moorehed

Be glad you guys aren't buying CDs in New Zealand. Most all new albums here cost 35-40 New Zealand dollars. That is about $25-30 US. I will say, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, that price is a detering factor for me. In the states I would go to a local shop or Best Buy and buy several CDs every week. Here it would cost me over $100 (US) to buy 4 CDs. No way can I afford that.

Sdallnct

I don't think anyone is trying to say downloading is legal and ok. Everyone knows it is not legal. And? What next?

Everyone knows downloading is here to stay. It doesn't matter if you are honest and "up front" about it or "justify" it. The question is, what is next.

The record industry has every right to go after every single individual who has every downloaded before. It is their right. But as we all know rights are not without consequences. The discussion that is being made by most and I think a reasonable one is: is the record industry going to save itself by going after those that download music or would it be better served by finding a solution and working with the new technology?

You and I and whoever can argue on one side or the other. The record industry has the final say. But I agree with most. The industry better "choose wisely". There could be very serious consequences.

NCMojo

I'd love to see a macroeconomic model for music publishing -- leverage the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of consumers with the cost savings from eliminating production and distribution. There is no reason why you should not be able to legally download a full CD for $5 or less, or buy an individual song for 50 cents or less.

I do see the major labels declining in importance, since modern technology means that anybody can produce, record and distribute a very sophisticated and polished collection of songs. The RIAA would be smart to call an international conference to come up with practical ways to take advantage of this new medium, this new storefront.

Having said all of that... even today, I still see a lot of people wasting a lot of time trying to justify illegal downloading. Sure, the RIAA is evil, the labels are evil, CDs are overpriced, yadda yadda... but so what? File that under the category of "two wrongs don't make a right".

jw2299

I'm not making any justifications, but I can tell you that I've discovered some of my all-time favorite bands by downloading their tracks on P2P networks. Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphy's, Pete Philly and Perquisite, etc...

And once I find a band I like, I do support them by purchasing t-shirts, cds, etc... directly from their websites.

I haven't bought a CD in a store for years, however.

DVD Polizei

Two wrongs don't make a right, but you have to consider the impeding circumstances which create an environment where piracy is the answer. If you track consumer products and their legal and illegal entities, you discover that price was governing factor. Hell, I made copies of my cassettes when I was in high school and gave them to my friends and my friends gave me copies of their music. But what was interesting, is that I STILL bought the official copy at the store because since I liked the music so much, I wanted the cassette case labeling print, the inside jacket, and a better quality version. I suppose these days you can print up your own sleeves and jackets as they are sometimes scanned and available, but still, that's a pain in the ass. I think most consumers will in fact buy the original but the price has to be low enough to justify it. Otherwise, we will listen to our MP3 versions which sound ok.

But let's be honest. Since the digital age is already here and downloading free stuff is king, the music industry is going to need to find another way to make money. They simply will lose at attempting to recoup their "losses" by taking people to court. They cannot keep up with the downloading and sharing. In other countries, the RIAA equivalents are realizing this.

The music industry will have to, for example, make more money on the tours, product promotions, and other aspects of the recording artist. The music industry is going to need to come up with more creativity to keep their product worthy of purchasing an original version.

Maybe the music industry can start REWARDING those who buy the legit copies. This is another issue I have. They don't reward the people who are doing things right. They only punish the people who break the law. Why not have a system where a person buys a CD and they get their next one free with a one-time unique code inside the CD jacket or something. And maybe the music industry can put something inside the label that says, "Hey, we really appreciate you buying this original copy. It means a lot to us..."

calhoun07

The music industry is it's own worst enemy. They have tried to squash digital formats ever since CDs rolled out (they originally wanted to price the CDs at $50.00 a piece and force it to be a rental only business so if people did copy the music it would be onto inferior tape). Instead of embracing the digital age, they try to shut it down.

