Funny, I always thought it was the other way around – the product is pirated BECAUSE it is too high priced!
I haven’t bought a CD in 4 years ever since I got involved in internet sharing and CD burners. Sorry but there is not enough reason to buy at the store.
The birth of MP3 CD’s and players make it even more lost cause to buy a CD with 12 songs (5-6 of which you will listen to) for $20, when MP3 CD’s hold 100+ songs, every one of which you will listen to.
The radio shares their copies with us and is able to be recorded, so they are sharing aren’t they? They have a license but are contributing just as much if not more to piracy than I would be with my 5GB collection available on *azza.
Simply put, sharing/burning is a fact of life (however good or bad you think it is) and the industry should deal with it on their own. Not every business model/industry stays at the same profit level forever. Get over it.
As for the artists personal property being exploited, again, it’s a fact of life and it is truly a shame but it must be accepted into society. Get over it, and Rock On!
Does file swapping hurt the record industry? Who knows?
But what consumers do know is that they’ve heard this spiel many times before. In the 60’s, “Pirate radio is killing the music industry.” In the 80’s, “Home taping is killing the music industry.” In the late 90’s/early 00’s, “Internet radio is killing the music industry.” Damn, the music industry is one resilient beast. It’s hard to believe the wolf is at the RIAA’s door when they’ve cried wolf so many times in the past.
Yeah, if the music industry opened its books to independent auditing, and we had an unbiased analysis of the music industry financial figures over the last 10 years…sure, maybe it could be proven that file swapping was hurting the record industry. No one would believe that anyway.
The radio is sharing the music legally. Are you don’t see the difference?? Even if there is copying off the radio (and I wonder how much there is these days, since cassette tapes have passed into history) - the industry and artists get compensation for their work, and obviously feel they can afford whatever losses occur. More songs might be copied from radio than from you, but when you add up the copying from KaZaa and all the other ones - whichever the hell ones are still up, I never know - I doubt it’s comparable. And I rather like Bill H.'s point: radio is a new medium, this is just a way to pass around what already there without paying for it.
I guess I’d be a sap to say “to reward the artists you like?” “to encourage them to record?” "because, er, you’re provided with goods and services, thus your end of the bargain is to pay money for them?
Well one thing is for sure…for the music industry to say “sales are down 8% from 1998(or whatever the number is they are claiming this week)” and it is all due to illegal file swapping is a joke.
MOST industries are in a slump…we are in a semi-recession…
and I would dearly love for someone to tell Metallica “your record sales didn’t slump because of Napster, your sales slumped because your genre of music is in a decade long slump”
Best Buy. But I went to Wal-mart last week and they were around 12 or 13. Maybe its just that way down here
“Are you don’t see the difference?”?
I said they had a license, so I do know the difference. My point was that there was so much sharing going on, it’s become a fact of life. Piracy is everywhere, why all of the sudden think that you can do something about it and then think that it will help boost the industry?
Pay money for CD’s to support the artist? That era is long gone, but go ahead, keep spending your money. Metallica could sure use your $20… to pay for a fraction of the cost of the guitars they break on stage… Jennifer Lopez could use your $20 to help pay for her $3000 chandelier in her $3 mil house.
I’m glad to pay for concerts, that’s about it.
I omitted the word “saying.”
I didn’t say all the money went to the artist. That was never true. Some goes to the artist, some goes to the people doing the artwork, the promotions for the album, the publishing rights, the cost of actually making the album, the cost of shipping copies hither and yon, and label stuff. Yes, some musicians are really rich, plenty aren’t. You think Metallica and JLo are the rule? If you buy the album, you’re still, in part, compensating the musicians for actually making the album. If you’re getting it online illegally, you’re not doing that. Taking something from the person who made it without paying does rather strike me as stealing. The fact that it’s a fact of life doesn’t change anything, other than meaning the industry has to adjust for it.
That’s cool, although what you say is just as true for a major concert as it is for an album. The number of shows I see in a year is higher than the number of CDs I buy, and I don’t easily stomach giving money to Clear Channel and Ticketmaster, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sneaking into the show wouldn’t fix what’s wrong with the system.
I think it has hurt and helped the industry.
