I ran across an an old thread here on barnson.org where I got caught by Universal for file-trading The Hulk. I decided to look around the Internet a bit more to see what the latest deals are on file-trading legislation.
I read an article, written in November 2003 with the laughably ponderous title of Feinstein pitches stricter penalties for music, movie thieves Recording copyrighted movies, songs could bring 5 years in jail . Beyond the remarkably long name, though, I found a quote from the RIAA talking about loss of sales:
The Recording Industry Association of America, hit first by the now-defunct Napster and later by such currently popular file-sharing programs as Kazaa and Morpheus, says that in 2000 the top 10-selling albums sold 60 million copies. By last year that had shrunk to 34 million.
Now, there are a few different ways of looking at this little statistic:
- The RIAA’s Perspective: Instead of people buying the missing 26 million records, they are downloading them on the Internet, directly affecting our profits.
- The Independent Musician’s Perspective: Dude, those albums aren’t being sold because the Internet has enabled people to find music they really like rather than the rubbish the RIAA promotes. Their loss is our gain.
- The File-Traders Perspective: i d0N’+ \/\/@N+ +h3 +r@$h pu+ 0u+ by +h3 ri@@ @Ny\/\/@y. +h0ugh i h@v3 16,000 $0Ngz 0N my h@rd driv3, i purch@$3 @ 10+ 0f mu$ic 3v3ry y3@r 13gi+iM@+31y. (Translation: I don’t want the trash put out by the RIAA anyway. Though I have 16,000 songs on my hard drive, I purchase a lot of music every year legitimately.)
- The Economist’s Perspective: The U.S. economy is still in a very deep recession. Although traditionally, entertainment sales remain strong in a slow economy, in this case spending in real dollars on musical recordings is up from ten years ago before the economic “boom”.
My take: I think that the reason the top ten albums are suffering is directly related to the Internet, but I espouse the Indie Musician perspective. More small bands are taking a larger slice of the pie from larger ones. I know many people today who buy CDs from small-time bands, and it seems to be a pretty hip thing for college students to latch onto indie bands now as well. The depressed sales are a result of consumer choice — ask independent labels what their sales figures are like, and the successful ones will tell you their bottom line is way, way up, due in large part to file-trading and Internet-based distribution.
So did I miss some reasons? Do you agree with the Indies, the Economists, the RIAA, or have a totally different explanation for the large statistical difference in top-10 album sales between 2000 and November 2003?
File sharing.
In the next week or two I will be writing a paper on this topic.
That being said, I think it is the advent of DVDs that has replaced CDs. People collect DVDs now, and don’t tend to spend a lot of time sitting around listening to music like they used to.
Time?
I don’t know about the rest of America, but I don’t have time to sit and watch all the DVD’s that come out. We buy about one a month. And maybe watch two a month. Of course the kid’s watch a little more, but not nearly as much as most families watch.
As for collecting CD’s, why bother? You can turn on the radio and find several great stations and not have to buy the CD’s. I listen to music all day long. Instead of buying the music, I’d rather spend my money on other hobbies!
Best of luck writing your paper!
EDIT by matthew: This post was by Weed (or someone with his IP address). I don’t feel like mucking around in my database tonight to fix the post 🙂
Exactly
On almost any given CD, there might be 2 or 3 songs worth having. I don’t see buying the whole album for those few songs. ITunes is doing so well because of that idea. Buy the song you want right now, not the whole album. I think that mentality has contributed to the drop as much as anything else.
For bands I like, ( Beastie Boys, U2, Van Halen, The Cure, Wayward Sun, etc), I’ll buy the CD out of loyalty. But because 50 Cent has one good song, I don’t see me buying his whole album. But I’ve bought three copies of Paul’s Boutique because it is the standard.
MY $.02 Weed
Addition To Your Responses
I agree in that there is a Competitive Market perspective. People discussing the “free digital music” situation overlook the fallacy that music consumption operates in a stand-alone, uncompromised consumer delivery bubble, and this is not the case.
Purchasing entertainment from a consumer’s position comes with choices: product appeal, assortment, price, alternatives, and perceived value. Obviously, a price set at $0 affects the downturn in sales. Free music hurts music sales. But the choice to spend discretionary funds on music needs to look at alternative entertainment product as well.
When I was working at Best Buy, our team made a huge case that the larger share of the consumer entertainment wallet had shifted away from music and more towards home video. The price points between the two categories are similar and today’s entertainment shopper feels more fulfilled from watching and collecting movies than they do from listening and sharing music recordings. This line of reasoning was accepted by executive management and impacted the way that the entertainment division went about building its strategic partnerships.
(Side note: keep in mind that this is not the same as the live music customer, which revels in sharing live musical experiences via sound recordings. We actually worked with Clear Channel over ways to sell live music recordings from concerts as people were walking out of the concert halls.)
The other premise we took is that packaged music media has new competitors outside the traditional home entertainment sphere. Other forms of home entertainment, such as broadcast sports and gaming software, is going to not only take away from the music spend, but subsume music spend. Meaning, music would ultimately become a subset feature of a larger home entertainment offering, and the audio album format would no longer thrive in a long-term setting.
I recommend to check out Rhapsody, which is a fantastic subscription service. We got it for free here at the house and I’ve been using it non-stop. For $120 a year, you can get access to almost every popular recording artists song conceivable. We have it pumped from the back of our high-speed internet, through a powerful computer, into a large home entertainment sound system.
My point? The original statistic mentioned the decline of album sales but it doesn’t mention the $70M in iTune sales nor the advance of other subscription services. Nor do any of those responses mention that sales in other entertinament formats have increased to access music, the proceeds of which recompense recording purveoyrs in other ways. Again, RIAA has every right to sue people for allegedly infringing on their member’s copyrighten material. Plus, regardless of what perspective you take, it is illegal because RIAA’s allegations are getting upheld in courts.
Get In Groove, Sammy G