CD Music Sales Down 20% In Q1 2007

prostoalex writes "Music sales are not just falling, they're plummeting — by as much as 20% when you compare January-March 2007 with the 2006 numbers. The revenue numbers are actually worse, since CD prices are under pressure. The Wall Street Journal lists many factors contributing to the rapid decline: 800 fewer retail outlets (Tower Records' demise alone closed 89); increasingly negative attitude towards CD sales from big-box retailers (Best Buy now dedicates less floor space to CDs in favor of better-selling items); and file sharing, among others. Songs are being traded at a rate about 17 times the iTunes Store's recent rate of sales. Diminishing CD sales means that you don't have to sell as many to get on the charts. The 'Dreamgirls' movie soundtrack recently hit #1 by selling 60,000 CDs in a week, a number that wouldn't have made the top 30 in 2005."

shhh... can you hear that sound?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227533&cid=184 33111 [slashdot.org]

Re:shhh... can you hear that sound?

Bands have been manufactured long before the 1980s. Peter, Paul, and Mary is one well-known example. I'm sure many of the nice sounding groups from the 40s and 50s were created by producers as well.

Many of the bands we still listen to (such as the Beatles) weren't label stooges, but I'm sure they were the exception. Labels have always tried to sell bubble-gum tripe and take as few risks as possible.

Re:shhh... can you hear that sound?

You know, this is true. While overall I've never been a fan of Top 40 music, it's only in the last 7 or 8 years that I have not been interested in *anything at all* on the charts. Admittedly, I'm getting older (in my 30s now), but my disdain for what's out there now is not that I find the music necessarily "too loud and offensive for my early middle age years" or that I "don't get it" but that it is all...like product, barcoded, generic...I can't tell one band apart from the other. I can't remember the damn melodies from half the songs I hear. A minute after a song ends, if you asked me to hum it, I couldn't (there are some isolated exceptions).

I mean, it's like so many mediocre, flattened McDonalds hamburgers which have been left under heat lamps for an hour. I doubt this is the *full* reason why the industry suffers - I am pretty sure it's mainly piracy - but really, and I do think I'm being far, the stuff in top 40 now is the most generic, forgettable, all-sounds-the-same stuff I can recall in my lifetime.

I grew up in the 80s and I *hated* that. I hated most of the music but looking back, there was way more diversity even in synth-pop and crap like that, than there is in what people call emo today (I mention emo just because being white and middle class, this is supposed to appeal to me...or a younger version of me).

And let's not forget the aesthetic sewer hip hop and R&B is in. R&B was already dying in the early 80s, but rap had its golden age at the end of that decade, and has steadily declined since around 1993 or so, leaving what we have today - music so awful I am afraid to be in an elevator with a fan of it (not because I think they're bad-ass thugs, but because I think they must be barely sentient and might try to like, eat me or something, and not in the good way). And I'm not talking about underground/alternative rap - I'm talking about the top 40, "Hi I'm a big dumb idiot, I'm throwing money at the camera while a bunch of sluts dance behind me, all of which I'm going to have to pay the record company for, which will bankrupt me and launch me into obscurity back in the ghetto I came from."

There's obviously an audience for these albums and singles - really, really, really stupid teenagers. (Music execs like to say "teenagers" but what they mean are the dumbest of teenagers. Any of you reading this who are a teenager now and have to go through your teens in this culture have my utmost sympathy. And yes, it's as bad as you think it is.)

You know, what I really want is art and poetry; I want to be moved, like what I'm listening to *means something*. I want an emotional response, and if not that, then at bare minimum I want clever and quirky or even funny, but what's out there now doesn't even deliver *that*. I still pay attention to pop music because I am trying to understand why people listen to it. I understand why a bunch of posers out with their friends listen to it as a shared ritual of simian idiocy, but I don't get why I see these white boys driving around in pimped out hatchbacks listening to this shit when they don't *have* to? Do they not have a stash of like, real music to listen to when they don't have to pretend to like what everyone else likes? Are there really that many stupid, empty-eyed kids?