I think it hurts with new releases. I downloaded about half the tracks from the new Peter Gabriel album. I didn’t rush out to buy the album. The wife ended up buying it for me as a gift and I listened to half of it once in the car. But I would have never bought it myself.
That said, I have recently bought a bunch of CD’s of older albums which I downloaded a few tracks from. After listening, I found myself wanting the album. Some of these are albums I used to own on LP. I’ll listen to the track and remember how much I enjoyed the album. So I’ll buy it again.
I think the industry would do themselves a favour by allowing the free trading of mono tracks. Good enough to listen to but not good enough to really enjoy -sparking the consumer to shell out the cash for a better version. I really think if the companies encoded their active catalogs in mono mp3’s and flooded the P2P networks with low quality tracks they’d see a rise in CD sales.
I have done research on mp3 for my final project in college and i asked lots of Dublin musicians what they thought, some reckoned that mp3 file sharing helped them get a live following in Britain and America (and they often sold their album to fans at the gigs) that they could not have had otherwise. Many smaller bands like the promotional benefits of their songs being traded in mp3.
As far as album sales are concerned,
If you have a slow connection to the web you probably download the odd song and perhaps buy the album (or burn your friend’s copy) if you like what you hear but if you’ve a very fast connection you’d probably just download the whole album. So i reckon some filesharing is detrimental and some beneficial but how it balances out is anybody’s guess. More “real” research needs to be done i suppose.
Not much help probably, sowwee,
Mogi
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Music industry revenue has not dropped as much as music releases have. That is, the record companies are releasing fewer albums but making more per release.
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P2P file sharing is just as much a “new medium” as radio was. Where else can you mix and match individual tracks by various artists of your own choosing, or browse music based on recommendations or the collections of others?
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Radio is just as much an outlet for free music as P2P sharing is. You think Britney gets a dime every time you turn on your radio and hear her song?
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Recent releases by Radiohead (popular on the internet) and Eminem (popular among teenage males, the most common file traders) have not suffered in the sales department, even though they’ve been available online for weeks before they were available in stores.
“From the person who made it”, eh? Considering how much file sharing goes on, the record company shelves must be pretty bare now if all that music is being taken from them!
I was never a big music buyer before I used P2P filesharing services, but I have since stopped almost entirely. On the other hand, I’ve gone to many more concerts in the past few years than I ever did back then. I have a pretty small budget for this kind of thing, but I’d estimate that I spend approximately half to a quarter as much on tickets as I used to on cds (say a concert every few months instead of 1 cd per month)
So, in my case, the music industry has been hurt some, but cd sales have gone down more. This is a pattern that I see in many of my friends as well.
And, Mr2001, in regards to “You think Britney gets a dime every time you turn on your radio and hear her song?”, I think the answer is yes. IIRC, Radio stations pay fees based on the number of listeners they have.
The way I see it (*azaa user), buying CDs is a waste of money that I barely have, and if I do (snowball’s chance in hell) buy a CD, it might come with only one track I like and the others I might hate. So, why buy CDs making recording artists richer than they already are, while making me poorer than I am? So, I just go and download a song I might like from the radio, though I admit I’m hesitant when it comes to deleting it afterwards.
Besides, they can live without their personal assistants for one day, can’t they?
-To"Be a dear and fetch me some mineral water"paz
I dont think that MP3 trading between all us normal[?] people can hurt the record industry, I think however that a certain groups reaction to it is more likely to effect there record sales… yes everyone knows I mean Metalican and Napstr right? I mean those guys are millionaires and not only did they want to sue Napstr, they wanted to sue there fans! and ANYONE who downloaded a Metallica tune from Napstr, subsequently got banned from the site. That action probabaly effected the sales of metallica records more so then any amount of MP3 trading will ever do.
I mean to look at it from the other side, Dave Matthews Band, released a track, I think it was on Napstr, on one of these sites, officially, before it was released on CD, and actually increased there sales because of it…
Personally for me, if I download a song and I like it, Il more then likely go out and buy the CD, sorry but I really cant be bothered downloading 14 or 15 tracks and putting it onto a disk myself, Id rather pay the money.
Also on a different note because Im not sure if this falls under the record industry or some other industry, the majority of artists make there money from merchandise not record sales, so if the proceeds of these sales are included as record industry profits then I doubt P2P or MP3 trading is going to hurt the record Industry.
