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Report: CD Sales Further Decline
AP via Yahoo! News ^ | 8/26/02 | Simon Avery

Posted on 08/26/2002 7:07:13 PM PDT by GeneD

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Compact disc music sales decreased 7 percent during the first half of the year, a further indication that online music sharing sites are hurting the recording industry, a trade group said Monday.

The decline cost the industry $284 million in lost sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

The decline, measured by PricewaterhouseCoopers, compares with a 5.3 percent drop in CD shipments in the first half of 2001. The RIAA said the industry uses just-in-time delivery, so CD shipments are reliably indicative of actual sales.

Also Monday, the RIAA released a separate survey of Internet users' music habits, which found that most consumers between the ages of 12 and 54 bought fewer CDs as they downloaded more tracks.

Previous studies independent of the music industry have suggested that access to free music on the Web actually encourages consumers to experiment with new acts and buy more CDs.

"We find a striking connection between people who say they are downloading more and buying less," said Geoff Garin, the pollster for Peter D. Hart Research Associates, who conducted the random telephone survey of 860 consumers for the RIAA in May. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Of consumers polled whose downloading increased during the last six months, 41 percent reported buying less music, compared with 19 percent who said they were purchasing more, he said.

Among those polled who said they were downloading the same amount as six months earlier, 25 percent said they purchased less music, compared with 13 percent who bought more, Garin said.

The survey also reported that 35 percent said they go straight to an Internet file sharing site whenever they hear an unfamiliar artist they like. Only 10 percent reported that they immediately buy the artist's album.

The poll did not provide information about consumer attitudes on other factors widely considered to be affecting CD sales, including the quality of new releases and the lack of easy-to-use online services from the major recording labels.

"I very strongly conclude that the ability to get music for free is an important factor and has an adverse effect on music purchasing. I would not argue that it is the one and only factor," Garin said.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: compactdiscs; digitalcopying; riaa
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To: bvw
So am I here or retreated? Which is it?

You have retreated because you hide behind a computer to insult a person's wife after being exposed as a liar and a coward.

You may be on your way to a time out if you do it again.

121 posted on 08/27/2002 8:27:49 AM PDT by Protagoras
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To: ThomasJefferson; RabidBartender
Take it to the back room, or knock it off.
122 posted on 08/27/2002 8:28:26 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator
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To: ThomasJefferson
Why sir, I did honor to your wife! What makes you say otherwise?
123 posted on 08/27/2002 8:28:34 AM PDT by bvw
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To: ThomasJefferson
������?����zª?«l when you charge more than people are willing to pay, your sales decline.

Impossible for you to correctly ascertain what he meant. You are speculating. He didn't answer. He still can if he wants

What exactly do you mean by that? Should I speculate? :)

He already did say what he wants: the music industry charges too f***ing much. And I am perfectly able to ascertain his meaning, because I'm the sort of person who knows what "is" is.

By your reasoning one could never have communication, because one's interpretation of any communication would be based on "speculation" of the true meaning.

124 posted on 08/27/2002 8:38:51 AM PDT by LexBaird
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To: ThomasJefferson
Are you saying it is OK to steal things if the price is higher than someone is willing to pay?

What we're saying is that it's OK for us to buy fewer CD's when the price is too high, at least until the Hollings-Berman Mandatory CD Purchase Act passes.

As far as file-trading goes: have you ever actually fired up a peer-ro-peer program and run it? You have to do a significant amount of fiddling to get one of these things going, and far more trouble to find what you want. If CD releases cost $5 instead of $15-20, the whole file-trading scene would vanish overnight.

125 posted on 08/27/2002 8:39:05 AM PDT by BlazingArizona
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To: LexBaird
Hmm. My HTML tag didn't work. That quoted part should have been in italics.
126 posted on 08/27/2002 8:49:51 AM PDT by LexBaird
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To: LexBaird
By your reasoning one could never have communication, because one's interpretation of any communication would be based on "speculation" of the true meaning.

