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If you think that the lack of sales is due to downloading then you've been brainwashed by the recording industry.
Congratulations!
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I download illegally where as if I had no means of getting those mp3's, I would eventually buy an album. I havn't been brainwashed. All I know is that it does have an impact. Teenagers download way more than then buy.
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It's debatable as to whether or not downloading truly impacts sales. Just because teens "download way more than they buy", doesn't mean that they definitely would have bought a particular CD had they not been able to download. When I was a teen my friends and I would make copies of each others CDs and cassettes. In my pre-teens I'd tape songs off the radio. Downloading is just a new means of getting music without paying for it. This practice has been around for decades.
As for my own personal habits, I've lost count of the number of tracks I've eventually paid for after "illegally" downloading an MP3. And I'm talking about tracks that I certainly would not have heard otherwise given that (a) I'm not going to stand in a record store listening to CDs (b) radio - for the most part - doesn't play a lot of the music I like and © MuchMusic certainly doesn't show videos of the music I like.
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maguire Wrote:buzz882 Wrote:I download illegally where as if I had no means of getting those mp3's, I would eventually buy an album. I havn't been brainwashed. All I know is that it does have an impact. Teenagers download way more than then buy.
I download and buy the same amount, most time i put a cd in instead of downloading and im 15.
Yeah, I'm 17 and I buy alot, but I just think that alot of ppl dont buy anymore.
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Downloading has an impact, but it doesn't account for that clear slump in album sales. If it did, you'd see a similar slump for everyone else. But Avril Lavigne moved a million copies of her first album within a year.
cferneyh is dead-on re the impact of downloading. I used to tape songs off the radio, tape borrowed records, and tape records borrowed from the library. And when CDs were first introduced, there were places that rented them - and everyone who rented them, taped them.
Downloading represents lost sales to some extent, but the fact is that records (er, CDs, showing my age) are luxury items and we only buy them up to the point where we run out of spending money. Downloading allows people to allocate that spending sale.money to other things, but considering that active downloaders are also more likely to buy music, it's wrong to assume that one downloaded album is one lost sale.
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Thank you. I agree that there is a decline and that if there was no downloading there still WOULD be a decrease, but it DOES have an impact.
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skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Downloading has an impact, but it doesn't account for that clear slump in album sales. If it did, you'd see a similar slump for everyone else. But Avril Lavigne moved a million copies of her first album within a year.
cferneyh is dead-on re the impact of downloading. I used to tape songs off the radio, tape borrowed records, and tape records borrowed from the library. And when CDs were first introduced, there were places that rented them - and everyone who rented them, taped them.
Downloading represents lost sales to some extent, but the fact is that records (er, CDs, showing my age) are luxury items and we only buy them up to the point where we run out of spending money. Downloading allows people to allocate that spending sale.money to other things, but considering that active downloaders are also more likely to buy music, it's wrong to assume that one downloaded album is one lost sale.
I agree with you Skippy, however, aren't downloads much more readily available than rented records or CDs may have been 10-20 years ago? Wouldn't there be much more "illegitimate" music out there now than, say, 20 years ago? It seems the internet has multiplied this trend many times over.
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Downloading has probably hurt sales to a degree, but let's step back and look at where we started here: sales of a particular band's CDs declining over 50%.
Downloading didn't do that.
Trends did that. Changes in public tastes and changes in the kind of music said band has put out.
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I know we're getting into a discussion about downloading now which is way off topic.
But instead of attributing loss of sales to "downloading", we should attribute it to the record companies and their failure to adapt. We were told before that CDs would become cheaper when they became so mass produced. Have they become cheaper? No.
Why can't the record companies response to market demands and make the price of music cheaper so regular people who have bills to pay can afford to buy music? And don't tell me that they aren't over charging. Such a small portion of the money from a CD goes to an artist.
With our technology and new distribution methods (especially the Internet) Record Companies are become more and more useless. So why are they still charging as much as they do for an unneccesary service?
Of course they just parade out the "downloading" boogyman and get governments to pass ridiculous laws restricting our rights so that they can get out rich.
I maintain that declining music sales are because they are not following what the market demands (have they not heard of supply and demand?) and giving listeners restricted options (digital rights management systems that only allow you to play your music with certain devices - what the fuck?).
Not to mention the fact that they train people to listen to meaningless crap music which isn't unique at all. It's undeniable that more serious fans of a band or artist are more likely to buy their records. To me this helps to explain why there are flagging sales in the music industry. If they produce crap and get their audience to think they like crap they're just hurting themselves. Because as much as the audience might think they like a certain crap pop act of the day, they don't have the emotional investment in them neccesary to WANT to buy their music and support what they do.
Wow, that was a rant. I hope it makese sense.
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again off topic, but what impact does used CD's have on sales of new albums/CD's? I know that if I am a causal fan of a particular artist, I maybe inclined to purchase their next release new but if I their last release did not make my heavy rotation, I will most likely give it a try as a used CD after downloading a few tracks. Is this the case of the casual TTH fan?
Also as I download some songs of a new artist to me, I will also look for it in a used bin which is not contributing to album sales. I have picked up 90% of my CD's this way over the past few years. The only CD's that I have purchase new are bands that I would like what ever they put out.
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googolplex, I'm not sure you can attribute a loss of sales to the record companies' failure to adapt... that's really an example of a lost opportunity for sales... big difference.
If record companies were ahead of the curve and forecast how Napster, mp3's, downloading et al. would change how people would access music, they would have set up their sites where people could download albums (or only the particular songs they wanted if they don't want the whole album) and realized a whole new source of revenue. Instead they got totally behind the times and allowed companies like Apple (w/iTunes) to step in.
Anyway, other people have already made good points regarding other, more pertinent reasons why bands (using the Hip in our example) show declines in album sales (changes in trends, public tastes, economic situations, etc.), so I'll leave my argument at that.