Digital Strength Drives First Growth in Music Sales Since 1999 as File Sharing Declines

Akuratyde said:

The operative phrase here being "for me". For you Spotify is perfect, for many others like myself it's useless. I listen to a lot of music that simply isn't available on Spotify and never will be. I also live in an area that has spotty cell coverage and I spend a lot of time in the car. Not only would I never want to waste my 4G on streaming while in the car, I couldn't even if I wanted to.

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Your first point is certainly a limiting factor, though it's worth noting that you can also use Spotify to play local tracks. However, for your second point, Spotify* enables you to cache playlists offline, in part to avoid the very problem you mentioned. And if you're driving, I certainly hope that if you're driving you already have a playlist made and aren't searching for new music at the same time. So as long as you don't bump up against the cache limit, it could work for other people with this problem--but of course, for you, the first is much more limiting.

*Actually, Spotify Premium, but you need this for mobile anyway.

bawbac said:

How well does this streaming work for mobile vehicles with no WiFi or cellphone coverage?

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Well, you can't stream music without an internet connection, but you can download any song or album - for free - from within the Spotify-app and play these songs offline (that is without internet connection).

dustinsc said:

I doubt it's legal where you are. Unless you live in a country that did not sign the Berne Convention, either you or the web site you're downloading from is criminally or civilly liable for the unauthorized copying of the music. The law might lack teeth, but it's probably not legal.

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It is legal. The thing that is illegal is sharing (as in: uploading) movies or songs yourself.

bawbac said:

Can I store over 6000 songs for offline playback like my iPod?

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Yes, you can. That is, if there's enough free space available.

rbrian said:

So let me get this straight... If you make your goods available, people buy. Who would have guessed? Certainly not the TV and movie industries.

If everything was available at a fair price, most people wouldn't pirate. The only times I have was when the official DVDs were damaged (Star Trek slip cases I'm looking at you..)

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Yes, my last torrent was for a Big Bang Theory episode that for some reason my DVR didn't record. I spent about 20 minutes trying to find it as a repeat in the program guide and then on the show's website and then finally said "Screw This" and went and downloaded it from TPB. I already paid to be able to watch it and then they made it difficult for me to get what I paid for.

My other pet peeve is when studios force me to watch all the trailers on a DVD I bought. Let's see, I can pay for a DVD and be subjected to your marketing or I can torrent it and get right to the movie. Hmm. let me think...

coming from sweden we have seen that spotify is overtaking itunes 10 to 1. everyone here is using spotify. buying music? why? when?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/...ke-money-by-the-fraction-of-a-cent-on-spotify

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_spotify_will_kill_itunes.html

i'm still using itunes (have a huge library - that i can migrate to spotify and might probably do that too) and is basically waiting for itunes match and streaming service. if apple is not getting the ass out of the wagon i'm leaving itunes soon. spotify is VERY convenient to browse new music. and they also have related music - similar to genious that works quite well.

sometimes i wonder what apple is doing - being a long time die hard fan - some things needs to change:

1. diversify iphone...or you'll loose out (does not mean that they will loose)
2. improve itunes (both purchase and renting music) and honestly - the usability of the lates itunes is NOT that improved. many things are quite confusing.
3. only offer 768 SSD for imac?! it's ok to limit to some extent - but not make stupidity out of it.

hm...that's about it.

Nunyabinez said:

My other pet peeve is when studios force me to watch all the trailers on a DVD I bought. Let's see, I can pay for a DVD and be subjected to your marketing or I can torrent it and get right to the movie. Hmm. let me think...

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I mostly rip my DVDs, and extract only the main feature and the extras. It also manages to read many scratched DVDs which won't play - even on the exact same hardware. I'm guessing it's because it can try 100 times to read it and take as long as it needs, but when playing live it has to be live.

freddiecable said:

coming from sweden we have seen that spotify is overtaking itunes 10 to 1. everyone here is using spotify. buying music? why? when?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/...ke-money-by-the-fraction-of-a-cent-on-spotify

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_spotify_will_kill_itunes.html

i'm still using itunes (have a huge library - that i can migrate to spotify and might probably do that too) and is basically waiting for itunes match and streaming service. if apple is not getting the ass out of the wagon i'm leaving itunes soon. spotify is VERY convenient to browse new music. and they also have related music - similar to genious that works quite well.

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Yep, I have discovered a ton of music on Spotify since I started using it. It's really easy to find out about an artist or song and just quickly listen to it. It's much easier and much faster than downloading - let alone buying - music.

My flowchart goes like this -

1) "discover" new music artist on Pandora (which I pay for)

2) Listen to the rest of the artist albums/songs on Spotify (free version)

3) Buy the CD (used if I can find one) at a local CD store

4) Rip it at lossless quality for all my listening devices/machines

5) store the CD for the next HD crash.