Allofmp3.com was the ideal website to show how music should be distributed in our day and age. While the website is legal in Russia, outside of Russia the legality of it all is some confusing grey zone, but charging per download on the basis of bitrate makes sense and they pay royalties to the record companies out of that (at least they claim to do so...there is debate on both sides about that, but getting on to my point.) The biggest legal site here, ITunes, charges a flat rate per song, and it's not cheap. Sorry, but a dollar per song is not cheap compared to the pennies per song Russian sites can charge. And, in some cases, it's prohibitive if you want to download an entire CD rather than going out to buy the CD.

And CD prices...they have not come down since they rolled out nearly a quarter of a century ago. In fact, I've seen new CDs even at discounted sites like amazon.com go for nearly 20.00. Meanwhile, we see video games and DVDs that have been out for a while marked down to ridiculously cheap prices all the time. If major studio DVDs can get marked down to ten bucks or less, then why not music? Oh, that's right, the record industry is it's own worst enemy.

So instead of getting with the times, record companies continue to charge high prices, support legal downloads at insanely high prices, and attack their own customers to "teach" them a "lesson" at an early age. A lesson in corporate greed, no doubt.

They wonder why DVD sales rose so high and music sales dropped...it's not downloads. Hell, I bet movie downloads are just as prevalent as music downloads yet DVD sales remain to be a good business. That's because the movie studios let the prices drop on DVDs and they actually offer some great material to go with the prices.

And I don't blame the music either. Corporate pop/rock does suck, but there is more great music out there now than I've heard in a while. The fact it doesn't get radio air play is a shame, but great stuff is out there.

kvrdave

yes and yes.

kvrdave

I'll bet dvd downloading is nowhere near as prevalent. A small part of that is because of the size of the files, imo, but the largest reason is the price, as you said. At $10, I'll blind buy a lot of dvds that I don't know much about. At $20, I won't blind buy a single cd. I'll listen to the snippets on Amazon, and if I am still intrigued, I'll borrow it, etc. before deciding to buy. But I use to blind buy a lot of music when it was cheaper. Not anymore. Still blind buy a lot of DVDs, and the difference is price.

NotThatGuy

How's the air up there?

Bootlegs are legal recordings made by fans.

As for commercial stuff that is ripped......I'm not saying it is legal, but i'm saying the way it is currently setup is wrong.

-p

NotThatGuy

I have a rule of not spending more than ~$10-12 for a CD, with the exceptions being CD+DVDs and independant recordings/bootlegs. I don't listen to most main stream music so it is a bit easier, but I still can't see buying a crap CD for $18, liking 3 songs, and being ok with it. I can just buy through iTunes.

-p

Tuan Jim

I'm in a similar boat. Aside from established bands I've been following for years now, most new music I find out about is through downloading music videos (since I can't get Fuse over here). If I find it interesting, I'll look for the single on itunes, etc and pay .99 for it. Half the time I can't even find that. Just through vids alone though, I've gotten hooked on Coheed and Cambria, Skindred, Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand and a few other bands -- In some cases I have ordered CDs from Amazon for them, but most of them, I've gone and bought whole albums off itunes. Itunes really filled the convenience niche for me -- I hear something, I like it, I go ahead and buy it right then and there -- I don't have to drive to the mall and hope that they're actually carrying that CD in stock at Best Buy or FYE or anything else (chances are that they aren't).

What's frustrating right now for me is the limited supply on itunes -- due to international licensing crap, I can't go and purchase legit (and conveniently) singles to try out different foreign bands like I would for *most* domestic releases. I just have to take the plunge and purchase the CD at cdjapan/yesasia/etc. or wade through crap on other programs hoping to get a decent d/l -- just for a sample. Still, I may end up paying a little more than a US CD price on yesasia (with free shipping), but there's a good chance that my Japanese disc includes a dvd of music videos or something else in addition.

Either way, I think I purchased from the college cd store once or twice during 4 years of college -- not that I went out of my way to purchase from other cd stores either at that time. It just wasn't worth paying $5+ more than I could get on Amazon just for the convenience of them being there, and even for something OOP, I could almost certainly get it at half.com for a fraction of the price.

jfoobar

Absolutely.

