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Music Media Entertainment Games

Men Spend More on Video Games Than Music 57

Posted by Zonk from the why-wouldn't-they? dept.
Jakob Paulsen writes "According to research group Nielsen Entertainment, men now spend more money on buying games than on buying music. This adds further credit to the general belief that video games are displacing other forms of media for the attention of young men. Nielsen base their findings on interviews with 1,500 people in January and February."
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Men Spend More on Video Games Than Music More

Men Spend More on Video Games Than Music

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  • Understandable (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dash'n'SlashDot ( 841636 ) <climhazzard@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @01:34AM (#12185116) Homepage
    I think this is more of a product of men being more capable of pirating music than of pirating games as emulation of current consoles is hardly a replacement for the real thing.
    • Minorities also spend far more money on video ame purchases than caucasians. I was surprised by that.

      Then again, this is as surprising as "women spend more money on shoes". Except that videogames are actually useful and we play them more than one night.
      • Well... women spend the money on shoes, to find somebody worthwile to have a child with, while they meet only man normally who want to screw and them dump them :-)

        Which in the long run would indicate, that if somebody would invent artificial women the shoe industry would have a serious problem on their hands.
      • Minorities also spend far more money on video [g]ame purchases than caucasians.
        That's because caucasians are a dime a dozen these days.

        No, wait; I think that I parsed your sentence wrong.
    • Great. Now you are assuming that because people buy less music they must therefore be stealing it. I guess you work for the RIAA?

      Has it occurred to you that those same men could simply be listening to new music less? Either because they are playing their old CD's or because they are too busy playing games? Or do you really want to make the point that these men are engaging in "income-piracy" of the poor music artists? [sarcasm]Because that is what is going on, after all: by choosing not to spend their mon

    • I was considering to just mod this down but here I go and bite instead.

      Did it ever occur to you that:

      1) Anyone capable of downloading music is also capable of (or learning) to download games.
      2) There are no emulators for current gen consoles (yet).
      3) All current gen consoles have been hacked and can play copied games.

      "-1, Haven't thought think through" would be a more appropriate mod.
      • No, I thought about those items. The current generation of games can be downloaded at gigabytes a pop and there are no good software emulators for them to be run on. Yes, all the current consoles can be hacked, but it isn't all that widespread since, in most cases, it negates the online aspect of the consoles. ESPECIALLY on the Xbox where it hurts the most since you can no longer access Live without crashing the hacked box and having to fix it.
    • I don't pirate any music because it isn't worth the albeit slim possibility of a lawsuit for way the heck more money than that music is possibly worth to me. As a result, I don't try out new music the way I used to when my *ahem* "friend" in college who pirated lots of music was around, and thus I don't find out about any music to go and buy. Thus, any non-zero video game spending > my music expenses.
    • I think this is more of a product of men realizing that modern music sucks.

      Kids on the other hand....

  • Well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sebadude ( 680162 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @01:45AM (#12185206) Homepage
    Duh. For every game I buy I'd have to buy 4 albums to spend an equal amount of money on music.

    It's like saying that people spend more money on their house than on their car. It doesn't mean that they'll own more houses than cars in their lifetime, it just means that houses are more expensive.

    • Re:Well (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      Duh. For every game I buy I'd have to buy 4 albums to spend an equal amount of money on music.

      Where are all of these $75.96 games you're buying?! Unless you're talking about collector's editions.

      • Re:Well (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Dash'n'SlashDot ( 841636 )
        I think a better question is where you are spending $19 on a CD

        • Re:Well (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Seumas ( 6865 )
          Most meat-space stores sell non-discounted CDs at between $15.99 and $18.99. More for double-dics sets. The last CD I bought that wasn't directly from a band or a very small label was $18.99 and that was in 1999.

        • Re:Well (Score:2, Informative)

          by Sebadude ( 680162 )
          In Canada.

          New game with taxes: approx. $80 Canadian. New cd before taxes: $15-$20. 20x4: 80!

      • Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)

        by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @02:08AM (#12185337) Journal
        Games in the UK are 30-40GBP or close
        albums are around 7-12 GBP
        so i would say the aproximations is close and yes it is a total rip off.
        The RIAA wonder why people download music for free in the EU , Bit hint boys its because your charging us near $20 per CD but i digress.
        Yes the main reason is that games are about 4* the price
        • I remember when CDs were £14.99 new, and routinely £16.99-£19.99 for stuff off the beaten path (I paid £17.99 for Daft Punk's 'Homework' in 1998). The current situation of being able to buy almost any chart CD for under £10 including postage (play.com) is a significant improvement.