You know, I could chalk this up to a difference in aesthetics because clearly I probably listen to a lot of stuff other people really dislike, but in most cases I can *understand* why people would like something I'm not into (For example, I despise Nine Inch Nails, but I understand why someone would like its visceral energy). But I really don't understand why today's top 40 appeals to anyone at all. I can't abstractly understand why someone would like dickless tripe like AFI which the local Clear Channel stations just won't stop playing. This is an actual experience:

Me: "This is complete, crap, what is this, who would possibly like this, there's nothing here?"
Wife: "It's AFI. You asked me the same question about this same s

Re:shhh... can you hear that sound?

None taken.

I think what we're hoping for though is to be able to gloat over the demise of the current recording industry, which many people feel is corrupt and not conducive to creativity.

An industry that does well should be one that creates or adds value without the need for artificial controls over supply. The bottled water industry does very well indeed without needing legislation restricting the supply of drinking water from other sources. It adds value by providing a quality controlled, conveniently packaged product. If the water in the bottle was poor quality, or you needed special controls to get the bottle open, people would probably prefer the tap in the public conveniences, after all, that water is free...

Re:shhh... can you hear that sound?

I dunno, but, one thing I DO fear from reading this...is the demise of the CD itself.

Until we have another way to get music in a lossless format...I really don't want them to stop pressing CD's.

Re:shhh... can you hear that sound?

"Some suggestions:

While your suggestions were helpful, you should omitted the most basic one, that should have been #1.

- Actively look and cultivate talented groups that MAKE good music to publish on a CD...and make it a full disk worth of good music.

This is a hard lesson for the Industry.

"You're not entitled to my money" is that lesson.

Re:This is a hard lesson for the Industry.

> "You're not entitled to my money" is that lesson.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

- Heinlein, Life Line, 1939

Not strictly true anymore.

This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law.

Of course, that was before the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, etc.

Re:This is a hard lesson for the Industry.

There really seems to be a sense of entitlement here (by record companies). They made money once upon a time with their business model, and so they expect that their old business model must necessarily be enforced by law. Now, the truth is that they still do make money, and they can continue to make money, but just not as much money with the same business model.

Anyway, people seem to forget that our population wasn't born to be disposable consumers for large corporations. We do not exist to be bullied and exploited for profit. Companies and corporations are a means to an end. They are artificial constructions so that we can organize ourselves into a society that can work efficiently to provide for ourselves. Record labels, for example, aren't entitled to money for simply creating a product; they must create a product we want, but more than that they must create a product efficiently enough that they can sustain their endeavor. Their endeavor is really our endeavor. The corporation is created and empowered by our society for the good of society, and if it fails to benefit us, if it fails to succeed in our endeavor, if it is so inefficient that they cannot sustain their own endeavor, then they've failed us. They are bad businessmen and their business has failed to provide us with what we, as a society, need.

Believe it or not, I've been accused of being a "communist" for saying things like this. Listening to some people talk, reading some people's comments, you'd think "capitalism" was a moral doctrine in which companies are the true individuals and profit is the only true good. "Morals" should be outlawed from business practices, and all should be sacrificed on the alter of short-term gains and increased stock prices.

Listen people, capitalism is just an economic theory that personal economic freedom will generally result in greater efficiency than an economy that is run by the government. What we're after here is efficiency in providing for society's needs, but the idea is that if you allow the system to provide benefit to the most efficient and productive, then you will see greater efficiency and more productivity. That's it. There's no moral component. There's still no purpose to it other than to order society efficiently.

Giving unlimited artificial monopolies to large bodies and guaranteeing inefficient business models against obsolescence is *not* capitalism. Yes, it benefits large companies, but that's not what capitalism is. It's actually a form of communism in which the "government" is supplanted by a partnership between the government and the small number of large companies that run everything. I don't know what you'd call it, but if you ask me, it's not good.

CD sales down

It would be nice to know that all ??AA content was moving 20% less of their volume, including the P2P stuff. How is the indie movement going? Are their numbers up? Let's hope so. Give the artist less incentive to join up with the RIAA and their types.

Stage Artists will do fine, perhaps even better

Only recording artists will be hurt over the long run. Those who are willing to sing for their dinner will do well.

