
and will have the same problems in the future, until the ARTISTS actually stand up for their music. the artist is the one that's being bastardized.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
This problem will happen eventually, regardless of whether MP3 continues to live on or not. MP3s provide, what, 1:10 compression? That's all, nothing magical. It is to the point today where the distribution and storage of MP3s is pretty near trivial. However, assuming Moore's Law holds for storage and bandwidth, it will be a mere ln10/ln2 * 1.5 (for those of you without your calculators handy, that's a hair under 5) years until straight, uncompressed sound data can be stored and moved with the same ease as MP3s today, and better quality (anyone who says that 128kbit MP3 has the same quality as CDs either has a crappy stereo system or a hearing problem) to boot. Granted, this is making some assumptions about technological progress, but five years doesn't seem too unreasonable a time for a tenfold increase in storage and banwidth. If you can't stomach that, increase it until you can. Ten years, twenty years, but, barring some unforseen disaster, it will happen.
My point being that this problem can't be stopped, merely delayed, and resistance of change will not stop the change, only make it more painful.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
It's a FACT that I own every CD of the above and many more cool bands. The fact that I have spent the money, means RIAA now _has_ the money. All of OUR music money. Thats why RIAA has power. The Artists got only _some_ of the money. Publishing thier own MP3 changes that. Permanantly.
We spent a LOT of money buying the rows uppon rows of our favorites. Meters of CD's folks.
I ask people over 30 this question; If the number of CD's you now OWN is equal to 100%, then how many more CD's will you buy this year, or the rest of your life? The answers vary;
The average answer of people was they would BUY 25% more music from now onward. 50% myself. DJ's said 1000% more CDs! Most CD's are bought before age 30, starting with thier first job I guess.
With most people having SPENT carelessly to get thier gigantic core CD collection completed, its winding down. Sales may decline due to all the CD's sought, having been bought! Perhaps they over produced the CDs for years...at stamped master prices...to sell that Michael Jackson for $14.95 a few million times.
RIAA: I'm gonna compress my CD collection. It's huge. So leave me and MP3 alone. Go retire and count your(my) money. ( I suggest you invest in MaxNet, GoodNoise, or MP3.com !)
Now where is that Technics 5 CD MP3/CD player I've wanted for years, and the matching dual CompactFlash ultra-speed dubber, in that 80's silver styling to match the other equipment I've got?
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
Radio and will always be around. How else are you going to know what's new and hot if you are playing MP3's that were in 3 years ago.
"Look out honey cause I'm using technology" Iggy Pop
You listen to exactly what I listen to! Are you sure we aren't the same person? All my car CDs are Phish and They Might Be Giants...
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
I think Lycos and any other defendants against the RIAA should counter-threaten with a class-action lawsuit. Price-gouging and Censorship (of the millions of unsigned artists) come to mind off the top of my head...
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
Ditto on that...
I had been wondering why I can't stand any of the music on the air today. I find myself listening more to ~oldies stations that also play new tunes by bands that have been around a while, rather than bands that got their contracts through for looking pretty or having interesting hair. All the latest groups sound the same, when you step back and really compare - there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of substance to them.
Can't go wrong with NPR though, they've expanded my musical interests more in four months than a whole four years in college did!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
This whole idea that the RIAA is showing a revenue loss to MP3's is an outright lie. By their own numbers, if you follow the links, sales are up in '98 vs. '97, after a decrease from '96 to '97. To wit:
year sales % change
1989 $6,579
1990 $7,541 15%
1991 $7,834 4%
1992 $9,024 15%
1993 $10,046 11%
1994 $12,068 20%
1995 $12,320 2%
1996 $12,533 2%
1997 $12,236 -2%
1998 $13,723 12%
In fact, 1998 was the best growth year since 1994,
ending a three year slump. Yet, 1998 was really the year that MP3s hit the big time. And CD sales went UP? Say it isn't so!
Their other so-called statistic was that the 15-24 year old age group is a smaller percentage of the total. Notice that they didn't say that sales to this group went down, only that they are a (4%) smaller piece of a (12%) bigger pie. Also, this group has been on a downward trend since 1990, when it dropped like a rock.
1989 44.0%
1990 34.8%
1991 36.0%
1992 34.3%
1993 31.8%
1994 32.2%
1995 32.4%
1996 32.2%
1997 30.6%
1998 28.0%
In fact, the largest single group is now the 45+ group, with an 18.0% chunk of sales. This is up from 10.2% in 1989. Note that 15-24 is two groups in the original stats. Given that this study primarily measures American consumers, it's pretty clear what's probably happening: Baby Boomers. It's not that kids are buying fewer CD's, but that Boomers are buying more CD's.
In summary, it's pretty clear that the RIAA is both doing better than it has in years, and that it's so-called declines have been going on for longer than MP3's have been popular. Basically, the whole news story is a sham. The only "common-sense" conclusion is that the recording industry is doing great, due in part to increased sales to Baby Boomers.
Where are you listening? At an airport? MPEG Layer 3 is a substandard audio specification. Granted, the Blue Book CD specifications aren't the best way to record audio--hence the push towards 24/92 (Super Audio Disc, etc.) standards.
