Album Sales Way Down!

[Rick]

I guess this is the place to post for something like this but I think my topic will spark a little lively discussion.

As reported by USA Today...record sales are taking their first loss since tracking of sales began in 1990. The RIAA obviously blames file sharing for the problem but the bottom line is that people just aren't buying the music like they used to.

My question is this: In your opinion, why do you think that there has been a decline and if you think it has to do with P2P like I do, then what do you think the RIAA could have done differently or can do to help themselves out here?

I will start off a little but but not ruin the whole discussion. I think it's pretty obvious that P2P has sucked record sales dry but what I see is a stingy market that was not willing to listen to their customers demans. Napster was a huge hit and I believe that labels could have used this to their advantage. Instead, they fought against momentum and now they stand in decline.

Rick

[MSNwar]

Here in Germany the major music stores are always full. The most popular stores are MediaMarkt and ProMarkt. The two are technology stores, i.e. Music, PCs, T.V.s, Coffee machines, etc., and the music departments are always full. It has been a private interest of mine for the past year to observe the girls in the music departments. In doing so, I noticed something one day and have been keenly interested since. The people are in small groups of three to four per group. They do two things. One, they pitch-in and buy the CD. Then they go to the CD-R section and buy a box of cheap CDs. Two, they might shoplift a few CDs while only paying for one.

I think shoplifting and copying the CDs goes hand-in-hand or CD-in-Pocket. Never the less, the Record Companies loose money.

[FthrJACK]

i think that they have angered a lot of p2p users who would otherwise have ended up buying albums and in doing so just made them revolt against riaa by refusing to buy any more albums. Thats my stance anyway. theres no way im paying over the odds for a CD i know the company pays less than 20C for and maybe 20c packaging.

Theres no way im paying for a CD with 10 crap songs on and 2 good songs on.

theres no way im buying CD's and putting money into RIAAs pocket, why support someone you hate by giving them money, before you say otherwise... where do you think RIAA gets its money from...? RECORD COMPANIES.

i rarely buy cds. when i do its by bands i know turn out good material, consistently, by artists that deserve the money, and 99% of the time AFTER ive downloaded some of the tracks from the internet first, to make sure im not blowing money on a pile of crud.

im sick of these bands and artists that you have never heard of that release some junk pop songs they never even wrote, mean nothing to them, and they disapear in 3 months. TV shows like pop idol, fame academy, etc etc make me want to spew.

Commercial, manufactured garbage bands can go back to packing cat toys at the local factory where they came from, they linger around like a bad smell till the record companies get as bored of them as we are, and as sick of their jumped up attitudes as we are then they dump them. why waste your cash on this rubbish.. ill never know.

also.. how many of you out there tell friends about songs and artists and send them an mp3 over messenger.. or suggest they try it and grab it from a p2p application? ive done this so many times myself, artists wanting to become known in other countries should take note, ive told American friends about songs and artists they have never heard of plenty of times before, take kylie, i remember telling sedative about her erm.... nice videos long before she was known in the usa.

and kylies videos are good.. .. .. so is her new calendar, all in see thru undies for 12 months... cant wait for jan 1st! hehe w00t

[ThA_FiLeR]

In my opinion I use p2p allot because:

-Like tris says, most of the time it's just about a couple of songs, rest is s***..

-$10-$15 it's getting cheaper, but im still too poor to afford it.

-I like to have cd's with only music I like and not carry 5cd's and only having about 20good songs..

-I can't afford a ride to a store.

-I can't afford shipping in an online store and the wait for arrival..

-One very big point is that they barely have any trance music up in the stores, when I used to be living in The Netherlands I had plenty of choice but here in Florida, I can get a couple of things like Dj Sammy, Dirty Vegas and have heard some Lasgo on the radio (which are alright, but nog enough)

When I would by a cd:

-If I could customize it right there in the store and then get it burned for a nice price

-If it had some nice music vids on it

-If I didn't have a pc to burn or download it (duh)

Also, when looking around on school I see 80% burned cd's that ppl be listening to. When I be asking them what they listening to, they say "mix" which is most of the time all off the internet.

[ThA_FiLeR]

Oh, and tris, I never heard of kylie.. is it trance? hook me up with it too

[MSNwar]

I am not condoning the Record Companies or RIAA. After reading my earlier post it kind of sounds like I am. My point is that people will acquire music in the cheapest or easiest method possible. Especially when CD burners make it so easy.

Who hasn't pitched in and paid for a CD with a group of friends? How many times have we burned a copy of a copy or had our friend do it for us? Some people have and others have not. It is all the same. But it is so simple and that is why people do it. Now-a-days just about everyone is doing it. That does not make it right from one point of view (Record Companies).