I get the best quality and the safety net of owning a copy but get the convenience of a Hard Drive library system with no loss in fidelity. I got in the habit of CDs and re-ripped my library a couple of times as HDs got cheaper and the compression got better. Now with lossless there is no difference between the file and the CD. Listening to that vs the streaming alternatives is all the difference I need.

I would love if they sold or streamed lossless. But saving CDs - might as well rip and sell CD and backup with an extra HD.

ersatzplanet said:

I get the best quality and the safety net of owning a copy but get the convenience of a Hard Drive library system with no loss in fidelity. I got in the habit of CDs and re-ripped my library a couple of times as HDs got cheaper and the compression got better. Now with lossless there is no difference between the file and the CD. Listening to that vs the streaming alternatives is all the difference I need.

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Pie in the face of record execs who went kicking and screaming into the digital age. Napster and it's pirate descendants existed because a demand wasn't being met at the time, and we all know nature abhors a vacuum.

Once Steve Jobs led them into the 21st century all the sudden it wasn't worth people's time to pirate music of dubious sound quality at snail-like speeds. All the money those smart record guys and Hilary Rosen pissed away suing high school kids and grandmas could have fed starving people if they'd just opened their windows and listened to the marketplace.

But there is still work for them to do. 256Mbps lossy is absurd in 2013. How about going full bore lossless and we can stop filling landfills with cutout bin CDs.

freddiecable said:

I would love if they sold or streamed lossless. .

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Det kommer...
WIMP is beta testing FLAC streaming
"As you read this, WiMP actually also exists as a lossless streaming service. But it is in beta right now, with a lot of people testing together with us. It is a natural step up, to deliver full CD-quality to the users that are willing to pay a little extra."
http://wimpmusic.com/wweb/specials/audio/

Chupa Chupa said:

Pie in the face of record execs who went kicking and screaming into the digital age. Napster and it's pirate descendants existed because a demand wasn't being met at the time, and we all know nature abhors a vacuum.

Once Steve Jobs led them into the 21st century all the sudden it wasn't worth people's time to pirate music of dubious sound quality at snail-like speeds. All the money those smart record guys and Hilary Rosen pissed away suing high school kids and grandmas could have fed starving people if they'd just opened their windows and listened to the marketplace.

But there is still work for them to do. 256Mbps lossy is absurd in 2013. How about going full bore lossless and we can stop filling landfills with cutout bin CDs.

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OMG, it was so hard to go to best buy or order from amazon and rip to mp3 or whatever

everyone i know who pirated music, did it because they could do it and it was free. not because it was too hard to buy legit products. at least in the USA.

and the revenues are still lower than they were in the late 1990. mostly because people buy single tracks instead of albums

milo said:

While it's good to see piracy drop, if the main reason for it is streaming services that compensate the artists practically nothing, that's not really much of an improvement for the actual musicians.

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Musicians have never made money from content sales. Their cash-in came from concert touring, apparel sales, endorsements, and ancillary streams. These avenues of monetization are untouched, and in fact likely enhanced, by a transition to subscription broadcast services instead of sales of box after box of flat aluminum donuts.

The performer's residual on a CD sale has always been expressed to the right of the decimal... and by a safe margin, unfortunately.

Personally, I hadn't bought a full-priced retail "album" since 2009. Then, about a year ago, a friend turned me on to Pandora. Through a few Kevin-Baconesque related click-throughs, I found a whole realm of music I had not heard before, and loved it so much that I've bought about 15 albums to date, digitally of course.

So, point being, using a free service like Pandora has garnered the music industry a recurring customer that it didn't have before.

glimp7 said:

Most of these music sales are fueled by a failing industry...

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Yes, failing because of all the theaft over the past 20 years. The only way they can make money is to have enough money to go on tour. Consumers are getting exactly what they pay for. If they pay nothing, that's just what they'll get.

Ice Dragon said:

Louis CK and Bill Burr offer specials they do for $5. If bands release whole albums and such themselves and make it less expensive, file sharing will decline more.

It's the record companies that make out like bandits as opposed to the artists.

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If you're not willing to pay $10 for an album you're most likely not willing to spend $5 on the same album.

Pirates will always pirate.

Gemütlichkeit said:

If you're not willing to pay $10 for an album you're most likely not willing to spend $5 on the same album.

Pirates will always pirate.

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I will pay $10 for an album to the artist but I'd prefer not to support a huge label. I agree with you on the "pirates will always pirate" thing.

And it took them so long to get on with the idea... (the big 4 that is, not AC/DC... )

ThatsMeRight said:

Yep, I totally agree. It now feels like as if CDs are ancient and services like iTunes are at best "out-dated". Spotify - for me - is perfect.

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Spotify seems pretty cool, but with digital services I'm still concerned about sound quality. CDs are still superior, and vinyl even more so, with proper speakers.

