digg

I know my habits have changed. I haven't bought a complete CD in over two years, now that I think about it. I buy a song if I really want it, but the biggest change is the impulse buys. I just don't bother anymore.

Absolutely true. Why buy the whole album when you can just buy the song(s) you know you like? Same thing with iTunes and TV. I don't need a monthly subscription when I can just buy the single TV shows I like from iTunes.

CDs are overpriced as it is. Selling digitally protected files for the same price is a scam.

maybe if the RIAA supported artists that made albums worth buying, their sales wouldn't suck so bad. 90% of music coming out today is just, bad. almost every artist that has a half way decent song on the radio puts it on an album that has 2 or 3 songs that are worth listening to (the singles) and the rest is filler. i have no problem paying $15 for a good album (i will when the new CLUTCH album drops next week, i *****), ***** i still buy albums on vinyl if they are good, and available on that median, and those can cost much more than 15 bucks. even ***** that i download i buy a hard copy of eventually (theres nothing collectible about mp3s). i think other people would be willing to do the same if they listened to, and respected good music, but as long the radio is full of carbon copy ***** and artist that got their start on american idol people will keep downloading. that and if the industry wises up about DRM and licensing, but thats a whole other rant.


**Speaking of good music, anyone that is a fan of pure rock music check out the new Clutch album, From Beale Street to Oblivion. great album by an amazing band. Clutch is what rock and roll is supposed to be. LISTEN

"Many of our readers also cite a declining quality in music from the major labels."

You think?

The last CD was almost a year ago when 10,000 Days came out. If more bands 'sold their soul to make a record' I would probably be buying more CDs.

Until then, I'm content with what I've got!

So how long before the RIAA issues another report blaming those filthy, no good, dirty hippie pirates for destorying the music industry?

Maybe if you take a few more grannies and college kids to court you can recoup your losses. No, really RIAA, I bet you totally could. While you guys are at it, how about adding 10x more DRM. That'll show those pirates!

Maybe it's because the music is rubbish.

Yea CD sales are dropping... Why buy a crappy $15 album when you only like one or two songs? I've only purchased ~6 CDs because of that reason. I got tired of spending $15 on one or two songs. iTunes is where it's at. Artists won't like the fact that you only want to buy a few of their songs, so they're going to bitch how illegal stuff is killing sales.

Yay! Bands will actually have to record 12 good songs instead of 3 amazing tracks and a bunch of ***** filler to make any money in the business. If anything it this might hold musicians more accountable for making garbage to round out an album.

What's going on is simple. The album format is dying. People only want to listen to what they are programmed to like by the radio. Anything unfamiliar is crap and a waste of their time. Singles generate much less profit than CDs, so the music industry is in a decline, even though the economy is booming. Piracy also causes a large amount of loss, since teenagers and college student, traditionally large consumers of music, have turned to illegal copying and downloading instead of even paying for the singles.

I think at some point we'll all be able to be honest with ourselves and admit the real reason music sales have gone down. Children are growing up in an atmosphere where they know how to get a hold of free singles on normal P2P networks, and full albums through torrents. Having been born in 1987, for instance, I admit to having only bought about 5 CDs during these past 19 years, and maybe 20 digital singles. The rest of my 34 GB library was amassed through other means.

The real question is... do we care that everybody is getting their music through piracy? And can this habit even be changed if we did care? I, for one, support artists through other means, and could give a rat's ass about music sales and the RIAA's fat wallet.

I have to import all my videogame soundtrack CDs; everything else is iTunes.

It's sad, personally, as somebody who buys (yes, buys) around 10 albums per month on CD. And I'm a young college student. Some of the greatest music is hidden behind the singles, and few people find that because they are cultured to like what's on the radio and in the top 100.

Hopefully the great bands (The Arcade Fire, Counting Crows, Modest Mouse, etc.) that release quality tracks across whole albums won't cave to the trend to sell out and just record what they know will be popular (I'm looking at you Fall Out Boy).

By the way, you can still find new releases on CD for around $10 - just check the locally owned record stores around college campuses.

Perhaps the recording industry should take the decline in sales as a cue to stop producing substandard music by substandard musicians and then forcing us to buy it.

Produce some good music, by some talented musicians, and see what happens.

I'm with you there Catfud
I Love Dream Theater, I'll check out the rest.
Another worth your while is Eternity Black www.eternityblack.com
They are mostly the band Helstar that toured during the eighties but with an updated feel. The lead guitar also happens to be my coworker. Buy directly from the artist. Stick it RIAA!

-Rexey

I don't buy anything online because I'm not paying for DRM. I don't buy any RIAA CDs because I don't want to support them in anyway. That basically leaves non-RIAA CDs and used CDs. That is why you are losing money. ***** you, RIAA, and ***** you DRM (e.g. iTunes).

Why don't the record companies get a clue and lower the price of new cd's? They could make a killing if that 18 dollar cd were lowererd to 8 bucks or less. The mall and big chain prices are nuts. I buy all of my cd's used now. Especially when there is a buy 3 get one free deal. I would rather rip my own music than deal with the apple DRM crap.

