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Comments: 174 +- Your Rights Online: Music Industry Thriving In an Era of File Sharing on Tuesday July 28 2009, @01:21AM
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kdawson
on Tuesday July 28 2009, @01:21AM
from the told-you-so dept.
from the told-you-so dept.
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levicivita notes ZeroPaid coverage of a recent study by the UK music industry's own economist showing that overall UK music industry revenues were up in 2008 (study, PDF). The study is titled "Adding up the Music Industry for 2008" and it was authored by Will Page, who is the Chief Economist at PRS for Music, a UK-based royalty collecting group for music writers, composers, and publishers. From ZeroPaid: "[T]he music industry is growing increasingly diverse as music fans enjoy a wide range of platforms to hear and consume music. Sales of recorded music fell 6% for example, digital was up 50% while physical dropped 10%, but concert ticket sales grew by 13%. In terms of what consumers spent on music as a whole last year, this surprisingly grew by 3%."
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Oh come now... We know this can't be true. (Score:5, Funny)
The recording industry has lost [CARL-SAGAN] Billions and BILLIONS [/CARL-SAGAN] due to those Evil Content Pirates(tm)!
Re:Oh come now... We know this can't be true. (Score:4, Funny)
Not to forget those who pirated non-evil content. :-)
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And all those bastards that aren't buying all the songs on an album. Really, just buying what you like and not taking what you don't want is just stealing from hookers and coke dealers. How will they feed their families without the support of the music labels?
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
The Chief Economist of PRS was found dead in his home, apparently of autoerotic asphyiation, with ropes tied around his neck and completely naked.
The UK police are stumped. "We did find a card with the word 'RIAA' on it, but we decided to ignore it and call this a suicide. A sex game gone wrong." Outsiders call this a case of corporatism - the government and the corporations colluding to cover-up a murder. "It be fascism, that's what it be," said a local man who refused to identity himself.
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Come come... You are getting confused here...
What on earth does the recording industry have to do with the music industry ???
File-sharing has dropped in the UK (Score:4, Insightful)
I like how both the article and the Slashdot submission completely ignore that file-sharing has dropped in the UK [arstechnica.com], especially among teens. Though I know this was posted on Slashdot to give pro-pirates the idea that sales are thriving in spite of piracy, this story doesn't disprove the effect piracy has on sales--if anything, it bolsters the idea that sales go up when piracy goes down.
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Re:File-sharing has dropped in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about that one.
You're ignoring that there are better content delivery systems these days. Years ago you almost NEEDED to pirate if you wanted a digital copy (especially if you weren't a techie), these days you can buy from many online stores, DRMed or DRM free.
I'd say you're putting the cart before the horse. Piracy has dropped because there's more choice for legal avenues. It's not that pirates have been busted therefore buy more legit downloads.
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You mean before songs were released on CD?
Re:File-sharing has dropped in the UK (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention all the people who're finally willing to buy digital media online (legally instead of allofmp3.com or similar sites) because you can get the files in relatively high quality, and without DRM. I can't wait until the first 99ct FLAC store opens...
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:File-sharing has dropped in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot (or at least the segment you are referring to) is not trying to increase piracy, it's trying to reduce copyright, and one of the desired reductions is to make personal file sharing legal. If the artists are doing fine without the draconian laws some people are proposing then it supports the (Slashdot-approved) idea that we do not need those laws.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1) Correlation does not imply causality.
2) Who paid for the survey? Take a look at http://www.theleadingquestion.com/ [theleadingquestion.com] and you'll find prominent Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony and Universal logos on the front page. Do you trust them to be unbiased?
3) Even if the survey was fair, unbiased and accurate, it cannot distinguish between people who are aware of the RIAA's tactics and are no longer willing to admit to filesharing and people who have actually stopped.
Re:File-sharing has dropped in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA labels are well aware that file sharing is free advertising and it increases sales, the reason they are against it is that it breaks the monopoly on exposure that the RIAA labels had. Being able to try before you buy via P2P allows people to discover great self-promoted and small label music without making expensive 'stab in the dark' purchases. This means that although file-sharers spend on music is higher, the amount that ends up in the pockets of the RIAA labels is lower.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention the way they're raking internet radio over the coals.
