h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The music industry is in decline, based on "rampant piracy", according to the latest report (see here).

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040407/325/eqijf.html

Given that it is going to be very difficult for piracy to be prevented, how do you think this will play out? Is commercial music dead, or will it survive in some different way? What are your thoughts?

Woodpigeon

I read somewhere the other day that people downloading music from the internet actually has very little impact on sales of cds, i think it said something about people who download songs tha if they were unable to download them, they wouldn't actually buy the cds.

But i can't remember where i read this or anything

What's going to happen to it? It's going to have to buck its ideas up and stop blaming everyone but themselves for falling singles sales.
Piracy, it has to be admitted, doesn't necessarily help. But there are two massive assumptions, and one complete ignoring of the facts, in the current argument by the music industry:
1) That the vast majority of people who download pirated music would go out and buy the CD if they couldn;t download the music off the internet.
2) That the vast majority of people downloading pirated music don't buy the CD afterwards.

Neither of these two asumptions is valid.
I think what the big problem is is that the music industry has got extremely greedy. I mean, how many times have you in the past taped a copy of an album your mate has? How many pirated copies of LPs and EPs are there out there from previous decades? Tons is the answer. They treat this like it is something new, but it isn't. They've coped for decades. Now I don;t believe in ripping people off, musicians and the general public included, but saying that internet pirates are solely to blame is cobblers.
And, of course, most of the music industy is not losing money hand over fist because of this. They may not be making as much because singles sales have dramatically fallen, I think you only need a couple of tens of thousands sold these days to get int he top ten. Used to be up to 100,000 I believe.
CDs are too expensive, Singles are way too expensive. And people are voting with their feet. Also, many tunes these days seem to have a limited shelf life. Why pay 15 quid for something you like and think is 'kinda cool'?
They are going about this entirely the wrong way. It is all stick and no carrot, and people don;t respond well to that. I think the approach taken has shown exactly how little regard the industry holds the individual punter in.
Just off to find some relevant stories about how the music industry is actually making money and not suffering at all
At least one economist article I remember reckons the actual impact of P2P (which is what they really mean by piracy) is about 1 CD Sale in 5000 lost (in the USA).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/29/uk_oz_album_sales_rise/

Not necessarily my first choice of reference for 'the truth' but a good article. Make sure you read all of it though as the first section reads initially like they are on the side of the BPI.

But basically, album sales have risen. Revenue from album sales is up over £1Bn (US Billion I assume). CD Singles have fallen, which is hardly surprising.

I can't remember the last time i bought a cd single

Usually, i buy the album and thats it, if the record company relaease the album after the first single, then whats the point in wating money buying the single

wating = wasting

People don't want to pay £5 for 3 songs. That's the problem - the record companies are killing themselves with their own greed.

The research (canadian I think) shows that the vast majority of downloaders do it on the basis of downloading stuff they wouldn't have bought anway, or try before you buy or is too difficult to get hold of thanks to the trans-atlantic music wars that are still raging after nigh on 50 years meaning that music doesn't always get published on both sides of the pond.

Those that download shed-loads of stuff generally just keep it - these are usually the sorts of people who would in the past have bought music, copied it then taken it back anyway.

Other research shows that in monetary terms, the money that is no longer being spent on music-singles is being spent on DVDs...which not only provide us with movies/music/stories but, shock, horror, more information, behind the scenes stuff and interactivity...I wonder why on earth people might prefer getting all that for not much more money than just 3 songs...

Anyone detect a hint of sarcasm there?

no, no sarcasm evident there at all

The research is actually from all over. The report I quoted was UK and said much the same thing as your Canadian report. Apparently Australia is the same.
I think the bit which really annoys me and shows the arrogance of the BPI and related groups is this (from the link I posted earlier)

"In a survey of 3667 members of the public aged between 12 and 74, 17.8 per cent said they had downloaded music. Of those, 92 per cent - 600 people - admitted to using illegal file-sharing sites.

On the basis of this figure, and an assumed 48.78 million members of the music buying public, the BPI reckons some eight million Brits are stealing songs via illegal file-shares."

Now, anyone want to poke holes in that?

...and these reports didn't say anything about the illegal price fixing on CDs or the refusal to freely publish American music in Europe and vice versa?


Is it any wonder why people who buy online generally import stuff from Australia?

