hotaru_san

I realize that your response wasn't directed only at me, but I would like to point out that I never said if I thought the correlation was positive or negative. I think napster probably had an effect but I don't know if it was helped or hurt record sales.

It seems like the backlash from the end of napster and the rise of so many other free music providers could have hurt record sales. But I'm sure there is more to it than that. I don't know if a quality issue or an economic issue or what...

gcribbs

I barely used napster but the few songs I downloaded I liked caused me to buy the album. For example when I downloaded Linkin Park I loved the music and so I bought the album.

I know many who did not do this. however a few of my friends who used to buy many albums are now downloading from free sources and saying screw the music industry and not buying even if they like them.

Frankly the whole mess was handled badly.

einTier

Personally, I've never seen an industry so overtly hostile to it's best customers. This was handled in the same heavy-handed response that the record company has been handing down since 1976. It's just been lately, customers are starting to have other choices, and the record companies are acting even more like bullies.

What do I want? I want to be able to play my music anywhere, from my car to my PC to my mp3 server or my Rio Volt. Once I buy a piece of music, I'm not interested in buying it again -- I'm not going to pay per-use fees. I'd also like to pay a reasonble price for a CD, $20 is absurd. Being able to buy any album from the entire back catalog of any artist ever released seems reasonable too, no more out of print crap or CDs only sold in Germany or the UK. It would also be really nice, to be able to download digital tracks right from the record company's server, in a non-crippled, non-propriatary format like mp3. It doesn't have to be CD quality, but it had better be as good as the better files available on Napster and it's clones. A dollar is not a reasonable price, $0.10 or $0.05 would be for something that costs almost nothing to distribute.

Instead, they'd like to have me re-buy my catalog every ten or so years (vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD), and preferably, this time they'd like to charge me per-use, and make sure that I can't share it with anyone without paying extra and make sure that if I bought a license to listen to it in the car, I can't do so on my computer -- without buying another license.

I've found I can feed my music habit without feeding the RIAA. I really didn't want to do this, I liked buying music, and I like having the real CD, but I feel the RIAA and the big seven have forced my hand. I spend my "music money" on concerts now, and what I can't find at the used record store I just don't buy at all -- or I download it off Morpheus.

If the MPAA doesn't watch out, they'll be heading down the same road -- luckily, they can watch (and believe me, they are) what happens with the music labels.

Mutley Hyde

YEAH!!

(right on man )

cartman

I typically didn't ever buy a CD unless I had heard it first. When I first got into music, I didn't know that 90% of albums released with a "hit" song that I liked were crap. Then I learned, and stopped buying. Then Napster came along, where I could actually hear the whole CD, and I began buying again, mainly "obscure" stuff. Now I'm back to buying only what I know I'll like (Garth, Cranberries, Bush, Pearl Jam, Enigma, Enya. That's about it.)

Weapon X

JustinS-
I make money off album sales...and I was cool with Napster....
I used it.
It helped me make decisions..you talk about broke college kids, what about those of us WITH cash that you know, have to pay bills, raise kids....that sort of thing?


I have bought only the KISS Box since Napster shut down...and I had a 'Preview Version' ,anyway.

Who knew?

mllefoo

All of the stuff I download off the net, Napster or otherwise, is out of print. I've said it before and I will say it again: if the stuff I download was available on CD I would happily buy it.

It hardly matters to me one way or the other. The RIAA doesn't receive one red cent from me since ALL my music is purchased used. I have a really big problem spending more than $8/per CD.

freedexter

I would happily buy a CD for over $8 if I knew that no part of it goes to the RIAA. Do they even do anything to help the consumer, or just themselves? It's sad to think so little of whatever we pay for a CD actually goes to the artist.

mikehunt

the artists should just start burning their own CDs
it would be a pain at first to get them into stores but I'm sure they could do it eventually

mllefoo

My local Bay Area artists do this already. Streetlight will sell anything.

Giantrobo

I agree.

benedict

Some already do this and sell them (exclusively?) online.

Others with poor record deals use the Net to boost interest/raise their profile by harnessing the support of their fans. Marillion were recently involved in such action: http://www.marillion.com/

Aside from the expensive Japanese version, I think Graham Bonnet's, The Day I Went Mad also originally was an internet-only release. (Also here)

FWIW: I think the royalty thing very much depends on the country: I had it in mind that tapes/cds etc attracted a royalty charge in Canada, for example, butwasn't sure that the industry lobby had managed to "convince" sufficient politicians in the UK. And, of course, as inventors, Phillips gets its royalty on compact cassettes and I think may share one with Sony on CDs.

MatthewCho

Sure, Napster's gone. But other sites have replaced it. The hardcore downloaders are still downloaded. It's just a bit more difficult.

- Matt C.

Oliver Clothesoff

Hell, it would be great if I could download the disc and send a check for $10 or $12 directly to the artist... Hopefully, this will be the way of the future and get rid of the middle man.