Re:Stage Artists will do fine, perhaps even better

The entire music industry is set up to abuse recording artists. Exorbinant marketting fees, a advanced based signing model, shady producers and a lot of very bad accounting that affects briteney spears as much as it does from . I had friends who had record promoters run up a 17,000 charges to book them in dive bars (within our own town). They never notified them of what was owed or outstanding until my friends demanded to know where they stood financially and the promoters handed them a 17,000 invoice for work and a bit of merch(a few dozen t-shirts, a few dozen logo'd props)... Most of the industry is crooked and sleazy and I won't cry a single tear if every studio that comprises the RIAA went banrupt and all the artists had to fend for themselves. It means the wolves have died and the lambs need to figure out how to get eaten without them.

Re:Stage Artists will do fine, perhaps even better

You really don't know *anything* about musician's lives, do you?

Maynard James Keenan from Tool has been quoted as saying they could get by just fine without producing any albums. So, there's proof that some artists will indeed do fine.

Re:Stage Artists will do fine, perhaps even better

I don't know his answers, but here're mine:

Wow, I guess if one musician from one band can do it, so can everyone else.

Yes. This is a market thing: either you do what customers want and profit, or you do what you want (as a hobby or some kind of personal-improvement) not caring for profit, or you discover you're not fit for that function and go search something else you are able to do and people are willing to pay you for.

So my method of making income as a musician should be limited to what 19th century musicians did?

Yes. It was good enough for them, it's good enough for you.

And what if I would like to be able to sell my recordings so I don't have to travel? Maybe so I could raise my son, or have a family or social life in general. Or maybe I have a job I can't take major time off of.

Then I say to you that you don't understand what "making money" is. Again: it is you doing what others want and are willing to pay you for, not what you want.

I know I'm sounding harsh, but there are good reasons for things being this way. I've discussed this matter extensively on another /. thread I suggest you read [slashdot.org]. For some people it's simply a matter of principles.

Re:Stage Artists will do fine, perhaps even better

The reason why only certain people manage to establish themselves as money makers through live performance is because RIAA members and ClearChannel are the gatekeepers to that prosperity. The Internet can permit people to market their own music and establish their own popularity without the control and oversight of the RIAA. Once the RIAA hegemony is broken down such that free Internet distribution, not radio or MTV, is the dominant form of bringing one's music to the people, then good performers will be able to make a living from their live performances.

They'll probably have to cancel MTV's Cribs due to lack of subject material, but at least talented performers will be able to make an honest living without first being "discovered" by some overpaid record exec.

iTunes Purchase vs. p2p

I wonder a bit about iTunes vs. peer-to-peer metrics. On iTunes one is liable to buy a single track or two whereas on file sharing services downloading the album is usually the only choice (even if you only want one track). This alone would account for some of why file sharing is so much more voluminous.

Garbage in garbage out

This may have something to do with the garbage that the record industry keeps churning out. Seriously, the Dreamgirls soundtrack was #1? What does that tell you?

It may also have something to do with a downturn in the economy, uncertainty about the future, record levels of consumer debt, and energy prices that take up an ever-increasing share of people's budgets.

But, certainly, above all these factors, it must be the file sharing!!!

Plus ca change

the garbage that the record industry keeps churning out

But it has always been that way. If you're a boring old fart like me then 1967 was the great year for singles (Beatles and the Stones at their prime, the Motown glory days and the US west coast just beginning to wake up) and the top selling single in the UK in 1967 was Tears for Souvenirs by Ken Dodd, not exactly great music. Good (difficult term but I'll let it ride) music tends not to have mass appeal, the charts have always been full of mass produced pap.

Re:Plus ca change

Heck, the other "golden age" of popular music was from around 75-84, when Madonna and her ilk hit the airwaves. You had the punk/heavy metal revolution followed immediately by a revolution caused by MTV. MTV was so desperate for material they'd play anything anyone sent in as long as it wouldn't get them fined. Try to imagine someone like the Talking Heads coming out in today's world if you doubt it. Then again, you'd have to have a music channel on TV that actually played music.

