Downloading Music Encouraging CD Purchasing
from the what-happens dept
A NY Times reporter has written up his experience in trying to get one of his sons to stop using Kazaa and start using iTunes or Rhapsody. He admits that it’s really pricey for limited selections, but feels more comfortable about it. He’s also surprised that in letting his son download music, he now wants to buy more CDs. Despite the music industry claiming that no one would ever want to buy CDs if they could download music (especially teenagers!), the reporter’s son wants the CDs because they come with liner notes and lyrics that make it worthwhile. Again, this is an example of the industry missing an opportunity. People (including myself) like to own the actual CDs if it provides us with additional value. At the same time, downloading music can help people figure out what CDs they want to buy.
Comments on “Downloading Music Encouraging CD Purchasing”
No Subject Given
The last cd’s I ever bought were during the napster days. Since napster was shut I havent even visited a music store. Napster let me freely experiment with what I might like to own on cd. Now I feel like I’m in musical limbo and I think I’m going to keep it that way.
Re: I don't need any more music
On television I already get like 30 music channels with my digital cable subscription. I can go to shoutcast on the web and listen to free music without commercials. If I want to listen to only songs I like I have a few hundred on my hard drive. If I want to listen to satellite radio for a little while for free I can go to sirius.com (only catch is that every 20 minutes i push a button to keep the sample feed going). In the car I have regular radio, and when commercials come on I simply change the channel. It’s been months and months since I’ve even heard a new catchy pop song on the radio that’s hooked me enough to even make me think about wanting to buy it individually. So I simply don’t have a compelling need to acquire more music when I have it constantly around me. It’s almost amusing that the record industry seems to think that music is some sort of precious commodity, and that I’ll accept any conditions of DRM at any price to have. With cable television, all the web sites I can visit, books, magazines, video games, and playing with my digital camera, I just don’t need any more entertainment in my life. It’s gotten to the point that if any form of entertainment becomes the least bit bothersome for me to acquire or use as I wish, I simply don’t use it, because as Americans we have so many options for our leisure dollars. If they don’t want to sell me an MP3 for a quarter or so that I know I can do anything I want with, then they can keep their music. I don’t need it.
buying CDs
I have not bought any CDs since I stopped using fileshares, if I can’t hear it I won’t buy it, and I don’trust the record company marketers (or any company’s marketing department).
I tend to buy CDs based on live performances of bands, just buying something that is advertised that you have not heard is saking for money to be thrown away on one hit wonders. This is why the music inductry does not want people to listen to other songs, because we will see that the CD they are selling has one good song, maybe one decent song and 8-12 songs of utter rubbish.
Buy or download
Well, I think it really depends a lot on the type of music and the particular artist’s approach to putting out a CD. In most cases with pop-music, the single tries to sell the CD and, far too often, there isn’t a full CD’s worth of good music there. I’ll consider downloading the good songs, but there is no way I’m wasting my money on the CD.
My CD purchases are almost entirely limited to classical, folk/bluegrass/blues and pop compilations (best-of’s). Most of this stuff is hard to find online. If I could find it online, I don’t think I’d spend money on the CD to get liner notes and lyrics.
No Subject Given
It may bee that some teens would download Music first and then if they like it, buy it, but i think those are very rare.
Because there is no logic behind buying a CD when you already have the content , and today CD-writers are nearly in every PC.
Beside this, many teens are no longer listening their music on Minidisk or Diskman when they are travelling but they are using MP3 or OGG-Vorbis Players, they are smaller and can store up to 5000 songs , and its fare easyer just to copy the MP3’s from local disk to the MP3-PLayer than first buy a CDRipping Software (or download it like music titels from a Sharebase which is illegaly too) then convert the often copyprotected CD’s to MP3’s, just to be able to listen to music while sitting in the train.
And another thing , the music industry invested a gread deal of money to stop musicpiracy. Most commen they “intersepted” Kazaa even now where the “big uploaders” have switched to other sharebases etc.
