Another Year, Another Pile of Misleading Statistics From the Recording Industry
Written by Ernesto on January 26, 2008The IFPI recently published their latest digital music report. Amongst their claims “illegal downloading” outperforms legal downloading by a ratio of 20:1, and that because of this, the recording industry has lost US$3.7 billion. Picking apart these ideas reveal that they may be very misleading.
The very idea that music sales are declining seems to leave record companies scratching their heads. They can’t understand why people who once paid $20 for an album are no longer willing. The industry seems to think that music should be valued similar to movies. Is an album, which costs little to produce, really worth the same as a movie, which costs a fortune, often 200x more, to produce? DVDs and music CDs are often very similarly priced.
The press releases put out by the recording industry focus solely on piracy for declining sales, while in reality there are so many reasons. Most have been covered so many times by the media and academics, but we’ll re-iterate a few here.
The Decline in Music Sales
The CD format has now been around for over 25 years. Back-catalogues have been re-released on the medium and consumers lapped it up, replacing their analogue copies of music they own. However, there’s only so many back-catalogues to buy, leaving consumers either only purchasing new music or none at all. A decline in CD sales is an indication of saturation in a market where innovation is lacking. There’s also only so many “best of’s”, “greatest hits” and other compilation albums consumers are going to buy before thinking “I already own three copies of most of these songs, why would I buy another one?”
Format-shifting, the art of moving from one medium to another is on the rise. In the past consumers have moved their collection of music to different formats, usually because of quality improvements and convenience, and paid for the privilege. Now it seems consumers don’t think they should have pay to move their collection of music to their computers and media players, and especially not pay to receive an inferior quality copy of something they already own. It just doesn’t make sense. “Illegally downloading” seems logical. Digital copies of music, which were until recently usually DRM crippled, and are still poor quality in relation to CDs, are simply unattractive.
The thought also never seems to occur to the music industry that perhaps Avril Lavigne, Utada Hikaru, Rihanna, T-Pain and Akon (the artists behind the top 5 digital downloads in 2007) are simply unattractive to the public. How much manufactured pop can society take?
The Problems With P2P Statistics
There is no doubt that piracy is on the rise. This in in part due to the aforementioned, overpriced, inferior or non-existing alternatives. This aside, it is absolutely ridiculous to compare downloads with actual sales. Let’s sum up a few of the reasons.
Firstly, just because someone chooses to download music via P2P doesn’t mean they’re doing it illegally. The recording industry has stated numerous times that it will not sue people for format-shifting, whereby consumers would want a digital copy of music they physically own. Why go to the hassle of copying a CD you own to your PC/media player, when someone else out there has done it for you? There’s a lot to consider when digitizing music from CD, though the one-click approaches of programs like iTunes would let you believe otherwise. Indeed their exists numerous guides on how to best digitize music you own, most notably jiGGafellz’ guide.
Secondly, do these numbers include the antics of MediaDefender? They flood P2P networks with fake files, which unsuspecting users will often download. How many fake files does someone download before managing to get a genuine copy? Even when they have a real copy, how many times before they get one in a high enough quality to suit them?
Thirdly, what about those who download with the sole intention of improving their share ratio on private sites? Sites like OiNK were notorious for users downloading popular releases with no intention of listening to them, just to try and better their ratio. Similarly, users often download entire albums just to listen to one track. While BitTorrent clients have the ability to do selective downloading, broadband connections are becoming so fast that users don’t feel the need to. Other P2P networks where albums might be shared in archives such as .zip, .rar or .tar remove the ability to selective download.
Fourthly, a great deal of people seem obsessed with discographies. They would download an artist’s entire back catalogue of music just because they like collecting, often without listening to it.
A New Business Model?
The million dollar question of course is, what should the recording industry do? We know that there is no straightforward answer to this question, but we speculated about some of the options before. The Internet has changed the way people interact with music. Sites like OiNK made is easy to find and share virtually every piece of music ever produced. Services like last.fm on their turn made it easy to discover new artists, and interact with other fans.
The Internet and filesharing technologies make it possible to make production (of the copies) and distribution costs disappear, yet the prices still don’t change. Why? Because they cling onto their old business models.
