The Dying Music Industry

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Sat May 03, 2003 5:40 pm

Did anyone get the message on KAzaa networks from the RIAA urging you to stop stealing music?

Mix magazine, www.mixonline.com, has released an interesting issue touching on many facets of what is so broken with the recording and record industry.

Here's a neat figure to start a discussion:

CD albums sales in 2002 - 680.9 million
CD-R sales in 2002 - 5.23 BILLION

mexicanjunior · Post by **mexicanjunior** » Sat May 03, 2003 5:44 pm

sixstop wrote:Did anyone get the message on KAzaa networks from the RIAA urging you to stop stealing music?

Nope.

Ean · Post by **Ean** » Sat May 03, 2003 6:49 pm

There were 2 nice little critial reading passages on the SATs today about "stealing" music... one of them said that CD sales have actually gone up since the emergence of Napster/KaZaA and other P2P sharing networks... I'm not too sure about the validity of the passage, but it goes to show you that money DOES matter.

If I ever come out with a cd, I'd give them away for free 8) (well, maybe one or two...)

Jace Tsunami · Post by **Jace Tsunami** » Sat May 03, 2003 10:21 pm

CD-Rs are used for so much more than just music tho, you have to credit them that much. And if they are being used for music, you have to look at mix CD values, all of it's not nessicarly pirated.

On the issue of pirating music tho, I'm really not for it at all. I hate how there are people that just get music for free from a whole bunch of respectable artists, and then just never pay anything to support them.

However, at the same time, i'm kinda glad I can do it myself. Sometimes I lack the appropriate funds to BUY a CD so I have to pirate it. But sadly, I'm one of the few people in our fine little nation that will go back and pay for a copy of the actual album later, when I have money.

Right now I have more CDs than I can count, and 3 of them are pirated. In the past I must have pirated over 30 diffrent albums, 3 are left that I need to replace, and I would have by now if I had any money, which I don't tho. I've been doing this for years, even when I had dial up. It'd take me a couple days to get a CD, but I did it.

Chaos Angel · Post by **Chaos Angel** » Sat May 03, 2003 10:37 pm

I download MP3s like a madman, but I never download an entire CD, and I try to not get more than 5 songs from any given CD. If I like that many songs on a CD, I figure I'll just buy it. Hell, I've bought and am considering buying CDs based off of just one song I downloaded by chance. I bought The Bends just because I liked My Iron Lung, and got Amnesiac entirely on faith (Pablo Honey and OK Computer were gifts and don't count). I am going to buy John Hermanson's self-titled CD just because I frikken love Sensational. I bought Mellan Collie and the Infinite Sadness because of Tonight Tonight and Bullet with Butterfly Wings (almost every song on those CDs are good, too. I absolutely adore Galapogos). I also make mix discs of downloaded songs that I like. They sound like ass due to the format conversions, but they work well enough. And it's a good way to compile songs I like on one disc.

But, yeah, Jace, you ain't the only one who buys CDs, man. I like the idea of supporting the artists that I really like. I also plan to buy a CD of a lChicago band called The Locals at some point... good stuff.

Flint the Dwarf · Post by **Flint the Dwarf** » Sun May 04, 2003 12:21 am

Heh, I buy CDs more often than I should.

I generally use p2p programs to find bands that I could like, but I try not to get more than 5 or 6 songs from that band or artist. I ocassionally burn a CD with various artists for friends to introduce them to new bands, but that's about it.

And I don't buy CD-Rs, I just take 'em from friends. Bwahahahaha... haha... haaa...

TekkaRepliroid Zero · Post by **TekkaRepliroid Zero** » Sun May 04, 2003 12:47 am

Citing a February 10 article from Business Week, Mills comments, “It's [got] a fascinating statistic chart of retail music sales. In 2002, there was a downturn of 8.5 percent from 2001. But book sales were also down, as well as theme park attendance, advertising revenues, baseball — we could go on and on. Even at 2002's declined level, 20 percent more CDs were sold than in 1998, back before CD burning, downloading, MP3 and all the woes of the labels.