No wonder

The other day, I was in a trendy clothing store. Embarrassment aside, I could not believe all of the innovative music that they were playing. There was one particular track that I wanted to buy so I queried the sales folk as to the artist name and title. They had no idea and were not provided with any resource to fine out.

But that got me thinking: The ClearChannel monopoly on our radio stations is the source of this problem. They "pay to play" the same 40 songs all day.

I remember back in the early 90s when the FCC allowed this sort of thing (it was previously not legal for a single company to own more than a certain amount of radio stations in a given market... I don't know the exact detail but I remember the discussion). I look back on the variety of music from pre-monopolization and it really illustrates the difference.

But they can always blame the pirates.

Welcome to the Asian markets

Jeff Rabhan, who manages artists and music producers including Jermaine Dupri, Kelis and Elliott Yamin, says CDs have become little more than advertisements for more-lucrative goods like concert tickets and T-shirts. "Sales are so down and so off that, as a manager, I look at a CD as part of the marketing of an artist, more than as an income stream," says Mr. Rabhan. "It's the vehicle that drives the tour, the merchandise, building the brand, and that's it. There's no money."

That is exactly how things are in Asia, due to rampant physical CD piracy.

Guess what.
Asia still has a thriving music industry.
They just have to make their money differently.

Prove It?

Songs are being traded at a rate about 17 times the iTunes Store's recent rate of sales.

According to the article, this information is provided by BigChampagne LLC. According to their website blurb at http://www.bigchampagne.com/thedata.html [bigchampagne.com] ;

"Like it or not, the vast majority of online entertainment media is now acquired for free on P2P file sharing networks, and BigChampagne is there."

Cue lots of rubbish about network operation centres and live feed monitoring. Anyone want to throw out ideas about how they really monitor this stuff? Is there a way of downloading torrents with a client and finding out exact data transfers automatically?

Could rubbish music have something to do with it?

And the fact that Q1 of 2007 has had virtually no decent new music released couldn't have anything to do with it?

This is a time when the R&B era is over and Hip-hop is on the decline. Traditional Pop music seems to have all but vanished, rock music has never recovered since the 90's and Punk for several years has been hit & miss.

Is anyone surprised people are buying less music?

Re:Could rubbish music have something to do with i

This is a time when the R&B era is over

By all means refer to recent music by (predominantly) black artists as MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) or some other unique name but please DO NOT hijack the name "R&B" (Rhythm and Blues) when describing that kind of music alone. The term "Rhythm and Blues" encompasses a very wide range of music, from the likes of Atlantic Soul music from Otis Redding through blues music like John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, etc. and was in use many years before being used as a category for modern mainly-black music.

Hip-hop is on the decline

And who's loss is that? All it did was take pieces from earlier songs, tear them apart and have some bloke talking over it.

rock music has never recovered since the 90's

A true rock music fan has more than enough material to last him a lifetime anyway. But as someone traditionally into the likes of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, not only are a lot of my heroes still wheeling themselves out on stage, I also have some good newer bands like Radiohead, Oasis, Kasabian, etc. that I can give a spin. I've been a rock fan (as well as some blues, soul and classical) for 35 years now and I'm still finding new and interesting stuff all of the time, stuff I missed from the early 70s through to new music today.

The whole "rock is dead" thing is a myth - it just never needed to be particularly cool and fashionable and just got on with it...

Is anyone surprised people are buying less music?

I'm actually buying less because I'm enjoying music more. I no longer buy CDs that just turn out to have one good song on them - I read reviews and download it from Usenet or BitTorrent first. If it's good, I buy it (I genuinely have about 1000 legally bought CDs) and if it's crap I delete it.

And I definitely don't buy from rip-off high street shops any more - much rather new or used online.

Na na na na...

Na na Na na...
Hey hey...
Goodbye!

I figured a song was in order. =)

I was listening to NPR about this yesterday

Basically it boils down to kids only having a limited amount of money buying other products which are cheaper. Video games, cell phones, and consoles are becoming cheaper yet cds are remaining expensive. Add to deteriorating job market and higher fuel costs which hurt teenage consumers the most, and you will find they would rather spend money on other items.

THe music companies have their price point figures off with supply and demand and should lower their prices like the game makers and cell phone companies are doing.

