17 Million People Stopped Buying CDs In 2008 375
Houston 2600 sends along an Ars Technica writeup on the continuing downward trend in the traditional music business: NPD's annual survey found that 17 million CD customers dropped out last year. Among the good news is that streaming services such as Pandora are growing fast. "While overall music sales were up 10 percent in 2008, the year saw a drop not only in CD sales, but also in the number of customers actually purchasing music. But according to a new report, the act of listening to music is actually on the rise. ... NPD's annual Digital Music Study found that there were 17 million fewer CD customers in 2008 than in past years. CD sales have been dropping for quite some time, and while 1.5 billion songs were sold digitally last year, the number of Internet users paying for digital music only increased by 8 million in 2008."
They all switched.. (Score:5, Funny)
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10 percent rise (Score:2)
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I don't get the numbers. What made up the gap?
Higher profit margins? That would also explain why people stopped buying.
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Things like Spotify [spotify.co.uk] do though.
Re:10 percent rise (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe it will work on IP6.
Re:10 percent rise (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure...listening is on the rise...people are desperately listening to hope to try to find something WORTH listening to, and possibly buy to keep.
So much music today, is dispensible.
When I bought music, it was something I bought to keep and listen to repeatedly. I hear kids today buy songs...listen for a few months, and hardly ever return to them again? I still listen over and over and over again, most all of my music collection from over the years. I have songs from my parents' time. I have stuff when I was a kid (very young) in the 60s and early 70's. I like the stuff my my teen years...through college and all. For the most part, I quit finding new, good stuff I wanted in the early 90's or so.
I have a pretty decent sized collection. I don't have any throw away music....
What is the deal with that today? Is it due to the lack of quality/musicianship?
Re:10 percent rise (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it is due to the dearth of good music coming out these days, that anyone would WANT to purchase.
This has been said several times in this discussion, and every other one about music.
But, I still see gigs, concerts and festivals selling out. Recent statistics from the UK showed live music income overtook recorded music income for the first time in the UK last year. Sure, big artists still draw massive crowds (just look at how many nights Jackson has sold out in London) but there's a lot of new artists too.
I quit finding new, good stuff I wanted in the early 90's or so.
90% of my music is from the early 90s or later, and I've been listening to it for over 10 years now. Maybe you're just getting old.
*Jumps on lawn*
Re:10 percent rise (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to be rude, but stopping buying/finding new music seems to generally be a function of age ( I'm 36 ). Music which soundtracked your most hormonal years seems to sink in deeper ( playing things on the radio enough that it hits a *special* moment for people seems to be a large part of how the music industry works/worked. )
Listening to music from their earlier years seems to be conforting for people, but to say that the quality of music and musicianship has declined is just another 'the kids these days are shit' statement. Your position and emotional needs have probably changed, but it's still true that your all-time favourite band you havn't heard yet, and right now they're probably about 3-4 clicks from where you're sitting.
Sign of for Last.fm, or Pandora, or whatever. People who've grown up around the music you love are now making music themselves.
And turn the damn radio off.
In related news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Retail sales in general are down because nobody wants to spend money on luxury items.
I am surprised that people even bothered to do research on this. I could have told you this without looking at any metrics.
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No it's clearly soulless pirates who are worse than the scum that steal candy from crippled blind penniless orphaned cute puppies. Studies have shown that the total cost of piracy over $180 trillion dollars per day in North Dakota alone. Doesn't have anything to do with this "recession" the liberals keep trying to pretend is happening.
But yes, when prices go up and/or willingness to spend goes down, people start cutting luxuries. For some, it's buying music. For others, it's obtaining new music. It's called
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
candy from crippled blind penniless orphaned cute puppies
Is there a torrent of that?
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No... but rule 34 applies.
Re:In related news... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
I have to say this is one area that the RIAA is right. I'm scared to walk the streets at night because the roaming nun problem.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a building near a mall. Several times a week I go over there and either eat in the food court or walk around during lunch.
There are TONS of people at that mall every day.