“What that means to me,” he continues, “is perspective. The late 1990s were boom years for the economy in general. Now we're in a recession, with unemployment at a nine-year high. Retail sales are down overall, and there's a giant restructuring going on. The music industry is essentially owned by five companies. At least two of the companies — AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal — are in financial difficulty, not because of their music divisions but because of the rest of their companies. And Sony is affected by the terrible Japanese economy, where the stock market just hit a 20-year low.”

Mills points to the massive sales of rapper 50 Cent's debut release, along with Eminem's recent multi-Platinum CD, as examples that music retailing is far from dead. “The demographic most likely to download music for free is males 16 to 20,” he notes. “That's also the demographic that's bought 12 million Eminem CDs, a good measure in any year! There's a plethora of fresh, young talent selling multi-Platinum, whether it be Avril Lavigne, Pink, Michelle Branch or Norah Jones. And look at how the older generation is selling: Santana, O Brother, Elvis, The Beatles and Paul McCartney.”

http://mixonline.com/ar/audio_studios_f ... /index.htm

There's a lot of facts that some people will ignore for convenience in these times.
I myself have been getting more into CD-finding over the last year or two now that I've been having access to the gateway of P2P to find music by people from around the world. I've been hunting down multiple CDs from Europe lately, both albums and singles, stuff that will never land in the stores on this continent. P2P does the international music scene a huge. HUGE favour. The big guns are only whining because the smaller fish are freely swimming in their pool. All artists should be given an equal advertising chance and P2P is the free-for-all arena that they need and deserve. Those that do truly like them will find the CD (provided it exists, which isn't always the case, though most of the time it obviously is).

Jace Tsunami · Post by **Jace Tsunami** » Sun May 04, 2003 12:49 am

As some one that knows a lot of bands personaly, I just thought I'd mentiont hat a TON of artists support pirating.

Sure they hope it's on my terms, but they know a lot of people are broke, if some one can get their music they tend to be pretty happy.

And if some jack ass that couldn't give a rats ass gets their music, maybe some one else will hear it through him, and they'll get a new fan.

Those are their views.

Brsrk · Post by **Brsrk** » Sun May 04, 2003 9:04 am

Jace Tsunami wrote:CD-Rs are used for so much more than just music tho, you have to credit them that much. And if they are being used for music, you have to look at mix CD values, all of it's not nessicarly pirated.

On the issue of pirating music tho, I'm really not for it at all. I hate how there are people that just get music for free from a whole bunch of respectable artists, and then just never pay anything to support them.

However, at the same time, i'm kinda glad I can do it myself. Sometimes I lack the appropriate funds to BUY a CD so I have to pirate it. But sadly, I'm one of the few people in our fine little nation that will go back and pay for a copy of the actual album later, when I have money.

I currently have a copy of Fear Factory's Hatefiles that I downloaded on dialup (took me forever cause of the length of the CD and the fact that the songs were 192 kbps, there were 18 songs. As soon as I get some cash and a ride to Best Buy, I'm gonna buy it because I like that band.

Also, the fact that CD-R sales were higher, means absolutely NOTHING. People could be using them to put data onto CD's to pass around like programs that they think are interesting. I use CD-R's mainly to put files I don't need at the moment onto them. I have all of my Counter-Strike patches on a CD, because they take up too much space that I could be using for video editing... I could go on and on, but I just woke up and don't feel like talking a lot about one subject...

Yeah music is downloaded and burned everyday, but that doesn't matter to the artists that get their CD downloaded, then the person who downloaded goes and buys the CD and both are happy. But what does kill the music industry are those people that sit at their computer all day downloading MP3's... I download probably one or so a week because the lag kills me. When I get high-speed, I might download more, but from other bands that I haven't heard a lot from yet, like E Nomine and MITTERNACHT!!!

*throws in 2 cents*

Jace Tsunami · Post by **Jace Tsunami** » Sun May 04, 2003 1:38 pm

Not everyone goes and buys their CDs they've pirated Brsrk

And I download about 5 mp3s a day. However, tese are legal mp3s, not just something some one ripped form CD and were sharing with a P2P server.

AnimeMusicVideos.org

The Dying Music Industry

The Dying Music Industry

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