well said, das. I'm also in agreement that the RIAA is shooting itself in the foot by attempting to impose such hefty fines against downloaders. I would love to see their math that has them equating the $15-20 I didn't spend on a CD with a $150k fine per song. Someone needs to stand up for the "consumer" that is getting fisted here.

And I, for one, would use iTunes much more if I could apply purchased songs to my non-iPod mp3 player.

I don't consider a compressed file to be the highest quality available. But, you're right, some older stuff is very hard to find at any B&M store these days so iTunes is decent alternative. Still, as an audiophile, I'd rather have a real CD than a compressed digital file any day.

I don't know, I quickly surveyed my friends, and it's mostly classic rock and stuff, that's not easily found in stores. I'm not saying it makes it right, but I don't doubt there are people ripping new CDs the second they get them, I just think the new music is crap.

The RIAA is like one of those people that bitches about how their life sucks but never does anything to fix it.

I think this has been a major additional contributing factor in CD sales going down. The introduction of CD burning (especially once CD-Rs dropped to under fifty cents apiece) suddenly put people in a mindset that they were being shafted. "Why pay $15 when I can burn it for under a buck?" Keep in mind, a lot of people still have the mentality that they are paying for the physical product and not for the intellectual property.

I still believe the music industry's best bet would be to make EPs the dominant format over LPs. Right now they're releasing a 12-15 track album with a bunch of filler, and casually releasing singles from it over the next year or two. I think they'd be better off with artists releasing 5-6 song EP/Singles every four months or so. They would be headlined by the 'single' (or two), 2 or 3 additional tracks, and maybe a remix or two (depending on the style of artist... substitute with live/acoustic tracks for other artists). It would sort of be a hybrid between a EP and a CD single. Sell them for 4 or 5 bucks apiece. This way you keep the material fresh and you have a product with a better price point. Of course, this approach wouldn't work for artists who are heavily album concept-based, but it might work for the more mainstream acts.

I don't think it's CD-burning; it's DVDs. The cost of a DVD isn't that much more than the cost of a CD, and most DVDs come with some special features. I can get the DVD of <i>Rocky Balboa</i> with commentary, deleted scenes, bloopers, documentaries, etc. for $17.99 from Amazon.com. Or I can get the soundtrack for $14.99. That's just one example, but the basic premise holds. Consumers have a finite amount of disposable income, and when faced with the choice of buying a DVD with all kinds of material on it versus a CD that is likely 50-90% filler, they side most often with the DVD. Add that to the fact that the film/television industry does a much better job promoting its product than the music industry, and sales go down.

A CD I purchase today is barely different from one I could have purchased 20 years ago, and yet the cost has risen with inflation. However, a DVD is a ridiculous improvement over VHS from 20 years ago, and the relative cost has pretty much risen at the same rate. It's not hard to see why more disposable income is being directed away from CD sales and into DVD sales as the years go by.

das

Yeah, this point was hammered home to me in a big way a few years ago when I was at Best Buy planning to get the Best of Blur CD, and then I saw that the DVD was cheaper. :lol:

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...ceka/samir.jpg
Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

I keep wondering when the RIAA is going to shift their focus from P2P over to blogs or even Usenet. I love browsing through blogs where long out of print vinyl is shared. I can't tell you how many of these OOP recordings would be in my collection if they ever came out on CD (and I'd never even heard of them before). But while looking through the blogs I'm amazed how many people set up sites offering brand new material. Seems like a pretty easy target for the RIAA to go after, but I never hear about it.

I don't think CDs should ever be over $10. I will sometimes pay more, but not very often.

while i'm totally on your side with everything you said; your first statement is purely a matter of opinion. i think the point being made by those who claim the opposite is that DVDs generally come with extras whereas CDs do not.

although that does seem to be changing lately with each new release...

rotfl

Since DVDs were brought up, it's also worth noting that they are sold under a dynamic pricing model. A DVD comes out, is on sale it's first week, and then hovers around $19.99 for a couple months. Soon it's MSRP gets dropped $5 and stores have it on sale for $10. Within a year, it's not unusual to see it for $5 or $6 as part of a sale.