The problem is,,,I never asked you, or anyone else, what the poster meant. I asked HIM. He chose not to answer. Oh well.

I don't really care what YOU think HE meant. Or I would have asked you.

127 posted on 08/27/2002 9:15:58 AM PDT by Protagoras
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To: 1Old Pro
Yep, I could see it coming in the mid-80's when RAP was added to music awards as if it was good music. I knew for sure that it was over when RAP was winning awards. Political correctness helped kill the music industry.

Finally someone has said it!!! My sentiments exactly. I have a rule about listening to CD's in my car (the only place I really listen). If there's no tune I can decipher, if I can't understand the lyrics or if the lyrics are about rape, cop killing etc.. I won't allow it on my CD player.

128 posted on 08/27/2002 9:34:36 AM PDT by YankeeReb
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To: ThomasJefferson
The problem is,,,I never asked you, or anyone else, what the poster meant. I asked HIM. He chose not to answer. Oh well.

I don't really care what YOU think HE meant. Or I would have asked you.

Then you should have used the nifty little button marked "private reply" instead of posting to the entire list.

I "speculate" the original poster hasn't replied because he feels his views are manifest in his first post. I certainly found them so, but you evidently find them obscure enough to assume he was advocating theft. Or do I again err in my assumptions?

129 posted on 08/27/2002 10:04:13 AM PDT by LexBaird
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To: LexBaird
Or do I again err in my assumptions?

Yep. I asked him to clarify. It was a fair question. It need not be made privately.

But I thank you again for jumping in with your speculations about what someone else is thinking.

Now run along and jump to some more conclusions.

130 posted on 08/27/2002 10:14:49 AM PDT by Protagoras
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To: GeneD
$17.00 to $21.00 per disk is just too much money. They can keep them for that much.
131 posted on 08/27/2002 10:18:36 AM PDT by A. Patriot
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To: GeneD
The slump is due to the economy. But if a sour economy makes people break the habit of buying CDs, will they go back when prosperity returns? Perhaps they would have once, but if the free alternative are as good or better, why bother?

Also, how to reconcile the growth of MP3 with all the complaints about the sound quality?

132 posted on 08/27/2002 10:25:15 AM PDT by x
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To: ThomasJefferson
original post:How's this: Stop charging $14.99 for a f****ing CD and then maybe people will start buying them.

Are you saying it is OK to steal things if the price is higher than someone is willing to pay?

Me:... you evidently find them [his views] obscure enough to assume he was advocating theft. Or do I again err in my assumptions?

You:Yep. I asked him to clarify. It was a fair question.

Ah. So that is what a "fair question" and "request for clarification" looks like in your world. Where I come from, we call it a rhetorical strawman. Do you work as a journalist, by chance?

133 posted on 08/27/2002 11:00:32 AM PDT by LexBaird
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To: jenny65
I don't have the exact figures, but as I recall, book authors and musical artists make less than a dollar from each copy sold. After manufacturing, marketing and distribution, it's the media companies that get the biggest share of the pot. With what little they do make from CD sales, most recording artists are forced to tour just to make money.

This would create an incentive for new groups to say "to hell with signing with a record label". Just put their stuff up on Napster, or their own web site. Put up samples for free, put up CD for sale, price the CD dirt cheap since the label and the music store aren't getting a cut, and use their recorded music as a draw for their touring performances

Soon, the record labels would go bust. This is what really worries them about file-sharing

134 posted on 08/27/2002 11:19:08 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor
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To: SauronOfMordor
Moral or immoral, legal or illegal, the file sharing application are here to stay. They Big 5 record companies are going to have to come up with a way to use this technology to their advantage or their sales will continue to decline (this and many other reasons are contributing to the decline of music sales).