Did you know that here in Germany every CD Writer manufacturer has to pay heavy fees for selling their recorders? Two years back Hewlett-Packard was the first manufacturer to pay the bill. Others followed soon after. The fees were in the $100,000.00 plus range per manufacturer. They still sell them, but pay an added fee per recorder. Thats one reason why they are so expensive here. It must be profitable for both the state and the manufacturer. Otherwise the manufacturers would simply stop selling them.

Same with CDs. Would record companies stop selling the music if it was not profitable? Enter RIAA and like FthrJack said the Record Companies are in fact RIAA. Sure, they stopped Napster, but not before Napster made a fortune. Napster was in it for the big bucks just like the Record Companies are in it ... for the big bucks. Now that the Record Companies have a watch dog with the law on their side they walk tall and carry a big stick. Are they bigger than the CD Recorder Manufacturers? That is their real target. They just have not reached that level yet.

Safeguard your recorders folks!

[Rick]

Okay...just think back to the days of tapes. It was so common to copy tapes that nobody really gave it a thought. It wasn't until the cd burning days that I ever even stopped to wonder if copying was wrong.

Actually, I don't forsee a stop in cd burners but what I do see are more controls on copyright laws while making the burners. I see a cooperation between the cd burner makers and RIAA and other media companys to put in a hardware block for burning copyrighted cd's.

Rick

[MSNwar]

I see a cooperation between the cd burner makers and RIAA and other media companys to put in a hardware block for burning copyrighted cd's. 

Rick

That was started here in Germany and quickly shot down. Again, money.

[Snoop]

As reported by USA Today...record sales are taking their first loss since tracking of sales began in 1990. The RIAA obviously blames file sharing for the problem but the bottom line is that people just aren't buying the music like they used to.

they arent making music, bands or lyrics like they used to either hmmm

anyway havent they ever thought that people might not listen to as much music these days they might spend there money on console and pc games instead which is obviously a hell of alot more entertaining than half the tripe they release especially at this time of year when cover versions are at an all time high *sigh*

[FthrJACK]

@Rick, i say this time and time again it wont work!!!!

when they started putting Cactus on CD's all that happened is a lot of people who bought the legit CD's found they wouldnt work in their CD player, never mind their computer. i think nattalie imbruglias CD was one of the first to use it and it got returned that much they withdrew it from stores!

Another was Shakira "Laundry service" most copies of that have some variant of Cactus on them, now i see it in stores without the warning label saying it wont work in a PC... so i think same has happened there too.

As for those people who downloaded the MP3s and burned them to CD they didnt have any of this trouble with it not working in their stereo!

how easy was cactus to bypass?

Easy ill tell you, take your CD, put it in a CD player (if you can find one that will play a Cactus protected CD that is) hook the CD players Earphone socket upto your sound cards mic socket, hit record.

oh.. **** that was so difficult!!! (hardly DeCSS was it?)

What record companies need to do is not restrict users who buy the legitimate product, as in the case of Cactus, but make it easier for them to get music, and harder for people to download music without paying.

they should release some tracks, or parts of tracks for download, some artists do this now, i think Avril Lavignes album has about 4 songs you can download from her website, they are low quality and only half of the song, but it solves the problem i mentioned earlier of not nowing if the CD has a lot of junk on it.

Record companies response is "buy the single then" but we all know that usually one song is from the album and the other 2 or 3 are junk or maybe even good or alternate versions, but dont give a proper impression of the album.. after all if they made the album out to be bad then they wouldnt sell them would they.. DOH.

[Drewdatrip]

I remind you of the titanic, "the unsinkable ship"..anything that is built, can be compromised..all it takes is time and thought....nothing uncrackable.....its just that simple

=Drew

[Rick]

My thoughts from the beginning have been that if the record labels would get with technology and offer their stuff...all of it...online. They should offer pay services and people would pay for it. I guarantee it. If I could listen samples of tracks and then make a choice to buy, that would be nice. Or pay a subsription fee to d/l stuff. This is nothing new...it has been suggested over and over but RIAA thinks they can win the war and stop technology. Yes they are very powerful but not enough to just shut down file sharing. PPL like Sharman who own Kazaa don't like having to depend on the stupid spyware crap. I believe they would all cooperate if all could profit.

Rick

[MSNwar]

CDNow had it right when they offered a list of music, you could select individual songs, they would burn them, and mail the CD to you. Or you could download the songs. All at a price. Now they have a deal with amazon.com and it does not seem to work that way.

[Da_fLaRe]

Who could blame p2p for making album sales way down! Personally i'd download as much music from the internet as possible, i carn't because iam only on dialup and it would take too long, but record companys sell their music at high prices, so of course people would rather pay a few pounds/dollars to go on the net and download thier favourite music

[Crispy]

... record sales are taking their first loss since tracking of sales began in 1990.  The RIAA obviously blames file sharing for the problem but the bottom line is that people just aren't buying the music like they used to ...

Maybe because the music sold today generally isen't as good as it has been the past 10 years? ... Anyone thought of that?