But hardly anyone actually has a bag, or is doing anything more than browsing.
So far, if I had to spit-ball it, I'd guess 22-24 stores have either "temporarily" closed or just boarded their doors.
No one is buying anything right now. The funny thing is, if you have the money, right now is such a ridiculously awesome time to buy stuff.
In short, your assessment is 100% correct IMO.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually a pretty good, simple way to describe a deflationary cycle.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pointless consumers whose lives are devoted to working and shopping discover they can't afford to shop any more, yet have no idea what to do with their free time other than going to the mall.
It's like the end of a zombie movie with the zombies wandering around aimlessly with no uninfected brains left to eat.
And we call this civilization.
Re:In related news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you at least include the movie name so I don't have to click to find out what you're talking about? Lots of reasons not to, only one good reason to, and that's because you think it's somehow awesome to make references more subtle by hiding the details behind a URL. There's a reason anchor elements can display text instead of just the URL. Welcome to the internet, you'll figure it out soon enough, champ.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's add in the metrics that the amount of utter crap has risen by 70%.
I have not bought a new CD for 2 years because most out there are utter garbage. I have bought a lot of used classic (older than 3 year old release) ones and amazon.com non drm mp3's. but no new CD has interested me for 2 years now. One other thing that influenced this was I started my Sirius subscription over 2 years ago as well.
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Agreed, better radio can put a dent in CD sales. Terrestrial broadcast drove me to an mp3 player, things like Sirius and Slacker for blackberry is grabbing my attention more lately.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds more like you have reached the same point in your life than many people seem to reach - their musical tastes freeze, and anything after that is just [crap|noise|meaningless].
see sig... (Score:5, Interesting)
also, I want to know a breakdown of what era the music is being purchased from... the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s or the current decade? Im guessing a big reason for the drop in CD sales is people have filled out their CD collections/replaced all their cassette tapes
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Since then, I've either listened to what I already own (as it's better than what's been recently released), I've listened to Creative Commons licensed music, or I've listened to streamed net radio for recently released music.
I stopped buying CD's based on the attitudes of the record companies and their affiliates. I don't care who it harms; I'm not supporting that method of business, and anyone with links to it deserves to fail.
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I prefer to talk down to small children myself - you're less likely to get punched out.
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> what I already own (as it's better than what's been recently released)
Everyone starts to think that when they reach middle age. It's not actually true though - plenty of good stuff has come out recently, it's just that your mind has gotten narrow and you dislike change.
Not that this gives you a reason to change your buying habits! If your mind is narrow, you should by all means buy records like a narrow-minded person would.
Re:see sig... (Score:5, Funny)
Now get off... Get off my l... No, I won't say it!
Re:filled out (Score:2)
Yea, I was in this category. I humor myself as a TurboLuddite because I squeeze every last ounce of value out of something before upgrading, so I skip tech generations.
I just got out of tapes about 2003. So some of those last-gasp sales were indeed me building out a $1500 CD collection.
Re:see sig... (Score:4, Insightful)
no one would buy the new format, 78s->LPs->Cassettes->CDs was a logical path, as the formats either became more convenient (cassette over LP) or the quality was better (CD over cassette). there is no valid reason to change formats on the consumer side, even Blu-Rays are having trouble, even though they are "better", because to most people there is not enough of a difference from DVDs.
The RIAA will use this as fodder, I'm sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
...but this should show them that their previous business model has failed. It simply cannot function in an Internet-enabled society. How are they going to succeed? I have no idea...I don't have any idea. I have no problem paying for music if I like the band.
I just hope their answer isn't "more DRM." That's shortsighted...the answer to this problem lies in their entire business practice rather than a heavy-handed technical solution. Or maybe, if we're really lucky, we'll witness the dissolution of the RIAA and the rise of smaller, independent record studios.
