Buttmunker

Prior to 2003 (give or take a couple of years, depending on your age and computer smarts), you had to go to a record store and buy a CD for either a bunch of songs, or for just one song that you want.

Nowadays, with the court ruling that music sharing programs are deemed legal due to the age we live in (they equated this process to when you used to record your friends tape to a blank tape on your old boombox.

Without confessing to too much, I think it is a bad shake for artists nowadays, as there's NO POSSIBLE WAY they could be making the kind of money they did in the 90's, 80's, 70's, etc. What about royalties for older artists? that's down the drain, too.

Damed

When I can go to the store and get the new Tool or Pearl Jam albums for $10, I really can't be bothered to spend the time and energy to download them. For a professionally printed CD, artwork and all, $10 is a very good price.

I think that the downloading of music has caused companies to offer more to the fans legitimatley at a decent price.

Good news if you ask me. Everybody wins.

darkside

If you like the music most everyone I know will buy the CD. That and concerts make artists money. The sky is not falling nearly as much as the RIAA would lead people to believe.

Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

where can you get CDs for $10?

Mr. Cinema

Best Buy and Circuit City offer up alot of new cds for $10 during release week. Some of those same titles stay on sale for that price a couple of weeks more. I see more cds on sale now than I did a few years ago.

Circuit City had 10,000 days for $10 during release week, but also had Aenima and Undertow for $7.99 each.

maxfisher

He specifically mentioned Tool and Pearl Jam, which were $9.99 a piece last week at just about all the major retailers. For the most part, a new album from just about any well known artist can be had for $10 or less in it's first week of release at either Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart or Target.

As for the original topic, if you buy that piracy is hurting cd profits, the correct question should be 'How the hell do major record labels make any money these days with 'MUSIC SHARING' programs??' Most artists don't make shit off their record sales and rely primarily on touring for their income. Maybe the U2s, Rolling Stones and Brittany Spears of the world have actually been hurt through file sharing, but I'm not going to lose any sleep about whether or not they make slightly less of a fortune than they would without it. And that's coming from someone who doesn't own a single illegally obtained song.

On the flip side of the equation, 'MUSIC SHARING' has been good to a lot of small to midsize bands, who have developed followings that would've been impossible otherwise. The most recent example I can think of is an interview I saw with a member of Ok Go, where he pointed out that while burned copies of their albums might potentially mean a few less sales, it also means a bigger fan base and more people at the concerts.

Anyway, another question that might be asked is 'How the hell do major record labels make any money when they're deliberately pissing in their loyal customer's faces?' I purchase around 100 albums in an average year and while I still buy some that are put out by major labels, I try to avoid it unless it's something I really, really want. On top of that, any sort of copy protection on a disc is an automatic lost sale, no matter how bad I want it. While I only represent 1 consumer, the actions of the RIAA and major labels have cost them more of my money than piracy ever would have.

cdollaz

Now you know why concert ticket prices have skyrocketed the past few years.

Shiv Shankly

That excludes the vast majority of stuff I, for one, listen to.

Jason

When did this happen?

illennium

Most artists don't make any money. This is nothing new. Ninety-five percent live off advances, which are never fully recouped from royalties. One effect in recent years has been that record companies have become even more conservative, focusing more resources on fewer artists, hoping for a few big payouts rather than a lot of little ones. In the 90s, most "alternative" bands were on majors, but now the majors won't have them, so there's a proliferation of "indie" labels and bands.

Hiro11

Exactly. I read somewhere that even big artists like Mariah Carey and J. Lo have both never made a cent of royalties because of the record companies (rightly) recouping advances, marketing costs, recording costs etc. The artists make their money from live shows.

cungar

And endorsements.

Alan Smithee

I wanna know how the hell record companies actually sell any CDs when they're priced at $18.99??

GatorDeb

Concerts and those that like the feel of a CD and like to collect them. Special boxsets. Those that want something physical. Your hard drive crashes, your $5000, 5000-song collection is gone.

illennium

This is generally correct, but the situation is actually wuite complicated. Because of the way recoupment works, the record company breaks even much sooner than the artist, which means there's no correlation between a record being profitable and an artist being recouped. Through something called cross-collateralization, any amounts unrecouped from one record get carried over to the next record.

This means that an artist can be making lots of money for the record company without ever breaking even himself. The record company will continue to advance the artist larger amounts for each subsequent record because it is profitable to do so. The upshot of this is that the artists is able to live well off of advances but is actually in huge debt. Once his career goes downhill, not only do sales of new albums stop, but now the advances stop and he has to repay his debt. This is the point at which many artists realize that they're actually broke.

Phil L.

