Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal 331
Un pobre guey writes "The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) press release claims that 95% of music file downloads in 2008, an estimated 40 billion files, were illegal. Oddly enough, digital music sales are up: 'The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007. Recorded music is at the forefront of the online and mobile revolution, generating more revenue in percentage terms through digital platforms than the newspaper (4%), magazine (1%) and film industries (4%) combined... Despite these developments, the music sector is still overshadowed by the huge amount of unlicensed music distributed online. Collating separate studies in 16 countries over a three-year period, IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally file-shared in 2008, giving a piracy rate of around 95 per cent.'"
Re:Inflation... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inflation... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I for one re-downloaded a few albums that I already own from piratebay simply because I was too lazy to rip them myself.
Why go through the hassle of shuffling physical discs when one click of a button will do the same?
Furthermore I occassionally got additional live-recordings, rare recordings, bootlegs, even documentaries bundled with the discographies that I downloaded - that's what I call added value.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
"First off, it only costs $1(us) at most to manufacture and ship a CD. Probably more like $0.50 or less, perhaps even $0.25. So they are likely making $11 to $11.75 for each CD after the physical costs of creating and moving them."
Distributors and retailers get part of the money you spend when you buy a CD. Record companies typically sell CDs into distribution for $8, so if we're trying to break down the margin model for CD sales, it's best to start with $8, not $12.
"Add to that the fact most people don't want to buy every song on a CD, and this means all things being equal, music companies will make more money on average by selling CDs."
You're correct, and that's why the industry is hurting so badly. Customers are buying too much digital media and not enough CDs, and the record companies' profit models just aren't prepared for this.
"Don't they usually charge $15 to $20 for newly released CDs?"
Some stores do, I imagine, but the average price of a new CD is around $13. This average price has held steady since about 2004. All the CDs on the Amazon top ten sell for between $9.99 and $12.99. The one exception is a David Foster CD/DVD combo for $19.99. Target and Wal-Mart have similar prices and Amazon, Target and Wal-Mart probably collectively sell most of the physical CDs in the United States. There might be some retailers that price new CDs at $15-$20 but they're a dying breed. These retailers are taking the extra margin; the CD sold for $15 or $20 was still sold by the record company into distribution for $8 and that eight bucks is all the record company saw.
Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, what do you use to rip 'em?
What format do you output to?
I'm actually in the middle of ripping my entire 300+ CD collection which starts with CDs from about 20 years ago. And yes, some of them do 'rust', but this doesn't necessarily mean you can't get a good rip from them. The central factor is (command line tool) cdparanoia. I use two gui interfaces which use cdparanoia. Mostly, I use rubyripper. This uses cdparanoia with no error correction etc. - but it rips in chuncks two or more times and compares the results, and rerips (only the) bad chunks repeatedly. For 'good quality' CDs it rips much faster than any other reliable method. For about 1 cd in 50 with bad scratches or corrosion I use Grip, which by default uses cdparanoia in 'maximum paranoia mode'. This can be *a lot* slower than using rubyripper but it will rip any but the most damaged discs.
Woo! While typing this comment I've discovered my missing (genuine shop bought) copy of Marillion's "Script for a Jester's Tear" in the wrong CD case.
Anyhow, I've ripped about 200/300 now with complete sucess using the above.
You also asked what format to rip to. With current disc space prices, the *only* answer is lossless. FLAC is probably best, you can easily convert this to wav or any other format and it doesn't take much more space than good quality compressed. If you've got plenty of disc space, like I have, you might as well use uncompressed wav format - makes life simpler. My whole music collection uncompressed will fit in about 200Gb