Stopping the pop-swappers

BBC News Online ^ | By Mark Ward

[freepatriot32]

They used to say "home taping" was killing music, now it's meant to be internet downloaders. But the real pirates these days are crime bosses - and the rewards are plentiful.

The net has given rise to many novel ways of doing business but the methods of the Recording Industry Association of America has got every twisted e-commerce scheme beaten.

Last month, the association began suing hundreds of its customers. For the RIAA - which represents the major US recording companies - this makes perfect sense.

The people being sued are sharing music with millions of others via peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus.

This tidal wave of subpoenas is the latest in a series of steps the RIAA has taken to stop "file-sharing" which, it believes, is causing CD sales to fall through the floor.

According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.

But the figures tell a different story.

In America and the rest of the world the biggest culprit in falling music sales is large-scale CD piracy by organised crime.

In just three years, sales of pirate CDs have more than doubled, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Every third CD sold is a pirate copy, says the federation.

The IFPI's Commercial Music Piracy 2003 report, produced in early July, reveals pirate CD sales rose 14% in 2002 and exceeded one billion units for the first time.

Not least in the East

The pirate CD market is now so big, $4.6bn (£2.86bn), it is "of greater value than the legitimate music market of every country in the world, except the USA and Japan".

In some countries it is hard to find legitimately produced CDs. Ninety percent of CDs in China, for instance, are pirate copies.

Counterfeiters have forced the price of a fake CD down to about $4, which only makes CDs in the music shops look even pricier.

Embarrassingly major record labels and distributors have been fined twice by the US Federal Trade Commission for price fixing their products.

However, pirates are not solely responsible for the crisis in the music industry. After all, it is actually producing CD titles.

Replacing vinyl

According to the RIAA's own figures, over the last two years the US music industry has produced 25% fewer CDs.

The peak of production was in 1999 when 38,900 individual titles were released. But by 2001 this was down to 27,000. Releases grew again in 2002 but were still below the previous high.

Musician George Ziemann says if only 3,000 copies of each of the "missing" CDs were sold, the fall in sales would be wiped out.

For Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter Research, the music is weathering a hangover after the 80s and 90s boom, when everyone was buying CD versions of their old vinyl records.

"Now the CD replacement cycle has drawn to a close," he says.

Also the global decline in CD sales is taking place against the background of a general economic recession that is depressing sales of almost everything.

After piracy and the production of fewer CDs comes the changing dynamics of the music industry.

Many of the people using file-sharing systems are looking for singles. By contrast the music industry is focussed on shifting albums.

This is reflected in sales figures. In the US sales of CD singles generate only a few percent of the total market. In the UK, it's 10% of all revenues.

Typically, singles are used to drum up support for an album, being hyped weeks in advance and played heavily on radio and TV long before they go on sale.

With nowhere to get these singles and no desire to buy an expensive CD album just for one song, it is no wonder many fans turn to file-sharing systems.

Finally, music just isn't as important to young people as it used to be. There is more competition than ever for the cash in a teenager's pocket.

"Youths are no longer defining themselves by music in the same way they used to," says Mr Mulligan.

New markets springing up

Now, he says, brands, clothing and lifestyle are as important as music.

Added to this is the rise of the mobile phone, the increasing popularity of computer games and DVDs.

In the past the music industry had young fans almost to itself. Now it has to compete for the limited cash in a young person's pocket like never before.

The music industry cannot hope to sue everyone using file sharing to find music as that would take hundreds of years and already the US legal system is complaining about the work the RIAA is heaping upon it.

There is no doubt that some piracy is going on via peer-to-peer systems but maybe not to the extent the RIAA fears. Perhaps it is about time they sang a different song.

[Perseverando]

Thought provoking article.

Bump!

[1stFreedom]

>>when everyone was buying CD versions of their old vinyl records.

Cause they were too stupid to realize that vinyl sound better than CDs do.

Go out and buy a record player. A really nice one can be found at garage sales for a reasonable price. Records go anywhere from a quarter to a dollar. I recently picked up 200 records for about $20.00. I got tons of great records.