          Games prices, on the other hand, have not fallen significantly at all. That said, game production prices have shot up, while production prices for music have fallen.
          • I do remember that it was horrendus ofcourse at that time the dollar comparison was not as bad .. I remember ordering Foetus-Nail at HMV and having to pay about 20 GBP for it(German keyboard) ..
            Basically i would not download any music (From Itunes , allofmp3 etc) if CDs cost a resonble 5 per album and lets face it thats still a massive proffit .
            Pay the artists 2.50 , production cost of .50 per CD(lets face it thats exagerating) and 2 pure profit on each album which is amazing considering how little they do
      • "Where are all of these $75.96 games you're buying?!"
        In Europe [gamestop.ie]
        $75 = €60 [xe.com]

    • God Bless P2P (Score:1, Insightful)

      by FalleStar ( 847778 )
      /me laughs at the thought of actually paying for music anymore.

      • Re:God Bless P2P (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        So, do you buy your games?
        • Of course I do, IMO it takes a lot more skill and hard work to create a video game than it does a CD, I'd probably feel bad ripping off a video game company.
    • Prices for a music album and a game are not that different in Japan, actually. Games tend to be a tad higher, with big-name games often starting at about 7000 yen when they're first released, and albums at 3000-4000 yen for the crap everyone wants. Other games are often 4000-5000 yen.

  • It's just a better value for the money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Immercenary_2000 ( 863998 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @02:17AM (#12185364)
    For the most part, games have a lot more entertainment value for the money. If I buy a CD I'm paying $20 for about an hour's worth of music (not to mention that there may only be a few good songs on it). If I buy a game, There should be at least a few hours worth of gameplay before I beat it, and most games have a multiplayer mode which means that i'll get a lot of play out of that $50 I paid for the game before I get bored with it and need a new toy :). It's simple economics really. Why pay $20 for (at best) an hour of entertainment when you could get an insanely large number of hours of fun out of a $50 game?

    • Re:It's just a better value for the money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by a whoabot ( 706122 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @03:05AM (#12185541)
      I think you're only partially right. I am a big music fan though, so...

      If you're only getting "at best" an hour of use out of a twenty dollar disc, you're not listening to the right music I'd say.

      What's the most replayable games? Something like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City(I'll admit that was pretty damn fun when I played it)? Or something you play with friends a lot, like Super Smash Brothers, or some sports games? Even if you take these highly replayable games, can you still imagine yourself playing them twenty years from now?

      Now take any good recording. How could you not still want to listen to it twenty years from now? How could you not want to listen to it, assuming your in the mood, at any time until your very death?
      • Now take any good recording. How could you not still want to listen to it twenty years from now?

        Well, you could but, you'd have to pay another $40 (on top of the original $20) for the two replacements as formats became obsolete twice in those two or so decades or the media (such as CDs) failed or degraded from age.

        Of course, the same can be said of movies. And, these days, books. The last good science fiction book I bought was $35. I read it in two days. Talk about expensive!

        Entertainment is expensive,
      • That replay value might be the reason music isn't selling, people have pretty large collections already and no need for more music (another factor might be the difficulty of finding good music these days as the radio plays the same thirty awful songs over and over again).
      • can you still imagine yourself playing them twenty years from now?

        What!?

        Think emulators, man! Super Metroid, Mega Man, Earthbound, Legend of Mana, Ogre Battle, Castlevania.... Honestly, why would we have emulators if we never wanted to play these games again?
      • Even if you take these highly replayable games, can you still imagine yourself playing them twenty years from now?

        Well, I'm still playing Super Mario Bros.

      • Even if you take these highly replayable games, can you still imagine yourself playing them twenty years from now?

        I still on occasion play NES and SNES games today. I know people who still play Atari games. In fact, in many cases, I've got more motivation to play older games because I never finished them. Or perhaps some new interesting thing has been discovered. (Finding interesting "glitches" that lead to various odd areas, for instance... this happened in Metroid.)

        Even aside from this, there'

  • it's not the money it's the units (Score:4, Insightful)

    by generalleoff ( 760847 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @03:14AM (#12185575)
    It's not really fair to use money as a basis for this. Games tend to cost 3 to 5 times as much as a music CD so it's no shock guys are spending more money on games as games can make more money while still selling less units.

  • $35 bongo controllers... (Score:3, Funny)

    by goodenoughnickname ( 874664 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @03:36AM (#12185694)
    Where do all the people who bought Donkey Konga fit into all of this?

    Oh wait a minute... nobody bought Donkey Konga.