I'd like to see some of the bigger artists attempt to do this, although I'm sure that their contracts might prohibit such direct sale. I know that the Smashing Pumpkins offered their Machina II album as a free download on their website, and that was quite successful. I'm sure many people would have paid $ to the band directly.

awl22

I don't know what type of music most of you listen to, but I for one can't find 99% of the CDs I want in my local mall/tower records/sam goody etc... and on top of that, if it wasn't for mp3's I wouldn't have heard about these groups. Most of the groups I listen to will never sell over a couple of thousand copies to begin with so do you think they shutdown Napster to try and protect them? It's just another way of the big record companies trying to force their garbage music onto you by cutting down on the amount of ways smaller labels & independent artists are able to reach people. Mp3's only "hurt" the really big acts. Instead of selling 5 million copies of the new Britney Spear's CD they sell 4.9 million. I'm suprised they don't charge you to listen to their over hyped music on the radio. As an "artist" I think mp3's are great. I've sold over 500 cds (not bad for a sub-genre of a sub-genre independent group that has never played a live show once) of my own release due to the fact that people were able to hear the songs on mp3 first. I'm sure there's more people who have downloaded the album and not purchased it, but what does that matter to me. Maybe one of their friends will hear it from them and want to actually buy the CD. For me, there's nothing better than sitting down and reading the CD booklet while listening to the songs.... I purchased over 1000 CDs since they first came out and to tell you the truth, 80-90% were garbage. Now, you may ask yourself "Why would you buy so many garbage CDs?" Mainly because before mp3's you would either just go by what the record company advertised or by a review in a magazine. Which most of the time was a magazine that the record label always advertised in...so do you think they're going to get a bad review? No. So, like a schmuch, I would buy these "incredible" albums only to get home and find out I was listening the same thing my dog was dropping in the yard last night. You can figure it out Now I can pick and choose for myself & obviously the big record labels don't like it. So sorry... I still download like an animal off of ftp pubs, fxp lists, & newgroups... but.. when I find something I like, I make sure I buy it even if I have to spend weeks trying to locate the CD.... Anyways, sorry for the length of this reply.. I'll end it now

JsphOfArimethia

einTier: I agree with most of what you're saying. The whole rights management, backwoods, darkage thinking in the music, software, and movie industries just gets my blood boiling. If I even think about it for too long I'm sure I'll get an aneurism. Just one thing though. How do you figure record companies hosting song catalogs online would cost them next to nothing?

Servers cost money.
Throughput costs money.
Maintenance costs money.
Uploads cost money.
Hiring people to do all these tasks, cost money.

While I despise record companies, I do realize they are a business. Sorry to have to resort to defending these morons, but having run a customer based business myself, I know all too well how the customer is so often oblivious to the things that go into making it all work. It was one of my biggest pet peeves.

Oh yeah, and is the "big seven" some sort of new sports thing?

criptik28

Exactly. The thing is, when Napster started getting in trouble a while back, other free file-sharing services popped up. (Let's not forget that the old Scour was around way before Napster, too.) Now you have, as previously mentioned, KaZaa, Morpheus and Gnutella, as well as things like BearShare, MacSter, AIMSter, Audiogalaxy and iMesh. I have no idea how the RIAA is planning to monitor and control all of this. It goes back to the ol' "piracy" days of friends sharing music by making mixed tapes from each others' cassettes/CDs. I don't think a pay-per-use/service system is going to work, nor do I think all those ex-Napster college kids who have now graduated/are graduating will suddenly be buying CDs from Tower just because their beloved Napster is no longer free. Hell, look at WinAmp...you don't exactly see their monthly downloads diminishing or anything.

einTier

maybe it's the big five... I was ranting a bit there. Not like it matters much, all the major record labels are price-fixing and acting like a monopoly anyway.

Now, for your real question. How do you make money when you offer your catalog on line, when everything costs so much money.

Well, big surprise, when you buy bandwidth in large quantities, it gets very, very cheap per unit of bandwidth. These guys would probably have to have an OC-3 minimum just to serve up enough bandwidth. Granted, that'll cost many thousands of dollars every month, along with the massive cost of hardware. It'll probably dwarf the cost of personnel.

However, let's do a little experiment. I used to run a very popular mp3 server about three years ago. At it's peak, I was getting about 10,000 downloads a day. At the time, I had a banner ad that paid $0.05 for everyone who clicked on it. Most didn't, but let's say for the sake of argument, that it was mandatory -- like the record company charging you $0.05 for a download of one track on mp3. 10,000 downloads x .05 x 30 days = $15,000. With that amount of money, I could have paid for the entire bandwith of my provider, all their operating costs, and still had some money left over for DVDs or something. Keep in mind, I did not occupy even a fraction of their operating costs or maintenence time, other than my bandwidth usage.

A co-hosted server somewhere like Exodus or XO wouldn't cost that much per unit volume, simply because the place hosting my server wasn't buying bandwidth in huge quantities, and prices for bandwidth have come down considerably since 1998. $0.05 for one track doesn't sound like much, but when you sell a billion tracks a month, you're talking some real money.