They tried to defeat it with the latest Celine Deion CD and their vaunted "copy-protection software". That was fine until someone with a $0.99 Sharpie defeated it. Reports are, the next generation copy-protection system has already been hacked. Supply and demand will rule the day...as it always does.

135 posted on 08/27/2002 11:28:27 AM PDT by Wyatt's Torch
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To: 1Old Pro
The pseudo-black stylism that includes screeching, trilling, 20-notes-per-syllable, falsetto and other vocal gymnastics crammed into virtually every song by even the few gifted singers around today is a huge turn-off to me. The purity of the music is buried under the weight of such vocal theatrics. Sometimes simple and understated really are better. It also doesn't help that so many "artists" these days can't sing a note, so they rely on recording studio wizards to manufacture their voices. No matter who the "artist" is, they all wind up with the same mechanical sound. And it doesn't help that all the female vocalists look like cheap hookers, and the males look like the broken-down winos I'd see on the Bowerie in lower Manhattan when I was a kid.
136 posted on 08/27/2002 11:28:55 AM PDT by Wolfstar
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To: Richard Kimball
I can buy "Animal House", "Back to School", "CaddyShack", and lots of other DVD's for ten bucks or less.

Where? I would like two of these.

137 posted on 08/27/2002 11:31:48 AM PDT by 1L
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To: Constitution Day
I LOVE THAT SONG!!! :)
138 posted on 08/27/2002 11:36:10 AM PDT by agrace
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To: SauronOfMordor
They are tools. The Movie Industry thought that VHS would ruin movie sales because people wouldn't see movies, wouldn't buy them on tape. They would just copy them. They are making record grosses in the theaters the last several years instead. They are selling their old catalog on DVD for incredibly low prices. Warner Brothers has set a selling point of $9.99 for most movies that are at least 5 years old that are being re-released on DVD.

Did anybody here know that it actually is more expensive to produce a cassette tape than a CD? It is true. The consumers are being gouged, and intuitively know it. The record industry did promise that the high prices of CDs would drop once the investment in CD technology was payed for in a few years. That promise was as faithful as Bill Clinton's wedding vows.

The artists are actually losing money sometimes when they sell 1 million, because of the egregious contracts they sign with the record companies. If they didn't make money on tour, some well known artists would literally be bankrupt.

The whole industry is a waste. Radio used to be what drove the industry. Except now, Clear Channel, and Infinity own about all the market, and they only put on drivel, that is given to them, that they play because of payola.

You can not force people over 25 to buy N'sync albums. It just won't happen. Talented artists before actually could get a record playing at one station, in one market, at one independent station, and it could spread like wildfire. Those days are over in radio. MP3 sharing is the only way a non bubblegum corporate act is going to get heard these days.

But RIAA says it is all Napster's fault. I am incredibly ticked off at this AP writer for putting out their position with no counterpoint. You are in a recession, and the music stinks, but it is all college kids on computer's fault that sales are down 7%. This is a pathetic piece of journalism.

139 posted on 08/27/2002 11:37:10 AM PDT by dogbyte12
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To: 1Old Pro
That's why I download the old stuff, which shouldn't significantly reduce overall sales.

I was a late comer to Napster, and the only things I downloaded were songs I found that were OUT OF PRINT. This is what pisses me off the most about the music industry and record companies. I can think of 25 CDs that I would buy RIGHT NOW that I can't because they are out of print. I even contacted a Christian artist who did a song I wanted. He couldn't remember the exact project he did the song on, but told me not to waste my time because it was out of print. Sheesh, the project couldn't have been more than 8 years old at the time.

Record companies restrict the output from artists. Right now there is a Christian artist who hasn't done a project since 1995. His original label got sold and the current label is not selling his new CD for so-called marketing reasons. What we need is more independant labels who are willing to MP3 their stuff and sell over the internet. Record companies can go straight to hell as far as I'm concerned.

140 posted on 08/27/2002 11:40:23 AM PDT by 1L
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