Music Industry Sees First Revenue Increase Since 1999 393
Zaatxe writes with a bit of news about the music industry; sales are slightly up (basically flat). From the article: "The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun. The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it's 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement. 'At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music,' said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving music.'"
Because CDs aren't digital. CD sales are declining, and being replaced by the sale of lossy files. I wonder how much more money they could be making if they'd just sell folks lossless music on the open market (not just iTunes) since at least that's all that keeps me buying a CD or three a year (I own way too many CDs personally, and stopped buying music until discovering Bandcamp and easy lossless downloads rekindled my desire to find new stuff).
Keep your guard up (Score:5, Insightful)
Make no mistake about it, the music industry still DREAMS of going back to the days when they could charge you $15 for a CD that you had to buy just to listen to one lousy song. Turn your back on them, and they WILL try to go back to a similar model.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
"We want to be last to market" (Score:2, Insightful)
Actual quote from executives there. Then they prosecuted, lobbied, internationally legislated any and all innovation out of existence. And they wonder why they have such trouble generating revenues from new markets.
I think these numbers are still better than they deserve. Burn in hell, executives.
Lossless Files (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how much more money they could be making if they'd just sell folks lossless music on the open market
Most people don't understand what this even means, let alone actually care. All they know is availability and cost, along with how many songs they can fit on their iDevice.
Napster (Score:4, Insightful)
Music never needed to be saved. (Score:5, Insightful)
"At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music," said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. "Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving music."
"At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing the music industry," said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. "Now, he added, it could be said 'that digital is saving the music industry."
FTFY
This is where they just don't get it. Music has never been in danger. Nothing in the industry has or will stop people from making and performing great music. They aren't concerned with saving music, just their cut of music.
Re:Napster (Score:4, Insightful)
What's maybe more interesting is that there are now so many methods to purchase music online now, that people born at or shortly before Napster have never really known a world in which it wasn't easy to get digital music through legal means, free or otherwise. Back in 1999, the RIAA wouldn't let go of the old models of selling music or explore new ones. Although I don't know Fanning's real motivations, I believe one of the reasons for Napster was to address the need for digital music in a marketplace absent of options.
There will always be a segment that wants their music for free, but I think that number is ever-shrinking. In 1999, people were starving for downloadable music. Now it's commonplace so obviously digital sales increase and piracy declines. It's what the users of this site have been saying for more than a decade.
Re:digital killing music (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, the music industry has been doing just fine on the whole, and was largely unaffected by piracy. The recording industry (aka the RIAA and goons) have been suffering, rightfully so
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:5, Insightful)
What's missing from the article is a comparison of actual sales numbers. The RIAA members are bringing less revenue in but selling more music. That's because people are paying less and digital suppliers are taking a larger cut than traditional retailers. That's what the whole digital revolution was really about, people reacted not just to free music, but to the greed and abusive pricing models of the industry.
Another piece that's missing from the article is that independent music sales now make up a far larger portion of the industry. While some of these numbers are likely to be included in a report like this, many of them are not because the independent artists are not members. The overall music industry may well have eclipsed 1999 revenue a few years ago, but we wouldn't know because only the label revenues are counted.
In short, I think you're right. The industry pines for the days when buying a copy of their works required a physical copy, not just because of bundling though.
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, these numbers are only for recorded music. While CD sales are dropping, ticket sales soar. And as musicians get a bigger cut from live performances, everybody is happy except the middlemen who have been cut out and a thin elite of top musicians who hoped they could retire at the age of 30.
The Big Labels Still Do Want to Charge You That (Score:5, Insightful)
Make no mistake about it, the music industry still DREAMS of going back to the days when they could charge you $15 for a CD that you had to buy just to listen to one lousy song. Turn your back on them, and they WILL try to go back to a similar model.
The people who once wanted to charge you $15 for a CD still want to charge you $15 for a CD. If you actually read the article, it's not the "big five" or any of the RIAA members that they're talking about movin' on up. Instead it's distributors like Apple’s iTunes Music Service, Amazon MP3, Spotify, Rhapsody and Muve Music. Google will join them eventually. But you're not going to see UMG, Warner, Sony/BMG, etc because they're still fighting these models. It's just turning into a really slow and long and painful turnover process as the money changes hands. Singer songwriters and performers are learning they don't need big labels as their music will pretty much advertise itself on social media and YouTube. That means the only big guys feeding off them are the distributors listed in the article. Time will tell if the distributors will hang around or continue to undercut each other (since it doesn't appear to be contractual and exclusive like label contracts). But one thing is for sure: more money is making it into the hands of a more diverse group of musicians. And the industry is more diverse and healthier because of that.
