An interesting article from Business 2.0:



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RIAA's mantra is that CD sales are down because of internet sharing (stealing).
Nobody seems to mention that their main market (teens & close to it) generally have
limited budgets for such things. Take a look at the price of a CD and then decide whether
to buy that or, for a couple of dollars more, get a DVD that plays twice as long, has video,
and 5 channel sound. Plus, the kid has likely been more effectively bombarded with
advertising for the movie on the DVD than for the CD.

In addition, that limited budget is diluted by video games.

I think the entertainment industry as a whole is squeezing kids of all available funds as effectively as
they ever have. It's just that less of it is going to traditional albums.

yup...


well.. cheaper cd`s.. could mean worse qualety...

a. they could easely.. let the artist.. get more $...
(that way .. they would make it easyer fot n00b`s
to get in.. and get the sales-curves.. to rise again

b. use more money on qualety recordings.. ditch
the protection buisness.. (this one is the real bugger..)


just an opposite example:

some friends of mine.. put there two last records
out on the net.. for dl..
they actually get more PR.. than the destributor
could get them.. earning lot more money..
and the public. are paying like.. no tomorrow..
coz now.. they know that the $.. goes
directly to them.. (like it should..)

>the buisness has themself`s to blame<

I don't know what the terms are now that Vivendi bought them, but the original mp3.com model was essentially:

1) anybody can publish. The ONLY minumum for getting CD's made was the artist
had to buy the first copy to check the transcription.
2) each CD had to have at least 2 tracks available for free download.
3) The artist sets the price of his CD between $5-$10 (I think that was the original range).
4) the artist gets half of the gross sales.
5) No exclusive contract; the artist can sell the same CD through other channels, or pull
his material if he gets "signed" by a major label.

With essentially no cost of entry, you got a fair amount of trash, but also:

1) Native culture music from all over the world of similar quality to that brought to market by Paul Simon
in his "Rhythm of the Saints" and "Graceland" albums.

2) local interest like school musicals or a church Christmas pagent. You make a few bucks even just selling a few dozen copies, and mp3.com handles all the sales overhead.

3) Some fairly popular groups in various genres (ie Canadian Brass) who probably just wanted to stick it to the RIAA.

SInce you could always sample a couple of tracks before buying, you could avoid paying for the junk.

mp3.com has/had a quite cool concept.

The record company's say the decreased selling of their cd's gives problems because they cant support new musicians. well, why not decrease the amount of advertisement???

they could give the MUSIC for free, or almost free, as advertisement. they'll be earning mony with merchandising and concerts.

CD sales are down because DVD sales are running at a torrent.

I'm a great example. I used to buy over 100 audio CDs annually, which would make me one of the industry's best customers. Over the past 12 months, however, I have trimmed down my CD purchases to about 30. During the same time I have bought around 60 DVDs (and I never used to buy them before). I generally don't download music (quality issues) so I can't say I'm using Kazaa as an alternative. It's just that I'm deriving more utility from my budding movie collection than my music collection. There's also the saturation issue. I have nearly 800 CDs, so each additional album bought has less of an impact...I can devote less and less time to each individual album.

The recording industry produced 20% fewer albums in 2002, in the middle of a global recession, than they did in 2001.

If the book publishing industry did that and had anything above a 20% drop in sales people would tell them to quit whining.

Fact is, today's CDs are grossly overpriced and are of mediocre quality, even when comparing pop acts across decades. Most CDs today are mastered far too loud after being recorded poorly, last only 45 minutes long or less, and include paltry liner notes and designs.

If a 45 minute CD of barely-passable 'music' that fatigues your ears as fast as white noise costs the same or more than a 2 hour DVD with crystal-clear picture and sound and hours of special features, it's no wonder why people will choose the latter over the former.

But they don't! A small minority do. Most people continue to buy CDs at a faster rate than they used to, they just have fewer choices today. And the music industry has worked hard to try to shut down the only means consumers have for being exposed to new music, like internet radio and P2P.

They should be raking home 10x what they do today. That they do not is their fault.

Secret Cheif,

I think you hit it right on the head. The numbers don't lie. Less product of lower quality equals lower sales. The RIAA is just looking for a scapegoat and p2p makes a great target.

I, for one, probably buy more stuff now because of p2p. You see, I hear a tune on the radio or at a buddies or something. If I like it, I come home and download it. Now one of three things happens. Either I find myself liking a few of the tunes so I decide that it would be a CD worth having, or I find that all of the stuff on p2p is of questionable quality, so I go buy the the CD. Lastly, I might find that the rest of the stuff from the artist is crap.

Another thing. We all know that CD's today sound like crap. I can tell you that there have been a few discs that I haven't bought because I've heard how poorly mastered they are (Foo Fighters/ Rush Vapor Trails excluded)

Not only did they make less music, they also produced more remixes and far less new stuff. So in essence, they're screwing the consumers big time and they know it. They'll never stop producing crap/recycled old music as long as people are stupid enough to actually buy it. The only thing we can actually do is to just boycott all 100% commercial crap music (and lets not forget all copy protected CD:s) and hope the companies goes into bankrupcy some day...

If thats not the truth, I don't know what is. For god sakes, who wants another Linkin Park CD full of remixes . The songs are 2 years old - move on people!

I can count the number of albums I bought during the last 8 years on my 10 fingers..
Before 1994 I got hundreds of CDs, but something weird happened after the downfall of Grunge that turns 99% of all published music into pure toxic waste crap

The only thing that saved the music industry from going in the dumpster in the early 80s (remember those massive layoffs?) was getting people to pay for CD versions of LPs they already owned. They could duplicate that outrageous feat by offering SACD or DVD-A discs for HALF THE PRICE of existing CDs.

The cost of stamping any kind of CD is now measured in pennies, so the profit margin would still be reasonable (less than the current obscene, but at least it's profit). Of course, they'd cannibalize their existing CD-A business, but that's pretty much end-of-life now anyway. They had to make the same decision with vinyl, and it certainly paid off. This time, though, the profit isn't in the mark-up, it's in the volume. Better quality + cheaper equals Buy Not Download. Not to mention the bucks (or yen) they make on the hardware, in the case of Sony, or the sweetheart deals for everyone else.

Having spent many years in the music industry, I'd rather see these guys drown in their own arrogance and stupidity. I offer these suggestions only because no one's listening anyway.



"You might find the people you used on the way up, you're gonna meet on your way down."

--Allen Toussaint

Eh. If the whole industry goes belly up the world will not be any worse off (well, not counting financially). As long as I can still buy CDs after the show I'll be fine. The cream will still rise to the top, whatever the top is.