They got some poor unluky ones but they scared no one. If they hade saved that money they would have gained more profit.
And for all those “evil Musicstealers”
just listen to the radio its free its legal
its suprising with old an new songs and your Hardisks will live much longer.
Or for those who need their 1/2 terra-byte music collection stored on their computer, the legal & free alternativ to sharebases are to capture the music from internet-radios.
Live long and prosper.
Re: No Subject Given
Yeah, the radio is free and legal.
But it only plays the same crap over and over. The P2P networks let you discover music you would never have heard.
Let’s say you live somewhere with 20 fm stations. Even among that number, the majority are going to be top 40 stations. Has anyone done a study? I can’t imagine there ever being more than 200 different songs played in one market in one day. Even that number seems high.
Radio offers very little choice. Is there a miles davis station in your market? Thanks to P2P there was more MD music available than I could ever find in any music store. Like Bella Fleck? How would you know?
itunes
i stopped buying cd’s when napster died…now i can sample music again before buying. like a previous comment, i want to listen before i give anyone my money. itunes gives you enough of a sample to decide whether to buy. add to that you can buy tracks instead of complete albums, although the artists probably don’t like it, i’m spending more now than ever before on music.
Re: itunes
No matter what angle you put, what excuse you make, or how lazy you are and are just refusing to admit it, downloading music is STEALING, period. Just because music in its digital, non-tangeable form is unable to be visibly held in your hand or comes in a pretty package, people don’t even think twice when they hit the download button, because stealing something that’s not in a box isn’t stealing. Well firstly, these people are idiots, and secondly, they’re complete fools to think that all musicians are millionares who live in huge estates and aren’t effected in any way from music downloaders.
Jazz, latin, funk, blues, and many less popular rock groups are being poisoned by music downloading, as they don’t sell many records in the first place. I’d sure like great bands that are just sprouting into the scene to be able to retain their careers, but the overall lack of enthusiasm for legally purchasing music is screwing thousands of artists.
Musicians aren’t even given close to a fair share of their own record sales by recording companies. Say a band signs onto a company that gives the whole band $50,000 to live, eat, sleep, and oh ya, record and produce their album for half a year. The band pumps out the record, as promised, and the recording company then proceeds to market, package and sell the product. The band doesn’t see a dime of the record sales until they have earned back the 50k they borrowed to produce their CD. For a young band just breaking into the scene, this is the death sentence if their music isn’t widely appreciated by a large enough crowd to both pay back the record company and make enough revenue to produce another record.
Now, we go to the other side of the situation. Jimmy DirtyArseholeThief decides to log onto Kazaa and pick up a few tunes. He’s heard about this great new band in his hometown from the paper and decides to check em out. He downloads one song, decides he likes it and downloads the whole album in about 45 minutes. He says to himself, “man, this is good stuff, maybe I’ll go pick up the album later”, but because he’s already burned the whole thing to a CD and is currently strapped for cash because he bought to much weed last weekend, he never gets around to picking up the CD.
Don’t lie. You know that if anyone downloads an entire album, their incentive for going to Bestbuy or their local record store and picking up the CD drops to about 1%. Sure, the pure of heart will download low-quality, trimmed music samples from CDnow.com and then go pick up the record like good non-criminals, but we know that most American teenagers aren’t good citizens. In fact, if Mp3 downloading (stealing music) was acknowledged and enforced as the crime that it is, our jails and juvenile halls would be packed to the brim with millions of lazy, disrespectful kids that just don’t feel like obeying the law anymore.
Music, like any other material good in this world, has a price tag. Get used to it. See what happens when you go to the mall and decide that you just don’t feel like paying for a shirt and pants that you really like, but don’t have the money for, so you’ll just go ahead and slip out the door and hope nobody sees you. If you could, you’d download that shirt and pants off the internet when you got home, but you can’t do that, now can you?