Um, couldn't you always sample music in advance? I can't recall ever buying a cd without first hearing it on the radio, at a friend's, etc. Being able to sample, however, has led me to buy a few things I probably wouldn't have come upon otherwise.
You could sample in limited ways, but you couldn't decide to only get two songs from an album. (Admittedly, that's not what the quote says, but I was reading it as implied. Maybe not.)
I think that point is that you would hear the single, buy the whole record (and see here we are already with the generation gap, because I still think of them as records), and then hate every other song on the album. Courteney Love advanced this theory long ago -- bands were afraid of downloads, because they knew there was so much crap filler on their records.
I don't know -- they used to sell singles, too.
Only one or two tracks from any given album were available as singles, no?
Albums are more profitable for record companies than singles for precisely this reason.
So maybe it's a return to buying patterns in the 50's and early 60's, where mass-music buying was singles, and buying an album was a bigger committment?
DRM-free downloads of more music
Usenet, bitches.
I'm sorry, it's about the fact that you can get music for free. It really is that simple.
re: 1
Also, for a lot of people, the music they like wasn't the music in the charts or on the radio. I still regularly buy albums on spec because I've read a review of it that sounds interesting and because it's not on emusic or one of the less legit sources that I use for sampling/listening in advance. I think quite a few of my friends are the same.
However, with increased access to downloadable content, less of those 'spec' albums probably do get bought.
This is really two statements, one a theoretical statement about preferences, and another wondering if this is responsible for the current decline in music sales.
For the former, I wonder whether a simpler explanation is "the paradox of choice" -- that when people have too many choices they are less inclined to choose anything.
For myself, part of the appeal of CDs is that, if I'm looking for songs by someone I'm interested in, I know I'm going to want to get some grouping of songs to give me a reasonable basis of exposure, and it's convenient that someone else has made that choice for me.
If I had to decide on a song by song basis what I was interested, I would spend more time selecting, and purchase less music.
As far as the music industry, I haven't followed it lately, but the explanation I found compelling 4-5 years back was that there was a switch from "hi-fi" to "home theater" and that DVD sales were competing with CD sales. That doesn't necessarily explain continuing drops in sales.
9 is also partly true I think. I don't buy less music now that I can get access to music for free. But the music I buy is certainly different.
On the sampling thing: I've never not had access to a local music store that would happily open CDs (from the bottom, so as not to break the name-label on top) and allow you to listen to as much of it as you wanted prior to purchase. If you choose not to buy, the disco goes to the shrink-wrap machine and then back on the shelf. Am I an outlier in having this access?
It really is that simple.
If only you could get word to all the economists working on this problem.
re: 14
I've never not had access to a local music store that would happily open CDs (from the bottom, so as not to break the name-label on top) and allow you to listen to as much of it as you wanted prior to purchase.
That's not that common here. It's fairly common in specialist vinyl retailers but I've never seen a mainstream CD retailer do it.
15: I just sent you an explanatory email, mister.
I've never seen a mainstream CD retailer do it
These were local shops, so I think that's an important distinction. The mainstreamers will have kiosks with the popular discs queued up for pre-purchase sampling. But local shops will let you hear anything they have in-stock.
I'm sorry, it's about the fact that you can get music for free. It really is that simple.
No, no, no.
8 years ago I bought CDs based on hearing one song. A lot of them only had one good song on them. Now I no longer buy CDs that don't have multiple good songs on them, because I can listen to multiple song clips on Amazon or at the record label's website or watch the music videos on demand at Youtube. You're saying I'm unusual in this?
Sure, you could theoretically request that record stores perform this function, but most people wouldn't want to impose that much. In the record stores I used to go to, there were maybe 30 (new) albums available for listening at the "listening station" with headphones, and that's it. Otherwise you had to get the guy behind the counter to do you a favor.