First off, you cannot possible compare the sound quality of these two mediums reliably. MPEG Layer 3 is not a lossless compression system. Played back though a computer with even the highest priced sound card you will never acheive the sound quality of a CD played back over even a moderately-priced audio system.
MP3s are the bane of high quality music lovers. Making music available on an inferior medium only pollutes the "gene pool" for people who treasure music and its faithful reproduction.
But I agree, no matter how big and popular MP3s get, and how cheap CDs get, radio will stay, and for music-- for new music, indie artists, and such-- I like the randomness of radio broadcasts, and the community spirit the best ones make.
OK, so maybe when bandwidth is no longer a problem and RealAudio-esque stations are of equal or better quality, but still...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
MP3 is the reason that CD sales are declining?
Audio Cassettes existed long before MP3s and, PC, or even CDs,
and people record CDs on them.
They can be heard on any normal Stereo System, or on a cheap walkman.
The reason you don't sell CDs,
is because you don't produce good ones.
In the last year I havn't seen any good new CD.
And I already have the CDs that I like (Beatles).
Don't blame bad sales on us.
Some MP3s are actually helping the sales.
People listen to music and decide to buy the CD.
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
If you look through their website, you'll find various previous consumer reports from earlier years, and if you read the press releases, you'll notice that the demographic for the 15-25 age group steadily decreasing every year since 1988, hrmm.. kinda funny since I don't recall getting mp3's in 1988. The RIAA is playing the music industry for a fool, they report that mp3's are causing a decrease in sales, but the sales of music increases every year (by about as much as it does any previous years,) interesting isn't it.
I agree fully with all of your arguments, however I should point out that you may be surprised just how many people have heard of MP3s. Where I go to college, the dorms have ethernet (nice for d/ling MP3s) and because of it, just about every student with a computer uses MP3s. Even the kids who first got here and didn't know what the internet was have been introduced to MP3s. They're everywhere. And I imagine college students are a major market for CD sales...
---- Dave
yes, that's right. bahhh.
I listen exclusively to mp3s. I have a cheap $300 aiwa system hooked up to my computer and everything sounds great to me.
what's radio? i've never used it.
I mean seriously, among people on here who socialize with non-geeks, how many people do you know who have ever even heard of MP3, much less use it? Very few if any.
That's true, the only non-geek i know who uses MP3 is my roommate whom I introduced to MP3. Even she only uses it because her parents bought her a kickass machine with Altec Lansing speakers a couple years ago that sounds better than her mini stereo system. (besides, what else would she do with the 3 gigs that windows isn't using??) I'm pretty sure she has all the MP3 songs on CD too. (you have to see the boxes of cds she has to believe it) the MP3s are just a lot more convenient.
Perhaps your numbers are correct, I dunno...
BUT,
the case has always been that, other than for wildly successful artists, most musicians make their money on the road. This is especially true for MTV one-hit-wonder bands who make a cool video and then spend a summer selling out arenas and the like before their CD starts showing up in second-hand shops.
How do MP3s fit into this, then?
Well, the artist may lose a little money (assuming your numbers are correct), but, potentially, earn it back through increased concert attendance, t-shirt sales, etc. The record company, though, stands to lose the most money. Thus, the RIAA's silliness.
This is prolly why we've seen artists release songs in mp3 only to have their record companies pull them off the web recently (Chuck D, a few others that I don't remember...).
It does make sense though that the RIAA is against electonic music distribution. Wouldn't you be if you had so much to lose?
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
To bad you're not in New York..
I used to be a little pop kiddie.
I liked metal and rock all that good stuff inside tho.
I found howard stern...and found KROCK
I swear it is the only radio station
I've ever listened to that doesn't over play stuff.
and actually plays GOOD stuff.
Old Metallica, AC/DC etc etc.
if more radio stations were like KRock
the world would be a better place.
For those who say that the music is getting worse, I have to disagree with you. We've always had lame music, it's just that when we start reminiscing about music "from the good old days" we tend to remember only the songs we like and forget all the crap we didn't listen to.
Look, five years from now, we'll be complaining about how music got so much worse after the millenium. People will always complain about music getting worse. We always have and always will continue to get shrink-wrapped corporate music like New Kids on the Block, Color me Badd, Spice Girls, NSync, 98 Degrees, etc.
The Recording Industry has evolved and refined its money-making techniques to best suit the enviroment that existed about 5 years ago. They managed to develop a superior media delivery mechanism and they were able to drive down the manufacturing costs to such levels that they could make huge profits. They then became dependent on those margins, and have thus left themselves very vulnerable now that music can be so easily distributed for free.
The Recording Industry as we have known it will continue for a while, but as bandwidth costs drop and the percentage of connected individuals goes up, their profit margins are going to shrink and they will either be forced to completely rethink how they do things or they will die.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
What do you think?
-- MicAttAck
Religon is an insult to human dignity.
I listen to the radio all the time, more so than mp3's for instance. Who has time to seek out new music all the time? Much better is to find a station with few commercials and good taste. This is the best way to be exposed to bands you otherwise wouldn't have heard of, and you can then look them up. It's normally a 50/50 thing with mp3's and the radio. Even better are college stations, more willing to try out new songs and none of the commercial breaks. Better still if they have a real audio server on a large bandwith connection. Full stereo pouring through a T3 is my idea of advancement in society.