Today, the average consumer buys approximately 3/5 CDs a year. Let’s say the labels make $25 a year per consumer. Now, what if the record labels decided to make their entire collection available online, and charge people $2.50 a month for a subscription. This way they could easily double their revenue. New business models will emerge, and I’m pretty sure piracy will pretty much cease to exist. The record industry can even outsource the distribution to online music services, who can even offer the music for free if they come up with other revenue streams to compensate the $2.50 a month per user. I’m just thinking out loud here, but there are tons of possibilities.
So, stop complaining about biased statistics, go back to work and do what you’re supposed to… distribute music to the fans!
Previously: Torrent’Em, a Flashy BitTorrent Search Engine
Next: Scientology Hackers Ask Pirates To Join Their War
57 Responses
We’re smart enough to know the problems and how to fix them, but fortunately we’re smart enough not to touch the current industry with a 10 foot pole.
i wouldnt compare music to movies … you buy a cd and you usually have it, movies have their first run in cinema, then they come out on dvd, then they get bough by tv stations, all of those make a lot of money on commercial successful (read:good) movies …
but still, a very true article …
Comparing music on cd’s to movies on dvd’s is quite an unfair comparison in revenue production costs.
The music industry will do anything to get the public’s attention about music piracy.
They claim they lose billions of dollars a year and want sympathy because of illegal sharing. They want the government to step in and help handle illegal sharing because their tactics are not doing well.
Sorry music industry but people are fed up with buying an album with only a couple of good songs. Times have changed. Change your business practices and work with the consumers. You give us what we want and will show you the money. Jellybaby time!!!
Yes, the content industry has to wake up and find new ways. Yes, it is using shock and awe / f.u.d. to f*ck us all up- but….
____
Although I sympathize with your general opinion on filesharing and misleading information by the content industry, there are some points I’d like to talk about:
> Digital copies of music [...] are simply unattractive.
Pirated music is nothing else that “Digital copies”.
> The thought also never seems to occur to the music industry that [...] the artists behind the top 5 digital downloads [...] are simply unattractive to the public.
If so many people download those songs, why are they unattractive to the public? Aren’t the people (or the majority of people) the public? Or is it just the music industry downloading those songs? Ot are they lying about downloads? Am I missing something here?
> How much manufactured pop can society take?
Hehe, right. Casting-Show-Suck-Pop sucks. But Pop(ular) music will always exist. It’s a part of popular culture and there will always be “customers”, even when they don’t have to pay money anymore.
> Why go to the hassle of copying a CD you own to your PC/media player, when someone else out there has done it for you?
Sometimes I actually do something like this, in case my CD is scratched or something. But, under the circumstances, I also think about the unnessecairy “risk” connected to downloading (and by that uploading) copyrighted stuff, that I already own! It’s not comparable to something I want that I don’t have, where there’s an actual reason.
To make a long story short. I think that albums that are downloaded, just because it’s more comfortable to share than ripping ones own CD, account to less then 1% of “music downloads”.
> Indeed their exists numerous guides on how to best digitize music you own…
You encourage people to do more backups for personal use. Noble. :)
> Secondly, do these numbers include the antics of MediaDefender? They flood P2P networks with fake files [...]
Good point. But by selective downloaing I never (never) stumbled upon a fake.
> Thirdly, what about those who download with the sole intention of improving their share ratio on private sites?
A noble thing for the filesharer and the community. The uploader would have never bought the album. But what about the downloading person? He might have bought a copy of Crippy Crapp. The sole purpose of ratio-pimping does not justify anything.
> Fourthly, a great deal of people seem obsessed with discographies.
Wouldn’t (some of) those fans have bought an entire CD collection? Or at least parts of it, according to ones own budget? Collectors, you know…
> A New Business Model?
Correct.
Pirated music is nothing else THAN “Digital copies”.
ahh yes Jiggafellas guide is the best out there :)
A sorta Reader’s Digested version of why things are going downhill:
1. Crappy artists. No innovation in the Top 10 anymore (Hell, in ANY “popular” music). Dare I mention… Spice Girls reforming? I think you see the point.
2. Radio sucks. See aforementioned reason why it sucks. ::COUGH::ClearChannel::COUGH::
3. RIAA = Corp. mentality = Greed
’nuff said. (Also see aforementioned reason).
4. Loudness War. Again rehashing and frelling up what was already good.
Hmmm…. There seems to be a pattern here…
Live in the underground, where TRUE innovation lives and things are done the way they USE to be. For the LOVE of the music, not for the $$$.