There's a major difference between FLAC files and MP3s. Digital services are starting to increase the bitrate, but it's still not high enough -- most songs on iTunes are still in the 200K range (is that true, I'm not sure?)

I think Apple deserve a lot of credit for this. I think it was the iTunes store that made download music through online stores simple and cool.

I just wish they would either match or supersede CD quality instead of 256kbps AAC on iTunes. It just feels like a waste paying more money for a non-physical, inferior quality version of an album that I can't sell on if I want. Apple have always been a 'quality first' brand, now is the time to show it.

I'm no audiophile and I don't pretend that I can hear the difference, but somehow it just feels better knowing you'e listening to a lossless music.

Jsameds said:

I just wish they would either match or supersede CD quality instead of 256kbps AAC on iTunes. It just feels like a waste paying more money for a non-physical, inferior quality version of an album that I can't sell on if I want. Apple have always been a 'quality first' brand, now is the time to show it.

I'm no audiophile and I don't pretend that I can hear the difference, but somehow it just feels better knowing you'e listening to a lossless music.

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Audio quality is a very interesting topic all in and of itself. Apple has determined that for MOST people on MOST equipment with MOST music that 256K AAC will be indistinguishable from lossless, and I think they are correct. It would be stupid to listen to lossless music on the white Apple headphones because they can't reproduce what is there.

However, some of us are not MOST of us. Here are the conditions that I believe warrant someone asking for lossless.

1. You have a trained ear. Some people literally can't hear the difference. Some people think they can but can't, only ABX testing will prove this ability.
2. You have the hardware to reproduce the full dynamic range. Professional amps and speakers and a good source are needed to hear the difference. I have studio monitors and a professional amp and I go digital out from my PC to a tuner.
3. Your content has real dynamic range. Listen to a CD you bought 15 years ago and one you bought last week. You will hear that the new one is much louder. This is because of compression, not MP3 type compression but dynamic range compression. If you are listening to hard rock, you probably aren't going to benefit much from lossless because it will be heavily compressed. On the other hand, if you are listening to a classical orchestra, there is little compression and you can hear amazing things that you didn't know were there if you listened to a 256k version.

Anyway, just thought I would spout my opinion here. That's all I have to say about that.

benh911f said:

Now maybe if the movie studios would take a hint and not charge as much for a digital download as a Blu-Ray, they could see an increase in sales and decrease in piracy as well.

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Couldn't agree more. Digital video rentals at 480p should be maybe slightly more than a RedBox DVD rental (say $1.50) and "HD" at around $2.50. $4+ is like pay-per-view prices and it is no wonder that so many people still pirate movies.

Music is ridiculously cheap these days. Back in the 90's, finding a CD on the sales rack at Hastings for $12.99 was an absolute steal! These days $9.99 for an album is the norm. Taking into account inflation, music is pretty damn cheap these days. Its affordable enough that piracy isn't worth the hassle.

I was one of those music pirates ever since Napster, Scour.net, etc. I then discovered newsgroups which was awesome for downloading full albums without sharing.

HOWEVER, when Spotify came out I gladly paid the $10 a month for the premium version. I no longer download mp3's illegally

because

1. It was work to download mp3's, clean up any tags that was incorrect or mistyped, get the cover art, etc. etc to have a clean library (I'm a little OCD about that)

2. storing those files on hard drives and getting it on my many devices - tablet, phone etc was a pain in the butt.

BUT Spotify has a great product - high quality stream (320kps), great for discovering new artists, creating playlists and sharing them, seeing what your friends are listening to, offline storage for over 6000 songs which is more than enough for me. I can have the same music on my laptop, iPhone, iPad and Nexus 7.

Now I can just enjoy listening to music. I still buy CDs of my favorite bands to display and indie bands that get signed when I go to their concert. I own about 100 physical CDs. I paid for some digital albums on iTunes but hated the fact they required an Apple product.

$10 a month is very reasonable considering I listen to music at work, in my car, at the gym, and at home. Heck, I would even pay $15 or $20 if they had EVERY possible release available, particularly the maxi-singles that have club remixes.

I grew up just recording songs on tape from the radio and occasionally bought an album or a $2 single cd so it's not like I had a lot of money to blow on music.

benh911f said:

Now maybe if the movie studios would take a hint and not charge as much for a digital download as a Blu-Ray, they could see an increase in sales and decrease in piracy as well.

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I would argue that region locking (and all forms of geo IP blocking) hurts content owners about as much as pricing: region locking takes away your option to pay for content.

a0me said:

I would argue that region locking (and all forms of geo IP blocking) hurts content owners about as much as pricing: region locking takes away your option to pay for content.

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Absolutely. What possible reason could there be to deny your product to half the world, and then complain when they take it? It's the 21st century, the Internet has reached every corner of the world, making a mockery of borders. There may perhaps be a reason to block physical goods, but why block ones and zeros when you can make a voice call to anywhere and everywhere?