16's right. Honestly, I buy virtually no music whatsoever. First, because people who are more attentive and spend more time on music than I am make stuff available for free (thank you TheWeblog's Friday Jazz, thank you Mr. w-lfs-n, thank you Sifu and Apo and McG for your mixes a while back), second because I have *always* hated buying music just because I liked the album cover or whatever (what's available on the radio, in my youth, being mostly stuff I didn't want to buy--although my album-cover based purchase of the first TMBG EP should have demonstrated to me that the method was infallible), and third because while I really enjoy good music, I also really don't mind silence.
And then there are oldsters like me who would buy a lot more music if DRM-free downloads of more music were available.
But since it isn't, you have to download those 15 CD collections for free, eh, THIEF?
Seriously, though: the only CDs I've bought since Napster came out are from bands at shows, and that's generally only when the bands don't have any vinyl (oh, there might have been one or two others; I bought a couple things when Tower was going out of business). I surely love buying vinyl, though. New dance records I will sample (usually online) before buying, and old records I never spend more than a dollar or two, so who cares if it sucks?
Of course demographics have nothing to do with this at all. Nobody forecast this precise decline five years ago and nobody made any money out of doing so. A complicated business school just so story is surely the explanation. The next thing to do is make big extrapolations from arbitrarily selected bits of textbook theory and tell everyone they're the way of the future.
I act like I can't stand the Cowens, Levitts and Friedmans of the world but actually I love them. They're like little elves who keep putting nickels in a slot, and then me and my mates come round and say "wow, what an interesting machine! shall we sweep up all those messy little metal disks for you? no, don't worry, our pleasure, you just go on feeding your machine".
Another data point in favour of 9:
I got talking with some friends about how much music we buy. I mentioned that my buying mine goes up and down, but gave a rough estimate of how many I bought [quite a lot in terms of sheer numbers but I mostly buy cheap stuff].
One friend replied, paraphrasing, 'You still buy CDs?'. And it was pretty clear it was the buying that was the part he was incredulous at, and not the on-CD part [rather than some bought-but-downloaded media].
But since it isn't, you have to download those 15 CD collections for free, eh, THIEF?
No, often I just don't buy it. There's stuff that I wait to see on eMusic, or, if I really want something, I'll get it from iTunes and strip the DRM. If I desperately want something, I'll buy the CD.
It seems to me that one of the reasons companies bundle goods and services together is because it induces people to buy things that they would otherwise not buy. I'm not sure what's incredible about a decrease in total purchasing in the face of unbundling.
24: wait, so you didn't actually download that 15 CD collection? Craziness.
The Rolling Stones were masters of bundling. The best version of "Honky-tonk woman" only appeared on a greatest hits album, so that an album-buying Stones fan would buy a whole album for one song.
some say "were masters of bundling", some say "wrote an unconscionable amount of shite"
so you didn't actually download that 15 CD collection?
I did not. It probably is crazy. But I justified my Napstering by telling myself that I'd pay for music when I was able and now I cannot break my vow! (I do sometimes download songs to see if I want to buy them, however.)
Oh man if I'd known that I would have worked harder to convince you. None of the rights to those songs are owned by the original musicians, their descendants, or the original label. The only pockets you'd be lining belong to MCA executives.
Which, actually, to add something to this comment that isn't utterly meaningless to everyone else, kind of defines my thinking on buying music: when I'm confident that all or most of the money I'm spending is going to an artist or indie label, and the buying process is as hassle-free as downloading would be, I'll cheerfully buy. Those two things just don't coincide very often.
28 is right.
40+ year career built on a six year purple patch..
Well for one, theres no sentimental reason to buy cds, since they are too small to have artwork. And the money goes all to the record company, whose only service is marketing bands. And this marketing is mostly of bands that are shit so i'm rather looking foward to them all going belly up.
And ripping cds is a lot more work than downloading something. i've only bought a few albums recently, mostly because they rely heavily on the particular way the tone is processed and i want to hear the sound in the highest quality i can get.
Someday soon I'll actually get around to downloading music from the internet for the first time.
Basically I am one step above LB in terms of being bothered about music and buy maybe 1 or 2 CDs a year. Probably more now that my brother has moved out and is no longer bringing new music into the apartment.