End Of Line
@4 (”1024″)
Commercially available digital copies are unattractive.
“Popular” = a large number but small percentage of humanity / music lovers.
“Popular”/beloved by masses = good.
“Popular”/manufactured = bad.
Ripping CDs: “It’s not comparable to something I want that I don’t have.”
If you don’t have computerized/mp3 player access to it, you don’t (entirely) have it. If its scratched, you may as well not have it at all.
Few don’t “selectively download”; none remain unburned, however.
“He might have bought a copy of Crippy Crapp.” Might. If its good, then probably will. When it falls to a reasonable price.
“Wouldn’t (some of) those fans have bought an entire CD collection?”
No. They care more about ownership-rights than usage-rights, and are unwilling to pay for both.
I love to hear responsible dialogue, and far more often than not, the devil’s advocate makes us realize important (and interesting!) positions we haven’t even considered; however, I think that usually, the position is best served in morally grey areas where the best path remains unknown, than in experimentally confirmed areas, where criticism, while always good, is far better applied elsewhere.
avril lavigne et al, the top five digital downloads, aren’t the top five digital downloads because they are “unattractive to the public”.
Holy contradiction, give your head a shake.
More lies and damned lies, and nothing more from the MAFiAA.
Their narrow explaination for the collapse of the retail CD market completely ignores the rise of alternate media (DVDs) and growth of other retail products (cel phones, ring tones, pdas, mp3 players, online mp3 sales) all taking aim at the same limited youth revenue stream. They also always choose to ignore how changes in the retail market (Wal-Mart is now the largest retailer of CDs in North America) have directly effect sales — Wal-Mart carries very little back-catalogue items, the source of the the lion’s share of total retail CD sales throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. But the MAFiAA knows it’s all the fault of those damned pirates… sure, sure…
@ Ernesto;
can you back up the statement that (typically, for most bands vs. most movies etc) an album costs 1/200 as much to create as a film?
Because if that is true!!!
I think this article understates the affect that illegal digital music sharing has on CD sales. The great thing about piracy is that it DOES hurt them. That’s one of it’s perks.
They are almost dead folks!
The last december sale were 21% down from laat year. No business can stand that. EMI already laid off over 2k people in January and SOny/BMG, Vivendi Universal Time Warner are going to do the same soon.
EMI is droping the IFPI because they can not aford them and they are contemplating ever to drop the RIAA CRIAA and so forth too or to merge all of them into a smaller international organization. If this hapen it is doubful that this organization with a lot of less mean will be able to afford their grandiose psychopatic scheme of suing their best customers and corruplting our governements.
It is time for those that got riped off by the RIAA to band together in a class action lawsuit to recover your money. Soon the money will be gone. Of course you can try to sue the executives of the RIAA or the executives of what will be left of the music companies. Some of them like Sony and Time Warner possess also a movie division still doing ok. You could go after that too. Sony also have an electronic division not doing to well because of the criminal and anticonsumer activity of the music division though.
Meanwhile:
CONTINUE THE BOYCOTT!
This is the “coup de Grace” in progress as I write this!
Fith: We are boycotting and we will continue to boycott until all these parasites are deads.
“The million dollar question of course is, what should the recording industry do?”
Ths question is easy: Die of course! Deu!
Hey, you know how we talk about what (hypothetical) dickwads the music execs + recording companies are?
Check this out: “The record industry is careering towards meltdown. A good thing too, says Simon Napier-Bell, after 40 years of working with its most notorious moguls.”
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2241544,00.html
Its an article in the British paperabout this guy who started in the British independent industry in the 1960’s, before the Beatles, and has known almost every president of the Big Four (Brit and Am) since then; some of the best quotes:
“Artists were never the product; the product was discs – 10 cents’ worth of vinyl selling for $10 – 10,000 per cent profit – the highest mark-up in all of retail marketing.”
“Recently, the Wall Street Journal investigated the industry and concluded that ‘for all the 21st-century glitz that surrounds it, the popular music business is distinctly medieval in character: the last form of indentured servitude.’”
“In 1966 I came into a business that was alive with excitement and optimism. I was one of a select group – the young managers, like Brian Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham and Kit Lambert – who had taken over the UK’s new pop groups – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Animals. We young managers were on fire. We hustled, and we were free.
…Despite enormous differences between us, we found one thing in common. We all saw our principal job as going to war with the record company.”