Re:The RIAA will use this as fodder, I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
CDs, at this point, are simply are not required to be purchased because if you can get the music in FLAC(whether it be through a legit source or not), you can just make your own CD. The music industry desperately needs to come to grips with the fact that no one is lugging around bulky CD players anymore, they want MP3 players that fit in half a pocket and hold 1000 songs and have 8 hours of battery life (all of which are advantages over the CD model). Factor in the cost of a CD vs. its digital counterpart and its really not a choice anymore. It's really not surprising at all that CD sales have declined, even while music sales are up.
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where the RIAA goes wrong is using CD sales as its only metric for profitability.
I wonder; is this really a mistake? Either the music industry is truly ignorant and incorrigibly stubborn, or they've realized that they can make a better case for subsidies/bailout/public sympathy/whatever if they can be all "ohhh, my cd sales"
Re:The RIAA will use this as fodder, I'm sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
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only no talent no money hack DJ's use CD's.... Most real DJ setups use a software system that cant be beat.
Yes I Guerella DJ on the side as a hobby. I dont pay ASCAP or BMI fees and DJ in a gorilla suit with welder goggles. Ditched all the crap CD setups for a laptop with a great software package and 2 turntables with digital records.
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Or they use, you know, real turntables with real vinyls. They still press those things just because the sound on them is so damned good.
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And truly, sound quality matters when you are listening to 90+ dB music in a club.
I mean, if you are ruining your hearing, you want it to be at least for high-quality reproductions of electronically distorted guitars and overly compressed cymbals.
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This line from the artical is telling:
"Convincing customers to buy complete albums, though, now relies on overall album quality, not on forcing people to buy full CDsâ"and that means overall industry revenues may not recover to the levels seen during the CD boom years anytime soon."
In short: People won't buy your crap pieces of music anymore. Make an album a whole 'work', or make singles.
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...but this should show them that their previous business model has failed. It simply cannot function in an Internet-enabled society. How are they going to succeed? I have no idea...I don't have any idea.
The solution is clear! The RIAA simply needs to shut down the internet permanently so hard-working folks like Kanye West and Britney Spears can maintain their well-deserved lap of luxury.
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They could give MP3s away as loss leaders to promote the sale of CDs, which could be "value added". There's nothing like getting a physical object for your money, much more satisfying than a string of bits.
People are collectors and packrats by nature.
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Now THAT I'd pay for gladly. Maybe this should be the new business model?
learn from it! (Score:2, Informative)
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Now your drop in overall sales is more likey due to the shoddy music that is out on the market today as compared to 5-10 years ago but that is just the music cycle.
I have to disagree on the cycle thing. Using Internet radio I can listen to all kinds of music... click goth metal... click AOR... click Euro dance/trance... click progressive metal... click ...
I can't do that with the **AA model of music distribution and advertisement. I don't need to go buy music if I can dial it up day/night for anything I want to listen to, including indie music, music from other countries that is not in the top 40 for the US etc.
The simple fact is that you can't even buy much of this m
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Precisely, thus as I said, "music that is out on the market". Best music I have found the last 5 years? Some indi rock or a lone guitarist in a bar...
You're not the customer (Score:5, Interesting)
...the retail store is.
I'm serious. Kodak went thru the same process. Focused on selling physical high-volume goods (photo film & paper), they viewed the customer as the store buying stuff in volume - not the individual actually using the product. As a result, when digital photography started catching on, the manufacturer was faced with threats of retail stores dropping their products entirely. You see, the standard drug-store film-processing model required the end user to enter the retail store three times (buy film, drop off film, pick up prints), thus encouraging additional "well, while I'm here..." purchases resulting from the walk-in photo-processing model. Digital photography trashes that model: no longer must the end user come into the store so often ... which upsets the retailer, who then tells Kodak et al "don't go digital or we'll drop your products entirely". Thing is, by considering retailer = customer, the manufacturer doesn't see that the end user is going to go digital anyway and sales of film will eventually evaporate. Scared of losing the "customer" (i.e.: retailer), the manufacturer fails to serve the "real customer" (i.e.: end user), and isn't ready to handle the transition when it finally hits.
