(no subject)

[metaphorge]

'IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing.

“In 2007 it became clear that the recorded-music industry is contracting and that it will be a very different beast from what it was in the 20th century,” says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch. Last year several big-name artists bypassed the record labels altogether. Madonna left Warner Music to strike a deal with Live Nation, a concert promoter, and the Eagles distributed a bestselling album in America without any help from a record label. Radiohead, a British band, deserted EMI to release an album over the internet. These were isolated, unusual deals, by artists whose careers had already brought years of profits to the big music companies. But they made the labels look irrelevant and will no doubt prompt other artists to think about leaving them too....'

Click here to read more; via The Economist

Comments

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

When CDs first came out in the '80s, I bought two or three per payday, and sometimes more. I built up a pretty good sized collection- over 800 disks during the 80s and early 90s.

Then, I stopped buying CDs- that was when I was between real jobs and struggling to make the rent and utilities. About the same time, I stopped listening to commercial radio.

I never got into downloading music during the peak of file sharing, because I had a dial-up connection.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of CDs I've purchased each year since the '90s. I purchased three last year- two were the Trans-Siberian Orchestra disks.

My problem is the quality of music- the recording quality. My old CDs have incredible clarity and dynamic range- the quiet parts were quiet, and the loud parts were loud. My recording of "O Fortuna" is an excellent example of this. Today's recordings do not have that kind of clarity, and are exhausting to listen to- I noticed this on my new car stereo when I played my dance CDs. I had to turn them off- they sounded awful. OTOH, my old Bob Minzer "Incredible Journey" CD sounded incredible on the same stereo.

Yeah, I'm an audiophile- with sensitive and picky ears. I can hear the difference in compression levels in music, and understand that today's music is meant to be heard through iPod headphones, not giant Klipsch speakers fed by an analog class A/B amp.

Yeah, I'm getting middle-aged. But I don't buy CDs any more, either- not because I prefer downloading, but because the stuff is crap-sounding. I will not shell out good money to listen to crap-sounding music. And there's the other thing- the economy. Music purchases are 'disposable' income, and I don't want to waste good money on something that might actually be 'disposable'. CDs also cost too much- they shouldn't be more than $5, but in most places, they're nearly $20.

Sorry for rambling. The record companies concentrate on youth, but it's not just teens that are eschewing music- it's older people, too. If they stopped putting out high-priced, over-compressed crap, maybe we'd start buying it again.

[amai-unmei.livejournal.com]

Ani DiFranco's model of the music business will be the prototype for the future ... which is now.

[galateadia.livejournal.com]

I could've told the recording industry eight years ago that this would happen. I saw it happening then! I know that if I were a musician today there is no freakin' way you could get me to go the route of being a recording industry shill. I'd hire management, and a promotional/marketing team, and then do it myself via the internet. As far as I can see that is the only way to do it now. The recording industry has existed as a behemoth at the expense of artist's hard work for too long. They are dinosaurs and should die out.

[thatdamnninja.livejournal.com]

Sony and others were pwned by a class action lawsuit that ended roundabout 2002/3 for overcharging consumers for CDs. After the lawsuit, they continued charging more or less the exact same price.

If these companies had ever charged a reasonable price for a new CD ($8-12), people might actually care that they are being demolished. But this is what happens when blind greed hits half-assed internet socialism and refuses to change for fear of losing some money.