Music Industry Thriving In an Era of File Sharing 174
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%."
no shock (Score:3, Interesting)
recorded music is where the juicy profits are though, so profit wise i'm guessing they lost out.
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".
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]
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."
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 statistic on how much concert ticket prices have changed with the onset of the digital file sharing. I have certainly noticed the hike in prices over the last 5 years. I am sure there will be arguments about recession being blamed for it, and I am not denying it may be true. It would just be worth a second and deeper look into the profit stratas to figure out whether it's really digital file sharing that's causing the profits to soar or if it's something else.
Re:Oh come now... We know this can't be true. (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?
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...
Re:To hear the accountants tell it (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 CD price fixing.
Re:File-sharing has dropped in the UK (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.
Re:Physical Media (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 vinyl to sound better.
Since if you mix analog with digital you get the worst of both worlds and the best of neither, the best thing would be for the music to be recorded in analog if you were going to publish it in vinyl.
When CDs first came out they were superior to vinyl, because they had been recording digitally for a few years already, so the LPs really had none of the advantages of vinyl, while the CDs had the advantages of digital.