Same problem with music. Big labels see the retail stores as the customers, who complain "if you go to digital distribution we won't have anything to sell, so stifle that MP3 stuff or we'll stop selling your product" - not seeing that the end user is, en masse, going all-digital-download. You're not the RIAA's customer, the retail store is.
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People dont want it PUSHED.
They want it pulled. they want control not to be controlled. Push means they control it. Pull means I control it.
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But no you are not alone in your senitment abou
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Interesting, but missing the comparitive (Score:2)
While reports like these are interesting, they often feel like they are done in isolation to everything else. For example how does that fit in the trend of the market in general, and if it is not fitting in with the buying elsewhere in the market, are other commercial sources like iTunes picking the slack?
I'M NOT CHANGING! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'M NOT CHANGING! (Score:5, Funny)
I was at a white elephant gift exchange two years back. I actually found an 8-track of the Partridge Family's greatest hits. I can't even begin to describe the look on the recipient's face...
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I was at a white elephant gift exchange two years back. I actually found an 8-track of the Partridge Family's greatest hits. I can't even begin to describe the look on the recipient's face...
Oh perhaps you haven't seen it before that look is called absolute horror.
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I prefer 9-track tape, where everything sounds like Kraftwerk.
17 Million People Stopped Buying CDs In 2008 (Score:5, Insightful)
because 8 million people finally understood that they could buy single tracks online and not have to waste 20$ to get the two or three tunes they really wanted.
The other 9 million either went broke, discovered illegal file-sharing or simply got tired of the crap the industry is producing and moved to other things like books, movies, videogames or that new amazing thing called going outside. I hear the 3D is amazing.
Going Outside (new game) (Score:2, Funny)
that new amazing thing called going outside. I hear the 3D is amazing.
Oh yeah, heard of it. The gameplay is very difficult to understand when it comes with interacting with NPCs (wish it comes with a manual), but some players succeed and are given access to body surfing the NPCs.
Re:17 Million People Stopped Buying CDs In 2008 (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, the 3D is amazing, but what people want is good content.
I have yet to see an orc or kobold, not to mention a dragon.
On the plus side, I suppose I could play:
Grand Theft Auto: Outside.
Re:17 Million People Stopped Buying CDs In 2008 (Score:5, Funny)
or that new amazing thing called going outside. I hear the 3D is amazing.
Nah. It's totally overrated. First, it's *way* overpriced. Second, the developers couldn't even agree on how to create it, so it's full of bugs and littered with bits of trash left-over from the process. Additionally, there are just things that the AI does that will make you smack your forehead in disgust. And some of the designs are just crazy. The platypus object, for example - multiple inheritance gone crazy.
I'd recommend waiting until the next version.
What's worth buying? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I haven't heard a decent mainstream track in the past year. At least, not one that made me want to go out to the store and buy an entire album. Last year, I got most of the singles I wanted via Amazon spending Pepsi Points.
New York just lost it's biggest rock station, which switched to be yet another top-40 "pop" broadcaster. Everything else is classic rock -- and really, how is playing Led Zeppelin twenty times a day going to boost record sales? The state of modern music is so bad that radio stations can't find enough songs to play to fill up an hour's commute with songs made in the last decade.
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"Everything else is classic rock -- and really, how is playing Led Zeppelin twenty times a day going to boost record sales? "
Exactkly. I ahve been saying that for years. The music industry needs to take steps to support radio stations that play new music.
I don't think you could legqally be a music publisher and own stations, but maybe if all the publishers got together to pay clear channel to only play music less then 5 years, regardless of who publishes it they could get new music into the ears of the next
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Seems I've been hearing that since about the Dawn Of Disco.
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"Decent" and "Mainstream" rarely belong in the same sentence.
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The state of modern music is so bad that radio stations can't find enough songs to play to fill up an hour's commute with songs made in the last decade.
Congratulations. You have successfully attained middle-age. You will now spend the next 20 years complaining the same things about "music these days" as the previous generation of middle-agers, who were saying what the generation before them said.