Unfortunately RIAA dont see it like that…
I hope that makes sence, Im going from memory of a napstar spech i had to right a couple months ago
Can we please stop calling it stealing? It’s infringement. That’s what the law calls it. Stealing means taking and depriving. Infringement involves using someone else’s property without their permission.
For me, the music industry has hurt itself. I’ve used P2P, but 99% of what I download isn’t even in stores (you know, live tracks, TV theme songs, etc.). There’s about 2 active bands that I buy from, and their release are the only CDs I’ve bought in the past year and a half. Not because I download stuff, because there’s nothing I want.
I guess I’m different in that regard because usually people finish the “music today sucks” rant by listing the 10 obscure indie bands they like. Honestly, I’d rather buy PS2 games and DVDs. 
However, I would like this question answered: if the anti-file sharing stuff will benefit the artists so much and not just the record companies, why hasn’t every band on every major label come out and said, “stop downloading”?
In my case, the opposite is true. I’ve bought two Bloodhound Gang CDs, two Daft Punk CDs, one Lo Fidelity Allstars CD, one Fatboy Slim CD, one Garbage CD, and one Blue Man Group CD, thanks to illegal downloads. Before Napster, I only bought soundtracks and albums from the two bands I followed.
Somewhat correct. How do you suppose the radio station knows how many listeners they have?
They don’t; they guess based on polls. If I hear Britney’s hot new song and call up 5 of my friends to tell them about it, guess what: 5 more people are now hearing that song for free, and Britney isn’t getting another penny. If a hundred people in the county do the same thing, that’s 5000 people hearing the song for free.
[RIAA spin]Oh, but see, “infringement” just doesn’t call up the same emotions in people as “stealing”. Everyone hates thieves, but most people just don’t care about copyright infringers. Obviously those people have been misled by the Vast Anti-Artist Conspiracy, so the people saying “stealing” are just ah, misleading them back in the (copy)right direction.[/RIAA spin]
Well, I can only speak from my own personal experince. I can’t say that it’s really helped or hurt. Here’s what I think anyway:
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“CD fatigue” - as others have mentioned, I can’t stand to pay $1x for a CD with one or two good songs on it. In my pre-Internet days, I simply did without. Now I download it because I simply can’t be bothered to drive to Best Buy for one song - or pay an exorbitant price from Amazon (including shipping) for a single track.
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“Incredible Shrinking Selection” - About ten years ago, I would stop by Tower Records every Thursday (payday for me) and see what they had, usually coming out with $40-$50 worth of stuff. The last time in was in their original Atlanta location (for you ATL dopers, the Around Lenox one) well over half the store was given over to books, magazines and DVDs. And what stock they actually had was of a dismal quality. Back in the day they always carried at least one copy of every Madonna album, a slew of CD singles and three or four Japanese or European album CDs. The last time I went I found around 10 copies of “Music”, 2 copies of “Ray of Light” and one copy of “GHV2”. How am I supposed to buy the music if they don’t have it to sell?? And it’s not just Tower: when Best Buy stores came to Atlanta a decade or so ago, the entire front half of the store was dedicated to CDs - classical CDs even had their own room at the Gwinnett Place Mall store. The last time I was in that store (a year ago) the CD area had shrunk to around a quarter of its original size - even less if you count the classical room, which now houses washers and dryers. But I know what some of you are thinking: “you can always order it online!” Yes I could, but most of the band I like are from the UK, so the CDs cost $25-$30 and “typically ship in 2-3 weeks”. Hmmmmm… So I can buy 2 Saint Etienne CDs from Amazon for $60 and wait a month for them or download them now for free?? Which one will I choose?
