Legal Downloads Won't Make Up For Drop In CD Sales
from the of-course-not dept
Jupiter Media is getting some attention today for pointing out that the legitimate music download business won’t make up for lost CD revenue. This is an apples and oranges comparison. They’re defining the market incorrectly. The market should be all music-related entertainment (or even, possibly, the entire entertainment industry). By narrowing the focus to just downloaded music vs. CDs, they miss out on plenty of other things. For example, by allowing free or cheaper downloads, more people will discover more music and spend on other things (t-shirts, fan clubs, concerts), which increase music industry revenue, but not necessarily CD revenue.
Comments on “Legal Downloads Won't Make Up For Drop In CD Sales”
Music is information...
What this boils down to is the plain and simple fact that the music industry is not selling music, they are selling a medium (a physical object that happens to have music on it…)
Their problem is, music has broken free of its cage. They do not want to prevent you from stealing music. They want to prevent you from not having to re-purchase your music each time methods of sale, storage, and playback are changed. It’s a cartel, nothing much more.
“Music is information is wants to be free.”
Oh, and please do not read that as free in no cost. Free as in free from boundries and restrictions.
Re: hack da planet
Music should b free.Fuck da indatry
No Subject Given
Perhaps if there was better music available, they would sale more. While I’m sure that users downloading free songs is hurting ‘a little’, the fact that most of today’s artist’s (used very loosely there) suck. Groups/singers used to have a following because you knew you were going to get a quality product but today’s one hit wonders aren’t getting those followers which means no one is lining up for their next CD/DVD/whatever.
The groups/artists that do have a following (think Springsteen, U2, REM, Eric Clapton, etc) have no problems getting listens to buy their music.
No Subject Given
Jupiter sells it’s studies to industry. You don’t move many market studies by announcing that your customer’s products suck.
That's not where the money is...
The reason they want to sell more cd’s is money. If you look at the price per song vs the cost of a cd they make more off the cd. Currently the artist makes more off merchandise and concerts than they do cd’s. So if downloading songs makes them more popular then the RIAA won’t get it’s cut and will get mad. That’s why they are starting to get a take of the concert money now too.
New Storage Format
I know why sales are down. All of us old fogeys have finished changing over our record collections to CD. I have already bought BMG music club CD’s to replace all of my best vinyl albums, and I suspect that my peers have completed the switch too. If they want to sell more music they need to change the storage format again. If they go to a new storage medium then sales will rise as everyone replaces their favorite CDs with the new format.
Re: Hahaha
New formats exists: DVD-A and SACD. But they are not rippable, that’s why nobody is buying them.
Re: Re: Hahaha
Other problem is they really aren’t THAT much better than the existing CD format. When the world was tape (any one besides me remember that ?) the first time you heard a CD your were totally blown away by the leap in quality. If they can some how come up with the next ‘big thing’ they’ll see huge sales again as you/I will again turn over our current collection. Otherwise, like you said, most of us old fogey’s have rebought everything we used to have and not much new is appealing to us.
Re: Re: Re: BASTARDS!
I can’t believe this.
They think that they can treat their customers the way they have, and not have it affect sales? Are they smoking crack? I haven’t bought a record since the Metallica Napster thing. And I’m not going to until the industry gets a clue. Treating your customers like garbage and expecting sales to continue unchanged is nuts.
Of course, there is another possibility.
After all the suing of college kids they did. Maybe their biggest clients have no more money because they’re in debt up to their eye balls in CRIPPLING DEBT to the RIAA.
Ever think of that?