variety.com — "The music biz can't stem the bleeding, but, for now, digital tracks are proving to be a secure band-aid. Album sales dropped for a seventh consecutive year, but a dramatic increase in the sale of digital tracks helped keep the music industry afloat in 2006."
Jan 5, 2007 View in Crawl 4
silencehrJan 5, 2007
You are both right... albums cost way too much for crap that is on them. Either drop the price or make better albums, people don't want overpriced crap..
unfinityJan 5, 2007
Yeah, everyone knows that the more talented you are, the less money you have.You should really check out the new album by "Hobo Pete and the Broken Bottle Orchestra"
mrfleshJan 5, 2007
I haven't bought a CD since 97' and I haven't illegaly downloaded a song since 2000. Metallica suing napster pissed me off so I started listening to techno cause it's all over the net for free. f**k RIAA and MPAA the easiest way to make sure my life isn't upset by these goons is to make sure they have nothing to do with it.
meepzorkJan 5, 2007
1st - f**k itunes and every other download service. I have no problem whatsoever buying a cd if the music is good. I also have no problem NOT paying for it if it is s**t. If im paying for it, I want the highest possible quality, a hard copy with artwork, and no DRM. i honestly dont understand how people use those services. i received an itunes card for xmas which was quickly re-gifted.2nd - i think last year i bought more cd's than ive ever bought in my life. if you guys didnt jump on the tower records liquidation....sucks 4 you.3rd - old music > new music. theres alot of music out there that is simultaneously new and good.... but good luck finding it. sirius has introduced me to alot of cool bands since i signed up.
brianbowdenJan 5, 2007
See. That's what I've been saying for a while now. The music industry has attributed its losses to piracy when in fact, most major label acts are horrible. That is why Indie labels are thriving. This is the biggest the underground has been in years and it continues to be growing. But this is all for the better. The 7 (I guess 6 now) major labels have had one foot in the grave for a while. Hopefully this continues. No major labels, no RIAA, no Britney Spears/Nelly/My Chemical Romance, etc. Sounds pretty good to me.
skellenerJan 5, 2007
I agree meepzork! Keep making those CD's! I ain't buyin' those low quality DRM'd tunes when I can get full quality non-DRM'd ones! Even better when you find it at the local used CD store for like $3 - $4 !!!
bashJan 6, 2007
@Ronnie: Don't be dissing Gnarls Barkley. They were one of the few breaths of fresh air in an otherwise stale hip hop year.The two guys from G.B. were working their asses off (before they met) to get buzz underground; they deserve the popularity they got.
sonofcaliJan 11, 2007
I think album sales decreased because of three reasons:1. The digital age has come along and people buy music on iTunes and the like,2. People have gotten so lazy, that they resort to piracy to get music,3. Most of the new music coming out sucks.
netvalarJan 22, 2007
I was going to submit a similar article I wrote in my blog but I saw this one and thought my blog could only be a comment to this. So much better then Netvalar speaking on music could ever produce. Oh my article as comemnt <a class="user" href="http://netvalar.blogspot.com/2007/01/music-sales-down-3-great-news.html">http://netvalar.blogspot.com/2007/01/music-sales-down-3-great-news.html</a>
tindleJan 31, 2007
You are right in a sense, but making good music takes time and a lot of care, not to mention expensive equipment. How do you fund that if you can't make money from your music? St. Indie doesn't actually exist....people have to understand that being a musician doesn't come cheap, and we are not here purely as some form of benevolent being, in order to save the human race from the mainstream record industry. I made a record on my PC. It cost me 'nothing' to do that because I already had the gear I needed. That gear had already cost me $2000. Because I was out of work at the time, I could afford to spend 6 months making the record. However, lets say I costed it at my rate of pay from the job I was fired from, that would have cost $15,000. I then had to have it mastered by a studio because I didn't have the expertise...cost $25 per song, x16 songs = $400. I then had to have a short run of replication, labeling and packaging, at a cost of $300 for 50 copies.Now, so far, my record has cost me $17,700. for 50 copies. I then have to market it, so I choose CDbaby.com as my on line store, and that costs me $50 dollars set up. We are now at $17750 dollars cost. For every copy I sell, CDbaby keep 4 dollars, (which, trust me, is a good deal). Lets say I sell all 50 at $10 each. So I make $500. But, wait, no, I don't! I have to pay CDbaby $200. You don't need a degree in Math to know I'm now at minus $17,750 plus $500 minus $200 which = minus $17,450 on my balance sheet. Now lets stop the accountancy nonsense, and take out the theoretical cost of my time, the six months I spent making the record, $15,000. So, perhaps more realistically, you might argue, I'm only at a loss of $2,450. Not so bad, huh? Well, actually, it's real bad, 'cos I only sold one CD. See I couldn't afford to advertise it, and I'm competing with 50,000 albums on CDbaby and all the 1000's of others from everywhere else, and my family didn't eat for six months! So the record cost me $2446 and maybe a divorce. But, lets take the accountancy a stage further: I said earlier, I already had $2000 worth of equipment, so the actually, you could argue that record only cost me $446 dollars. How many of you would go to all that trouble and expense to sell a single copy of a record? How many of you would bet $446 to win $6 dollars? That's what I did. But, here's the rub. I didn't make that record for you. I made it for me, and to help a friend who was having a hard time, and it's a good piece of work, and I don't actually give a flying fig whether you like it or not, whether you buy it or not, I like it, and that's good enough for me. Interestingly, 6 songs from that album have been played 120,000 times by people all around the world, (for free), on the Internet and every one of those 6 has topped Alternative Country Internet charts at some time. I read all your pontificating on this page and what I see is mostly ignorance. No meaningful thought or understanding of the reality of making art. I cannot afford to be St. Indie, and most of us making Indie music aren't saints. We live in the real world and subsidise your entertainment, and we are mostly completely misunderstood, and would starve if we depended on you good folks for a living. We do a day job, and entertain the world at our own cost. So you go and be a garbage man! I prefer to be a gentleman Guitarist.