I loved "Flowers" when I first got it, but eventually I found out that most of it (8 of 12 cuts) had appeared on other albums. It was like a playlist.
Which, actually, to add something to this comment that isn't utterly meaningless to everyone else, kind of defines my thinking on buying music: when I'm confident that all or most of the money I'm spending is going to an artist or indie label, and the buying process is as hassle-free as downloading would be, I'll cheerfully buy. Those two things just don't coincide very often.
Oddly, I thought about this for a while and came to the opposite conclusion. I like having money go to the artists, but I'm not opposed to the labels getting their cut either. I decided that, as long as I like buying CDs and, particularly, as long as most of the CDs are older music that could well have gone out of print long ago, that I'm happy to support they people who keep the catalogs in print and keep the distribution chanells (somewhat) functional.
That said, I buy quite a bit of music used or as cheap as I can possibly get it, but that doesn't contradict the sentiment above.
oh, theres a few labels that do restorations of tapes of africans making music or stuff like that which are useful. Those are worth keeping around.
But if you don't buy CDs--or records--then you don't get to go to the record shop.
I hate almost everything the way it works now, because, y'see, I like going to the record shop. I like going to the bookstore, and the movie theater. I don't like clicking around somewhere and fiddling with my computer and having almost no serendipity involved in the process. My ideal life does not involve sitting at home in front of the computer ordering things delivered. That's rather like my vision of hell, actually.
Besides, where will I hang out with my record nerd friends? Once you've had coffee, the next logical step is "hey, wanna go look at records?" No market for records, no record shop, no sociable whiling-away of a Saturday afternoon, periodically wandering over to each other to coo over what you've found.
The best version of "Honky-tonk woman" only appeared on a greatest hits album, so that an album-buying Stones fan would buy a whole album for one song.
I'm trying to think of a recent greatest-hits album (by any band) that *hasn't* included at least one new song, precisely for this reason. I'm not coming up with anything.
oh, theres a few labels that do restorations of tapes of africans making music or stuff like that which are useful. Those are worth keeping around.
Are you seriously going to say that the archives of Verve, Island, or Atlantic aren't useful?
For that matter I'd be pretty sad if someone went out and threw away the Warner Brothers archives, and, while I think it's unlilkely that will happen, it's more likely as long as the label knows their archives have value.
I'm happy that rykodisk can license material from the archives. I'm happy that labels occasionally put out remastered/expanded versions of older material.
I'm even happy that it's possible for labels to convert material from their archives to new formats like SACD or DVD-audio despite the fact that I haven't gotten on board with either of those formats.
"rykodisk" s/b "rhino"
I was thinking of the EC remasters and got them mixed up.
So maybe it's a return to buying patterns in the 50's and early 60's, where mass-music buying was singles, and buying an album was a bigger committment?
This really would be disastrous for record companies.
The music industry in the 50s and early 60s was *much* smaller and profit margins were *much* slimmer. Many labels were only a step removed from selling shellac discs from the back of trucks. One of the reasons Michael Jackson could sell so many more records than the Beatles, despite not being as good, was that more people were buying more full length albums.
35 and 39 are right.
I grudge the prices for a lot of new CDs, but lots of labels I like release stuff at low or mid price points, and I'm happy to buy 'em.
Ogged, what did you mean by the parenthetical in the post? This passage is from Tyler's book, isn't it?
Don't overlook the massive technological change, not in music distribution, but in music handling. In the days of cassettes, CDs, and somewhat less so LPs, one song took up as much physical space as an entire album. You could make a mix tape with all the songs you wanted to listen to from five albums, sort of, but god what a pain in the ass. Once you have mp3 files and ID3 tags, the album convenience economies of scale go away.
"Are you seriously going to say that the archives of Verve, Island, or Atlantic aren't useful?"
Yeah.
I mean, i spend as much time as anyone digging out music as anyone, but I'm quite confident that past a few dozen bands in a sub-genre, anything more is just compulsive obsession. There are several orders of magnintude more music out, even if you narrow it down to particular genres, than anyone could digest in a lifetime.