I've ripped all my CD's, and I really enjoy being able to listen to any song I want with a few clicks of my mouse.
Unfortunately though, some of my college friends got a little too involved in trading of copyrighted music, and the RIAA took notice. The RIAA actually asked the school administration to turn over names and addresses of all the students that were running ftp servers with MP3's available. Fortunately, (and surprisingly) the school simply told the RIAA to go to hell! The offending MP3's were pulled voluntarily by the students, but not a single one was thrown to the wolves!
It's nice to see a school actually stand up for its students now and again...
I became a Linux convert the day that NT crashed five times on me.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
One word: PLAYLISTS ;)
I became a Linux convert the day that NT crashed five times on me.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
RIAA have claimed to be the friends and defenders of recording artists, but of course, they are not. These are the same wonderful people who, with their battle for copy protection on DAT, succeeded in killing that technology for home use.
Oh, and btw, Canadians will soon bay a CDN$2.50 tax per blank CD (also thanks to RIAA lobbying).
--- Bill
For me, when I hear a Real Good mp3, i go into Music Geek (TM) mode, and spend the rest of the day (Week sometimes) trying to find the single/CD... since i found out about MP3's, my CD buying has gone from 1 every 2 months, to about 3 a month. Of course they all get ripped... but i still listen to them... and why are cd singles more expenceive then the actuall cd (sometimes)! So all you whiny RIAA guys... stop crying over something you will *NEVER* control... and S*CK IT!!
Hey now... I'm listening to CBC right now. It's actually a very good station - they don't play much popular music, sure, but they play GOOD music instead. Not that classical is the only good music - they also play a lot of jazz, and alternative (occasionally VERY alternative) at night. All in all, you get lots of variety - rarely the same tune in a single month even - and knowlegeable commentary (quite a change from most commercial stations!) and no ads! Hard to argue with that...
Maybe if they actually lowered CD prices to more closely reflect what it costs to produce them then people would start buying more CD's again.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
SMACK!
sorry. flashback.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
If that were true how could (in the words of the immortal Alice & Bill, of computershopper's hard edge) "vapid CD distributor and sometimes online service AOL" afford to give away (approx) 5 billion CDs a year? CDs are WAY cheaper than tapes. clear plastic, stamped, covered with a thin metallic film, covered with more clear plastic. The ink on top costs more.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Actually, one of my extremely corporate (ClearChannel, Inc.-owned Star 95.7) local radio stations is very good at pushing the local bands (Wedgie, The Swinging Mooks, My Friend Steve, etc...). They sponsor their concerts and do their best to get the good ones signed. Unfortunately, they also play a lot (A LOT) of the Third Eye Matchbox Hootie stuff. ick.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Is it just me, or is she the Anti-Christ?
Their "Total Request Live" garbage takes a video, maybe shows the beginning or the end, but never the full thing,
My brother, harnessing "the power of the Internet", got people across the country to call MTV and on March 10, the #2 song on TRL was "Hanging Tough", by the New Kids on the Block. hee-hee.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Just look at what the recording companies are pushing now...Backstreet Boys, `n sync, brittney spears, 98 degrees...and a thousand other prefab groups. No wonder there`s a decline in the purchasing power of the 15-24 age group. When you release an album that has maybe 2 good tracks then it becomes more economical to dig for an MP3 than to buy a $18 album.
Pardon the rant.
From what I understand, the record companies shell out $500+ bucks an hour for the use of recording studios (sure, they own `em but they still charge it to the artist). After all o that they jack prices on the CD so they can recoup the money they advanced to the artist and spent in production. Then they further jack the prices so they can pay the artist some slack royalty that amounts to more than $.02 per unit.
I don`t begrudge payin cash to support the artist themself, but to shell out to make the recording companies rich is irritating at best.
another rant...it`s just too early for me.
Sounds like someone is getting old. You'll be listneing to the CBC before you know it.
>:]
I'm sure the record companies do. ;)
:P
Of course, they do have to account for the salaries of their no-talent hack performers that they signed to multi-million dollar, multi-record contracts.
Perhaps the solution is to not pay someone $15 million dollars just because they can sing! Oh, and look pretty. Gotta look pretty. Which can also be solved with money.
Dorks.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
It's our fault, of course. If we weren't all scurvy music pirates (or pie rats, for you Richard Scarry fans) full of greed and lacking any consideration for the starving performers and the poor record executives, they wouldn't have to charge so much on a per-CD basis to just barely recoup their losses!
If they sold 97 billion CDs instead of the 33 billion they sell now**, I'm sure prices would come down to reflect this shift of scale.
Same with computer software. It's all our fault.
*Note: Author does not really believe a word of this post, except maybe for the Richard Scarry bit. You really shouldn't either.
**Numbers made up.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
I would certainly think that cassettes cost more to produce than CDs. CDs can just be stamped, fer cryin' out loud.
;)
I thought CDs cost more because they cost more. To clarify, they cost this much initially because they were new, and the market wasn't established. The market took off, but at some time the industry realized that people would STILL pay "new item" prices for them. Having no need to lower the prices to move the product, they never did.
Stupid supply and demand economics.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
broken mailto
:P)
Here's what I sent (paraphrased from the discussion below - sorry if your quote is uncredited, sue me
Regarding your article "MP3 Is Possible Culprit In CD Sales Slump", you neglected to mention four important facts.
