Music industry woes

[johnS]

Interesting survey on the music industry:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060202/..._music_ap_poll

Highlights:

Eighty percent of the respondents consider it stealing to download music for free without the copyright holder's permission, and 92 percent say they've never done it, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine.

Meanwhile, three-quarters of music fans say compact discs are too expensive, and 58 percent say music in general is getting worse.

The article also notes that CD sales continue to slide:

A total of 618.9 million CD albums were sold during 2005, sharply down from the 762.8 million sold in 2001, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

At the same time, 352.7 million tracks were sold digitally in 2005, a category that wasn't even measured five years ago. Digital sales of music and ring tones offer new revenue opportunities, but often at the expense of more lucrative CD sales.

To me it's clear that the music industry is still waaaay behind the curve. File sharing, MP3s, and iPods are not new, but they are reaching a point where they are really sinking in, and the more they do, the more the culture of music consumption is irreversibly changed.

Music should be a high-volume, low-cost, commodity biz--yet labels and retailers cling to the absurd notion that a CD should cost $18.95. Simple math tells you that if an iPod holds 10,000 songs, then ~$1.90 per song is an order of magnitude too expensive. Even iTunes $.99 per song is too expensive.

Think about it. Would you spend more total $ on music if each song was $1.90, $0.99, or $0.19? I would definitely start buying music again if it cost $0.19 for a single. In fact, I would constantly have a stream of new music in my iPod. I would be much more likely to explore new music and try genres I'm not familiar with. I would take many more chances on bands I hadn't heard of or had only read about.

As it stands now, I buy maybe five CDs per year, simply because they're not worth it and I know I'm getting ripped off.

What do you think?

[dagosto]

Originally Posted by johnS

To me it's clear that the music industry is still waaaay behind the curve. File sharing, MP3s, and iPods are not new, but they are reaching a point where they are really sinking in, and the more they do, the more the culture of music consumption is irreversibly changed.

Music should be a high-volume, low-cost, commodity biz--yet labels and retailers cling to the absurd notion that a CD should cost $18.95. Simple math tells you that if an iPod holds 10,000 songs, then ~$1.90 per song is an order of magnitude too expensive. Even iTunes $.99 per song is too expensive.

I completely agree. Music is a trade just like any other art and the "Star System" is very over. This ais a big change we are talking about though. It is bigger than most other businesses because the music industry is directly related to our culture. Until our culture changes there will still be a place for the big distributors to sell sh!% as shinola and pop-stars will be able to make records instead of sticking to their reality TV shows.

[mikegee]

i agree! the price for a downloaded song should be much less than .99 cents, i mean, wheres the overhead??? no hard copy mass production, no packaging, no distribution, no return costs from retailers, etc etc etc so the songs prices should reflect the low cost the music industry currently enjoys in "distributing" online music. the current price for a downloaded song is a ripoff and the public knows it...

[Gareth*]

I disagree fully,

99 cents is super cheap for one cutt considering the cost of actually recording and 18 bucks isn't a total rip off for a CD. Making a semi-pro album can easily cost $10,000 to record. (actualy pressing the CD 1000 times will cost about $1400) Making a a full blown CD can easily cost $100,000. If I've got a CD that sells for about $10 after shipping and promoting I can get $6. That means that after selling 1000 CD's I'd still be down about $4,000. If it goes for $18 then I'd make about $4,000 or $4 per CD. This is all considering I don't realy promote the album and I'm not using a record lable. That seems pretty fair considering how hard it is to sell 1000 CD's to people who buy "5 CD's a year". If you want people to have the chance to make great album's you've got to shell out a little cash.

[mikegee]

Originally Posted by Gareth*

I disagree fully,

99 cents is super cheap for one cutt considering the cost of actually recording and 18 bucks isn't a total rip off for a CD. Making a semi-pro album can easily cost $10,000 to record. (actualy pressing the CD 1000 times will cost about $1400) Making a a full blown CD can easily cost $100,000. If I've got a CD that sells for about $10 after shipping and promoting I can get $6. That means that after selling 1000 CD's I'd still be down about $4,000. If it goes for $18 then I'd make about $4,000 or $4 per CD. This is all considering I don't realy promote the album and I'm not using a record lable. That seems pretty fair considering how hard it is to sell 1000 CD's to people who buy "5 CD's a year". If you want people to have the chance to make great album's you've got to shell out a little cash.

i hear ya, but still: let's face it; retail cd prices, at least from the major labels, are pretty set standard prices (can anybody say "price fixing"?) i thought that was illegal? so like, why do they all have basically the same prices? because the prices are fixed, not only fixed, but also, the industry promised, when cds first surfaced, that the 12.99-14.99 prices were temporarily high due to the new technology, and after a few years, the price of cds would come down (not), i used to work for a record chain, all the biggies made this promise, an empty promise...

and a lot of the reason for the exhorbitant prices for cds, let's face it, is to support the FLUFF of the industry: outrageous marketing, over the top production and recording facilities, limos limos and more limos and lots of lavish parties, so many record executives doing so little to actually promote their artists, on and on and on... the out of control over spending of the industry at large, of course ya gota charge that much for the final product... they have no choice IMHO

[dolivas]

I think the industry suffers mightely from the tin ear it hires for A&R and prospect hires. They may sign like 10 acts and lose money on 9 of those acts and have only one prosper, which is typically the case nowadays. IF they payed more attention to detail rather than hire clique-ish trend spotters they might be going somewhere and be recouping more of there money back than placing all their eggs in one basket and hoping one of those acts might bale them out from losing money on the previous 9. There's no reason to not get 10 great acts if they looked for a A&R worth something and not some tin ear dude with good contacts and networking skills.

That's the only reason I welcome the digital age it gives more non-standard artists people who have websites, know html, are personal digi-recorders the ability to become their own startups and weed themselves out if they suck from the herd, hopefully.

If you do good in this upcoming digital age it would be because you have the tools out there to pull yourself from your own bootstraps up and be successful. There is no reason why we need 100-Pixies ripoffs, 20-GYBE! imitators, 30-Belle and Sebastian knockoffs all the time on "indie radio" or "indie blogospheres" just because they're "avant-garde" not Greenday or Jessica Simpson. Im just hoping as more of America or the world gets into this digital age and figures out how to demistify the art of music they'll start to rate both people in big labels and people on myspace.com etc. with equal venom and aplomb. There is a bigger case out there of people sucking and coasting along in music right now just because technology let's them or because general attitudes are letting them think that's the way to go.

Seriously we need a faster Darwin-effect on music in general right now more than ever.

*end rant*

[lukedavo]

If the stuff is available for free, I just dont understand why people would pay for it. I buy used cds, and records thats about it. I dont download music, but I have at one point when Napster and Kazza were in full swing. I got several full albums and didnt pay a cent. I guess I just really dont understand what all the hub-ub is about. When you have the choice, why choose foolishly. One thing is for sure $15 or whatever it is these days, is tooo damn much to pay for a CD!

[Nubus]

I'm so over downloading CDs. DVDs are where it's at.