However, some sad news that has to be broken to you; you haven't heard a decent mainstream track in the past year because you are no longer in the target market for mainstream music. Middle-agers simply don't buy enough music because they've already spent a quar
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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only 1.5 billion downloads? (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA says 1.5 billion downloads happened last year. That sounds a bit fishy since Apple alone sold 2 billion songs last year (see e.g. techcrunch article [techcrunch.com]).
17 million (Score:2)
And how did they get this count? With the data changing so rapidly, they have no metric with which to measure how many CDs each person bought. They don't know that 17 million quit buying CDs, and they don't know that only 8 million started buying tracks.
It could -easily- be that the 17 million who no longer buy CDs now buy twice as many single song MP3s as they used to buy CDs.
Maybe 2008 was a bad year for new music? (Score:2)
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People who want that are on the decline.
Digital music is just too damn easy.
Download, back up and keep forever.
Laughing all the way to the bank (Score:2)
Right now the entertainment conglomerates are transitioning their command and control structure.
1. They control the distribution of entertainment media practically worldwide and earn above-average returns maintaining that control. DRM schemes are cheap enough and discourage piracy enough.
2. Execs prosper in a political/corporate culture that has fleeced willing consumers for generations. Why would anyone want to screw that up?
That's a shame (Score:2)
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USB stick/SD card with every live performance(including the one they just finished with you shouting in the background), studio take, or random noodling they just happened to record on the bus?
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I actually really dislike Digital Distribution. (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, from my perspective, digital distribution could lead to the end of music as we know it. So that's a bit extreme, it's really more like music will become harder to make and tour with.
Record labels are something to be satiated and dealt with, in the eyes of an upstart musician who is still trying to get his first band started. They foot the start up bill for tours, which can often be too pricey to deal with, and they also pay for time in the recording studio. Studio time can be really expensive, and there's just not a lot anyone can do about that. There's always the option of at home recording, however, I don't know if any of you guys have ever tried to record at home, but without at least a few hundred dollars of equipment, you're going to have a hard time getting anywhere. Especially if you want it to actually sound good.
You do have to have music available before you can put it up for download, and you have to money to record it before it can become available.
Then there's also a certain factor of presentation. As a fan of progressive rock and heavy metal, I often find myself listening to albums as a singular entity, and when digital distribution has its way, there's no real uniformity to hold that experience together. The idea of the record as a whole rather than the single song is severely damaged by downloading just one song and not getting the rest of the pieces. I plan on writing a few concept albums before I die, and I know that I damn sure want them to be listened to as a whole. To me, the problem is that this artform of storytelling in music is going to die out because of a distribution method. That seems like a gigantic waste, doesn't it?
Something else that's nice about physical media is that feeling of actually having something. I dislike paying for downloads because you literally have nothing to show for it in the long run, as hard drives get wiped and passwords get lost, not to mention that you usually end up paying for a low quality mp3 or a proprietary equivalent thereof. In closing, digital distribution could literally kill off certain parts of the music listening experience (if internet induced ADD hasn't already).
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The real problem, I suspect, is that while the cost of the right equipment and software for a home recording/editing studio (emphasi
Buying new music? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shit, I don't even DOWNLOAD music newer than 5-10 years old. Nothing in the last decade has really caught my attention.
I'm an old man already at 22. :(
GET OFF MY LAWN!
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I quit buying from RICOs that sue their customers (Score:3, Insightful)
The sue-your-customer mentality of the **AA has put me off buying CDs. The last ones I bought were from a Goodwill store. And I don't download music, either. BTW much of the music I've bought over the years has been from the performer, at the concert.
On a further note... (Score:3, Funny)
The RIAA was optimistic about the increase in clay pot recordings with the recent fad in "accoustic archeology" and hoped to once again start producing new releases in this format in Q4 2009. Questions concerning the validity of such archaic technology were pushed aside with "If the format fails, it because of the Pirates".
Disposable Income (Score:2)
Paying $20 for a CD you can download for free or $.99 per track is the first thing to go when money gets tight. Why do you think Starbucks tanked last year?
