Are the RIAA and labels actually losing $$$?
 

[From a wired Letter to the Editor]
The RIAA loves to use sales figures: Numbers are down, after all, and that simply must be due to piracy, right? Well, there are other explanations. some which actually incorporate facts. CD shipments went from 1.1 billion units in 2000 to 968.6 million in 2001; income went from 14.3 billion to 13.7 billion. Thats a 10.3 decrease is units, but a 4.1 decrease in sales. But if you look at the actual number of releases, there were 12,000 fewer albums put out by the major labels in 2001 than in 1999. So in fact, the industry has dramatically increased its per album profit. It's pretty clear - labels cut back on new artist investments and raised album prices. You can go through all the RIAA-posted statistics, and not only don't you find its lost $4 Billion, you can't even begin to find any loss not attributable to its own sales and marketing. Piracy isn't a factor
The major labels dish up a small percentage of recorded music. They act in very expensive collusion with commercial radio stations, through "independent promoters" to pay for airplay. The Internet is a threat to this nice little deal - not because of piracy, primarily, but because of choice. If you're buying downloads from EMusic or MP3.com by artists not heard on the radio, your're probably not buying major-label fare like Britney Spears.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...not another thread about the RIAA lying about the cause of lost revenue..;)

It's absolutely true they lie. Michael Green was one of the main perpetrators of this myth.

Plain and simple..if they had worthwhile [read: not disposable] artists releasing affordably priced product none of this would be an issue. It's easy to place the blame on a technology that they're unsure of how to harness to "get theirs"...

[Which is why i'll be supporting Metallica during their ICON tribute on MTV...-rolleyes-:lol:]

They are just greedy children of unmarried people.

This is a little beside the point but it still applys here....

Did the RIAA ever think that people like myself would still buy CD's if they HAD SOMETHING ACTUALLY WORTH BUYING!!


I think most of you would agree with me that you often pay $17.99 for maybe one or two good songs. That's far too little value for your money these days.

I think that it's not so much that the RIAA is losing money, but just that they are not making as much money as they think they should. The record industry is not in danger of going belly up, they are in danger of losing the extravagant lifestyle.

yes they are losing money. sony just laid off 1000 people last week.

gosh, if only the bad labels would release something worthwhile then i would stop stealing their product. great argument which gives no comfort whatsoever to those people, like myself, who are out of a job because of the decline of sales due to downloading.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brain Stew
I think that it's not so much that the RIAA is losing money, but just that they are not making as much money as they think they should. The record industry is not in danger of going belly up, they are in danger of losing the extravagant lifestyle.

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:lol: :up:

I never pay $18 for two songs. If I buy a CD these days it is only from a band that I know will not have crappy filler....needless to say which is not alot of the time....which says something about the music biz.

Looks Like the RIAA Means Business
 

This is going to get interesting...

Methinks a cyberterrorist group will counterattack, perhaps financially destroying the legal team and the senior officers of the RIAA.

this atleast makes sense.

its stupid when they go after a web developer who simply made a site that lists network shares on a college campus like the article from a few weeks ago had.

Well, they are deffinatley raising the stakes....interesting to see if they actually do it.

Good for them.

I have a serious question....

Let's say I own CD "A" in my collection. I download a song from it using some peer to peer software. Have I broken the law? If so, how and what law?

how is this raising the stakes? isn't this what they have been doing? isn't this why they had the case against verizon? i guess the only difference is that now they can force the ISP to give them info on the people.

well methinks a cyberterrorist group hacked my personal pc and took advanage of my bandwidth and my own private music collection by installing a P2P software without my knowledge.

I had no idea my files were open to the P2P community, I never installed any such thing. ;)

No.

Thye RIAA is targetting individuals that offer large amounts of files for download to others. Take individuals like this out of the equation, and P2P networks suddenly become far less attractive for the average user (you know, the one who downloads songs while never actually offering many, if any, himself).

They are raising the stakes because their "test cases" have gone well and they will now be using an army of lawyers to push open the floodgates.

To use a music analogy, the song is the same as last week but they will be turning up the volume to "11."

Fear not, like I said before....the RIAA will be the cause of their own demise. Their strongarm tactics with musicians and consumers alike will eventually lead to their downfall.

What kind of song would carry with it a $150K penalty for illegally owning it? Yeesh. Even $750 sounds steep to me. CDs only cost $15! :)

It will be interesting to see if the consumer will finally fight back with their pocketbook. While I'm not a big proponent of p2p, I do think this is an extremely poor tactic for the RIAA. They ignored the problem (as well as the potential) until it got totally out of control, and they simply cannot return to the way things used to be.

I think a boycott is in order. I have enough CDs that I haven't listened to in years. I can go a few weeks (or a few months even) without buying anything if it helps put these people in their place.

Thanks, that's what I assumed.

Freenet here we come!

This is a really dumb move by the RIAA. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

What about the people that are sharing them from overseas?

How? What do they have to lose? Their sales have been going down for three years in a row...with no end in sight.