I wish

we could say it was the music buying populace engaging in a measured boycott of the industry fronted by the thugs at the RIAA, but sadly, I don't think that's it. And I can't even say that it's because popular music (you know, the kind that climbs the charts) sucks, because it has sucked for 20 years or more (I blame The Cherry Hill Gang). I know why I so rarely buy CDs anymore (there's little I like, and Pandora hasn't catalgued bands I do like yet), but I am considered a social deviant so I don't ascribe such simple and straightforward motives to the mass of the music buying populace.

Lots of reasons

I have admittedly narrow tastes in music. As one of my friends pointed out I only like bands that released stuff between the years of 1994 and 2000, with a couple of exceptions.

So the part of the reason sales are down is because I haven't heard anything I wanted to buy in years.

News flash...

Consumers don't want to fund your lawsuits. Here are some things that the music industry may want to consider if it is to gain its customer base back:

1. Stop suing your customers. Clearly it's not scaring people out of music piracy, but it's definitely pissing people off.
2. Get rid of the DRM. You're just punishing your legitimate customers. Oh, that's right, if you sell music without DRM, people might pirate it. Because nobody pirates music now.
3. People understand economics better than you give them credit for. Given extra middle-men and the cost of production and shelf space, the per-unit cost of a CD is probably fairly high. On the other hand, it costs very little to send a copy of a song over the internet. People know this, and they know the dollar per song price point is high. Lower it. Hell, try cutting it to 25 cents, and you may find that you sell more than four times as many songs. Call it a promotion and see how it works out for you.

Welcome to the new age

Music is one of those things that you just don't need a brick-and-mortar shop to sell, or even a physical item. I'm sure the established industry will do everything it can to blame illegal file sharing for this trend, but that is only a vain attempt to prop up a dead business and keep a whole lot of useless people employed collecting big paychecks.

The simple fact: Their business model is obsolete. I would even go so far to say that the recording industry as a whole is obsolete now that the people who actually make the music have to power to self-publish and self-promote to the entire world.

=Smidge=

Weird, I just bought a CD

I got it directly from the artist's web site, and I paid them directly using PayPal. Was that counted for these statistics?

To give the artist even more credit, they put their *entire album* on their website inside a Flash player so I couldn't have downloaded it, but I suppose I could have hijacked the audio from my web browser. I bought the album because it's damn good, and I wanted to support the artist, and - of course - I wanted to be able to play the tracks in any order and on my iPod.

Kudos to the band Winterpills for showing just how to sell a damn album!
.

Too many reasons for the fall

There are just too many reasons why the CD sales are falling. Here are some of them:
* Digital music sales
* Satellite radio
* Music channels on Cable TV
* CD's last forever or can be archived on computer and once the media goes bad, you can burn again. This means no more replacement sales. In olden days people used to buy same album again because the media didn't last forever.
* Lots of DVD/Computer/Games. People are spending their free times on these items instead of listening CD
* You only need one CD for the entire family. Earlier, I used to buy multiple copies of same albums (for car, house, office etc). Not anymore.
* Just a seasonal fluctuation with not too much of great music release. .....

bum rush the charts, NPR story

there's an effort to make an independent artist #1 on iTunes today
http://bumrushthecharts.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
(dunno if it's a scam or not, but it's an interesting idea)

also, there was an interesting story on NPR a while back about recording technology, including some mention of the fact that some people were upset when it came along and changed the way people experienced music (from gathering around and playing/singing to just listening). Music will always be around. The Recording Industry won't.
The Roots of Audio Recordings Turn at 78 RPM by Susan Stamberg
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=6645723 [npr.org]
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=1019 [npr.org]

Doesn't mean a damned thing.

This is indicative of nothing. There are so many different aspects to CD/music sales and values that focusing on CD sales is somewhat ludicrous.

In my personal opinion, modern, mainstream music sucks for the most part. I've been purchasing more independent music than ever before. Are independent labels included in these numbers? I download very little in way of illicit means. I like my CDs and I have no problems buying CDs, but most of the music out there from the major labels simply doesn't interest me any more. Why is the author not taking into account the "cookie cutter" mentality that dominates a lot of the mainstream music scene?