1) CDs still cost the same as they did 10 years ago, even while their cost of production has gone down astronomically.
2) The RIAA has already played this game twice with us before. The first time, they said cassettes were killing vinyl. The second time, they pointed their fingers at used CDs.
3) According to the RIAA itself sales for the 15-25 group have been decreasing EVERY year since 1988.
4) The RIAA isn't what I would called unbiased espicially wrt mp3s.
Finally (and this is my opinion)
5) There is less worth buying. Year after year of mergers and consolidation have left commercial music a smear of homogenous crap.
And to quote the head of another monstrously slow-to-adapt, clueless megaconglomerate:
"The Middle Man Must Add Value."
Record companies have been ignoring this rule for at least 3 decades. Time for their just desserts.
It isn't our fault their industry is over charging everything. If everyone and their brother weren't getting a cut out of every CD sale we wouldn't have this problem. I think it just goes to show it is time for a change. Those execs produce nothing only the artists are doing anything. I enjoy a lot of music and the artists I like I wouldn't mind paying some money to, but right now it is out of control. Believe me I don't want to see the artists get ripped off, just the over inflated music industry. I hope those execs get what they diserve.
Yup yup. CDs should not cost $15 a pop. The record companies have been ripping off consumers for way too long. They deserve what they get. Now if we can only get quality MP3s out without encoder glitches, etc and make everyone encode at 192, then I'd be content. I'm still not going to buy another CD anytime soon (except to support bands I really like). I want a rio.
Hate to disagree with the venerable CmdrTaco but, well, I disagree. I like radio cos of the sense of community. Well actually no - radio where I live is **** but music TV here is good. I can talk about programs that were on the previous evening with friends.
Even more importantly, I hear stuff on the radio/TV that I never would have known about otherwise or never would have chosen to listen to. And anyway, I like the randomness of it. I have a CD collection to rival anyones MP3 collection but most of the time I listen to the radio or music TV.
Presumably if only crap music is coming out, then only crap mp3s are coming out. Just about everything is coming out these days. Get beyond the mainstream (which is, almost by definition, crap).
>I love radio. Radio DJs are cool, and I want cool jingles in between my songs! :)
This is my third posting today. I must feel strongly or something. Or maybe I can't be stuffed working :)
Anywho, I agree. I gladly concede that a good DJ is better at mixing than I am. And on the subject of the music industry changing, the DJ is where it's at now. People don't make music anymore - they mix it.
You mention in you message that you won't be getting a computer for your car soon, however, a device exists, made by a company called EMPEG (not very original :~)
:~) with a 2GB Disk drive (about 35 hours of music, I'm told!). In a device the size of a car stereo! (StrongARM Chip, Full flashly Colour LCD Display, etc....). It simply connects to your PC. Just thought you might find it interesting. NOTE: I DON'T WORK FOR THEM, I JUST READ ABOUT THEM, THAT'S ALL.
www.empeg.com
which costs about £699. It is running LINUX
http://www.jonmasters.org/
Actually, Devices exist (SUCH AS THE SOON TO BE RELEASED NOMAD FROM CREATIVE LABS - www.creativelabs.com) which use FLASH CARDS and so are much better than your crappy OLD Mini Disk!!! (They don't skip - ever!!!!).
Oh, and yes, I do know what I'm talking about, I went to Sony research here in the UK about 5 years ago to see a Mini disk demonstration and get all the techy stuff, I WAS the only person able to distinguish CD and MINI-DISK!!!!)
http://www.jonmasters.org/
I wonder if they considered the possibility that the recording industry isn't delivering the music that 14-24 year olds want.
I know I'm not finding a lot of new music that I like, and I'm in the over 30 crowd which showed growth as a market segment.
I agree that CDs are way over priced.. I think the decline is probably due to the lack of good stuff on comercial labels.
There is another player in this (sort of) ASCAP.
The american society of Composers Artists and Producers. http://www.ascap.com
You see there name after song credits on CDs and such. If I understand there function they make sure the artists, producer etc get paid for radio play. Maybe they should expand and try to get into electronic distribution. They handle billions of pay for play a year.
The group is made up of its members. Maybe they should get on the ball and impliment system that allows artists to get paid for electronic distribution?
Pirates will always be there... High quality cassetts where going to wreck the busisness.....
Radio is always good because they it a good way to hear new stuff (If you can find a good station... Internet radio is good if you have a high speed connection)
I love radio. Radio DJs are cool, and I want cool jingles in between my songs! :)
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
They are scared for the same reason any corporation is scared of anything, and for what a lot of things come down to in the end. Money. They aren't worried about the person who rips all his CD's so its easier for him to listen to them....they are worried about the circle of 100 friends, who go out and buy 2 CD's each, and then rip them and exchange them with eachother. When this happens, they sell 9800 less CD's then they would if everyone bought their own.
People (that is, computer-clueful young people) start to think of music as a computer file and not a track -- anybody remembers the vinyl LPs with their physical tracks? -- on a CD or tape. This is doom for the music industry in it's current form. Once they get through the 'sue everybody in sight' stage I'm sure the CD prices will drop from their current ridiculous levels. There are just too many parasites feeding off the music distribution chain. Some, hopefully most, of them will have to die.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
$40,000 for the new 1999 N'Sync mp3. heh That would suck.