CDs, on the other hand, are on sale their first week and maybe a few others if it's a popular or rising artist. After that, there's almost never a price reduction. Let's say I want to go pick up Counting Crows first album. Best Buy is still charging $13.99 for it. That's just fucking absurd. Back catalog titles like that should be around $5, tops. The record companies can produce them dirt cheap, so they'd still be profitable, and the reduced price would make older albums much more of an impulse buy for a lot of music fans. The music industry can look to DVD for a great example of how to cut piracy off at the knees and increase profits, but it would rather blame external factors than evolve its business model.

^^^
Good point.

I work at a college, and we got an email about all the changes. Here's my favorite part:

The pre-litigation letters offer the allegedly offending students terms of settlement at a “discounted settlement rate” to avoid litigation.

<Yakov>Discount law suit? America, what a country!</Yakov>

And heres what they recommend to our college:

Review and update their peer-to-peer (P2P) network policies to include information about the RIAA’s new approach

Distribute the updated P2P policies to faculty and students

Consult with legal counsel regarding communications to students identified in the RIAA “pre-litigation” letters

Consult with legal counsel to determine which of the other actions suggested by the RIAA are appropriate for institutions to take Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Yup, all of the above will work like a charm...They allready block Myspace and Facebook though.

I was complaining to a friend about this. Most of my friends never buy cds, I am about the only one. They find them too expensive. My friends would buy older stuff for $5-7 if available. The only reason I see for them not to do this is possibly the deals with artist royalties.

I had this same dicussion with someone. Except I can't understand how a multi-million dollar movie made one or two years ago can be had for under $10 while a CD, 10 or even 20 years after it's been produced, still costs $15.

All I know is I would definitely own more Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, and Beatles CDs if they followed the pricing of DVDs, and actually were sold for $5.00-$9.00 per CD. And in some instances, you find these older CDs for more than $15.00.

I'd buy more music if they followed DVD pricing as well. Since pricing doesn't, I have to rely on used CD's...but i remember the RIAA wanted a piece of that pie too. -rolleyes-

I just don't trust companies that lie to their customers or kick them in the teeth. They treat their most loyal customers like shit. How other do you explain the repeated bonus tracks that they put on CDs a month after it is released.

So, I'm an honest customer that just bought the new Saliva CD. A month later I walk into my local Best Buy and see the SAME CD with bonus tracks that I NOW do not have.

Now, explain to me how this LOYAL customer must feel like. Well, you know the answer to that question.

I USED to be that loyal customer but I got tired of getting an album with 1 or 3 good songs. Or I would get a good CD and then they would add 3 bonus tracks and expect me to buy the EXACT same CD to get these added tracks.

Nope, the RIAA did a wonderful job of making me feel like I was getting ripped off week after week after week after week......

Needless to say I am NOT alone. The RIAA made their bed, they can lay in it now because I have lost all respect for any of their companies.

From the Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/
University snubs RIAA
By John Oates
Published Friday 23rd March 2007 10:10 GMT

The University of Nebraska has complained that the Recording Industry Ass. of America wants it to do its work of tracking down file sharers.

The University IT system assigns a new Internet Protocol number to a computer everytime it is switched on. But it only stores this information for a month or so. Although the RIAA can track people sharing music to individual IP numbers, it cannot link that number to an individual student.

So although the RIAA is ready to sue 36 students for sharing music files it can only identify nine of them, and it regards this as a problem for the university.

A spokeswoman for the RIAA said: "One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records," according to the Omaha World Herald.

But the university made clear it did not believe it had any role in doing the RIAA's work for it. In fact, a lawyer for the university wrote to the RIAA asking to be reimbursed for the cost of tracking down students.

The university's chief information officer Walter Weir told the paper: "We're spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems. Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren't they paying us for this?"

The university said each requests costs it $11 to deal with - and the RIAA has sent the university over 1,000 such requests.

The lobby group advised the university to block all peer-to-peer software to combat the problem, but the university refused because such programmes have academic uses too.

More from the Omaha World Herald (http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pag...u_sid=2348353). ®

I think the RIAA is run by Sony.

I was at film panel with producers from Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Lion's Gate and they were going on about the ridiculous practice of the RIAA. I thought that was kinda cool hearing it from suits in film industry.

Um...why exactly is that?

I get the feeling that nobody outside of the RIAA actually likes the RIAA (and i'm sure some in the RIAA don't like it either).