# Who handled the emergence of the Internet worse - the newspaper industry or the music industry?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-handled-the-emergence-of-the-internet-worse-the-newspaper-industry-or-the-music-industry/508544
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [September 1, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-handled-the-emergence-of-the-internet-worse-the-newspaper-industry-or-the-music-industry/508544 "2009-09-01T21:36:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2009, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-handled-the-emergence-of-the-internet-worse-the-newspaper-industry-or-the-music-industry/508544/41 "2009-09-08T01:07:11Z")
> [@Markxxx](#):
>
> The final fact is that most peope will download music they’d never buy.
Um, as a 40 year old straight male who has Fergie and Lady Sovereign in his playlist, I can confirm this. I’d have to put on a hat and dark glasses and make a foray to another town to buy THAT crap in CD format.
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2009, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-handled-the-emergence-of-the-internet-worse-the-newspaper-industry-or-the-music-industry/508544/42 "2009-09-08T09:52:41Z")
> [@Markxxx](#):
>
> The music industry went through many changes in the mid to late 90s and has yet to come to terms with them. First was the end of the rock era. This was a huge blow that most people still refuse to accept though popular music has been replaced with R&B and Rap and rock music is in the back seat now, much as the change over TO Rock in 1955.
>
> This meant a lot of mainstream people were put off and stop buying.
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> Second was the end of cassette tapes and the change over to CDs. People were busy replacing tapes and vinyl with CDs and this inflated sales. When people replaced their CDs they stopped. The mp3s came out and people fearing another change over of formats, stopped buying again.
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> When the sales dropped the music industry blamed piracy instead of recognizing a shift out of Rock Music and the fact that now that CDs could be ripped, music was competing with itself. There simply is no need to come up with new groups because people can go buy the Beatles and get the original. Groups like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac are still touring and selling their old stuff.
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> Hence the market for new stuff is limited, simply because there is so much of the old stuff to buy.
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> MySpace has over one million profiles for bands and solo artists alone. That is one MILLION people pretty much giving away their stuff for free.
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> The market is oversaturated. Singers like actors and writers have outpriced themselves and are being replaced by ametuers.
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> The final fact is that most peope will download music they’d never buy. The music industry sees each download as a missed sale. But if it wasn’t free it wouldn’t be downloaded.
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> Also the Internet has allowed people to basically choose their own music and in a sense be their own radio station. This means acts that got by, though riding on other acts via the radio, the “one good song, three bad songs, one good song” bridge used by radio, provided royalties, however minimal to marginal artists.
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> This is fading quickly.
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> So easily the music industry still hasn’t learned to cope with the Internet, 'cause they are ignoring everything about it. You can’t force a business model on people, yet this is what they are trying to do.
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> But they’ll learn. Movies killed Vaudeville, TV killed Movies, TV killed Radio, FM killed AM etc etc. But none of them died they all came back in different forms with different business models. Vaudeville is back via reality TV and YouTube.
You forgot demographic shift.
Fewer births (in the West), fewer young people, more old people, more immigrants from non-Western countries.
So…young people were always the big music market, & nobody is adapting to non-Western musical tastes.
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2009, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-handled-the-emergence-of-the-internet-worse-the-newspaper-industry-or-the-music-industry/508544/43 "2009-09-08T22:08:11Z")
The newspaper industry gave away the store. The music industry padlocked the penny candy.
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### Author:  [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-handled-the-emergence-of-the-internet-worse-the-newspaper-industry-or-the-music-industry/508544/44 "2009-09-08T22:33:55Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#):
>
> The newspaper industry gave away the store. The music industry padlocked the penny candy.
Maybe. In any case the “product” can be multiplied for pretty much nothing. The marginal cost is almost zero. For most musicians, that means they can sell their product to millions of users with a cost (for most bands) of just a couple of thousand dollars to make the recording. Let’s say 20,000 for a pretty damn good album (excluding the time it takes for the musicians themselves to turn up).
Record companies are just middle men; they lend the money to make the record to the musicians, and then they advertise (at 1000% the recording cost or more) and move the physical records to the stores. Then when the recordings sell, they take off all the costs and give a couple of percents of the profits (this generally means turnover minus ALL the costs, including promotion, distribution and recording) back to the artist. This means there’s practically no reason for any business savvy artist to make a deal with a record company at all, although a distribution deal may be worth it.
I really have no idea how newspapers are going to survive. But I’m 100% certain record companies as we know them now are not going to survive the next decade. And good riddance, too.
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