“None of these companies had been set up first and foremost for music; they made records for extra profit. It was a wonderful trick they’d learnt. They bought vinyl cheaply; added a label, a song and a sleeve and sold it expensively.”
This is pure gold!!!
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2241544,00.html
I think it’s true that people are not buying CDs because we can easily download it. But I think they’ve already taken it as a reality. One wrong step towards this “New business model” and they’ll all drown together. I mean think about it. Whichever model comes about, as long as pirating continues they won’t make money no matter what business model surface. They’ll eventually all drown and die. I mean music is not a movie where you can actually enjoy in a theater. Face the reality, the time has come for music “industry” to end.
I’ve read the parts of the report.
They are obviously misrepresenting statistics as well as making most of them up.
Just think of a basic credibility criteria: vested interest, to lie.
They obviously are not credible.
Their pirated track numbers have been estimated by monkeys pressing random numbers.
Oh, and the funniest thing… they talked about how dangerous it might be to download pirated files, since they’d be full of spyware.
I see the opposite, ROFL. All those rootkits from these idiots and shit :D
I’ve never seen a file with spyware or shit inside a music album.
DIE dinosaurs… DIE painfully!
Piracy kills the movie industry, not the music industry. But I don’t care!
Now have a good day and seed like hell. :)
Ahh this is purely an attempt to spread ridiculous propaganda to overshadow the fact they are ripping us off in the stores. I still gladly buy a ton of cd’s and dvd’s. However, when I buy a movie I know what the hell I am buying. Its a movie and it plays on my dvd and blue ray. When I buy an album its in iffy business. You might get one song, and if you are lil wayne you put out twenty albums every few months of mix tapes to leech off your fans dedication. I find torrent to be one of the best ways to choose if you want to buy an album or not, and it only boosts an artists popularity. The dirty south would never have been as popular as it is today had people not shared the mix tapes online. So please folks just laugh and give them a tissue. Its basically the RIAA’s way of saying we can’t buy any more islands, so please start paying more than blue rays for a britney spears cd.
[quote comment="272636"]Piracy kills the movie industry, not the music industry. But I don’t care!
Now have a good day and seed like hell. :)[/quote]
and buy tons of blanks from companies whose qualities will last ten times longer than those cheap heaps we are forced to pay thirty bucks for in the store.
THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT IS MISSED!!!Just because people download DOES NOT mean they are willing to pay for it.for example…my personal policy is i download any movie or tv show i want to watch that does not air in the UK in the same week it does elsewhere in the world (US mainly). There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER for me to have to wait 2 weeks,a month…2 months to see or hear something that could have been released here at the same time so i refuse to wait….i am not second rate i dont like being treated like it.
another reason is i would be willing to download 20 rap albums to find 1 i really like but i would not buy 20 to find one i like! CD albums should cost no more then £3-£5 brand new and DVD movies no more then £5..blue ray £8. That is fair!Instead i will just keep getting it for free until the companies charge the price i am willing to pay…supply and demand!!!!!
And finally,i make a little note on my n95 everytime i hear or see one of those dumb ass “knock off nigel” or “mpaa” stupid adverts, that reminds me to share for 1 extra hour that day for every crap advert…the more money you greedy companies waste…the more you will lose!
Most of todays music is crap anyway.. not even worth a single piece of coin. So why spend money on crap ? Did those IFPI retards think about this ? I download an album and if I like it, i Go out and buy it..
Haha, this is so true for me. I fill HD’s like a mofo with stuff I will never listen to, just so I can have it. I have to have all the MP3’s!
Thanks for this! Awesome torrent!
I recommened this if you guys wanna play online ;).
————————–
**CALL OF DUTY 4 CRACKED SERVER LIST*
UPDATE: OVER 300 NEW SERVERS ADDED!
http://www.cod4-servers.moo.no :)
o
Ernesto wrote: “Now, what if the record labels decided to make their entire collection available online, and charge people $2.50 a month for a subscription. This way they could easily double their revenue. New business models will emerge, and I’m pretty sure piracy will pretty much cease to exist.”
Piracy will never go away.