CDs are for weenies, ie the mass market who have $10 cd players.

[TheMightyQuinn]

so was i breaking the law a couple of months ago when i bought The Matrix Reloaded and The Two Towers on DVD in a mall in Jakarta for a dollar each?

[goldstategop]

Yes. If they were bootleg copies. But I won't tell the MPAA you did. Scout's honor.

[rmmcdaniell]

Cause they were too stupid to realize that vinyl sound better than CDs do.

Or perhaps you’re just too stupid to understand the benefits a CD offers?

[rwfromkansas]

bookmark bump....good stuff here.....*writing this down as a story idea...*

[rwfromkansas]

CD's sound fine and you get to go direct to the track you want.

There is no benefit in a scratched record.

[1stFreedom]

>>Or perhaps you’re just too stupid to understand the benefits a CD offers?

LOL. Nice one.

CD's do offer convienience.

However, back when they were introduced, most people didn't need this convience. For instance, you can't play a record in your car stereo, but you could play a CD if you could afford a car CD player. Most people had cassette players with which they could record their albums on and then play them in the car. Unless your car is very quite, the quality of the music is not as important as it is in the house. Tape is fine.

IMO what got people buying them was the hype about digital audio. What most people didn't realize is that CD digitial audio was inferrior to vinyl and Reel to Reel. (Some claim it's inferrior to Chrome tape with dolby noise reduction -- I can't vouch for that).

CD audio suffers from Nyquist errors. If you have ever recorded your voice on your pc at low rates, you'll notice that when you play it back it sounds tinny. CD's are recorded at 44khz which is twice audible range of the human ear.

But the problem is that to avoid nyquest errors , IMO, you have to record at a rate at least four times the audible frequency of the ear. The 44k sampling rate is the reason why higher notes on CD's sound tinny. Had the sampling rate been higher, these notes would not be tinny. Analog formats do not suffer from nyquest errors.

As most of us have learned, CD's are vulnerable to scratches and warping (leave them in your car on the dashboard on a really hot day and find out). They aren't as sensitive as Vinyl, but they do get scratched.

The industry is trying to correct the inferior quality of CD's with SACD and DVD Audio. These formats will bridge the gap between vinyl and digital.

I myself have an SACD player and it sounds great. It sounds as good as vinyl, but the discs are $20+ each. Much of what is on SACD is classical and jazz -- both of which I can find in vinyl form very cheaply.

Finally, if you want to make your CD's sound better, you can get an upsampling device to convert it to 24bit/192 quality. Then your music won't be as tinny. Such cd players/devices start at $800.

[-YYZ-]

Yeah, vinyl might be better, if it was a good quality pressing in the first place, and if you don't count the relatively low signal to noise ration, nevermind the "snap crackle and pop". Also record players are finicky things with easily damaged needles. And finally, most adults have suffered enough cummulative hearing damage from concerts, over-loud stereos and personal audio players, and other sources of noise that they're lucky if they can hear up to 15 KHz, which is only about 1/3 of the sampling rate.

High quality cassette tape, or reel to reel is probably better than either CD or vinyl, but most commercially available stuff is not on high-quality cassette tape, and reel to reel hasn't been popular in the consumer market since the 60's (and it's rather finicky stuff, anyway, and certainly not suitable for mobile use).

[1stFreedom]

>>if it was a good quality pressing in the first place,

Also goes for both CDs and vinyl: bad records sound bad on either.

>nevermind the "snap crackle and pop"

If you take care of records, including using an ion gun, you won't get them.

> Also record players are finicky things with easily damaged needles.

This is true. Needles are also expensive.

>>
High quality cassette tape, or reel to reel is probably better than either CD or vinyl, but most commercially available stuff is not on high-quality cassette tape, and reel to reel hasn't been popular in the consumer market since the 60's

I'm going to buy a reel to reel to archive my favorite songs from vinyl. Then I'm going to rip them to 24bit audio.

PS, the last manufacturer still producting stopped making reel to reel tape this year. (Consumer reel to reel tape, that is) Grab them while you can. :-(