45 is sort of crazy. Rare music is much funner.
Past a few dozen bands in a sub-genre, anything more is just compulsive obsession.
Not true in jazz. There are a lot of obscure musicians who are really good, for the right person. Obscure three-chord pop, not so much.
its not that they aren't good, or possible not even that they aren't interesting. Its just that there are lots of satisfactory substitutes.
so you didn't actually download that 15 CD collection?
Ogged, you knucklehead. That shit is one of the most amazing shuffle folders in the history of recorded music.
But, but, I can buy it!
Don't be mean to me.
No, there aren't, if you really like that kind of thing.
Pop is more interchangable than a lot of other styles.
What 15 CD collection are you talking about?
An interesting source of mostly bad free music at the moment is the Bill Graham tape archives at www.wolfgangsvault.com.
Some of them you can pay for, but the streams, which form the overwhelming majority of the stuff on there, respond very well to Wiretap pro on a mac. I'm listening to a 1970 Byrds show right now, and thinking "You know, cocaine wasn't all bad in its effects on music."
There's a really nice Cream show, too </filthyhippie>
its not that they aren't good, or possible not even that they aren't interesting. Its just that there are lots of satisfactory substitutes.
I just don't get this.
It may be true that there's lots of stuff that we wouldn't miss if we never knew about it. But in this case, all of these great recordings exist, and you're arguing that it isn't worth paying someone to maintain an archive and occasionally release things from the archive?
The thing that bothers me is that there are plenty of historical examples of archives (print mostly) that are just thrown away because nobody wants to house/catalog them, and it's always depressing.
But, but, I can buy it!
Oh right. You don't have kids in daycare. Carry on.
What 15 CD collection are you talking about?
I'm sorry, it's about the fact that you can get music for free. It really is that simple.
I agree. My music consumption is almost 100% illegal downloads. I used to buy 6-8 cds a month and would feel guilty if I didn't listen to a cd that much. Now I am downloading a much wider range of music. And am feeling less guilt than I did when I used to buy cds.
Wow, that is a great looking 15 CD set. Drool.
My niece got zinged for thousands of dollars by the AASCAP gestapo.
58: Do you know any details of what she was doing? Napster in the day?
The RIAA has pretty much declared war on college students this year. They're filing a low of lawsuits.
I believe that illegal downloads are HELPING the music industry. Here's why:
I remember back when I was a kid, I'd save up loads of money for a tape or (later on) a CD, and then I'd find out that it sucked, or that there was only one or two good songs on it. Ouch. An expensive mistake. That kind of thing really discouraged me from buying music. As a result, my bought-music collection was a mere fraction of what it might have been if I had been free to listen to whatever I wanted before buying.
Now sure, when people can listen to, and keep, free MP3's, they're unlikely to rush out and buy all of them on CD. But they will buy their favorites. As an example, I got into Fountains of Wayne (this is back in the pre-"Stacy's Mom" era), The Flaming Lips, and other bands I never would have heard of under the old "hear it on the radio or MTV, then buy the album" paradigm -- by reading about them on websites and then clicking over to Napster to download their stuff. I ended up liking it so much that I wanted to go out and buy their CD's just to have them in my collection, and to be able to rip pristine tracks of their full albums into my PC.
All well and good. But what about the dozens of bands whose albums I don't rush out and buy? Are those lost sales for the poor music industry? No, because there's no way I would have bought them anyway. Before Napster, I wasn't buying ten albums a week; I was buying zero.
Conclusion: Record industry sales are down not because of free downloads, but because the record industry is promoting overpriced crap while making it hard for people to find reasonably-priced good music.
Also, let me add to #61 the "long tail" factor: Back in, say, the 80's, everyone would buy a hit album simply because it was a hit: It was on the radio or on MTV, it was hot, and you had to buy it. But today, people can dig around the Internet and find music they really, personally like, rather than buying, lemminglike, what everyone else is buying.