I think it's funny the way the RIAA keeps sounding off about the evils of MP3, and how it's been the source of piracy, and so many other problems. But it isn't as if we haven't had WAV files for years now. The only difference is nobody wanted to waste 50 or 60 megs of space for one song. Eventually though, that really won't seem like such a big deal once higher speed internet connects become the rule rather than the exception, and 100G hard drives become commonplace. The point being, MP3 is just a file format, and the RIAA should see the bigger picture.
The record industry is really the only people to lose out in the mp3 revolution. The business is structured AGAINST the artists who make the music. An example from an excellent article on the topic of the music biz by Steve Albini at http://www.apk.net/cihs/verbal/albini.html:
This is in reference to a typical moderately successful MTV type band ---
This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.
Record company: $710,000
Producer: $90,000
Manager: $51,000
Studio: $52,000
Previous label: $50,000
Agent: $7,5000
Lawyer: $12,000
Band member net income each: $4,031.25
-
This is the NORM, not the exception. Unless you really score the average artist is not destined to make much of any money in the business, while their art has financed the new homes of the executives and producers involved.
Think about how bands/artists will do with the middleman of the record companies gone. They could charge 1/2 the price for an album's worth of material, and still make gigantic cash.
Amen
obscure images/cDc obscure@cultdeadcow.com www.cultdeadcow.com
A couple of days ago, I offhandedly mentioned to a friend of mine that I'd started snagging MP3s from the net. He asked, "If you could get the MP3 for 99 cents, would you do it?" Without hesitation, I answered that I would.
Imagine this: walk into a music store with your favorite MP3 player. Go to a kiosk, preview some music, and create a download list of the MP3s you want at $1 each. Dump them onto your player, and download them from the player to your PC when you get home. Given such a scenario, I could easily spend $20-30 on 20-30 songs that I like instead of buying two CDs that are mostly songs I'm not thrilled about. Furthermore, I'd like to see the record companies get out of it entirely. If I like someone's work, I want the bulk of the money that I pay for it to go to them, not to a record company exec who's made itself an unnecessary evil.
Nothing about this idea prevents music piracy--MP3s will always be on the net and if you can send them from your player to your PC (or someone else's player or PC, etc.), there's nothing to stop you from giving the song to someone for nothing. But the same argument was made against the integrated CD/tape stereo systems that are now common fare. In other words, the situation now facing the RIAA is no different than the situation when someone figured out that you could copy a CD to tape with reasonable quality.
Void the Warranty
Yeah, right- The RIAA is *such* an impartial observer. Anyways, I seriously doubt MP3s have much to do with anything, has anyone walked into a music store recently? A CD costs like $17-$19 for plain ol' normal CDs- thats why CDs aren't hopping off the shelves, they're all makred up like 3 bucks for no good reason.
:-) >
Now I *know* the cost of manufacturing hasn't gone up and the CDs haven't gotten any longer- quite to opposite if anything. So where has my extra $3 gone? OH YEAH, some schmuck at a music label that wanted the new 911. Personally, I don't think the MP3 quality is quite there but bring on the direct artist distribution and cut these guys off at the knees.
</manifesto
I believe the decline in CD sales has more to do with the outrageous prices and the lack of interesting music than with MP3's.
I got into the CD revolution fairly late in the game. I got my first CD player in 1992. Since then I have purchased a little over 200 cds. I figure that's about a $2500 investment. A CD can't cost more than a few pennies to produce. They don't pay that much to the artist. So who is making the money here? Probably the stores and the record labels.
A CD club can sell you CD's for $3-4 each and I know that includes royalties to the artists. They are still making a profit. That means that the $12.00 CD I got at Best Buy (with the inevitable cracked case) was overpriced by $8.00.
I can tell you that I would like to own a couple of hundred more CD's. There is a lot of good music out there (This isn't a rant about the unimaginative "alternative" bands that get the airplay) but I can't afford to shell out thousands of dollars for CD's.
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
Oh sure, MP3 is ruining the music industry just like pirating is costing the software so many billions upon billions. Get real: pirating/MP3s can only COST a corporation, if, in fact, the person pirating would have *actually bought* the product in the first place! Since this is almost ubiquitously untrue, these dollar claims are correspondingly exaggerated. If *anything* the MP3 format is *helping* sell music, and evening the playing field allowing small bands to direct market to their fans instead of having to "sell out". That is without to mention the narrow-minded ludditity of denouncing a FORMAT. Heck, let's denounce paper because people plagiarize! I have no sympathy for big fat record companies...if they can't play in today's playing field that's just tough...
Agreed on the decline, but for me the equation is very simple. A lot of people voice questions to wether the CD sales will be affected by mp3..Well;
You want a song? You don't own a 100,000$ Hi-Fi system you built your house around to get the best sound? You sit on free bandwidt and spare time ? You wonder if you want to use those 17$ on a CD to get that song ? I don't see the problem with the choice of medium here. You think that more and more "general public" users won't discover this too? The only problem here is the relative difficulty for "general public" users to get their hands on what they want. Once that is sorted out, mp3 could become a contender.