In teh UK high-street sales of CDs have been something I bipass as much as possible for as long as I can remember. Do they really think that I'll walk into HMV/Andy's/Our price/whatever other shop you can think of, and spend £15 or more for a CD album, that I can get for less than £10, off the net, including postage, and which will arrive in a couple of days? They've priced themselves out of the market, good luck to them.
Secondly, if they insist on doing what they seem to do to some CDs, and 'copy protect' them, then they are forcing me, and others like me to break the law, I have purchased this CD, what I then do with it, is basically my own problem, if they try to prevent me using this CD by copy protecting it, then I'll just continue going round and round with various pieces of software to lift the music off it, so I can use* the music in the way I wish to do so, I've purchased the music, and I have certain rights in using it, the majority of which are legal* uses of the music I've purchased...

Sony themselves in the instructions for their minidisc recorders/players say you should make backups of your CDs digital data onto MD to preserve the original

A lot of the time in this house, we want to make a copy of particular songs, so we can stick them on a media player on the PC, to make it easier to play them, especially whilst lodger is working out new tunes for his band, we ain't distributing it to anyone, we ain't sharing it over the web, it is still for our use, and as we have paid for it, I don't see why they should try and stop us, BTW, it takes a little while to get round the copy protected CDs the first time, I think its about four or five different bits of freeware needed to get round it, but its quite easy once you've got the hang; I gues s'professional' CD pirating peoples, can do it even easier, so what is the copy protection for? To protect us? To protect them? It doesn't do neither of them, but it does manage to f**k off their customers...

The music industry can go and rot in its own filth for all I care. Music is an art form, not an industry.

Ah - ok. So this is my question - Say the music industry is completely overwhelmed by free-copying. Say the execs and the hangers-on and distributors and the minders all lose their jobs. Are we still saying that the *musicians* should work for free? Are we saying that the production people should work for free? I presume not. So how do you think they would be able to earn a crust in this scenario?

the big joke in all this is that the musicians loose almost nothing. Revenue from a CD for the producing artists is rarely more than € 1 for all of them. The only people than get more is the really big names with spectacular contracts, or people that distribute it outside the mayor labels. Most of the income of musicians comes from live shows and merchandise. This is how I preferably support artists, although I also buy CD's when they are good enough. The fact that the record labels (that grab most of the pay) would possibly disappear doesn't worry me at all. Maybe this is the beginning of a big change in mainstream distibution of music, who knows?

Another problem is that there is no respect for the music "industry" as a source of entertainment, so people feel no goodwill towards them and are happy to rip 'em off wherever possible. When you look at AOL-Time-Warner or Stock-Aitken-Waterman etc etc etc, does anyone really think "wow, these people are doing me a real favour by providing this great music", or does everyone think they're a bunch of greedy >something< who churn out disposable pop trash cover-version bands and mediocre R'n'B "re-imaginings" of old songs which then sell to children on the basis of image, regardless of the content. What they're finding now, is that the marketing of the music industry to children has a limited scope as children have very low disposable income in comparison to adults. Now, all the bands that adults and fans of "non-pop" music enjoy are signed to small labels which can't publicise and get air time on the radio, hence a spiraling descent of profit. Not really anything to do with piracy (which has been around ages - everyone used to tape albums for their mates on audio tape long before the internet and CD burners were around).

Yeah, most commercial radio stations are very boring. It's not that they play particularly awful songs, it's the constant repitition that bugs me.

It'd be nice if there were some decent pirate radio stations around where I live now. I occasionally picked one up where I used to live and it was usually quite refreshing.

Aha, so there's widespread discontent with the radio? I wasn't sure if the quality of popular music had decreased, or if I had changed, or both. I used to get internet radio -- radioio70s, in fact, very decent -- but then my Media Player broke .

I think the music industry has really shot itself in the foot over piracy and what have you. As has been mentioned already here, piracy is not a new trend. I couldn't begin to count the number of albums I copied for myself and for friends before I even owned a computer. Granted, it's easier, and more in the open now, but the basic idea is still the same - if your buddy has it, you can have it too for virtually nothing. Sharing programs just make it like you have a whole lot of buddies with a whole lot more music to share.

If the money from record sales isn't mostly going to bands in the first place (and why the hell isn't it?), I could care less if record company bigwigs are getting their pocketbooks emptied out. Want to sell more albums? Bring the damn prices down. Steps in the right direction are being taken by sites like itunes, that will let you download a song for a dollar or so.

As for what's to come, CD's will probably be decreasing in popularity in the years to come as digital music becomes more popular and more practical (we already have portable mp3 players, after all; it's only a matter of time before the technology gets better). Commercial music will still be around, but I think it's going to get cheaper. It almost has to.