Moreover, when they find that music, they can order it from Amazon's limitless inventory, rather than hoping the local record store happens to have it on its shelves. I remember spending much of the 80's looking for "Come on Eileen" on CD; it took me about 10 years before finding it (in Japan, btw). Nowadays, with online shopping, the idea of being unable to instantly find an obscure CD is unbelievable.
As a result, the days of monolithic blockbuster albums that sold untold millions are largely behind us. The best-selling albums of all time include Thriller and, I think, an Eagles greatest hits collection. That's some pretty old music right there. Why isn't Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears in the top spot? Well, obviously, because they suck dead donkey balls. But also because the record companies simply can't mobilize the masses to buy their crap as easily as they once could.
Conclusion: Record industry sales are down not because of free downloads, but because the record industry is promoting overpriced crap while making it hard for people to find reasonably-priced good music.
No, it is because of the illegal downloads. Illegal downloads prevent about $100 of my money from going to record companies each month. I am not the only one.
CDs are overpriced because they are not free like the illegal downloads.
An interesting source of mostly bad free music at the moment is the Bill Graham tape archives at www.wolfgangsvault.com.
mostly bad s/b outrageously fine
What 15 CD collection are you talking about?
Have it umm, in flac. And individual sets, like Howlin Wolf & Little Walter. Just discovered Amos Milburn
My niece got zinged for thousands of dollars by the AASCAP gestapo.
I am like, so not participating in this thread, even the splint has helped tremendously. Damn doc-in-a-box won't do casts is the bad news. $250 for an exam and x-ray and a referral. Fuck that.
I am feeling kinda exposed down here at the bottom of the thread, and since I am not good at cock-jokes, may need to bury myself behind extensive quotes from from my classic of populism, Triumphant Plutocracy.
This could definitely attract an unsavory element in google searches.
Nice googleproofing there, Captain Hook.
I didn't know they were still suing people. i hadn't heard anything about it in ages.
67: They'll be so happy to hear that. The whole campaign is supposed to be scaring people enough that they'll change their behavior. Not so good for them when people in the target demographic haven't even heard about it.
oh, well ages ago i made sure my downloading system was secured. at the amount i grab, i don't want to think what the fine woudl be.
aaaaargh! That Chess box is £115, which is kind of hard to justify when you know that none of it at all is going to the original artists, and have owned at various times a great deal of it on vinyl. I still have, in the cellar, little walter, howling wolf, lowell fulsom and maybe some others. It is at moments like this that a man might turn to flac copies.
9 12 22
My CD consumption has dropped drastically in recent years but it is not because I am downloading off the net or sampling. I am less interested in CDs partially for demographic reasons but primarily because of competition from DVDs. CDs are technologically obsolete so it is no surprise that consumption is dropping.
Yeah, it's the (legal in the Netherlands! [1]) downloading all the kids and their parents, and their grandparents are doing these days.
I mean, ten years ago me and my cool nerd friends would know from mp3 and downloading free music via obscure websites and napster and such, but these days everybody knows about bittorrent. It's become incredibly mainstream, helped quite a lot by everybody having broadband these days. Downloading an mp3 over 56k is not a pleasant experience, but over broadband is hardly noticable.
Meanwhile music cds are still more expensive than dvds and why would you buy a 20 euro album when you can dowload the entire discography of the same artist for free?
[1] but you are not allowed to do anything with your downloads...
Martin, that's odd to me, because the extremely high price of academic books from the Netherlands has led me to wonder whether the Netherlands has extremely strict IP laws.
My niece was sued several years ago, I don't know how many.
Well, if the books were in Dutch, that fact alone would make them expensive: small market.
What we do have is a system where tax is paid for any sort of blank media on which music etc could be copied which is then divided between copyrightholders. For a blank 4.7 gig dvd this is between 40 and 60 euro cent per disc.
(Of course since I can buy blank discs at the local market for 15 euro per fifty, evading this tax is not very difficult.)
I'm skeptical that any artist every sees anything of the money that's raised this way, as it's all divided between the various copyright lobbying organisations; it's all a bit of a scam.