Here’s what happens if they charge a 2.50/mo fee. Three people go to the site and pay their money. One of the three releases his download to the masses a la torrent, soulseek etc. And people like me will be there. And so it goes. The huge paradigm shift that has to happen is that artists and musicians have to leave the big label system as it is the problem here, not filesharers. Artists have to learn to produce and record themselves. This provides the artist ALL the leverage they would ever need for the entirety of their careers.
But being lazy and allowing/requiring the labels to do all your work for you, well that’ll be just stupid. They couldn’t find their weenises in the bath.
Anyone considered the fact that if the music labels die, the amount of music available to the general population will decrease? (i.e sony music dies, less music distributed, at least from lesser known artists)
go back to work and do what you’re supposed to… distribute music to the fans!
And gather voluntary payments from the fans via Karmafan.com!
I agree with #23. They think that if someone couldnt download music he would buy all the albums that he downloads now. For God’s shake! Maybe they lost 0.5 billion or less, big deal…
1) the money they “lost” was spent for something else than thin air on solid-oil (aka cd/dvd)…
2) why didn’t the industry DIE, just DIE, the record/movie industry is useless and makes mostly 99.99% shit, don’t give anything to these worst-than-nazi scumbags that would love to send us to death camps if they could
Don’t forget many people have different taste so when people say crap, it can be relative or the opinion of the that particular genre group (latter being more important). Personally don’t like most rap, but I respect old school because it had a message. Today’s rap blows.
Wow. How insightful. A subscription model. Rick Rubin’s idea from 2 years ago. Except he’s actually doing the work to try to make it happen. And… you say it will make piracy virtually cease? Ridiculous. You biggest idea is borrowed from Rubin, your only original thought is embarassingly naive. No doubt about it… you gotta get another hat.
If the RIAA doesn’t learn there lesson, I’m never going to buy there CD’s :\ But I get all of my music of the internet all the time! When I like an artist, I go buy his CD and support him/her :)
In fact I WILL distribute music to the fans. check it out!
http://www.last.fm/music/Skankin%27+With+Steve%21
http://www.last.fm/music/And+I+Quote
Last.FM it is!
So someone tell me how I could possibly make a living off of music in this day and age? It’s great that the common-guy is speculating and there are people blogging about this, but the industry is in ruins and I can’t see a way I could make some scratch in the music industry. Studios are shutting down all around me.
DO NOT compare Utada Hikaru to “artists” like Avril, Rihanna or T-Pain. She’s much more than them will ever be. She is an amazing singer, composer and the best singer Japan has ever seen. Utada Hikaru is NOT “manufactured pop”! If you don’t know who she is, then DON’T talk about her.
To those who say a subscription based model won’t work because there will always be pirate material out there are as ignorant as the RIAA/MPAA themselves. It already does work in the form of Usenet/Rapidshare/etc… People have no problem paying in mass, many up to $25 a month, for these services just so they can download illegal material faster and safer. I for one would have no problem paying for a service that was well put together and offered me what I truly want, a huge collection of music in lossless quality without DRM. As to now this only exists in the pirate realm. Set up a nice looking site with a huge collection that offers that and I will without a doubt pay for it.
There is no honor in doing something illegal unless your trying to show these governments/companies that there current model is garbage. Once they wake up and change it to say the service mentioned for $5-$10 a month, I see no point in jumping through hoops.
ROCK STILL RULES!!!
Hopefully someone will have the b@lls to copyright the message of the lyrics in general. This would stop the infinite repeats of unintelligent songs.
People pay for quality. That goes for music/lyrics/talent not just the encode. Similar to why companies are willing to shell out the cash to buy a German-made machine and not get a cheaper but inferior American/Chinese one.
We don’t pay for crap, only governments do that.
Well, we might not pay for so-so quality DLs but its not nice to flame the guys who share what they’ve got for free.
Also–there’s a new Elvis Costello reissue on the horizon. Don’t know if it’s a one off for that album or a whole new catalog, but does that make it four times the EC catalog has been released in twenty years? The constant rerelease with a couple added tracks makes me constantly feel ripped off.
You forgot to mention that just because someone will download something for free doesn’t mean they’d pay for it. My music collection would have costed me well over $10,000 if purchased legally, LOL, like I can afford that. They may not have made money off of me taking things for free, but they certainly didn’t lose money on what I wasn’t going to buy anyway.
I used to actually buy CD’s to “contribute” to artists that I like. Not anymore. The music industry can thank the RIAA for that. And there have been times that I did want to buy albums but I specifically withheld from that because of RIAA faggotry.
