Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Music Service
Originally posted by type_r503
Actually it was E961 Million a 21% decrease over the previous year. And UMG was the only profitable music outfit in 2002.
The idea that the music industry invests millions in no name bands hoping they make it big is simply false. A more accurate description would be that they create bands like Britney Spears, NSYNC and eminem, and force them upon us with overplayed music videos, and looped radio playlists, yes the record companies pay for play. The investment on their part is not very risky at all.
I am not advocating theft, am simply saying that the days of charging $.99 per song are over. What if you had to pay $7 per TV show you watched? This happened before the invention of TV. If you wanted to watch a show you would have to go to the movies and pay per show. TV was feared by the movie industry, when it came out it was free. The Warner Bros, who are now the largest TV studio, claimed that television will never make it. As the Television industry grew they developed ways to make money, through comercials and pay services.
The music industry is at a similar crossroad. They can figure out how to use the internet as a media or the can go out of business, like so many early movie studios.
type R
I'm not agreeing necessarily or disagreeing with this quote... more like adding and clarifying where I disagree.
- TV is weighed down with commercials. Do you want little
commercials laced into every song you buy?
- Almost all people pay for their TV through cable or sattelite dish. If you opt for just the free part of TV, you get about 4 or 5 channels, reception is often sketchy, and every 10 minutes you get a 3 minute commercial break. That type of entertainment is not the same as going to movie theater with a huge screen, no ads (except previews in the beginning), an incomparable sound system.
- The movies that do get onto TV (even normal cable), are have spent time in the theatre, then on DVD before they ever make it onto TV. Plus they are edited. If you want a movie sooner (although still long after a theatre release) you have to pay even more money for a premium channel like HBO.
- It is true that by selling online, the cost and investment of "releasing" an album will go down to almost nothing. The record companies will suffer a miniscule loss from a flop of an album, if it is released online vs. if it is released on CD. Prices will drop. Right now, however, just as when any new technology is released (see CDs in the 80s), there is an investment, and early adopters are going to pay a bit more until the companies gain confidence in the new format.
- Record companies are by no means sure that internet trading is the cause of the decline in music sales. Perhaps pop music is just not as much of a fad as it was during the last 35 years. People are finding their culture elsewhere (IE the internet!). It is pretty obvious from the relatively limited selection that P2P share software like Kazaa provide that online music trading is not that huge of a thing. It reached its height with Napster 3.5 years ago, and has never come close to recovering.
- P2P sharing is an awkward thing. First, it is absolutely necessary to have high speed internet. Second, songs are often mislabeled, not complete, or just plain not available. Finding a whole album of an average band means searching for each song, then downloading a few copies of each song, then waiting... waiting ... waiting. Then figuring out if that song is the song you were looking for. Most people don't have the time or patience for it... even if they are skilled enough with a computer to figure out P2P share software.
- I am hopeful that, with this new format it would make it less profitable for the record companies to make pop bands like NSYNC. There would be much less pressure to create a product that is sure to sell because the $ risk of putting out an album is so much smaller. Something tells me that they will still create pop bands that they will shove down people's throats, but maybe they'll feel a little more comfortable dealing with experimental stuff and making it more available to the whole public.
- My major qualm with the above quote is that people would not be willing to pay $1 a song. I think the availability of a wider variety of music and the dynamic quality of having a song in a digital format (IE you can burn it, put on iPod, listen to it from the comp... all from just one copy that you paid $1 for), along with a wider variety of music will bring music back to people who perhaps became alienated by the shenanigans of the pop music world. In short, the $ of the music isn't the heart of the issue... its the lifestyle of the people.
I'm not sure what my "thesis" would be for this massive post, but a mish-mosh of ideas is better than no ideas at all!