  • For me... (Score:3, Funny)

    by terrisus ( 108956 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @11:10AM (#12187491) Homepage
    Gender: Male
    Time I spend listening to music per week: 0 Seconds
    Time I spend playing video games per week: More than 0 Seconds

    That was easy.
    • Time I spend listening to music each day: six to ten hours
      New music I've downloaded this month: No RIAA licensed content.
      Non-RIAA music I've downloaded: Mostly stuff from http://www.ocremix.org/ [ocremix.org]

      Time I spend playing games each day, including console games: six to ten hours

      • Non-RIAA music I've downloaded: Mostly stuff from http://www.ocremix.org/

        Except that everything on ocremix.org is probably considered pirated because they don't pay the royalty of up to 8.5 cents per downloaded track to the video game publishers, who own copyright in the musical works that underlie the recordings available on ocremix.org.

        • At Overclocked Remixes, the mixers take commercial work and change it making it their own. This is legal because they aren't selling their works. allofmp3 is making money of someone's original(well, as original as popular music is anyways) work and selling it to others without the permission of the said artists or their representatives(RIAA).

          • At Overclocked Remixes, the mixers take commercial work and change it making it their own.

            The owner of copyright in a musical work has the exclusive right to authorize sound recordings, except as part of a royalty-based compulsory licensing scheme.

            This is legal because they aren't selling their works.

            But they are still reproducing phonorecords of sound recordings of copyrighted musical works. Have you done a full fair use analysis of OCR's situation using all four factors [bitlaw.com], or have you looked only

    • Time I spend listening to music per week: 0 Seconds

      Are you trying to tell me you didn't buy food in the past week? Most grocery stores have some sort of music playing over the speaker system. The royalties for such music ultimately come out of the price of the groceries you bought. Therefore, you indirectly paid to hear music.

      • Time I spend listening to music per week: 0 Seconds

        Are you trying to tell me you didn't buy food in the past week? Most grocery stores have some sort of music playing over the speaker system.

        He's deaf and blind you asshole.

  • I've done this for years (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr.Dippy ( 613292 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#12187612)
    I think the total amount of music I bought since 2002 has been about 3 cds. I average about 1 new game every 2 months. I don't buy games when they first come out because 50 dollars is way to much. You can buy a quality game for 20-30 bucks and the entertainment time for any given game is at least 10-15 hours. Unless I really like a cd (which has about an hours worth of music), I usually listen to a cd 3 to 4 times and then put it away in my collection. I'll listen to it maybe a couple of times a year after that. I think entertainment wise videogames give you more bang for the buck.
    • I totally agree with those who argue that music is overpriced. I think $1 a track is too high, when you compare it with the value provided by games and DVDs.

      My solution? Join BMG. The selection isn't unlimited, true, but I get albums for about $8 shipped (on average), which is 50-75 cents a track.

      • I would agree with this but I'm not crazy about BMG's selection. Every now and then they have some good cds but it seems they are just trying to push off Best of collection cds. Also, it's not a bargain unless you buy in bulk (more than 3 I think). Most of the time I just want one cd.

  • Principles (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Radius9 ( 588130 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @11:51AM (#12187678)
    I used to buy something like 3 or 4 CDs a week, back in hayday of Napster, mainly because I was exposed to new artists I hadn't heard before at 0 cost, after which I would buy other CDs of them. After Napster was shutdown, that dropped to about 2 CDs a month, at the most. Once the RIAA started suing individuals, I decided I was not going to buy any CDs any more, and have bought 1 CD direct from the artist in the last 2 years. I have spent WAY more than that on games. I buy more games than I do CDs, just volume wise, not even counting the price differential. Most of my friends also don't buy much as far as CDs are concerned, albeit for most of them its not on principle.
  • Clearly, this is the work of internet piracy in a post-9/11 world. We will now sue people for not buying music.
  • Last year in music, I bought 6 CD's (around $15 per) and about 100 iTunes. Let's round that up to $200 to make it easy.

    Last year in games, I bought World of Warcraft ($50) and a 3-month pre-paid card ($45). Let's round that up to $100.
  • I will vouch for that
  • I'm a 25 year old male and I feel that the recording industry has mostly ignored my musical tastes for about six or seven years now. Last year I bought 1 album (Bowling for Soup). I bought 2 albums 2 years ago, but they were both older music (Talking Heads and Human League).

    There are very few newer bands that I like. The older bands I like are not producing new music that I enjoy. Also, when new music comes out that I do enjoy, it gets VERY little radio play in my city. I end up finding songs I like i

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