The RIAA needs to introduce linux powered cds in asian markets to offset the lack of growth in domestic markets.

As a general rule of thumb, I would buy a CD if I like at least 75% of the tracks. Otherwise, I hit up iTunes for it.

The memory of the industry is quite short.

Before the Beatles, there were few albums that were sold - the important sales number was the "45", a single with a "B" side thrown in.

In many ways, we have come full circle to the way in which the music business was operated pre-1967.

The music industry has to come to grips with this - there business model has changed and they have to deal with it

Please Take our poll

http://pandorastations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=176

The only CDs I've bought in the past year or so are foreign bands with American labels that aren't in the RIAA scheme, or independent artists who handle the transactions themselves.

The last three CDs I bought were from Symbion Project, otherwise known as Kassan Brooker, the sound guy for Harmonix. I paid him through paypal and he even signed the inside of one of the albums. It feels good to actually pay the artist themselves instead of some store or label.

I've heard it said that the rise of digital downloading of singles will change the way that bands release music in the future. Instead of a collection of songs released as an album, we'll see bands releasing a song or two a month. Kind of like an episodic version of an album.

With News Corp's purchase of MySpace, I expect to see that further commercialized as well. Bands will be able to sell their own music on more of their terms, without representation currently needed to get them on something like iTunes. That is, you'll be able to go to your favorite band's MySpace page and purchase their music their. Doesn't matter if your favorite band is based out of their garage or is in your small hometown, they'll still be able to put their music up for sale, cutting out the middle management record exec.

With digital recording giving everyone a decent ability to record a good sounding track and with easier access to online distribution channels I think we as music consumers are in for a treat in the coming years.

Yes, making it easier to create and distribute music means there will be a dilution in the talent (there will be a lot of crap out there), but cream rises to the top and with the rise of Web 2.0 services, collaborative websites such as Digg and others will make it easier to identify/share/swap the good stuff among like-minded music lovers.

Cheers!

One, I don't like anything out now.
Two, I hate the music industry and want it to fall so I just do things other than listen to music I don't like that I payed too much for, like read.

These reports always miss out one crucial point... another contributing factor to the decline of cd sales, is the fact that they are so badly mastered.... Compressed, loud pieces of ***** with no dynamic range, kill the enjoyment for me. I havent bought a new or remastered cd for years because of this, and I know I am not alone.

Heres a test for you, load a cd (any cd almost) from this year into nero wave editor, and look at the waveform....it will probably look like a solid block (or close) of a sound wave.

Now,,,, take a cd from say.. 15 years ago and try the same thing....SUPRISE! A wave form with peaks and valleys....... thats dynamic range people :)

The problem is the music sucks... you wouldn't have to download songs singularly if the companies would publish artists that were talented enough to produce a full album of quality material

Oh noes, so their strategy with bundling a bunch of much crappier songs for a high cost doesn't work as well anymore?

This Slashdot comment says it better than I could have...

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227725&cid=18448461

I am surprised so many people continue to buy CD's.

Who buys CD's now, anyway? Even before iTunes, I'd wait for a 'best of' album from a band before I'd buy a CD. I'm the same way now. I'd rather spend some time at a locally owned record store or a pawnshop looking for used CD's instead of Wally World or CD Wherehouse. Import the albums into iTunes, put them onto my iPod, badda-bing, badda-boom.

Something else the article isn't considering is the effect of all the iPods and car players out there. It's been a couple of years since I've seriously listened to a CD or even tuned the radio into a station in my car, and that's only been because I ran off without my iPod. Why would I when I have every song I've even remotely liked at my fingertips?

I'm fairly sure that there's a few people like me in the US of A, since Apple's sold millions of iPods in the past few years. And being cut off from new bands and new music does bother me at times (it doesn't bother me enough to listen to commerical radio's repetitive formats, annoying disc jockey's, and cookie cutter, paint by the numbers groups, albums, singles, etc). RIAA wants to sue everybody and complain about lost albums sales due to piracy, but why aren't they trying to reach me and the others like me? You know, do their frakkin' jobs?!?

Seriously, how hard could it be? Put on a podcast called 'new music buzzcast' and spend some time and money promoting it to let people know about it. Play some clips and maybe even some whole songs from new bands and groups on it. Have a person hosting it to tell people about great groups, albums, songs, etc.

And guess what, the geniuses could have more than one podcast! They can do ones for rap, country and western, hip-hop, blues, metal, etc. My guess is that they can do this for an ass load cheaper than using payola with radio stations.

The RIAA doesn't want to innovate or compete. They want to kill competition and innovation. They want to continue making truckloads of easy money using a corrupt distribution and marketing system that they helped create. When technology started to create an alternative to that system, they didn't want to adapt or compete in it, they tried to use their marketing/economic/social/political/legal power to kill it.

