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U.S. Digital Music Sales Plateau in First Half of 2010

It's only natural for growth to slow down as a product or service gets closer to saturating the marketplace. And with regards to media there is no longer going to be a 'super-dominant' format or service, IMO, because there are many choices now where there were very few choices in the past.


Lethal
 
I can see it now,

record company spokesman : Due to decrease in the profits of itunes, we are forced to make a 20% price on all current and new songs/albums/music videos. Previews will also cost 10 cents per listen and are now shortened to 15 seconds.

We need to stop these record companies from stealing money from us, they aren't dieing anytime soon .:mad:
 
GREAT GREAT news!

long live physical media.

once(if) downloaded junk takes over 1.29 will be a deal. i'm sure 2$ a song will be the going price. the only reason it's ever been so cheap is to get ya hooked. when cd's are gone and there isn't competition as there is now between stores and such. and when there aren't used cd's to buy (can't resell or sell off mp3's!). downloads will be the same price as mspr cd's now (which is higher than anyone pays anyway).
 
For me its Pandora, I use it at work, in my car, and at home. Heck even my TiVo plays Pandora... I can't remember the last time I bought a mp3 in iTunes.
 
ten-oak-druid said:
Same here. I had imported all my CDs at 198kbps over the years. Well some were lower than that from the early days. Recently I started reimporting everything at 256kbps. It isn't too much work. You put a stack next to the computer and work on it while multitasking. It went surprisingly fast.

And the better CDs have recording dates so you don't have to rely on flawed databases for the year field.

I do buy through itunes but I reserve that for individual songs that I would have no interest in purchasing the entire album. The download takes the place of the single (45rpm lol)
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Storage is cheap. I imported all my CDs as apple lossless.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-gb; Dell Streak Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

My missus has moved from buying music (she used to buy a lot) to a Spotify subscription which has paid for itself a hundred times already.

Yes you don't own the music, nor can you burn it to cd's but with the Spotify app on iOS, Android et;al, her most liked tracks are always with her, offline or on. :)
 
For the most part I buy new music releases on iTunes Store. It's nearly half-off compared to (new) retail CDs in my country. With older releases it is often cheaper to buy retail CDs in my country.

Also, I like the instantaneousness of the iTunes Store compared to ordering a CD from Amazon for instance.
 
For me there's been a lack of artists worth listening to for the past few months. No need to purchase any new albums if nothing I like comes out. Plus, Justin Bieber is still on the rampage so I'm waiting for that to go away and get replaced by some newer groups.

At this rate my next purchase won't be until My Chemical Romance's new album in november. I'm sure the million teenage girls and I that make up their fanbase:)cool:) will raise sales a bit then.
 
I manage a rock band made up of five 19 to 22 year olds. Even they admit there isn't much worth buying this year. I think the new Linkin Park CD has generated the most excitement among them this year.

bommai said:
Storage is cheap. I imported all my CDs as apple lossless.
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Right. As a former radio music director I had a huge library of physical media. Now I have over 16,500 songs in Apple Lossless on a 1TB external RAID-1. At $79 for a 1TB SATA drive I can't afford to back up to DVD's. For extra protection I back up the RAID once a month to a hot swap drive and put it in my safety deposit box.

Tampa Tom said:
Right. As a former radio music director I had a huge library of physical media. Now I have over 16,500 songs in Apple Lossless on a 1TB external RAID-1. At $79 for a 1TB SATA drive I can't afford to back up to DVD's. For extra protection I back up the RAID once a month to a hot swap drive and put it in my safety deposit box.
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BTW...In case you're wondering it took four years and two Apple computers to import nearly 1600 CD's and albums.
 
Here’s a thought … why not make most of the older songs 69 cents like they originally promised?

"I can tell you that we know already that more songs are going to be offered at 69 [cents] than $1.29."

Phil Schiller, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Apple, Macworld ’09

What a lie that was. I’m surprised Apple doesn’t catch more flack about this.
 

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No suprise. I haven't bought a CD or bought a download in over a decade.

Streaming music FTW. Free. Interesting. Fun.
 
coolbreeze said:
No suprise. I haven't bought a CD or bought a download in over a decade.

Streaming music FTW. Free. Interesting. Fun.
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Can't believe that people are actually PROUD of this. Enjoying other people's work and effort while not being willing to give even a single cent for it.
 
I feel bad for all you people who cry lossless. I can't even tell avg 200kbps to a physical CD. I just use 256k to be safe.

I don't miss the physical CD at all. I have about 600 of them sitting up stairs collecting dust. Plus downloading music is safe for the environment as well.

If there's something I want I usually find them on MySpace or use Grooveshark and sample the album. If I like I buy it on iTunes/Amazon MP3.

And for those of you who say "oh my computer will crash and I'll lose all my music". Hard drives are dirt cheap these days. Go get a terabyte of space for around $100.
 
Ever since I found Grooveshark, I haven't been purchasing digital media. If I want to hear it RIGHT NOW I go to Grooveshark, and if I want to keep it, I buy it physically and rip it lossless...ly.
 
miles01110 said:
That being said, there hasn't been any really good music since the death of Johannes Brahms. Everything since is just trash.
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You should listen to Wagner, Debussy, Mahler, Stravinski, Shostakovich, Ligeti and Boulez. Any of them is just as great or greater than Brahms:). If you need some recommendations of pieces of any of these composers, I'll be very happy.

I agree that if it is popular music, most of it is just stupid trash.
 
ten-oak-druid said:
Same here. I had imported all my CDs at 198kbps over the years. Well some were lower than that from the early days. Recently I started reimporting everything at 256kbps. It isn't too much work. You put a stack next to the computer and work on it while multitasking. It went surprisingly fast.

And the better CDs have recording dates so you don't have to rely on flawed databases for the year field.

I do buy through itunes but I reserve that for individual songs that I would have no interest in purchasing the entire album. The download takes the place of the single (45rpm lol)
Click to expand...

Like you all my own CDs are in iTunes - ripped years ago. I still have all my CDs in the attic, so I have to ask, can you hear the difference at 256 kbps?
 
kr11048 said:
Perhaps the nearly 30 percent less growth has something to do with the fact that they jacked up prices about 30% from .99 to 1.29 on iTunes. 30 cents may not seem like much more, but it takes a significantly better song to make me fork over the extra 30% of my hard-earned cash.
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Agreed. A man has got to know his limitations. Mine happens to be 99 cents.

I won't buy any song for more than that.
 
flopticalcube said:
You sound like a bunch of old farts. "if it ain't from my generation, it's crap!"
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I agree. The good stuff is there, you just need to look for it. If you are just listening to commercial music then you might think it's junk.

The 99cents factor has made a difference. The price needs to be worth the convenience. It's a sweet spot. If they can't justify 1.29, they will find a torrent or not buy it.
 
Digitalclips said:
Like you all my own CDs are in iTunes - ripped years ago. I still have all my CDs in the attic, so I have to ask, can you hear the difference at 256 kbps?
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In some cases yes. The one that stands out for me is Neil Young's Mirror Ball album (with Pearl Jam). I found the original import sounded "thin". After re-importing the depth of the sound in the guitars and base was better.
 
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