[quote comment="272816"]DO NOT compare Utada Hikaru to “artists” like Avril, Rihanna or T-Pain. She’s much more than them will ever be. She is an amazing singer, composer and the best singer Japan has ever seen. Utada Hikaru is NOT “manufactured pop”! If you don’t know who she is, then DON’T talk about her.[/quote]
She was compared to the other artists as they were the top 5 downloaded artists in 2007. Stop acting like such a fanboy, too.
The thought also never seems to occur to the music industry that perhaps Avril Lavigne, Utada Hikaru, Rihanna, T-Pain and Akon (the artists behind the top 5 digital downloads in 2007) are simply unattractive to the public. How much manufactured pop can society take?
This is a subjective argument, your personal opinion about manufactured pop does not have anything to do with declining record sales. An editorial like this needs to be backed up with cold hard facts, and this one clearly has very little.
“Sites like OiNK made is easy to find and share virtually every piece of music ever produced.”
This is partly untrue. While pretty much all of the more mainstream stuff is indeed very easy to find, underground music is much harder to find on such sites, in some cases even impossible.
[quote comment="272964"]“Sites like OiNK made is easy to find and share virtually every piece of music ever produced.”
This is partly untrue. While pretty much all of the more mainstream stuff is indeed very easy to find, underground music is much harder to find on such sites, in some cases even impossible.[/quote]
There is no way you have personal experience with Oink; you obviously haven’t even read more than two dozen words on it either; go check out former members posts regarding it (including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails).
It was the single largest collection of perfect quality music on the planet; more so than the net sum of all other music torrent sites (indie and pirate) put together.
You may be referring to public tracker sites such as Piratebay and Mininova, where it IS really hard to find rare or even semi-rare material…
[quote comment="272907"]
…
I used to actually buy CD’s to “contribute” to artists that I like. Not anymore. The music industry can thank the RIAA for that. And there have been times that I did want to buy albums but I specifically withheld from that because of RIAA faggotry.[/quote]
I fully sympathize; if I really like an album, I will buy it, but even so I’m aware that only the minority of my support is going toward the people whom I want to support, while the majority of my money goes to those whom I (philosophically at least!) oppose;
kind of like paying off Satan.
[quote comment="272388"]Comparing music on cd’s to movies on dvd’s is quite an unfair comparison in revenue production costs[/quote]
I see what some of you are getting at by saying this, but it is fair, when considered on a consumer level. We, as consumers, don’t think of production costs, or profits from rental and television deals. We look at how much it costs when sitting in front of us. When a CD costs just as much, and in some cases more, than a movie on DVD, it is easy to see why many consumers buy the DVD over the CD.
The DVD is cheaper than going out to the movies for most. When chain in a box stores sell them at lossleader prices, paying under $20 for a movie to watch on your giant home theater system is a better deal than going out to a movie theater, or buying that CD one may have wanted.
Heck, another great example, is look at concert DVDs. Some bands come out with the DVD and CD version separately. Most often the CD version costs more than the DVD version. That just makes no sense at all.
The recording industry has been facing their first real competiton over the past decade, yet they are too blind to realize that they are not putting out a product that can keep up with the competition. They then turn the blame towards P2P, because it’s an easy scapegoat for their own short-sightedness.
They have to compete with DVD and video games. Video games cost so much these days, but yet somehow still sell. The video game industry depends on the same consumer demographic. Most of these consumers would rather play their games, and with the high cost of games, it leaves them with little money to buy music.
Competition has more to do with the decline in CD sales, as well as the aformentioned fact that most have finished updating their back catalog of music. Hence, lower sales. It’s time the industry stop blaming their fans, and look for a way to win the real battle. The one against DVDs and video games.
[quote comment="272554"]Fith: We are boycotting and we will continue to boycott until all these parasites are deads.[/quote]
Agreed.. I’m continuing the boycott until they’re gone.
Keep spreading the word folks, Boycott these mongrels until they’re working at your Burgerking driver through.
Arrogant bastards like this deserve nothing less.
You downloaders just don’t want to see the truth, simply because you are greedy enough to want it for free.