I'm sure that there are other reasons that are not due to illegal means. It could be something like how Steve Miller was bitching about how his CD was on the top of the charts for years and years then suddenly plummeted. Uh ... ever think that maybe your market had reached its saturation point, Steve? In fact, did anyone stop to think that maybe the music market itself has reached a saturation point where the majority of people who wanted to get CDs of older albums has done so?

And with more and more people learning about (and despising) DRM-laden, digital music, I'm not shocked at all to learn that on-line stores like iTunes are not offsetting CD sales drops. I refuse to buy music with any kind of DRM out of principle (yes, I know about analog loopback to strip off the DRM), but stores like eMusic and Magnatune don't have the artists that I'd like. If iTunes dropped the DRM, I'd buy a ton of songs from them, and I think that a lot of people have the same mentality.

Oh, well. I guess it doesn't matter. If we're not following the greed-laden will of the record industry, we're automatically pirates no matter what we say or do, aren't we?

I'm sure Record & Cassette sales went down too

...when the compact disc (CD) arrived.

This is no different than the other evolutions of music distribution.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM, RIAA, or die a shameful, greedy death.

This is a Good Thing,Really!

The sooner the industry fails,the sooner music is back in our hands.
Music was here before the industry,it will be here afterwards.
What will change is;musicians will have a level playing field to promote themselves.
Listeners will not have talent arbitrarily selected for them by criteria of easy bulk promotion techniques.Instead we will get to decide what is good for ourselves.
Money will likely go directly to the musician for performance rather than royalty.
Open music and GNU like licensing will likely be the order of the day.
Internet radio will thrive.
Lets all do our part and quit giving the middleman money in exchange for continued abuse.
Just let it die.

I know everyone blames pirates...

...but they help us too. For instance, I am a professional pirate, and my business faces ruin. I don't mean that I have an eyepatch and cutlass and go around robbing ships. I mean I have an eyepatch and cutlass and go around robbing record stores. My trade has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.

I inherited the title about 12 years ago from the Dread Pirate R0b3rtz. It was one of those practices that struck without warning, carried away as many CDs as possible, then scuttled the small, independent record stores as we left. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My practice specialised in aquiring family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't steal sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have stolen one of the most extensive Christian rock catalogues that I know of.

The business strategy worked. People flocked to my illegal fencing operation, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on even more cutthroat and ruthless employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable pirate fleet that I had built with my own hands. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.

Every day, fewer and fewer of my stolen songs can be played. Why can no one play them? Do their players use proprietary formats? Are they not technologically inclined? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - the RIAA is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three song files world wide is encrypted with DRM. On the Internet, you can hardly find any music that hasn't been locked down by the RIAA. It has the potential to destroy the piracy industry, from buccaneers, to swashbucklers, to Dread Pirates like myself. Before you point to the supposed "social conscience of consumers", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is getting robbed daily. Unlike music files, it's harder to apply DRM to books.

A week ago, an unpleasant experience with record industry executives gave me an idea. In my favorite bordello, I overheard a slick, ponytailed record executive talking to his rockstar friend.

"Babe, I'm going to lock down your music so hard that if you play it with your windows down, you'll be able to sue the pedestrians."

"Gnarly, man. I'm going to be coked up in the VIP room for life!"

I was fuming. So they were out to destroy record piracy from right under my nose? Fat chance. I grabbed the little ponytailed, bluetooth-wearing flake by his shirt. "Arrr...you're going to lock down the piracy industry, eh?" I asked him in my best Blackbeard/Erik The Viking voice.

"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.

"That's it. What's your name? You shall bear the mark of the Black Dot. Now take yourself and your greasy toothpick of a friend out of my bordello - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.

So that's my idea - give RIAA executives the Black Dot. If somebody cannot respect the superiority of pirates, then they shall die by my cutlass. If the music industry wants to exclude pirates, then pirates should keel-haul them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - one instance of DRM, and it's off the plank with you. If you want to play tough, you should expect the big dogs to take notice. It's really no different than the ATF setting Branch Davidians on fire.