I've probably bought $50-$80 worth of music over the last 2 years that I'd have never heard of without soma.fm's Bootliquor station.
That's a combo of physical CD's, and downloads from both Amazon, and iTunes.
Just imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
How much greater would the reported growth be without losses due to piracy?
I'm guessing it would be something like 3 billion percent.
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no shock (Score:3, Interesting)
recorded music is where the juicy profits are though, so profit wise i'm guessing they lost out.
To hear the accountants tell it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:To hear the accountants tell it (Score:5, Insightful)
Now would that be the same people who raised the price when the CD came "to pay off the investment"? ;-)
When independent economists calculated the price of a CD, on the shelf in the store, being ~10 cents less than the LP. That included paying off investment in 5 years...
Or is it the people who said that the prices would drop as soon as the market grew?
I am still waiting for the CD market to take off so the prices will drop
Or are we talking the guys who manage to set the price of a soundtrack CD higher than the movie DVD?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the cost to produce a record has gone down, not up. Recording equipment has never been cheaper, software can do the job of gear that used to cost a fortune, and CD duplication prices are a fraction of vinyl pressing costs.
"They don't pick some random price and have a committee on it." Actually they do, that's why Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG Music and EMI Group, plus retailers Musicland Stores, Trans World Entertainment and Tower Records paid out a $140m+ settlement for C
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So, then why does the movie soundtrack on CD cost more than the movie itself (soundtrack and all) on DVD?
As for the cost of CD vs. LP, during the time period when both were released at the same time and the CD cost more to buy, it cost less to make. That's not inflation.
There's been an explosion in audio technology that if used to full advantage should have halved the recording cost by now.
Inflation? (Score:3, Interesting)
The report does tell us:
Make no mistake; the live music industry grew in 2008. More events, more bands, more tickets and importantly, higher ticket prices. Breaking it down to basic supply and demand economics, and given the scarcity embedded in its model, the live music industry is somewhere you really want to be right now.
My emphasis.
Perhaps the figures include all the tickets all those suckers bought for the triumphant London return of the "king of pop".
Or maybe this year's new music isn't as boring as last year's (I pretty much gave up buying CDs when I found they were all bland and soporific).
That's quite a report, in its gushing marketingese. I note with delight that "heritage act" has supplanted "senior citizen" as the euphemism for "old age pensioner" or "old geezer".
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Perhaps the figures include all the tickets all those suckers bought for the triumphant London return of the "king of pop".
The report considers 2008 revenue, so that's before the Michael Jackson concert in London was announced.
I go to lots of gigs, and I've noticed ticket prices seem to have gone up slightly.
Or maybe this year's new music isn't as boring as last year's (I pretty much gave up buying CDs when I found they were all bland and soporific).
About 2% of the CDs I own are stocked by a normal record store. You don't have to limit yourself to the most popular stuff.
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bullshit! (Score:2)
This is bullshit! I am sure file sharing and the free exchange of information represses interest of anything if not everything... hold on..
Long story short... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the Cause? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh wait. Two caveats:
(1) "Sales of recorded music fell 6%" (which means other digital industries that don't involve giving concerts shouldn't expect comparible results).
(2) A recent (July 13, 2009) study of UK piracy says "The analyst firm published a study on Monday that showed the numbers of those who regularly file-shared had dropped by a quarter between December 2007 and January 2009. The trend was particularly pronounced among 14-18-year-olds -- at the earlier date, 42 per cent were file-sharing at least once per month but at the latter date only 26 per cent were doing so."
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb20090713_439306.htm [businessweek.com]
Re:What's the Cause? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that the kids just got smarter. You don't brag about filesharing anymore. No matter how much a study is allegedly "anonymous".
Parent
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I wouldn't be surprised if filesharing is down. A few years ago if I heard something new that I liked (e.g. in a nightclub) I'd find out what it was, and at home search for a torrent.
Now, I just type the name in to Songza.com (or Last.fm).
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I'm more a YouTube person. Yeah, I'm not hip anymore, I go with the masses now.
