Told You The Biz Was A Dead Man Walking

[Kristy]

From the CNN hacks once more:

Linky

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/index.htm

"The battle for paying digital customers may have been lost before it had truly begun. In 1999, Napster, a free online file-sharing service, made its debut. Not only did Napster help change the way most people got music, it also lowered the price point from $14 for a CD to FREE!"

Those were the days.

[sonrisa salvaje]

Makes sense. I don't think today's music is any worse than it was in 1999, just equally as sucky.

[VAiN]

Holy shit.. by now they must be down around the $4 billion mark... who will help these poor suffering record companies??? WHO???? Imagine the heartache of selling off your yacht.
Maybe if they got smart, started making a product worth purchasing - whether it be an enhanced CD, something interactive, etc - they wouldn't be in this mess. Fuck them and their greed. I remember when CDs were $17. Cry me a river, RIAA.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah. I remember when cassette tapes were $8 and when CD's came out the record companies doubled the price. It actually cost them less money to burn a CD than to copy to a cassette.

[ashstralia]

i'd imagine that like most of us here, if i really like an album i'll buy a hard copy. and now with cd's at 10 bucks, it's a fair deal.

[FORD]

CD's were initially more expensive to make because it was new technology and there were like 2 or 3 factories on the entire planet that pressed the damn things.

Now anyone can burn a fucking CD on their own computer. A quality CD-R costs about a quarter (and the shit they sell in most retail stores are cheaper than that)

Add in the artwork, shipping costs, even paying for the marketing, and the 8.98 price point would be more than reasonable for a profitable industry.

But let's not kid ourselves, when most of the music itself is SHIT, who's going to pay for it? And when the music is marketed towards 12 year olds who don't fucking have incomes who do they expect to buy it?

Sure mom and dad might chip in a few bucks for the bubblegum now and then, but when junior has a PC and a broadband connection in front of him, why the hell is he gonna wait?

[ace diamond]

Makes sense. I don't think today's music is any worse than it was in 1999, just equally as sucky.

no, i disagree.
now it sucks even worse than it did in 1999.

[chefcraig]

no, i disagree.
now it sucks even worse than it did in 1999.

The fact that you were not inflicting your own musical "endeavors" upon the otherwise unsuspecting planet in 1999 makes this statement true.

[Mr. Vengeance]

Let's not fool ourselves into thinking if the product was "better" (for the record music these days is SHIT) people would pay for it.

Free will always win out over paying for far too many people. I buy all mine.

[ace diamond]

The fact that you were not inflicting your own musical "endeavors" upon the otherwise unsuspecting planet in 1999 makes this statement true.

that's actually not true.
i had some rough homemade demo tapes i was peddling at that time, and i was still performing live often back then.

[BITEYOASS]

Unless their a farmer, a person will not pay for shit.

[Terry]

I feel kind of antiquated these days, since I prefer purchasing and reading physical books and magazines vs. online subscriptions.
I prefer purchasing dvds, and am mildly perturbed that Netflix is phasing out the renting of physical dvds and pushing watching the flicks online.
MP3 players, to me, are just smaller Walkmans with those irritating small earphones that always pop out.
I have no desire to own a cell phone, or a blackberry, or tweet...or twitter, or purchase an iPad or an iPhone...
Seems like everything tangible is fading away and pretty soon the only way to see or hear anything will be via a computer screen.
I like my music and movie collection just the way it is.

I likes things the way they used to be!!!

[Mr. Vengeance]

For Christmas, my girlfriend got me an Ipod touch. I've resisted being a dowload guy for the most part, only buying music online when I can't find it anywhere else. I've grabbed a couple of albums on Itunes, the newest Krokus album and an old Riot album. I pay the $10 for the album. There's just something unsatisfying about it....Some of my favorite memories growing up were sitting in the big chair, with the giant headphones on, listening to a new record (vinyl), while holding the record jacket and reading the notes. Checking out the cover. Reading the lyrics if they had them. Alice Cooper always had great album covers. Gatefolds like Love it To Death, Schools Out, Billion Dollar Babies and From the Inside. The box for Muscle of Love, etc. I used to love to care for the records, cleaning them, putting them away on the shelf in alphabetical order. I still have every album, cassette and CD I've ever bought, a collection nearing 2000 now. I have it all catalogued in an excel file.

It's boring to have the music just go onto your ipod electronically.

[chefcraig]

It just seems so damned disposable now. Those great 12'' x 12" album sleeves have been reduced to a mere 4" x 4" square, so you need a magnifying glass in order to view the track listing and liner notes. And with the notion of downloads, you don't even get that anymore. Like Mr. Vengeance says above, a great part of the musical experience was contained in those album covers, and sadly it appears to be yet another terrific thing that has been swept aside thanks to the onward roll of technology, expedience and so-called enlightenment.

[binnie]

The issue here is that this has now become generational. If you are an 18 year old kid in 2011, you may never have purchased a CD. To me, that has more signigicant ramifications than the loss of money for record companies - it could also spell a change in the format of music as we know it. Kids seem to like a 'pick and mix' approach to music - a fews songs here, a few songs there - rather than appreciating ALBUMS. I think that's the major impact we'll see.

In a sense, I think the whole Prog Rock revival is a reaction against that.