I have just written a letter to the pirates guild outlining my proposal. Impaling RIAA executives one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention record executives use the fact that they're being drawn and quartered to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of record executives would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected record

Contributing factors

many factors contributing to the rapid decline

How about

1. Everybody over 20 has now finished replacing their vinyl and cassettes with CDs

2. The only records you get to hear about are the handful of rubbish on the radio playlists that you're already sick of.

3. Under 20s are now pissing their money away:

• Buying DVDs
• Buying expensive games for consoles
• Walking around with a mobile phone glued to their ear talking about nothing in particular
• Or, voting people out of the Big Brother house at HOW MUCH!? a minute
• Buying Crazy Frog ringtones without realising that they're subscribing to a "we'll take your money away" service at $$/month
• Getting legless every weekend on sticky drinks in little bottles sold for exorbitant prices in night clubs (of course, in the UK under-21s can buy alcohol without proving that they drive a car and own at least two guns).
• Buying expensive clothes (sorry, buying expensive logos attached to clothes made in China for 10c per gross)
• Buying expensive trainers (ditto the above)
• Buying cosmetics (Even the boys, god help us - must be the chemicals leeching into the water supply)
• In severe cases, still doing all the above while also having kids.
• Paying huge amounts of interest having used a credit card for all the above
• If boring, sensible and nerdy and NOT doing all the above, desperately saving money in the hope of being able to afford the downpayment of a small shoe-box nearly within a days commute from the city before they hit 30.

PS: Kids! Get off my lawn!!!

Time for a new business model...

Perhaps the music industry should just give up on selling cd's, allow free download of music, and resort to making money from product placement. We could have lyrics such as the following: I love you baby, like Pepsi. Won't you let me take you to dinner at Micky Dee's. Then we can cruise to my crib in my car, Chevy---it is the heartbeat of America. Tonight is going to be hot cuz I took my Levitra.

WoW!

Songs are being traded at a rate about 17 times the iTunes Store's recent rate of sales.

Wow! I didn't realize that iTunes was selling that much.

More seriously, these press releases always blame filesharing. It's a boilerplate complaint every time CD sales go down. In fact, it would be Man-bites-Dog news to read, CD sales rise while filesharing rates decline.

What I think is happening is that there is a more informed consumer that doesn't buy the record industry's garbage any longer. Ever bought a CD that had only one track worth listening to? I have -- more than once. Or bought a song you only cared to listen to a dozen times, but you bought it anyway? I have -- more than once. How about a song you wouldn't have bought at all if you'd listened to it first?

The record industry used to sell you a take-it-or-leave-it bundle of songs at a price of their choosing. If it wasn't on an overpriced single (relative to the cost per song when bought by the album), you bought the whole album album. Consumer cassette recorders came along and mix tapes arrived soon after that. The record industry responded with the higher quality of the never-wears-out CD. It took 15 years for affordable CD burners and blank media to arrive before you could reproduce a CD containing only songs you wanted to hear. All this time the record industry was able to bundle in a bunch of B-sides or worse on your only other choice of albums.

Now, finally, consumers are thinking in terms of single tracks. Why? iTunes store sells them that way, iTunes on your computer rips CD's on a track basis, and iPods set playlists by track. The We'll-Decide-What's-Right-For-You albums are dead. The industry just doesn't know it yet. All its contracts with its artists are at the album level. The album will be completely dead when recording contracts specify a certain number of songs, rather than albums. And that's why sales are falling. Consumers want singles to mix and match as they please, and the became easily possible to get them for free via filesharing long before the record companies started selling them that way. The record companies are blind and stupid for not seeing, and reacting, to this when Napster first surfaced, and still haven't learned this lesson. As such, they are attempting to utilize fear (we'll sue you), guilt (think of the artists), the courts (we have sued you), and lawmakers (remember our senator from Disney?) to force you go consume your music their way -- which it not our way any longer.

They will lose, but do a lot of damage on the way down.

An Inconvenient Truth Revealed

I've been into music for a LONG time. And when I say into it, I mean I've dropped tens of thousands of dollars on 8 tracks, LPs, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, I've shoplifted as a teen, I've downloaded as an adult, I've swapped CD's with friends and borrowed from the library to make a tape or CD. That doesn't even count the thousands spent on audio equipment to play it on. I've just had to have it. It is a part of my life. I know I'm not alone.