Many new bands today are fine with file sharing. They are very likely never going to see a major lable contract anyway, so CD sales are not how they are really planning to make any money. As others have stated here, they make money from playing live and also from selling their 'merch' at shows. T shirts and other associated crap. Some clubs actually have a feature available where you can bring in your own little USB flash drive and grab a few mp3's of bands you just heard that night. Maybe there is a small fee involved, maybe not.
But again, many bands are fine with it.
Plus file sharing actually to serves to do just that, it shares music from low budget indie bands literally all over the world. For instance for a band that comes out of Albany NY, and plays in basically local clubs, how the hell is anyone in other parts of the country gonna ever hear their music? Well, someone maybe buys their CD at a show, or gets an on site mp3 of a few of their songs. They put it on a p2p network for anyone to dl. So let's say a few people do dl it, even if they are fairly local. They then mention it to people they might know in other parts of the country. Friends recommend it to friends, the music is available on a network, and suddenly this little band from Albany is being heard all over the country as more people pass it around. Why wouldn't the band be in favor of this?
Who knows? Maybe it gets heard by some college DJ's in other parts of the country and starts getting airplay. Then maybe it gets heard by larger stations, promoters, or club owners, and suddenly, the band is on their way. All from file sharing. This is not totally far fetched. Maybe partially far fetched, but still, the band was never gonna make any money from large scale CD sales anyway, so why not?

Artman

Those were the first cd's I've bought in over a yr I think... since than I've been buying used albums that I've been meaning to get forever... and plan to start selectively buying new ones. Mp3's are great, but I get more enjoyment out of a cd with art, etc. Esp if they offer a dvd, interesting packaging, etc..

mndtrp

Several years ago, when albums were $18, I didn't buy very many. I would buy around 10 a year, and they would only be well known bands. I was ok with this, but it didn't broaden my tastes any. Every once in a while, I would go to a concert and find someone new opening for a band I already liked.

Napster appeared into my life. I downloaded tons of music: new artists, old artists, other countries artists, whatever. My interests exploded, I found a plethora (Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?) of new bands.

Because of Napster, I ended up buying albums left and right. This got me to go to their concerts, which got me to buy even more albums from opening bands. I get my friends to go with me to those concerts, furthering their fanbase even more.

I was able to pick up cheap discs of older artists that I had never heard before. I got into blues and jazz, which got me to check out local artsts. That, in turn, got me to buy their albums.

I stopped P2P-ing years ago. In the meantime, artists now give out a free song or two online. By checking their websites, especially their links, I now am able to find new bands. Indie lables are nice, because they usually have artists that are similar enough to each other that I can find new music easily.

Also, since the Napster days, album prices have dropped to the $10 mark. This is a very reasonable price, but you still have the issues with record companies getting their cut first. This makes sense, most of the time, due to costs incurred with supporting an artist for a while. I feel that dropping them due to one "flop" is a load of shit, though.


Anyway, long story short, file sharing isn't as big of a problem as some would have you believe. The people downloading gigs of music probably wouldn't be buying it anyways.

Mopower

Have you ever heard of a CD-R?

Hospitaller

the bands themselves rarely make a lot of money from album sales. an unknown band signing to a major label is likely to get totally boned. ive heard some deals are as bad as 25 or 50 cents per album sold. A band with some popularity can usually get $1 each, and occasionally highly sought after groups or artists (that arent currently pinned down to a worse deal) can sometimes command $2 or more. but they are the tiniest fraction of the overall recording industry.

Like others have said, even if you sell a truckload of albums, chances are the label has a list of expenses as long as your arm and will nickle and dime the band out of what little money they have earned. I happened to hear on a Behind The Music that some lame trend of the month band (goo goo dolls i think?) had a platinum album (1,000,000+ sold!) and still owed the label $100,000!

So really the music sharing is primarily hurting the labels and the few high-roller groups that can actually live off the royalties from their catalog (i.e. metallica)

nodeerforamonth

The bands still get money from publishing. Every time someone downloads a song from iTunes. iTunes has to pay the publisher (like ASCAP). The publisher then pays the band in quarterly royalty statements. Probably like 10 cents a download, if that.

Mordred

Prior to 1996 for me. For some reason in '95 I just didn't get the mp3 thing.

As others have pointed out, artists make very little on CD sales, due to recouping recording advances. Older established artists still do pretty well, as there are no recording costs for catalog CDs, so production is a lot cheaper, and a lot of profit will go to the artist (because they often have the clout to work out better deals). Popular artists still make good money from royalties as they get a payment everytime a radio station, MTV/VH1, etc. plays their song. Britney Spears may not have made a whole lot off of her first album sales, but I guarantee she was rolling in it from all the spins "Hit Me Baby One More Time" got. ASCAP and BMI are very good about that.

GuessWho

It really pays to be the WRITER of a song. You get royalties on any remakes.

slop101

Back in the mid '90s, I was in a band and we had put out 2 records on a local indie lable. It was really just a hobby and it was almost 10 years ago now. Anyways, we didn't really make money off the records at all. But just last year, we got $3K from MTV because they played a snippet of one of our old songs on The Real World. They would've paid even more if they played a part that had lyrics. And we're a nothing band - imagine how much money established bands with recognizable songs are getting payed for all the little snippets that are played here and there.

JacksModernLife

I remember when TLC had their behind the music, they explained how they went bankrupt, and that was because they only got 5 cents for each CrazySexyCool album that was sold. They made 5 million between the three of them, but then had to give some back for advances and what not. Because of that I've been kinda MEH about buying cds as opposed to burning or downloading them. If it's an artist I really like or have been a fan of for a while, I will buy their album no questions asked, because it's pretty mucha guarantee I will enjoy it (No Doubt, Britney, Mary J, RHCP, Foo Fighters, etc), but theres lots of bands where it all depends on their current music and the price of their cd the first week (I refuse to pay anything more than 9.99).