Buying a CD: The Hassle Factor (Score:4, Informative)
Let's compare buying a CD from a retail store versus downloading, shall we? Let's say you hear this rad Britney tune on some awesome Youtube mashup and you just have to have it, right freaking now.
Retail:
1) Get out of bed. Not something I do willingly.
2) Shower. Or not. Depends on how offensive your personal aroma is. After 2 days without a shower, I smell like roses and candy.
3) Get dressed. Okay, so I don't have any clean underwear. I'll just flip these inside out, nobody can see the skidmarks.
4) Find car keys. For me, it's usually a 5 minute desperate search until I realize that they're already in my pocket.
5) Drive to store. Traffic sucks, gas costs money and if I get another moving violation, I lose my license. No, Officer Friendly, I have no idea how fast I was going. Why don't you let me in on the secret?
6) Park in big box store parking lot. It's a long freaking walk in direct sunlight, and my basement-dwelling geek-pale skin might just burst into flame. Lean against door to rest. Wheeze loudly.
7) Go into store and find desired CD. Lookit that, they're out of stock and I came all this way. Shucks.
8) Stand in long-ass checkout line behind Welfare Queen and her brood. Screaming kids are always a pleasure, the little darlings.
9) Pay uncaring, minimum-wage clerk $14 for your purchase. For 6 bucks an hour, you KNOW she cares what you think.
10) Drive back home. More gas, more traffic, more chances for that moving violation.
11) Open CD. Break out Sawzall to cut through multiple layers of plastic and security tape. Cut finger open. Curse loudly.
12) Rip CD to disc. Can't browse porn while it's ripping or it might mess up. Hunt through 433 cable channels for something to watch while CD rips.
13) Upload to mp3 player. Rock out to Britney's latest. FINALLY!
Elapsed time: 90 minutes, $14 plus gas, plus cost of speeding ticket (if any).
Download:
1) Roll over in bed, open laptop, brush Cheetos dust off sausage-like fingers, click on Amazon.
2) Pay 99 cents for the one track you want.
3) Browse porn for the 60 seconds or so it takes to download.
3) Upload to MP3 player. Rock out.
Elapsed time: 3 minutes tops, 99 cents. No clothing, no shower, no speeding ticket.
It's a generational thing (Score:3, Insightful)
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
The younger generation isn't interested in having physical copies of the music and older farts like me have already fleshed out our collections.
Stopped buying? (Score:2)
I never stopped buying CDs, and never will!
One simple reason: I never started...
I never baught a single piece of music in my entire life. Instead I relied on radio and tapes to listen back to the songs I liked.
As for today's times, I barely listen to radio anymore, I rely on webradios and the few MP3 that i have, wich are mostly songs that can't be baught anywhere in North America legally anyways...
IT'S NOT THE MUSIC (Score:5, Insightful)
FACT: lots and lots of great music is made all the time.
FACT: human beings "bond" with music in their teens as music has an emotional component and the flood of hormones wreaks havoc with ones emotional make up and ordering. As a result: people "focus" on the music of their "coming of age" or maturation.
FACT: there has been no decrease in talent, nor has there been a decrease in creativity.
So, as people age, the hormone disaster retreats, and they lose interest in music as it is crowded out by careers, marriages, kids, and mortgages. Combine that with a multiplicity of technologies demanding one's attention (TV, Wii, XBox, Movies, Internet, etc.) and it thusly comes as NO SURPRISE that people think "music these days sucks" and "there's no good music anymore", when in fact, it is simply one's perceptions and hormonal predispositions have changed.
I'm an Older Geezer - I saw Genesis with Peter Gabriel, Yes, and King Crimson with Wetton on bass. I saw the Gang of Four, and the Clash, and MX80, Blondie, etc. Then I graduate university and I continued being fascinated by music. I also got married, and I saw my (now ex) wife lose interest, and my friends lose interest, and in the mid 1990s one of them said "yah know, Ralphie - music pretty much died in 75 and 76 when Disco and punk came down the pike" And I responded, "No, dumbass - you graduated high school in 75, and got that soul-deadening job at the air conditioning factory that drained all the life out of you."
