Posted on 01/12/2008 8:58:36 AM PST by george76
Last year was terrible for the recorded-music majors. The next few years are likely to be even worse.
IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits.
At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.
In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business.
But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected.
More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
There are small companies run by people who actually like music. Some of them are not even members of the RIAA.
Every year their sales increase, and they sign up more artists.
So, therefore, eventually.....
‘So, therefore, eventually.....”
Congress will step in!
They don’t usually notice what’s going on until it’s a done deal. It’s a big country, and most places are far from Washington.
Then you have the mix-tape thing going on in hip-hop, which is the equivalent of the old chitlin circuit from back in the day. The big record companies are simply being cut out because their middlemen.
Beatles forever!
Article doesn’t mention that teens hate the music industry for agressively prosecuting them for downloading. They want to see them die.
Strange to think that CDs might be the end of the line for physical formats. I wonder if there's a new format in the works to replace them, or if it's just accepted that downloads are the future and CDs are the last of the physical Mohicans.
Eight tracks are still cool, right?
Maybe sales would increase if the production companies start putting out better music. Most of the new stuff is crap. It’s the same overproduced garbage over and over and over. I can’t stand most of it...gives me a headache.
A small but talented garage band wants to record its work. It scrimps and saves enough to buy studio time. They cut a digital master which they then upload to a digital music warehouse. That warehouse holds millions of songs on thousands of high-powered servers. Users subscribe to the warehouse, which allows say 10 downloads a month for a base price. Customers can browse samples that they download to their computers and they can mix their own collections on their iPod. The downloads are not copyable (keyed to the individual machine).
Nobody needs to listen to the radio anymore to hear music. Nobody needs to drive to the store to buy a CD that's mostly junk and costs $20. Bands don't have to kiss record companies' butts to get a contract that makes the company rich at their expense, just to get an album cut. Nobody has to tie up millions of dollars in stamping plastic or vinyl, putting it into cases or sleeves, then hauling it all around the country. The Music Establishment dies a well-deserved death and everybody benefits except the leeches.
Then the same thing happens to the movie industry ...
I think it inevitable that downloads WILL be the wave of the future, and not just for music, but for ANY recorded/recordable item. And at that point, ALL media will be the "new format", depending on the listeners/viewers need/desire of the moment.
Good evidence that it's the quality of the product that's the root of the problem. They aren't producing product that people want to buy.
If it wasn’t such a pain in the butt to buy digitally. Once you download it, some MP3 players won’t play because of licensing issues and digital rights issues. If you download with Limewire, you can put the music on anything and take it anywhere without having to renew your license or take a chance on paying for a faulty license. I tried doing it the ethical way (paying .99 per download), but it bit me in the butt too many times. Besides, via P2P, you can get underground stuff and unreleased stuff that you can’t otherwise buy.
Sony has tried to introduce a successor format in Super Audio CD (also known as DVD-Audio), but it’s never went anywhere. The last big push for it was last year.
That is the old Dixie Chicks marketing strategy.
Prodce stuff your customers want ...or die.
Same here.
Vinyl forever!
The West always had dominance in one of the last bastions of “imperialism”.
But let’s face it the game is up.
Our populations are at least 20% alien,
Innovation through technology is great.
But the money goes elsewhere.
The West will be finished by the end of the century.
The stories of suing teenagers who downloaded music was painful.
Kids aren't stupid. They didn't want to take the CDs and then be sued by RIAA for copying the music onto their hard drives. There is plenty of good music being made if you know where to look for it and access it, as the kids do. And it is now possible, and preferable, to get ahold of it in a way that bypasses the big record companies. EMI has made a reasonable decision to pull out of RIAA because the RIAA is now just a buggy-whip advocacy group that is getting in the way of the business.
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