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http://songza.com/ [songza.com] is a music search engine that indexes YouTube and Imeem. You can search for a specific track, but it's also useful to search for an artist and let it play through a load of their songs (I do this at work sometimes, as I limit myself to legally purchased music on my work PC).
Re:What's the Cause? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that, when illegal file-sharing dropped, so did actual sales?
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Where the profit goes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ticket sale money doesn't line the same pockets as CD sale money (for one, the artist gets a cut).
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When you can fit a million people into a concert then you can compare figures. Its good to see artists sweat n work for their millions. Almost anyone can spend a week in front of a modern PC and bang up a reasonably audible production.
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I'm finding it a bit of a struggle. Perhaps if you'd supply a link to your magnum opus it would inspire me...
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A) Commercial music usage
B) Live concert ticket sales
And movie "stars" should get to do real work, like acting in a theater. I mean, anyone can whip up a good scene when you have 200 takes, but when you're in a theater, that is the place where you have to really work.
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Absolutely. I was pretty impressed by this video [youtube.com] that my son created, the music all recorded in his basement.
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AGAIN? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I remember, the same increase was seen throughout the industry when Napster was at its peak.
The industry should be thankful for being able to reach a larger audience without having to pay the giant advertising costs!
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Back when I tried Napster, only popular artists has songs listed under their own names. Everyone else was "unknown".
One of the points of copyrights is to ensure credit. Credit does not necessarily mean profit. I would be plenty pissed if my art was circulating around the Internet, everybody liked it, and I had a ton of fans, and... nobody actually knew who I was. Don't even get me started about mis-credited works.
Napster was bad. Period. I couldn't find anything from my favorite obscure artists with t
Physical Media (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly it looks as though even though the physical products are not selling well people are returning or atleast partially embracing vinyl records
From Wikipedia -
"Figures released in the United States in early 2009 showed that sales of vinyl albums nearly doubled in 2008, with 1.88 million sold - up from just under 1 million in 2007."
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Furthermore from the same wikipedia entry
"If these trends continue... eyyyyyy! "
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, CD's upper limit is 22khz, vinyl used a 44khz carrier to encode the rear channels of quadrophonic. The closer you get to the 22khz Nyquist limit imposed by CD's 44khz sample rate, the greater the aliasing. A 15khz tone has only three samples per trough, how can you possibly reconstruct a complex waveform with three samples?
Plus, audible frequencies are colored by supersonic waveforms. You don't have them with CD. However, you would have to have a higher sampling rate with your digital master for the v
The Money is going into the wrong pockets (Score:4, Insightful)
Executives only exists to protect themselves. The facts don't lie.
Increase in profit due to price hike? (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting statistic. I am all for pushing digital content out to the masses and being able to pick songs you like. I'd much rather buy a couple of songs that I like off an album and not having to fork out the bucks for the rest of the dross. It also creates competitive drive for artists and makes them dig deep into their creative juices or shell out the money for people who know how to produce stuff that sells better (whether of better quality or not).
But it would be interesting to do a follow up statisti
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... recession being blamed for it ...
The problem with that theory is that it would result in attendance dropping, in half empty concerts because there aren't enough people willing to pay the price hike. That isn't what's happening, the venues have been able to raise prices and still get the full house needed for people to come back to the next concert.
The only way that can happen, in a recession yet, is if even more people want to go but can't justify the cost.
So where do all these people find out about the concerts? I don't see any incr
Piracy doesn't affect the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
Performance - not sales (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well Good (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason that the big record labels perpetuate the myth that new artists need to be 'funded' is so they can perpetuate the closed ecosystem where artists can't reach the public without signing away 90 to 100% of the profits to them. This is the real reason why the music industry are willing to make payola payments to distribute songs for free on the radio, but are fighting against the free advertising of their product by filesharing, although both forms of advertising generate sales - it's because they can monopolise the airwaves but they can't do the same with P2P. It's all about artificial barriers to entering the market.
Apple don't lose money on iTunes, they make a HUGE profit. They take 29 cents per 99 cent song, and have sold over 6 billion songs, do the math!
Not much variety in music? Go count the number of artists on iTunes, Mr Troll.
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