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My audio enthusiast friends pretty much all buy their music and participate very little in file sharing, and then only to sample, never for their actual listening listening.
Just from what I've observed of people I know, and in my discussions with friends in music retail (I'm sure a lot of us here know our music stores' staff on a first name basis with as much as some of us buy music), it seems clear to me at least that file sharing has definitely impacted sales of CDs with the people I know ("people I know" -- not very scientific, but, hey, it's what I've personally observed).
Adult relatives who live oversees buy the entire life works of some prominent artists on one or two CDs (obviously not official releases, and MP3 must be involved to make it all fit). Nephews and nieces under the age of 18 are all Kazaa'ing and very rarely buy CDs -- they buy far fewer albums than my friends and I purchased at their ages. My nephews/nieces are using their speaker-equipped computers as their primary listening devices, and I think this has become very common, including in dorm rooms and the like. Given the resolution of these systems (usually not too resolving), any difference in sound quality between what they download and an original CD is usually not noticeable enough for it to matter to them.
My friends who've been in music retail for more than a few years have invariably expressed to me that the presence of young, buying customers in their stores has thinned considerably in the last few years.
Many of us here are audio enthusiasts, and, as someone earlier expressed, we'll therefore care about sound quality. We're not exactly the norm, though -- I don't think audio enthusiasts are a representative sample of the music consuming public.
Music is immensely important to me. I bought Jack Johnson's new CD today after reading the reviews in our Music Forum -- I'd just purchased his excellent first CD (Brushfire Fairytales) earlier in the week, and so coupled with the reviews in the Music Forum, I figured his new one a safe bet (it was). I don't know how much work went into writing, arranging, performing, recording, mixing, producing, packaging, marketing, distributing, and stocking this CD, but I would imagine it was significant. And I know the effort was well worth my $28 or $29 paid for the two discs. And, for that effort, I don't mind putting money in the record company's pocket for their share of the risk/associated costs, the store's pocket for getting it in my hands and all of the expense and risk that comes with that, and, most of all, the pocket of the artist (Jack Johnson in this case) who created it, because, well, music is immensely important to me.
If CDs were less expensive, would I buy more? Of course. There are a lot of things I'd buy more of if they were less expensive.
Just from what I've observed of people I know, and in my discussions with friends in music retail (I'm sure a lot of us here know our music stores' staff on a first name basis with as much as some of us buy music), it seems clear to me at least that file sharing has definitely impacted sales of CDs with the people I know ("people I know" -- not very scientific, but, hey, it's what I've personally observed).
Adult relatives who live oversees buy the entire life works of some prominent artists on one or two CDs (obviously not official releases, and MP3 must be involved to make it all fit). Nephews and nieces under the age of 18 are all Kazaa'ing and very rarely buy CDs -- they buy far fewer albums than my friends and I purchased at their ages. My nephews/nieces are using their speaker-equipped computers as their primary listening devices, and I think this has become very common, including in dorm rooms and the like. Given the resolution of these systems (usually not too resolving), any difference in sound quality between what they download and an original CD is usually not noticeable enough for it to matter to them.
My friends who've been in music retail for more than a few years have invariably expressed to me that the presence of young, buying customers in their stores has thinned considerably in the last few years.
Many of us here are audio enthusiasts, and, as someone earlier expressed, we'll therefore care about sound quality. We're not exactly the norm, though -- I don't think audio enthusiasts are a representative sample of the music consuming public.
Music is immensely important to me. I bought Jack Johnson's new CD today after reading the reviews in our Music Forum -- I'd just purchased his excellent first CD (Brushfire Fairytales) earlier in the week, and so coupled with the reviews in the Music Forum, I figured his new one a safe bet (it was). I don't know how much work went into writing, arranging, performing, recording, mixing, producing, packaging, marketing, distributing, and stocking this CD, but I would imagine it was significant. And I know the effort was well worth my $28 or $29 paid for the two discs. And, for that effort, I don't mind putting money in the record company's pocket for their share of the risk/associated costs, the store's pocket for getting it in my hands and all of the expense and risk that comes with that, and, most of all, the pocket of the artist (Jack Johnson in this case) who created it, because, well, music is immensely important to me.
If CDs were less expensive, would I buy more? Of course. There are a lot of things I'd buy more of if they were less expensive.
