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, Interesting)
They forgot secondhand music (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Make better music and provide better service th (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't bought any from them in years, and I won't be buying any from them until they learn to behave themselves and place nice. If they want to sue pirates, that's there right, but I'll be damned if I'm financing those questionable law suits. Restrict the suits to people that are likely guilty of significant distribution and ask for a reasonable sum and I'll start buying music again. Until then I just won't buy anything and they can make whatever they can off of those free sites like Pandora.
Re:What about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe. But it does seem especially bizarre that he's not complaining about 'stolen' music, but music that is properly licensed and paid for.
I guess it boils down to, decisions that the major labels made several years ago to license their music to these streaming services, now seems to be negatively impacting their ability to sell the hot new song of the week. It hurts even more because they no longer can bunch that hot new song with 9 other songs that are even worse.
Bad executive. No more coke and whores for you. And no golden parachute either!
Re:What about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod this person up! The music business is all about price models and cost per unit. Nowhere is there any genuine concern for the consumer's tastes, likes or desires. This is a market powered by dollar bottom line and not artistry in any way, shape or form.
When was the last big superstar group? Bon Jovi, wasn't it? They rode around in a frickin' jumbo jet, fer chissakes! And when their music lost favor, where were they then? Right now I'm listening to Duke Ellington and am amazed at the variety of style that that man could come up with in his head and on a train with just a pencil and a blank scored sheet of music. No way in hell would the music conglomerates even think of signing on such talent in this day and age!
Re:What about... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the music was worth buying, people would buy it.
The problem is that 'worth buying' is a moving target. A hundred years ago, you had a very small number of AM radio stations, none playing music all of the time. Buying some music was then very valuable, because it was the only way that you could guarantee being able to listen to music whenever you wanted (unless you were rich enough to hire a band).
Twenty years ago, there were a few FM stations that played music most of the time. Enough that you could probably turn on the radio and listen to a genre that you liked, even if it wasn't one of your favourite artists. Genres were quite broad, however, so you may get a lot of things that weren't really very close to music that you wanted to hear. Buying music was still quite valuable.
Now, there are thousands of Internet radio streams. You can connect to one playing music that you really like. I'm in the UK, but I often listen to one in California [radioparadise.com]. When I hit play, it's almost always playing music that I enjoy listening to. I've not bought much music for the past few years, because I find that I rarely listen to music that I've actually bought. I only do when I'm not near an Internet connection, but still want to listen to recorded music, which is fairly rare. I get a much wider selection of music that I want to listen to by turning on the (Internet) radio.
Now, the record companies could do something about this by making tracks cost about 5 for a DRM-free download. At that price, every time I heard a track I liked, I'd be tempted to buy the entire album and listen to it, and I'd end up with a very large collection of music - large enough that I could listen to it in shuffle mode and get a similar variety to the radio - quite quickly.
I pay Radio Paradise a small amount every month, but this goes to cover their costs - very little (if any) of it actually goes to the people who made the music. I'd happily double or triple my donation if I had some assurance that, at least 50% went to the artists. Unfortunately, the money that they pay for licensing goes to SoundExchange, and getting money out of SoundExchange is almost impossible for artists.
Don't think so, the user has other options (Score:5, Interesting)
The entire problem recently is simple. It is the MP3.
It has changed fundamentally how we listen to music, how we use music and how we expect to get it.
Napster wasn't just about not paying for music, it was about a different way to GET music. Only very recently has the music industry stopped the old practice of releasing a song for radio with a lead of a couple of weeks before it is available in the stores. The OLD logic was that they would advertise it through being played on the radio, create hype for the release , then have it released on a day with people queuing like they were selling iPhones or something. It worked because the consumer really didn't have much choice. There were few radio stations back then and you couldn't count on them playing the songs YOU wanted, so to hear your favorite artist when you wanted to, you needed a recording of it. Because only physical media existed this either meant buying one yourself OR getting a taped copy from someone else (and this happened a LOT, far more then the record industry would have you believe) OR borrowing an album from a friend (this happened a LOT as well).
There was no other choice, recording from radio was a lot of work and many stations talk(ed) through songs to try to stop this. The akwardness of LP's also meant people listened to music differently, you either had the radio on for casual listening OR had to flip a LP every twenty minutes or so for "serious" listening. While there were LP changers they were more expensive and couldn't play the B-side (at least mine couldn't, yes, I know I am old). The physical medium forced consumer behavior.
With the Sony Walkman this changed. While tapes had been available before, now people COULD play music on the go and HAD to make their own tapes (commercial tapes are to short). This helped create the era of the mix-tape, where people would create their own mix of music and share this as some sort of DJ on an individual basis. It made people see LP's not so much as things you listened to, but merely as containers for music which you then "downloaded" to your Walkman.
It was still a slow and akward process and the Walkman lost some of its original appeal. With the MP3 player it came back with a bang. Now people could create their own custom collection for hours upon hours of music. It changed the way people got their music.
Rather then having to buy an entire LP pre-filled with a music selection or get a friend to mix a tape during a slow process with a desired music collection, you could just pick music up from all sorts of places and use it in one long playback. Until you actually created your own tape with different music from different sources you just are not capable of understanding what a change a M3U playlist is. Just put a binary file on your MP3 player and it will be played. Guy at work has a new song? Copy it and you can listen to it. Among your collection, no quality loss like with a tape copy, no having to splice it in or create a new tape.
And because we could just take bits of music from anywhere, we did. My own early MP3 collections where a complete mix of different encoding settings and filename conventions, picking whatever song I liked from where I could find it.
AND then LISTENING to it, whenever and wherever I wanted it. Exactly the music I wanted, anytime, anyplace.
I don't just not buy music anymore, radio has all but disappeared from my life. If it wasn't for the radio on my MP3 player, I wouldn't even have a radio anymore. Oh wait, my clock radio has one and I use it because NOTHING wakes me up faster with the vile bitter hatred I need to get my day going then being woken by morning radio.
As for ads? Why should I listen to ads when I pick my own music? Ads are what we put up with on radio until something better came along. We no longer consume music this way.
And because we could pick up music anywhere, buying it is no longer an option. I had maybe a collection of 100-200 lp's. But that was build up over years and there were plen
Re:What about... (Score:4, Interesting)
It may seem weird, but some people want to be musicians. Others want to be writers. Very few can make a living at it. Musicians have even more problems than writers with making a living. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about performers or composers.
The trick of the Hollywood industry is to create a few stars and reward them exorbitantly. And then to use them as bait for the others. (And exorbitantly doesn't mean as well as the executive is rewarded. But upper management, anyway. And you don't know what parts of their spread the studio owns or decides on. Publicity, you know.)
Recently, however, (do I mean the last 10 years or 20?) the studios have consistently preferred to not promote talented artists. They want people who can easily be replaced if it becomes convenient. This may be a large part of why the arts have so quickly degenerated. It's not the whole story, though. The arts tend to flourish in brief spurts in small areas, and nobody knows why. Why was Kansas city so important? Why Liverpool? Why San Francisco? One can come up with reasons, but the reasons aren't sufficient. All the factors you will list can be present without causing a spurt in the arts. But it doesn't need to crash as badly as it has this time.