Music Execs Stressed Over Free Streaming 375
itwbennett writes "At the Digital Music Forum East conference, held Thursday in New York, music industry watchers gathered to puzzle anew over the continuing decline in music sales. 'We have lost 20 million buyers in just five years,' said Russ Crupnick, a president at the analyst firm NPD Group who spoke at the conference. Moreover, only about 14 percent of buyers account for 56 percent of revenue for the recording industry. In years past, the blame was put on digital music piracy. At this year's conference, however, the focus was on free streaming Internet services, such as Pandora, MySpace, Spotify and even YouTube."
Re:What about... (Score:5, Funny)
I kinda figured that might be where music is going: towards ad-based revenue.
You mean like radio?
Re:The "problem" won't go away (Score:2, Funny)
Someone mod this up!
While I don't necessarily agree that music can never be that wondrous again, this post really sums up my own feelings -- a "perfect storm" of factors has actually gotten me away from listening to as much music as I used to. I now have XM, news radio, podcasts, etc. and can skip to any song I want within my own collection. I also have audio content I find more stimulating than music at the time, but I MISS having music that I care about. Consequently, I am not forced to listen to the radio or entire albums -- which means I do not get used to any songs that I wasn't explicitly trying to listen to.
I don't buy music not because I can get it for free, but because I wouldn't even know what to buy that I don't already have. Back in the days of cassettes and CDs, certain albums would become the 'soundtracks' of certain events or periods of time for me. I don't know what music I'll remember from the 2010s, if any -- I certainly remember nothing from the 2000s. Maybe if they stopped producing such "truly average" stuff, things would be a bit better.
Ironically enough, my musical tastes were greatly expanded in the era of Napster, and I have bought more music during this time than at any other time in my life so far -- I could explore other people's hard drives, burn CDs, make playlists without restriction, and once I got to really like a song I got the album it was on, expanding my musical horizons to other things. I can't put up with Pandora's skipping restrictions and mandatory streaming and turn it off in annoyance every time I try...
The only thing that can save music, I suppose, is for Justin Bieber and Britney Spears to have a baby who is raised by the surviving members of New Kids on the Block and Milli Vanilli!!!