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“RIAAs Opinion Of Me” - I understand RIAAs arguments. I understand that me downloading an album off a P2P service means that someone is out some money. But the second RIAA called me a “thief” they made me their enemy. Hell, half the time I download a track from a P2P now I think to myself “take THAT Hilary Rosen!” Seriously, RIAA must have the worst PR people of any industry. I’ve never seen so much hysteria and misinformation come from one source since Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf hit the scene! RIAA skews any data source they offer as “proof” of piracy hurting their sales - no cite, but I once read something on the New York Times website about a report RIAA once offered to the media that only took into account their profits from new album sales, neglecting their back catalogues entirely. So while it’s true that the industry has to move a huge number of J. Lo or Eminem CDs to cover all their costs, every time someone buys a copy of a long paid-for CD like Duran Duran’s Rio or AC\DC’s Back In Black the labels make almost pure profit on it. RIAA totally left all that profit out of the “data” in the report and has done that again and again since. And not only that, they’re going after ISPs and end-users and trying to get Congress to pass laws to make them judge and jury over whether I violated their copyright. Screw them. If my dry cleaner called me a thief I wouldn’t go back, so why shouldn’t it be the same for RIAA?
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“Lack Of Anything New”: In the past year I just haven’t found any new music worth listening to - paid for or not. I’m sure it’s out there - it must be - but the wasteland that is radio and EmptyV isn’t showing it. I wonder if music in general is in a malaise - a holding pattern before something new comes along.
To add to my section about “RIAAs Opinion Of Me”:
RIAA always tends to shift any discussion about their business model to the “poor artists”. We always hear something along the lines of “using P2P programs means that Britney Spears loses money”. Which to me would be all well and good if Britney made more than a friggin’ nickel off a CD sale. I wish RIAA would stop trying to use that line of argument - my pity for them (RIAA) tends to go out the window when I find out that “my favorite artist” only gets a dime or two from an $18 CD.
Other things about the music biz that have pissed me off and thus made P2P seem less of a “crime” than they (and some one this board) would like me to think:
Going after used CD stores - yes, Virginia there was a time when RIAA actually tried suing used CD stores out of existence. Seems hard to believe it I know, but it really happened. How greedy can these people be?
Going after imports - I avidly collected records during my teen years in the 1980s. If anyone else reading this thread is in their thirties they might remember a time (1985-1987) when the import CD market almost disappeared entirely. This was because the music industry had a rule passed (notice I said “rule” not “law”) by (IIRC) the Federal Trade Commission that forbid the import for resale of any album of which a domestic copy was also available. Simple protectionism for sure, but this meant that we consumers could no longer buy the UK version of The Cult’s Love which had three bonus tracks unavailable in the US or Madonna’s Like A Virgin CD (which is the only place you can find the original version of “Into The Groove” aside from German and Japanese CD singles which were hard to find). I can’t remember why this rule was dropped - probably all the mergers in the music industry which made the protectionist part moot - but there you go. This thing alone pissed me off for years.
I think that with so much media monopolization that has been happening in recent years, and the growing centralization of radio stations through mega-corporations like Clear Channel, people have been looking elsewhere for more options. If Clear Channel owns something like 1,200 stations across the US, and plays a relatively small and corporate-approved selection for rotation, people get exposed to less and less music options on the radio. Mega-corporations each house a number of labels. What few small independent labels remain have a more difficult time than ever, getting airplay for their artists, and getting video rotation (if they can even afford to make any videos). Music industry corporations churn out pop products, and just aren’t interested in nurturing new artists anymore. All the labels vie to have the Next Big Thing, and once it’s “found”, all the brother and sister labels rush to find the clones of the Next Big Thing, and feed off of those sound-alike successes. General public music trend attention span is about 6 months long. Then people want something else.
There’s a sort of illness in the entertainment industry these days, and the RIAA attempting to sue the planet, and force everyone into the kind of submission where we go back to buying tepid products for continually high prices that have a shelf-life of 6 or less months, is like trying to remove a giant cyst and put a tiny bandage over it and demand that it heal. Instead of giving people even more options than ever before, corporate plundering reduces options, streamlines choices, and labels are quick to drop an artist that doesn’t show near-immediate success.
If someone figures out that with file sharing there are millions of different music options that they can have access to as never before, who isn’t going to pursue that option? Once someone becomes aware that they no longer have to only listen to garbage like Britney Spears, the whole world opens up for them. Corporate radio and MTV/H1 become secondary to wider interests. Someone can learn to pick up three inexpensive CDs by Indie Label Artists and get 10 times the satisfaction than one $20 CD by the Next Big Thing with only a few decent songs on it, they might as well sell to a used record store in a few months. So why not just file share those 1-3 good songs/get them for free, and sav