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:1, Insightful)
Why I stopped buying music (Score:5, Insightful)
In my younger days, I purchased vinyl 45 RPM singles for hit songs, and LP records for albums. For the car, most people used 8-track cartridges. They sucked, because the tape slides against itself internally, causing "wow and flutter". They also wore out as the lubrication was consumed. I was unusual because I'd record them to cassette tapes. Soon the 8-track got a bad reputation, and people switched to recording their own cassettes. The industry cried foul - we were "stealing" from them. Rather than selling multiple 8-track cartridges (due to wear), they only sold a single cassette or LP, and users would freely copy them. Oddly enough, sales rose.
When the CD came out, the industry raised the price about 50%, claiming it cost more to produce than vinyl records. We accepted that "fact", and repurchased most of our music collection.
A funny thing happened - the CD-R arrived. Suddenly we could make copies of a music CD for $1. People felt screwed. We knew the record companies screwed the bands, and we knew they were overcharging us, but charging 15 times the cost of a CD-R pissed a lot of people off.
Soon, we had a CD at home, and perfect copies at work, in the car and at the girlfriend's house. Wear it out? No problem - burn another copy. Find a new artist? Burn a copy for a friend. In theory, you'd think this would have caused a massive sales drop, since the earlier formats wore out and the CD did not. Yet, while the industry argued they were losing sales, it turned out to be the period of highest sales in history.
Then Napster and MP3 players appeared. Suddenly the industry was in a panic. The MPAA began an aggressive attack on downloaders, and sued anyone they could find as a scare tactic. Even though past history showed that sharing was a form of viral marketing, they wanted to kill it - perhaps because they have little control over it.
To my ears, nothing wrecks a song like Autotune (sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me) compressed to MP3. Most new music sounded too processed and too compressed. In a sea of over-processed crap, I'm finding it hard to find music I want to buy. So I don't.
The music industry doesn't understand the people like me buy music because my music-geek friends would share. Without that discovery vector, I'm simply not exposed to anything I'd buy.
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids use whatever is the easiest thing out there. When Napster ruled, it was by far the easiest way to get a digital copy of a song. Now, if you want to get a song on your iDevice etc., it's a whole lot easier to wander into the iTunes store to buy it than the navigate the mess of illegal downloading. It's not so much a generational gap as a market response. Distributors are finally selling what people were willing to buy all along: a song for $1, if it's available immediately and is easy to get onto players. The full album length market has been gone for over ten years, but for a while there labels kept dreaming it would come back anyway, and priced accordingly. Now they're pricing to where people find it easier to buy than steal, so they buy. It was always about convenience.
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the past. What they dream of is:
1: Paying for the media, which is DRM-locked to a device upon first use in a player.
2: Paying for each listen to tracks.
3: Paying for being transferred to another device.
4: Paying each year for an unlock key for the media for the locked device.
5: Paying extra for "DLC"-like ability to listen to the top songs on an album.
6: GPS device that charges if the player is playing in a public area.
7: Additional fees for playing music in more than one location in a house.
8: Additional fees for stereo, 5.1, higher quality, ability to use equalization, ability to use monitors or better speakers, or playing in a vehicle.
9: Additional fees if more than one person is in the area where the device is playing.
10: Fees to copy the tracks to and from a device.
I'm sure there are a lot more, but with DRM and devices having hardware copy-protection stacks, this all could be a reality very quickly.
Re:digital killing music (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd add a third variable into it, as a devil's advocate:
Music industry -- doing well.
Recording industry -- meh.
Artists -- dead.
Because the recording industry is not fairing well, they have only focused on markets which give them revenue, which tends to be teens/tweens. This is why we are only seeing pop acts like the Justin Beibers promoted compared to Kurt Cobains or acts that might define/push a genre outwards. Add to this radio, where most "rock" stations are living in a time warp ending around 1995, and it is impossible for an artist to "make it big" these days with a band.
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure Ticketmaster isn't exactly crying on the way to the bank. They are the other monopoly that needs to be crushed.
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keep your guard up (Score:1, Insightful)
Did iTunes suddenly start working on Linux based systems?