And for those who have mastered computers, know the net and generally possesses the general know-how, why would they even bother getting CD's if it's not something they really really like ?
Another scary thing is how the record-companies and their lawyers own the artists.. just look at the recent "pre-releases" on the net, and how well they were recieved by the companies.
It's all about the money, and maybe through mp3's and the like, the general public can voice their protest against this.
Re: Battery life
While battery life was a problem a few years ago, portable cd players now last much longer. Mine lasts somewhere between 8 and 12 hours, with ESP with just its rechargeable battery. With non-rechargeables it lasts 20 hours.
Also, without trying to support the RIAA, the quality of mp3s is far inferior to that of CDs. The compression at anything less than 320kbps introduces obvious artifacts and even 320kbps sounds different from the original. I believe DVD-Audio uses a new lossless compression called MLP which cuts a decent fraction off the filesize while mantaining the original signal. This is the future, not inferior lossy compression. Why sacrifice quality when storage capacity is constantly increasing?
However it is important that the cost of entry into the market for bands is as low as possible and mp3 does achieve this goal.
Anyone with access to a CD Burner can easily check out the quality of mp3s. Just use something like Winamp to decode to .WAV then put this on a CD. Now you can play it in a CD player without the noise from the computer.
Try encoding a song at different rates, and put them on randomly. I'd be suprised if you couldn't tell the difference between them.
I am a programmer (not a DJ, programmers program their show, DJs just play what they are told to play) at my college radio station, WRUW-FM 91.1 Cleveland. I am in charge of Webcasting. In a few weeks we will have a live MP3 stream courtesy of AudioActive. We have an OC3 onto campus so we can serve literally THOUSANDS.
The key to enjoysing radio is to find something different than the mainstream. I totally agree that most stations out there play nothing but crap. They only play what the record companies want them to play, the last "Big Hit" from prepubescent whiny boys to vapid pop jingles. Listen to noncommercial radio. Whether it is NPR or a college station, since we are not concerned with make money from all the 12-year-old tinnie boppers, we can play GOOD music. And I know that not all college stations sound great, but there are some out there that do put a decent amount of effort into their offerings.
WRUW's main objective is to provide a REAL altrenative to the Cleveland community. We, and other noncommercial stations , pride ourselves on being different (and I think better) from commercial stations. Variety is imperative. We have classic jazz shows, "avant" jazz shows, Ska, punk, Classical, indy rock, country (real country), blues, industrial, metal, and freeform (a wonderous mix of all of the above). Every programmer puts effort into into their show, not because they are paid ('cause we're not), but becasue we care.
I know I sound like an evangelist, but I truly believe what I am saying. In high school, I listened to the latest "modern rock" station. It was crap, and I was a willing participant. I listend to all the bands they told me to. I bought the CDs, too. Yes, I have Greenday's Dookie, REM's Monster, the Cranberries, I use them as coasters now. Now I know better.
So in conclusion kids, Varitey is the key, and noncomercial radio provides it. And some stations ever webcast this stuff to everyone, so don't dispair.
Moshe Katz-Hyman (Mo Katz)
The Shape of Jazz to Come
Programmer and Webcasting Director
WRUW-FM Cleveland 91.1
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
It's not MP3. I've downloaded MP3's and from what I've heard, bought the CD. I can't be the only one.
The reason why I personally don't buy CDs very often is that when I go to Tower, they're $18.99. Circuit City's charging $14-16 lately. If it keeps up, I'll never buy from a record store again. At least CDNow hasn't changed too much...
I just have a few things to mention.
All of you people saying that MP3 sounds like crap on your $1000 plus stereo, give me a break! How many people can afford to spend that much money on a stereo? I'd say maybe 10% of the country. Plus, ANYTHING could sound like crap on a system like that.
Personally, I don't like the way MP3s sound period, VQF has alwasy sounded better to me.
Another reason I don't like MP3 is that the kind of music I listen to(country), is almost impossible to find on the net. Almost every MP3 site that I have been to has the same shitty Pop/Rock songs that they play on the radio.
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
In 1989, I was working as a clerk at Tower Records. I told everyone who'd listen not to make a career of the record store business since within 10 years we'd have a way to download music for free. And whaddaya know, 10 years later...
Heh heh..it's nice to be right once in my life...
I've been into the
Where the labels/stores will get into trouble is the 20/80 rule- 20% of your customers provide 80% of your sales. So if you lose that top 5%, you're close to being out of business. Ah well.
On another note, why doesn't the book industry have a problem with the ".txt" format? Soemthing to ask yourself.
Because there are djs out there that know a lot more about music than you do. Think about it: there are people who know as much about music as you know about computers. Why limit yourself to the music that you've taken the time to listen to and understand? Why not find a good station. By all means, if you hear something you like, buy it--- buy it one freakin' pico second at a time in MP3, if you like, but don't dis'spect radio--- praise it amigo. Don't you think it's better to permit computers to let music proliferate, rather than kill radio? Isn't sorta cool that using a computer, you can listen to particularly fash London stations that the airwaves just can't deliver?
And one more thing: I thought for a second that you said "Why would I listen to WXYC," which happens to be one of the best commercial-free stations here in the Linux-Love-Triangle of Chapel-Hill (sunsite), Durham (RedHat) and Raleigh. But, you said "XYZ," so you're off the hook on that.