I continue to listen to new music, even as I lose my hair and go ever grayer. I have thousands of CDs and LPs (most of which I have digitised or collected digital versions of) and I listen to music all the time and I am always listening for new good music, and I am never disappointed. There's TONS of great stuff gushing out of the world every single day. It's Art. It's WHAT WE DO because WE ARE HUMAN.
so when you say "There hasn't been any good music in 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 years", I say FUCK OFF and OPEN YOUR EARS.
Wanna learn more? get "THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC". Read it.
nuff said.
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FACT: human beings "bond" with music in their teens as music has an emotional component and the flood of hormones wreaks havoc with ones emotional make up and ordering. As a result: people "focus" on the music of their "coming of age" or maturation.
FACT: some human beings... I like a lot of new stuff more than the mid-80s music I grew up with. I'll see your fondly-remembered Peter Gabriel and raise you a Stacey Q.
FACT: there has been no decrease in talent, nor has there been a decrease in creativity.
The hell there hasn't. Prior to MTV, a good bit of a performer's success depended on whether they could, you know, perform. Now it's down to how pretty they are in the video, whether they're good sports on reality shows, and whether the autotuner can make them halfway on-key without distorting their tone too much. Turn to the standard C
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I liked music from WAY before my age too....the old blues masters. Hell, I like some classical and jazz stuff. I prefer blues based rock. I like predominate guitar as my preference.
I just don't see that out today much though. At least, I don't hear it. I don't see the big supergroups that unite a generation anymore. Where is the next Who? Zeppelin?
As I mentioned in another post...in the past, at least really for rock, one generation took from the preced
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
FTFA:
and while 1.5 billion songs were sold digitally last year, the number of Internet users paying for digital music only increased by 8 million in 2008.
Man, I wish I had only 8 million more paying customers. Hell, I'd settle with 5 million.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
and yet the RIAA says that the industry is loosing $$
They're freeing up money?
Re:I expect brick and mortar "music stores"to go a (Score:2)
"Broadcast TV" - I'd really rather see an explosion in the use of Broadcast digital TV and Music. I'm hoping that the cable only networks decide to drop the 'only' bit and put their shows OTA... it's all ad supported now anyways and there are a lot of open channels available on DTV broadcast bandwidth. They can even deliver superior quality if they want. The HD I get for CBS is superb... OTOH I do already pay for internet service regardless... so if they can do ad supported online with very high quality I'
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Already, the stores that I've gone into recently are selling more DVD and Blu-Ray movies than CDs...
Lets see, I'm walking through Wal-Mart, they have music CDs that have all the cuss words censored out for twenty bucks, but lets see, here's an uncensored version of a two hour movie for five bucks. Which one should I buy?
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There is, of course, always the linear notes argume
Re:No added value... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, more and more, people are realizing that FLAC is just as good as CD quality,
Got a citation for that? I mean, sure, you and your audiophile buddies favour FLAC, but something tells me the average consumer on the street has no idea what the hell a "FLAC" is, let alone why it would be better (or worse, depending on your requirements) than MP3/OGG/<insert your favorite lossy codec>. Hell, just start off with the phrase "lossy codec" and watch their eyes glaze over.
Seriously... you're just living in a world of confirmation biases. FLAC is still a niche product, and it will probably always be a niche product.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Got a citation for that?
Yeah. My EARS.
Yeah yeah, I quoted the wrong bit. It was "it's becoming more popular" BS that I wanted a citation for. Obviously FLAC must be at least as good as the WAV/CD source it was pulled from, as it's completely lossless compression.
But no one is going to use it. Well, no one outside of a very tiny group of people who care. ie, not people who use magic words like "imaging" and "soundstage" (BTW, anyone who seriously uses those terms in casual conversation immediately gets
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"While it is true that illegal downloads are on the rise,..."
[cite needed]
The middle men aren't wanted by the publisher either.