What I really want to share is a conversation I had with a mid-western independent record store owner last weekend. Whenever I happen to be in this little town where I was, I always try to stop in and patronize his store. He has got cool stuff you can't find anywhere else (read Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc) and it's organized so things are pretty easy to find. He also carries a large selection of smoking paraphenelia - try finding that at your local big box, lol.

Anyway, I asked him straight up how downloads had affected his business. "Not much really. It's Target that's killing me", he replied. "Not Wal-Mart?" I asked. He told me that, "Wal-Mart doesn't carry the explicit versions, but Target does. They can sell it for less than I can buy it. We used to have a good crowd on release Tuesdays, but now they all go to Target."

"So the downloaders aren't hurting you at all?" I asked again. "They don't have any money to buy CD's with anyway, so I really haven't seen much impact from downloading", he stated matter of factly. And you know, as he added up the total for the 6 CD's I was purchasing, I realized he was absolutely correct. The total was $105. Now I have a pretty good job and can afford to splurge on some CD's once in a while, but the average joe college, high school kid or even single mom could never afford what I just dropped on 6 CDs.

It was then that I realized what I had bought and why. I bought one of my favorite LP's, Pretenders II which has been remastered and a live disc added. So now I have the LP, the CD and the remastered CD. Chrissie deserves my money though and it sounds much better, so I don't begrudge that one. But the point is, here we go again, they are selling me the same thing over and over in a different format. Next it will be some DRMd DVD thing that I won't be able to put on my iPod. It is really getting old.

Three of the other CD's were stuff I had downloaded and wanted the CD. The other was actually the new Stooges CD. I guess the point here is that instead of prices going down, they seem to be going up (except at Target). The specialty retailer is a dying breed as price becomes a much bigger factor in the purchasing decision than selection, customer service and just having someone to talk to about music in general. Ever try to have a conversation with a Target or Best Buy salesperson about the time you saw the Scorpions and Iron Maiden on the same bill? Think they'd stand around for even a few sentences.

So what's the inconvenient truth revealed here? It's that downloads aren't killing the retail music business. The music business is killing the music business. You want to sell more product, price it competitively. $105 for 6 CD's is outrageous to me and I only bought them because I want the store to be there when I come back to that town in a few months and pay them another visit. It was the least I could do. Now, I've got to go to the library and see what's on hold for me there. Thank god for the library!

The problem is too high retail prices.

Let's face it folks. The problem with declining CD sales is due to one reason: the retail price is too high.

With prices going for US$15 or more per album-length CD even at Best Buy and Wal-Mart, the recording industry has priced their product in a cartel-like fashion that actually encourages ways to beat the system, whether it's piracy or buying music at a lower price through legal download sites. Why do you think the iTunes Music Store has done so well? Anyway, the RIAA should seriously consider setting a much lower price for a new album-length CD, probably more like US$12 per album maximum. At these lower prices, there is vastly lower incentive to pirate music, since more people can actually afford the real product.

Interesting correlation to recent housecleaning

Just last week I took down the CD tower that I'd had for the last 5 years. I threw it straight out, took all of the CDs in it, tossed their jewel cases and booklets, and just crammed the discs into a Caselogics book. Even that feels like a fantastic waste of space -- the binder-sized volume could all fit on a cubic centimeter of a disk in my computer, probably less if I were inclined to rip them all (which I'm not).

It took awhile for it to sink in, but the idea of paying even $5 for an album on a disc strikes me as a reckless waste of money, actually worse than just burning the $5 because I'd be introducing the inconvenience of managing a baroque artifact into my life.

Music albums are worthless and it's finally penetrating the popular psyche. It's no surprise their sales are dropping like a stone.

Re:Ain't buying CD's no more

Just stick a mild compressor (3-6 dB) on your CD output, then mix in a cassette recording of your fireplace. Those old CDs will sound GREAT! You'll get the warmth, the soft rush of air^H^H^Hthe vinyl surface, and the soft popping.