All your ignorant ideas about the music industry is clearly based on what you want to believe. Not on actual facts.
umm, good article, but you messed up with this paragraph:
Format-shifting, the art of moving from one medium to another is on the rise. In the past consumers have moved their collection of music to different formats, usually because of quality improvements and convenience, and paid for the privilege. Now it seems consumers don’t think they should have pay to move their collection of music to their computers and media players, and especially not pay to receive an inferior quality copy of something they already own. It just doesn’t make sense. “Illegally downloading” seems logical. Digital copies of music, which were until recently usually DRM crippled, and are still poor quality in relation to CDs, are simply unattractive.
We never had to pay for any shifting before.
Copy something from radio to tape to cd to computer, etc? When did we ever pay for that? Problem is the opposite, they want us to pay for that now.
Never trust IFPI. IFPI are retarded LIARS! IFPI is fucked up corrupt gang.
There is no point comparing cd’s to DVD’s.
you dont pay 5 or 6 bucks to listen to a cd once through with a bunch of heavy breathing morons do you? :)
Blah blah blah … more propaganda from the torrent community — ironic as they are so critical of propaganda put out by the record industry.
Enough! Enough trying to justify the huge illegal-to-legal lopsidedness of downloading with obfuscated examples about torrent tracker ratios and the ridiculously lame example that it’s easier to download an album you already have than to rip an album you already have.
This article actually doesn’t address the 20:1 ratio and again puts all the blame of falling music sales squarely on the record industry for providing a product no one wants. Actually, EVERYONE wants it and that’s why p2p is so popular! It’s just that they’re just not willing to pay…which makes no sense, because thirty years ago, music was just as shitty as it is today and people paid for it.
I have 2 things to say.
The DVD compared to CD comment made a good point…
You can buy a DVD for $20 and a CD for $20… but a DVD holds 4.7gigs of video, music, pictures, and etc totaling usually around 2 hours… were as a CD holds 700mb of ok music totaling around 1 hour.
Movies tend to cost more to be made because more resources go into them. writers, actors, directors, musicians, editors, etc… Hundreds of people… Some movies are in the thousands.
A CD is usually The Band of say 5 people and maybe 20 other people….
Yet CDs think they deserve just as much as DVDs?
Not to mention that CD’s have pretty much stayed the same in price even though the cost of making one has dropped.
As I once tried to explain to my father… When you used to buy a CD you’d pay 10$ for the Plastic disc and 5$ for the music because it cost 10$ to make the disc. Now the discs cost pennies yet we still have to pay 10$ for the damn disc…
Prices used to be based on material costs, now its based on greed.
Over-priced, re-hashed, generic, manufactured, ho-hum, hackneyed music* is more often than not NOT worth money!… let alone the prices they try to charge us.
P2P is the white knight of the media distribution world. Record/film companies are the dirge.
*term used VERY loosely.
sorry, but i never listen to any artists the record company signs…except for small small record comanies that died in the 70’s, so i would never sign up to a service like that…it would never work anyway, free is better than 2.50
this just proves that there is no need for record companies at all…they need to die
I know that in the past, when collating figures for genuinely falling CD sales, the music industry had failed to mention that fewer CDs were being physically produced (I don’t know if this is still the case, however). It’s impossible for them to sell CDs or indeed, anything) that they have not produced.
Also, of course, file-sharing entails no theft since the downloader makes a copy, and the original file is left where it began. Nothing taken – nothing stolen.
What is most alarming, however, is that LAWS have been re-interpreted, changed and created; Big Business told people (sans any basis in fact) that file-sharing was illegal (which it wasn’t)… and then governments MADE IT ILLEGAL.
See how chilling that is?
BIG BUSINESS INFLUENCED GOVERNMENTS, WHICH IN TURN MADE NEW LAWS.
What kinds of society are we living in? Oh, yeah. A world where Metallics (who became popular intitially through the underground trading of bootleg tapes) have the gall to say that file-sharing is immoral, and where music/film piracy “funds terrorism”. I’d like to see the proof for that one. I’d also like to see figures for the monies the companies rake in for advertising soundbites, television and film soundtracks, and the like.
Right on… at $2.50 a month, the price is so negligible that most people would gladly pay the fee (less than half the cost of a deli sandwhich) just for the convenience of having access to all music. I’m not going to go pay $15 for an album for one good song and 16 tracks of fluff, but $2.50 for anything I want, whenever I want it? Sure! And I’d rather pay that and know i’m getting a bit-perfect copy of the original than use a tracker and get my songs secondhand.
3 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.