Peace.
See, if you read v0.9 of Bill Gates brilliant new $700 book, he will tell you
"The Middle Man Must Add Value."
While the response of most would be, "well, yeah.. I mean like duh, Bill," The music industry is one glaring area where ruthless capitalism has yet to work its efficiency magic.
This is happening in texas, not sure about the rest of the country. the ignorance of the music industry will be it's own downfall. no-talent bands, loser DJ's, greedy businessmen running it all. to me, it sounds like what happened when 8-tracks came out. the record company freaked out. it happened with tapes, and then cd's after that. with tapes, you could record your own cd's, and then listen to them later. i imagine they had the same problems then.
Commercial music radio is, for most intents and purposes, the same kind of mediocre across the country. I travelled across the US last summer and wish I really had a nickel for every goddamn adult contemporary station that bragged about its "best variety of music" and then proceeded to play more Natalie Imbruglia.
Truth be told, there are indeed commercial stations that don't suck -- as well as some decent college-run stations that aren't afraid to be creative, but they're few and far between. The majority of commercial radio is hypocritical and profit-driven, yet constantly telling us that This Is What We Like.
MTV is even worse. Ever see them actually play a full video recently? Their "Total Request Live" garbage takes a video, maybe shows the beginning or the end, but never the full thing, just so we can see more of Carson Daly's ugly mug and yet another ad for the latest teen movie. At best, they're pandering to short attention spans. At worst, they've already determined in their minds what counts, That Is What We're Supposed To Like. (I won't even begin to go into their blurring of logos, their strange restrictions on lyrics, and their blatantly hypocritical attitude about "giving us the music" when, in essence, they're not.)
Screw them. If I want to hear a song I want to hear, I call it right up and *Amp obediently plays it. If I want to make a custom mix and burn it to CD or transfer it to tape, I can. If I want to share this real bizarre song to a friend, I can do so easily and then, in most cases, the friend actually goes out and buys the whole CD (get me, RIAA! I'm helping to generate revenue!) I don't have to be at the whim of some corporate-created playlist, nor is the music compromised so I can be told again that I'm not cool until I wear Skechers. And you know what?
I'm happy.
I'd feel bad about MP3s and the copyrighted material issue if the artists involved were actually receiving a substantial amount per CD purchase. But that's not the case. The artists I like do get my $1 per CD, in one form or another (CD sales, show tickets...) but for RIAA to bitch and moan because they lost 4% off a single demographic is just plain rotten.
Here endeth the reading.
They're so anxious to blame mp3 for music piracy and declining sales, they've completely forgot their old scapegoat: used cd stores. I remember that they tried to get laws passed a few years ago preventing the reselling of CDs.
Of course, they were right about that one though, not that it should have any effect on the legality. I haven't bought a single new CD in over two years because I can find almost anything I want used. I make the decisions to only buy used CDs because of the way the record industry has reacted to MP3, and for the idiotic taxes on recordable media they lobbied for. I get my music legally, and they don't get a dime of my money.
cuz most COMMERCIAL white rock acts SUCK ASS! (gentlemen, arm your flaming engines)
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
gimme!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Get an Empeg car. 35 odd hours of music you really want to listen to. No commercials. No static. CD quality. And it's running Linux. See empeg.com.
CD's are of lower quality than the highest quality MPEG Layer 3. We dub audio on a $5000 PSB system, and there is a difference. Negligible in the low end, but in the >19kHz range there is measurable data loss when conforming to the CD standard.
Please try and get the facts right before stating them.
The method one finds out about new music is largely irrelevent in the end. There will always be a new way to find out about new music, but I highly doubt it will have anything to do with Radio in the long run.
Too expensive, too much capitol, too much overhead. And difficult to distribute mainstream.
Although the channels of distribution may follow through the internet, there will probably always be a niche market for wireless technology. Radio or otherwise.
In the 60's we were shocking the older generation with our bad music, bad haircuts, drugs, and irresponsible sex. And I remeber wondering, how will the next generation shock US?
Turns out they're doing it with bad music, bad haircuts, drugs, and irresponsible sex.
Let me get this straight... on a $5000 car stereo system, the MP3'd CD sounded horrible, yet on an el-cheapo pair of headphones, it sounded great? This makes no sense to me. How could you possibly get better sound out of some cheap headphones than out of a $5000 stereo system, no matter what the source is?
And besides the storage issue, the quality's not all there either. Even with good bitrates, you need to find a really good soundcard (anyone have suggestions) and get your box close to your amp to keep cable lenghts short. Also, I haven't seen any soundcards that will take a high quality interconnect...most of them are those little crappy ones for headphones. MP3's are great for playing music on your computer, but when I want to *listen* to music (really enjoy it), I crank up a cd on the hi-fi. On a related note, does anyone have any links for hi-fi + computer stuff? I'd be interested in finding a high quality soundcard to use as a transport.
-just bein'
...reason that the "big 5" are hurting. I can see mp3 counting for a bit of the loss, but PLEASE, anybody that listens to music knows that people are sick and tired of the regurgitated crap spoon fed by mass media houses like MTV and commercial radio. Good riddance. The indies will rise folks. Music sales AREN'T down, just MAJOR LABEL music sales.