They're losing sales, and wanting to blame it on music pirates and sue grandmothers and eleven year olds. Who they need to blame is themselves for their own greed, laziness, and lack of ambition.

Why doesn't any of these articles ever go into the fact that as a whole people do not have as much disposable income? When the price of everything rising faster than what incomes are people have less and less money to spend on non-necessities. If you can get your music streamed on-line for free or from TV stations and get the exact kind of music you want to listen to, why bother buying cd's to try out? When you do hear a song you like maybe you'll go buy the single from the online store but you aren't going to run out and spend 15 bucks on the CD... not when it costs you 45 dollars to fill your tank.

I may not be correct but it sure seems like a solid reason to me.

Good read. The RIAA knows that singles are what's been selling for the last 10 years. If people were more interested in entire albums, we'd have no need for singles compilations like NOW, etc. Before people were buying singles for $5 because you had the CD cost and they also threw in remixes or B-sides to the CD. Now people are buying just the single song they want. None of the extras.

The consumer has been empowered to pay for what they want. We can pick and choose the best stuff and cut out the crap. And save a little buy not buying what we had no interest in.

The old system is broken no matter how much they try and convince themselves otherwise. Blame piracy all they want but the market is changing and the consumer is always right.

We should first thank the pirates for forcing the RIAA to adopt digital distribution. Then we should thank the online music stores for allowing us to pick and choose what we want. Then thank both of them for helping bring down the RIAA.

Hey boss! Digital sales are up. Way up. But CD sales are down! We're still losing money! Piracy must have gone through the roof!

See the thing is a lot of artists make a lot of crap to fill out an album. At the high point you had to shell out for the whole album to get the one or two songs that were any good. Now you don't have to. I pop onto itunes, buy the songs I want as opposed to the full album. Hopefully it will lead to artists churning out less garbage and more quality music.

Why don't record stores change?

I know there's likely a bunch of legal things... but...

If I owned a mom-and-pop, I'd rip every new CD in the store. When people came in, I'd have some touch screens or some scanners and let people mix their own CD's for immediate burning or copying onto a flash drive.

I think a lot of people want to go into record stores and browse. If they wanted to buy a whole traditional CD, great. If not, buy a few songs or select from pre-composed mixes... and there you go.

Revenge of the 45!

Music industry will have to readjust their earning back from the Vinyl days, when 45's were King! With tapes then withCD's they made buying the whole album a requirement (Cassingles and CD singles were way overpriced)

Their are a few artists I will buy an entire CD no matter what, but the majority of the stuff out now, is singles only.

But they will just blame it on piracy as always, hire some more lawyers, sue more people.

(I'm really not a music person I'm just ranting!)

Gosh! Some people might interpret this to mean that the general public feels that most of the music produced by the recording industry is utter crap.

Maybe this will bring about the heyday of the One-Hit-Wonder. Music studios will be more willing to record and throw out a single of a band rather than working for months and months (years?) to get an entire album together.

Anything that would get them to change their method of inundating the market with hype for a handful of artists sounds good to me.

Could it be that people are no longer interested in paying 14-20$ for 12 songs they don't want and 1 they do, and instead go online and buy the ONE song they actually want?

OMG The nerve of these online shoppers, only paying for what they want. Hey! There's starving record exec's out there that aren't going to make their 4.5 million dollar mansion payment. How do you downloaders sleep at night?!

I stopped buying CD's a couple years ago and instead do track by track in iTunes. The SO still buys CD's occasionally but I actually like them. John Legend is pretty good, so too is Eric Roberson.

And sometimes I might snatch a whole CD off iTunes. I've done that with Lakeside and Incognito.

While CD sales are down, they are still selling millions of CDs for billions of dollars of profit. The labels are still cheating the artists and selling pieces of plastic for a huge profit. No record label has ever gone "into the red." Even with downloading, both legal and illegal, CDs are still selling handsomely. Justin Timberlake, (I know, bad example) had both the top selling CD and most illegally downloaded tracks. Huh? Now add digital singles, ie iTunes, and they have the potential to generate even more income from a new medium.

The music "business" is just that, because they make more profit than they spend. GM and Ford LOST billions of dollars last year... and no one is downloading cars. Those companies are clearly in trouble. They need to take a page from the music business... while tons of people still download songs for free, the music business is still profiting nicely... and embracing new technologies.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing big music complain about how bad their sales are. If no one makes money in music anymore then people will stop making crappy music that "sells" and people that truly love music will just make it because they want to. This could actually be a really great thing for creativity.

To boil this down to it's bare essentials:

80% of songs on albums are crap. And now the public has the choice not to buy it.

Ergo: Music revenue is down.

Welcome to Personal Freedom 101.

I do not do p2p or illegal filesharing and at first I ignored the RIAA lawsuits. But after a friend's computer was damaged by Sony's rootkit cd's and with the explosion of lawsuits, I just decided not to buy any new cd's until some of these asses went bankrupt. If I just have to have it I might buy it used.