Head-Fi.org › Forums › Misc.-Category Forums › Music › Theory about record sales
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Theory about record sales

post #1 of 10
7/26/10 at 3:32pm
Thread Starter 

not sure if this is the right area of the forum for this, but heres a thorey of mine, probobly quite obious to most of you,

 

record sales will NEVER come back to what they use to be for a simple reason,

you use to go buy an album, and you were forced to either choose from the single, meaning paying 4-5 bucks for 1 song and a couple of remixes, or buying the whole album, which was 12-15 bucks for 8-12 songs.

from those 8-12 songs you had 1-2 good songs, 3-4 ok songs, and the rest is filler.

 

come P2P and the structure changes, and you have amazon or itunes selling songs at 0.99 each, a record company publishes an album with the same stracture, 1-2 good songs, 3-4 ok songs and filler, 

the avarage fan goes to itunes, listens to the samsples or just buys the songs he likes off the radio from that album, meaning that he buys the 1-2 good songs, maybe 1-3 songs from the ok songs and leaves the filler where it belongs,

so the same album which would have given 12-15 dollars of brute revenue is now giving 2-5 dollars worth of brute revenue.

 

and this is all fully legal/moral/kosher, no piracy or unapproved downloads involved, so as much as the record labels bitch and whine, and as many laws corrupt goverments pass, in the end of the day, the market has changed and record labels will never again make the sums of cash they use to make in the pre CD golden eras.

 

amd i wrong or right ?

Reply
post #2 of 10
7/26/10 at 5:32pm

Yeah, i agree with your theory. 

Most people simply go to itunes and buy the best songs, no need for more tracks....way cheap. 

Reply
post #3 of 10
7/26/10 at 6:11pm

Another part of it is the significant used market.  It used to be that you bought used discs at local stores.  Today, you can legally buy used music the world over.  Thinking back to the days before eBay, it's pretty amazing how limited things were.

 

Another factor is that CDs do not wear out or go bad easily.  I still have the first CD I ever bought (DSoTM, naturally) which I've had for around 23 years.  It still works fine.

Reply
post #4 of 10
7/26/10 at 6:35pm

Aevum:

 the market has changed and record labels will never again make the sums of cash they use to make in the pre CD golden eras.

 

amd i wrong or right ?


I think you are right and will add yet another variable, which is home video. VHS, then even more DVD really cut into recorded music sales.

 

With all that, are you wistful for the old era? I'm not. We're living in a golden age for music lovers. Never has music been more accessible, with the many in control over the few.


Edited by virometal - 7/26/10 at 6:37pm
Reply
post #5 of 10
7/26/10 at 6:42pm

i agree.

but, to an even greater extent, pirated music downloads are responsible for the devaluation of music.

the younger generation, coming of age right now, is made up of listeners who've never bought music. 

they think it is free.  like the air we breathe.

 

unfortunately, when that thinking is allowed to flourish, it can't easily be taken back.

how do you convince a cash-strapped 22-year-old that he/she oughta buy that new jack johnson album, and not download it off rapidshare?

Reply
post #6 of 10
7/27/10 at 10:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWuss View Post

i agree.

but, to an even greater extent, pirated music downloads are responsible for the devaluation of music.

the younger generation, coming of age right now, is made up of listeners who've never bought music. 

they think it is free.  like the air we breathe.

 


True...but lately sites like Rapidshare...etc, are deleting such files..like music albums or stuff with copyrights. 

Reply
post #7 of 10
7/27/10 at 11:10am

Yet, from What Hifi, more turntables were bought in the year to May than CD players, "And now we turn to our headline fact - that 77,400 turntables were sold in the year to May (a 11% increase). That compares to 41,400 CD players"

 

http://community.whathifi.com/blogs/industry_insider/archive/2010/07/23/vinyl-turns-the-tables-as-decks-outsell-cd-players-3d-makes-a-slow-start-receivers-rule-2010-uk-ce-sales-revealed.aspx

 

Reply
post #8 of 10
7/30/10 at 3:51am

Only 1-2 good songs on each release??  Jeez, I hope not.  That should certainly be the exception, not the rule.

It's a shame.  Because there is much less incentive to buy the whole release, people are really getting dumbed down to music.  There is no effort to dig into the deeper tracks and you are actually slighting the artists in this regard.

Reply
post #9 of 10
7/30/10 at 7:48am

Not recently, but at first a lot of people were re-buying the albums they had on vinyl or cassette on CD.  That bolstered sales for quite a while.

Reply
post #10 of 10
7/30/10 at 9:40pm

If you're selling records with 1-2 good songs, you deserve to die out. Frankly, piracy is not killing music, that is. 

 

You're absolutely right in saying that even legal downloads are killing record labels. Hence why they need to change their business plans and adapt. Many independent distros and labels already accepted that they are fighting a losing battle and therefore begin exploring other avenues. Here is a case in point. 

 

Quote Prog Rock Man:

 

Yet, from What Hifi, more turntables were bought in the year to May than CD players, "And now we turn to our headline fact - that 77,400 turntables were sold in the year to May (a 11% increase). That compares to 41,400 CD players"

 

I also suspect merchandise revenue has also increased.

 

 

Quote:

Summarizing, unauthorized copies neither have negative effects on concert nor on merchandising revenues. Unauthorized copies of merchandise do not appear to cause as big of a problem as unauthorized copies of sound recordings do. Concerts, in turn, can not be copied at all. Consequently, the concert and merchandise industry is not significantly threatened by any kind of unauthorized copies.

 

http://www.get-it-all.net/indie112-Sales_And_Marketing_Trends_In_The_Music_Industry.htm

 

To add onto that, it's a lot easier to stop merch bootleggers compared to internet downloads. Honestly, this is the future of music so the RIAA and the government can fuck off. Apologies if this doesn't answer your question at all


Edited by Cianyx - 7/30/10 at 9:49pm
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Music
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Misc.-Category Forums › Music › Theory about record sales