From the article:
.WAV, or encode it into an MP3. Maybe they think that they can create a closed system where the files can only be exchanged between pieces of Internet-connected propietary hardware? I don't know, they're deluded.
> "It's hard to take away something
> people are getting for free, so what's
> needed is a technical solution, rather than
> depending on some sort of behavior modification,"
> said [RIAA spokesperson] Walsh.
No one has commented yet on what a supremely deceptive statement this is. There is no possible technical solution. The music industry has been releasing freely copiable digital music, in the form of CD's, for 15 years now. It's only becoming a large issue now because bandwidth and MP3's compression have combined to make copying easy.
So, if there is no possible technical solution, why is the RIAA saying there needs to be one? Because they are trying to hold together a fragile coalition of labels and consumer electronics companies to create a format to replace MP3 (SDMI, Secure Digital Music Initiative). I don't see how anyone can believe that this is a solution - no matter how elaborately and cleverly they work to make SDMI uncopiable, the audio data is still present in 44.1 KHz, 16-bit sound when it's passed off to the operating system's sound driver. It's trivial to write a program to capture the audio at this point, and record it into a simple file format like
Doug
I've still got quite a few CDs from my younger more foolhardy days, all in the process of being ripped and compressed, but I've learned the err of my ways. I've not bought a CD in years. And as any who know me can attest, my appetite for 180 gram vinyl is nearly insatiable.
"Oh, I'm a janitor. I used to be a computer geek, but I got wacked in the head". --Dave um... "Smith"
Of course, it's all the MP3 piracy that's causing the record industry to lose valuable CD sales.
Nevermind that the industry has been relying on people replacing their vinyl collections with CDs for the past 16 years for a big chunk of their sales, and that most people who wanted to convert have already done so...
Nevermind that the industry won't invest in new artist development, instead using the indie labels as "farm teams", signing whatever some market researcher tells them is "hot," and dumping any artist who fails to go multi-platinum within two records...
And nevermind that the industry continues to hike the price of CD's, even though the cost of manufacturing them has declined and the artists are getting smaller and smaller royalties from their own work...
No, it's MP3 that's killing the music industry. Just like home taping was before. GET REAL.
Somebody needs to send the RIAA a massive dose of coffee and smelling salts before it drowns in its own self-promotional, self-congratulatory swill. At most, MP3 is simply another nail in the coffin of the major labels. The industry bigwigs wrote and signed their own death warrants years ago for precisely the reasons mentioned above.
Check out http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/98Profile.PDF. (You'll need a PDF viewer.) It's the original report that the news article is about. It shows music industry sales going UP - $1.5 billion more in 1998 than 1997. That just continues the trend that has DOUBLED total sales over the last 10 years.
True, young people are a shrinking portion of the market. That trend has been clear for 10 years, according to the RIAA's own report. Could it be (gasp!) that young people are a shrinking portion of the population? Blaming MP3 is a transparent myth.
I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by the self-serving spin the RIAA puts on the sales figures. I guess I'm just not cynical enough yet. But it gets worse:
The market has grown SO much in just one year that dollar sales to 15-19 year olds and to 25-29 year olds are UP from 1997 (by over $100 million in each case), even though those groups SHRUNK in terms of market share.
And yet the RIAA has spin-doctored this into: "sales are DOWN!" The truth is that record industry sales are not growing as fast in some demographics as in others. That doesn't sound like news to me really. I guess the music industry will say anything if they get to take a poke at MP3 in the process.
You make an interesting point about how my attitude might change if my own income was likely to change as the result "misuse of technology," by which I presume you mean piracy.
As luck would have it, I write small business/consumer software for a living, and therefore my profit-sharing income is, in theory, effected by piracy to some degree. When I handle the tech support calls too sticky for the tech support folks, some end users tell me outright that they're copying our products. So it's real - I'm not just imagining the piracy.
However, as you point out, I cannot really quantify the sales loss that piracy may or may not cause. Partly for that reason, I don't worry about it. Unlike the music industry, I don't blame the medium used to pirate the software for the piracy. Unlike the music industry, I don't imagine that every pirated copy of my program represents a lost sale. And unlike the music industry, I definitely don't hunt and hunt for a way to misinterpret record-high sales figures to make them look like piracy is killing me.
Regardless of whether music sales are effected by MP3s or not, the RIAA has been represented as suffering a sales slump, caused by MP3. This is not true - there is no slump. I don't think lying to the general public is a very good public-relations move. Although my income may (or may not) be diminished by piracy, I would not make up "slumps" or otherwise exaggerate my losses. The RIAA seems to be quite happy to do so, though.
It doesn't occur to the RIAA that the CD sales could be down because the major artists...how do you say...suck? The extremely bland music that spews out of most any radio speaker only promotes what you can get in any mall, and probably in two different locations. The fact that it's all owned by a handful of corporations doesn't help things either.
Start tracking MP3 downloads to see if the world is really eager to have the latest Puff Daddy "creation" versus some other artist who the record company fails to promote/puts on a soundtrack/saturates the culture with.
Agreed. I know that I would buy three times as many CDs if they cost half as much. Similarly, $1 for a MP3 file is is way too much. For $.25 each I'd buy lots of them. For $1, I won't buy any.