Coral

I'll alter your statement to fit reality:

95% of all CD's can now be found for over $10.

(as long as we're not talking about used CD's).

I just searched for around 20 CDs that I'm interested in purchasing (some catalog, some newer) and only 1 was under $10 ($9.97)
A few were priced at $12.99, but most were around $15.99 or $17.99.

TheMadFapper

98% of music that is downloaded is done illegally. That means trillions, not billions, but trillions of dollars have been taken out of the hands of both artists and record companies.

But that's okay, I mean Metallica doesn't need any more money, right?

Coral

Before MP3s came on the scene, did the artists and record companies ever combine to make trillions of dollars in any 8 years period (roughly the same length of time MP3s were popular for)? I'm guessing not.

Regardless of someone's stance on piracy, nowhere near as much revenue was lost as the RIAA claims. A pirated CD =/= a lost sale since you can't assume that the CD would've been purchased were it not available for a free download.

Music sales were on a huge decline long before MP3s and iPods became popular.

I'm not justifying piracy, I just think a more accurate picture of the situation needs to be painted.

arminius

He is irate and jerking furiously, so I don't think he can hear you.

mhg83

This

And now Youtube has an auto play so you don't have to keep opening the next link making it much easier.

Dr Mabuse

Now there's no need to lowball the estimate like that for the sake of your post appearing to be reasonably well informed and sane.

Surely you meant to post quintillions of dollars right? No wait! Decillions of dollars!! That's it!!!

gmanca

I do agree with that but I will add that the digital downloads is not preferable unless they are lossless formats. The CD's are already compressed and don't need to be futher compressed for the MP3 format.

The record companies need some way of selling CD's in limited quantities at their own web-store or something of the like. But yeah, that 95 percent is way, way off. Any Floyd album that isn't The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon definitely costs more than 10.

Sean O'Hara

True, but we are talking about people resorting to digital downloads because they don't like the price of CDs. Unless torrents have changed a lot since I last checked them out, most of what's out there is 128kbps MP3s, so it'd still be better to buy from Amazon than go the pirate route. And even if the music you want is available in in lossless format on bittorrent, you can always download that then buy the album from Amazon so the artist gets paid.

gmanca

Yeah, I didn't mean to make the "digital download only" as an out to download torrents, just that there should be a way to get a pressed CD OR at the very least offer lossless digital downloads. It pains me that some stuff that is rare is only in MP3 format as if the Record Companies don't have enough money to go a little bit further than just the bare minimum.

CreamyGoodness

Em, yeah, pretty much.

I've got 20 gigs of high-quality MP3 files that I've 'collected' over the last ten years. The only CDs I bought in that time were those ELO re-issues. (Electric Light Orchestra being one of my all-time favorite bands, having their entire catalog on CD was too much to resist.)

The fact is, technology has really become too advanced. Once audio and video is digitized, music and movies are just too easy to move around. They've pushed the technology and now they've shot themselves in the foot.

As far as the music goes, if I ever start to feel guilty, I just think about buying the same albums years ago on vinyl, then tape, then CD - Quite a number of the CDs in my collection I've owned on all three formats and paid full price each time......

Dr Mabuse

Wow. How many years ago was that?

Coral

Yeah, it's been a long time since 128kbps MP3s were the standard. The most common now is probably 192-320 VBR and 320 CBR. And you'd be surprised how often a lossless rip is posted.

Imail724

You don't know what you're talking about. I would be in A LOT of debt if I paid for all the music I pirated.

al_bundy

i just checked out the amazon best sellers in music CD's and at least half are $9.99 or less, a few up to $12.99 and only two above $15 which was a Paul Simon 2 CD set and a deluxe edition of the fame monster.

gmanca

Yeah, best sellers on Amazon, an online store that already offers low discounts due to volume. You can't walk into a store and get anything older than '95? at less than 10 dollars. I mean, I know that's the case for most 80's music.

Alvis

RagingBull80

I don't really know about that. I'm not sure about people using it as an excuse but it's certainly a factor. To me, I'm not paying for a download. If I'm going to download something I'll just download it for free. If I'm paying money for something I better get something tangible. I'm not paying for some digital information on my computer.

Sadly, I'm the kind of person that the price of something is not going to deter me (unless it's something totally obscene). If I want the disc and it costs $17.99, I'm going to buy it but I won't be happy with myself about it.

I think that the price is the make or break point for some people though. Of course you are going to have people who will download it but there are a lot of people who go look at the price on Amazon and opt not to purchase it.

Also, $9.99 for a digital download? Give me a break. Those digital downloads shouldn't be more than $4.99. You can charge $10-$15 for a physical disc of a new album and that's understandable. But $9.99 for the digital download when the album is just $12 in-store? That's ridiculous.

For the record, I own physical copies of 99.9% of the music that I have and I continue to purchase a shit-ton of music. I go to the local record store at least once a week.

Heat

I agree, and the same thing goes for the e-books.

And while on paper it looks like the RIAA lost millions, how many people have stopped downloading? I think that their program accomplished much of what they wanted which was to stop the casual user from downloading illegally.

UAIOE

I tend to think the reason downloading decreased was because of iTunes and Amazon giving people easier access to purchasing MP3's.

I think what the RIAA did had *some* effect, but not as much as readily available (legal) MP3's.

Dr Mabuse

That's not accurate.

Even at the height of RIAA/MPAA lawsuits the number of people torrenting was increasing by millions of users, sometimes in only a 2 month period in 2007/2008 when the number of headline-grabbing lawsuits were at a high point. Torrenting has steadily grown worldwide, and in the US, with massive growth in some areas of the world like China.

A lot of people believe the lawsuits were free advertising to people who were otherwise unaware of torrents and where to get them. The articles about the lawsuits explained the hows and whys, the software and sites, and people adopted torrents. TPB can clearly show that after every major legal action against them their usage numbers spiked and stayed higher. They also think it's because people learned about the site due to headlines surrounding the legal action.

arminius

You would think at this point the RIAA wouldn't have any feet left.

wendersfan

I don't download music illegally - it's, well, illegal, and for me it's impractical because I mainly listen to '50s and '60s bop, and I can't imagine there's a huge amount of that stuff out there, and I probably have most of it anyway.

But I won't download legally until I can get uncompressed downloads - FLAC or something equivalent. I'm not going to pay even a cent for a 128kbps mp3 file. That's like paying for a mimeograph of a scan of a document.

s it stands now I exclusively buy used CDs.

islandclaws

As most everyone else has said: bullshit. Maybe crap that no one would even want to buy is $9.99, but when catalog titles from Iron Maiden are still selling for $16.99 a pop, that's ridiculous. Even most new releases, unless from some small-time band looking for sales or a major act that will move a shit ton of copies, are always over $10 @ BB or Amazon. I know where to look and how to shop deals, and I rarely see good pricing on CDs.

BGPu

Exactly. Trent Reznor has the right idea. 5 bucks for a high quality MP3 version of an album plus a PDF booklet. More than that is ridiculous.

As is what is becoming the standard price on iTunes, $1.29 a song. When the labels forced the new tiered prices on iTunes they said that the highest price would be reserved for new, popular songs. A year and a half later, on many albums the filler songs cost just as much as the singles. And technically, the higher prices were meant to create more competition for Apple, but I doubt the majority of consumers are shopping around.

PopcornTreeCt

I love how these threads always turn into confession booths.