These arguments have been re-hashed here so many times in the almost 6 years I have been posting here. What I vividly recall are the plethora of people who bitched and moaned about CD prices and having to buy a whole CD when they just wanted one song, and how they would pay if there was a good way to get just one song, etc.

Then iTunes comes out and the same friggin' people complained about having to pay a dollar for a song and continued to defend illegal downloading of music anyway. What it boils down to is that some people are going to download for free no matter what because they like to.

If the RIAA had gotten outlets like iTunes and Zune in place a couple of years faster than they did instead of letting an entire generation get used to downloading whatever they wanted for free over a period of several years, it might have made a big difference.

They really only have 2 choices now. Ignore those who choose not to pay for intellectual property, or go after them and the Internet infrastructure that facilitate their downloads.

Led Zepp, yes. But what about Honeymoon Suite, Bel Canto, Romeo Void, etc. Pretty much impossible to find in a B&M.

OTOH, iTunes has all of them, in the highest quality available, for a buck a song.

maxfisher

To the best of my knowledge, I've never downloaded a song illegally. About the only 'illegal' music I own is if someone makes me a mix cd or burns me a copy of something they think I'd like. If it's the latter, I'll always buy the album if I enjoy it. That said, every time I hear the RIAA talk about piracy, it makes me want to stop buying cds entirely and switch over to obtaining all of my music illegally.

Sure, music piracy has probably cost the record industry some money. Certainly not the massive amounts they claim, but I'm open to the idea that it's lost them some undefinable amount of revenue. I'm also glad to accept the fact that downloading a song is 'stealing' and, as such, is wrong. That said, the bastards bought legislation that allows them to sue for $150,000 per downloaded song. That's just fucking absurd. As long as they have that kind of disproportionate leverage to use against people, I will be aggressively anti-RIAA, as I think the punishment the government allows them to inflict on illegal downloaders is 1,000 times more immoral than the act of actually illegally downloading some music.

Oh, and I was on the campus of my alma mater this weekend. All three of the small record stores that I used to frequent when I attended there were still plugging right along.

nemein

Mod note: since this is about music/music industry I'm moving it to the Music Forum. If you want to turn it into a political discussion though let one of the Mods there know and they can move it to the Political Forum.

thx

das Monkey

I'm not defending or justifying anything. As I made very clear in my post, I think the moral questions are irrelevant. The music industry's problems aren't because of file sharing. It's really that simple.

As for it being documented that file sharing hurts music sales, that's impossible. No study can accurately account for the viral word of mouth that the Internet creates. I'd estimate that I've spent thousands of dollars in the past decade from interest generated solely from "illegal" file sharing. Hell, after our DVD Talk Mix Tape Project, I went out and bought 4 new CDs. No study can account for these things, and they're not going to try because it doesn't suit their purpose, which is to distract from the true problems. That's not a "justification" or a "defense" -- it's just reality. The RIAA can demonstrate that the upper 0.0001% of artists who are heavily promoted to the point of complete saturation are losing revenue because of file sharing, but they cannot demonstrate that the industry as a whole is losing revenue for that reason. The industry is losing revenue, but if file sharing is a source of some of that loss, it is an incredibly small slice of the pie. My gut tells me that it's a wash, but I can no more prove it than they can refute it.

Again, I repeat, I'm neither defending nor justifying anything. I'm simply irritated that an industry which is clearly struggling continues to waste billions of dollars on a faux moral crusade that won't do shit to solve its problems. In the meantime, both the public and the majority of artists continue to lose.

I don't use iTunes -- I prefer to own the CDs -- but isn't it incredibly successful?

das

A-aron

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.

Cobrachris

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.

lordwow

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.

UAIOE

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

DRG

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.

das Monkey

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 Rocky Balboa 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

wendersfan

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.

calhoun07

Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

atlantamoi

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.

Hollowgen

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...