The music industry's revenues aren't down because of piracy (at least, not substantially). The music industry's revenues are down because of quite a few convergent factors, all having to do with disruptive technologies causing social change:
Well, you can't really separate the two can you? Go back to 1989 and ask the typical 20-something about their music collection. You'd get an answer of something like 10 albums in some form. Today? Youtube, "nothing", or a massive collection of illegally obtained media. Every now and then you'll find someone in this age group with legitimate music, but not often. Pervasive illegal downloads have devalued music in the minds of many many people to such a point that they think they should NOT HAVE TO pay for it. It's a "social problem", but it's rooted in piracy.
Album sales were driven, in the later-vinyl and CD eras, primarily through a scheme of mixing a few well produced hit-tracks in with filler (and heavily promoting the hits through payola to the radio stations).
Hold the phone. Now you're saying "the content isn't any good anyway. I just want the hits." So "good albums" don't exist after some point in time? Or are you simply not an album listener? I know a lot of people that aren't and it explains MASSIVE music collections, because a lot of these people only want to listen to 1 or 2 songs per album and consider the rest junk. As a music lover, I think you are very much missing out on the experience if you only listen to the hits on an album. But that's a separate discussion unrelated to piracy. Or are you saying some degree of piracy is OK because the albums aren't worth as much as they charge? What's your point here?
The digital music revolution eliminated all of that, and people largely started buying singles of only the "good" stuff. This is where most of their revenue loss has gone. Single-track sales have, nearly entirely, replaced the "album".
You're saying there's some study somewhere that correlates single song purchases on itunes, amazon, etc with past album sales and says the number of consumers spending their money is the same? Seems like a huge stretch to me. How do you count someone buying 3 songs from one album for instance? Do you have a reference for this?
* The CD-era was also a once-in-a-lifetime boom of sales, as people format-shifted from tapes and vinyl to higher-quality and more convenient CDs. This will never happen again,
Do you have data to back this up? I didn't notice people around me replacing entire collections with CDs when they became available. But maybe they did. To be honest, I'm certain I bought *some* CDs of albums that I already had on tape. So maybe this is more valid than I initially would have thought.
for most people, and the only thing "more convenient" than digital audio libraries (on iPods and smartphones and whatnot) is streaming subscriptions, but those further erode revenues! You never get to sell anything ever again (but at least you trade in consistent ongoing revenue).
Yes. Another discussion too, because streaming (legitimately) isn't piracy. But it's a horrible idea for everyone for exactly the reason you just said. Plus it further devalues music in the minds of typical consumers.
Making a high-quality recording no longer required $14M recording studios, and distributing content to the entire world no longer required factories making plastic discs, radio station DJs on the take, trucks, and a network of record stores across the nation.
Well, yes and no. Very, very few artists are going to make an album like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours in a basement or converted bedroom with a few thousand dollars in recording gear.
A member of my family is a mildly successful artist and owns his own VERY small record label. A true independent. But there must be some reason that it doesn't work as well as you might expect, because his band is now signed with a mainstream label. A much smaller than average label, but still one you probably have heard of. He still has his really small record label and produces other artists on it. But *his* band, is now on another label.
* The Internet gave us a ton of new ways to entertain ourselves, and music just isn't as important as it once was.
I disagree. Music is still entirely pervasive in the lives of young people. Maybe more today than when I was in my 20s. Headphones are EVERYWHERE you go. People still listen to music in their cars. I'm not in very many people's homes, so I'm not sure how much home listening goes on. But home listening of music has been sort of secondary for a very, very long time now.
Music has been devalued. People in general don't see the need to purchase it as much as they did in previous years. Just ask anyone under 30.
Side Note: I'm not sure how old you are, but... For the record, high-levels of piracy among the youth in music is nothing new. When I was a kid, we all did it with tapes. That's because kids are poor. The music industry's bet all along has been that they'll get addicted as kids, and become buyers later when they get jobs.
I was a teenager in the 80s. So yes, guilty as charged. I had recorded tapes for sure: many of them. But I also had legitimately purchased tapes too (tapes were my main music collection when I was that age). I always bought music as my (tiny) budget allowed. I bought more when I got older and had more money.
The problem now is, young people don't "get addicted and then buy later". They just keep getting music for free. Or they go the ultra cheap route and stream. Or stream "for free with youtube". The model is not the same as it was.
If we want new music to be produced, the companies that make it have to make money. It's as simple as that.
Again: I'm not arguing for DRM. I dislike DRM and I think it's ineffective. I don't have a way to fix all of this. But I think it's quite clearly broken.
Glynor, I think you know that I respect you. The tone of this post reflects my shock at how you seem to think that the state of affairs with regard to digital media piracy is just fine and that the companies all deserve what they get. I hope you'll take this in the civil way it was intended and continue to have a discussion about this.
Brian.
Author
Topic: Digital Rights Management (Read 4950 times)