imc wrote:brent wrote:The recording industry is not dead. That is absurd.
I never said it was dead, I said that as it was it was dead. The primary revenue stream of selling CD albums is if not dead, on its last legs. Next time you're around a bunch of teenagers, find out how many of them own a CD album - you might be suprised! Both you and me know that CD's sound better, but that's because we've grown up with that quality of audio. The emerging and future record growing public on the whole are quite happy with the quality of mp3's, and as bandwidth and storage drops in price the quality of the files will increase, as it already has done on itunes.
Even at concerts bands are resorting to digital means, I was at a delirious concert not long ago, and to promote their new single they put a number up on the screens for fans to text - and in response they would have the single downloaded to their phone (for the cost of the premium SMS). Think of the convenience to the consumer and the band, not to mention savings on manufacturing. They probably sold a few hundred before the gig had finished.
Like it or not, selling music as physical product is not the future, I'd even wager that
selling music will not be the music industries primary revenue stream in the future either, as pointed out by some of the examples in my previous post. Like you say, there is supply and demand - and the demand for CD albums is running dry.
I am loads more selective with the music I buy today, because I can listen to full albums on services such as lastfm and spotify in high quality for free (and legally), so I only buy the music I really, really love. Why would I do anything else?
Listening to music free does not help the artist cover their expenses or fund more. If this keeps up, you will not see artists sticking it out. You will always be listening to rookie artists that never develop and mature with time. That's the big deal now. No longevity. There is currently no culture in any music genre for artists to develop. They must have hits on album one and so on.
Not including the hundreds of thousands of indie releases (signed and unsigned), 2008 accounted for 428.4 million units (down 8.5 percent from 500.5 million in 2007). CD sales fell 20% to 362.6 million from 450.5 million. Digital album sales increased 32% to a record 65.8 million units. Apple was up 27%. So CDs are still dominating. At shows, download cards are not selling well for bands. They have flopped at retailers. CDs are instant gratification.
You are correct. The kids are not the future salvation of the music industry unfortunately. Kids do not have or spend the money that moves the economy either. It is the 20s and 30 somethings that can change some things. They have some money to play with.
Then we must consider the fact that not everyone is on the web with a computer. Some people are using phones exclusively. Some people are not on the web at all, or have geographic limitations on fast service. So as long as there are people without computers, phones, iPods, etc, there will be a CD provided. It is going to take another couple of decades before the CD, or someother backward compatible disc, goes completely away.
There is a huge indie movement. Indie labels are doing serious business. So we cannot make assumptions about the business as a whole, because the RIAA is going to slant numbers, retailers are going to slant numbers, Apple is going to slant numbers, all in the name of self preservation. Until there is a universal, free (or darn near free) way to document every physical and download purchase, we will only have vague numbers.
I know this. CD Baby saw an increase of nearly 30% in royalty checks to indie artists in 2008, who sold about 35 MILLION dollars worth of music uncounted for by the RIAA. There are many others out there like CD Baby. So, the machine is just morphing and changing hands. But at the end of the day, some machine is selling music to those willing to pay for it.
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