Elbows Music Blog Community

Tell that to the guy who just bought a MacBook Pro yesterday!

not that i know, but they had a nice line in ebooks too, including ones that are college orientated. now that's a money-saver.

the unavailability of drm-free tracks argument gets weaker and weaker each day. eMusic has covered most indie labels (and for cheap!) for a while now, and Amazon has all that, plus Universal & EMI. You hear DRM and audio quality bandied around a lot as far as reasons not to pay for downloads, but you certainly didn't see a drop in torrent downloads when Amazon stepped up and offered high-quality, DRM-free music.. in reality, it's just an excuse - people, for the most part, would simply rather not pay for music if they don't have to.

I nearly exclusively used OiNK for releases that were either out-of-print or ridiculously overpriced because of their availability. I also found it useful for foreign releases that I would not be able to listen to unless I imported 10 tracks for $100.



that being said, "hot" new releases are always gong to be abundant on the internet. from the countless amount of music forums to the linear music blogs that get off on posting full albums, most are a click away (or a simple .RAR search on google). it will make things less convenient but people will grow accustomed to the new format quite shortly. I personally never found myself downloading any "top 100" torrents primary because of its availability elsewhere and the fact that I, along with many others here, already had it in different form. I am just upset that many will be deprived of "lost classics" that are otherwise unobtainable.



funny thing is OiNK will probably have a replacement by the end of November. if not, Soulseek will likely thrive again until one does so. the internet is so large and niche-y that it is impossible to halt file sharing. the fact that the British police classified OiNK as a "pay site where users pay a subscription fee" basically contradicts their urge to make such a grandiose statement. they will lock up and fine the admin and possibly, at worst, a few of the chief uploaders. while such scare tactics may be effective toward new users, I doubt it will have any longing effect. if a two year investigation results in facts that are THAT shaky, I doubt that music torrent sites are the largest blots on their radar.



sure, RIP. but there are too many bold people effected by this for hopes of a "copyright-free web" to be realistic. fun story though.

btw, open or semi open p2p is over. Now it's anon p2p. The transition is pretty much like centralized p2p to distributed p2p in the late 90's. 



ultimately, the entire pop music library will be online permanently in less than 3 years.



It's a waste of time arguing about oink. Blogger strategy should be adjusted to technological reality, not some idiot from big labels. (ie. what happens if all music are available online. what role can bloggers play)

The most important role of p2p :



- it introduces music that is not available in physical channel. (they can't calculate this) It fatten the long tail.



- it circumvents traditional TV/radio/magazine as promoter of music.



who cares if it reduces or increases the top 40 albums sale. Without P2p there is no sufjan steven or others blog band (proof: they are nowhere to be seen once p2p crowd and the blog move on.)

Posted by: scottp4k

Posted by: sean gramophone

Posted by: BillRocksCleveland

but I've never seen statistics to validate the contentions that downloaders buy after they try. 

 

Um, okay, here's some stats. From Canada's equivalent of the RIAA. Canada, incidentally, is one of the most wired countries on the planet (especially among youth).

Al that says is that 75% of respondents have bought a track after downloading first. It doesn't say how often they do it; in fact, it says only 21% of P2P users have then gone on to buy music 10 or more times, which is pathetic (no idea if that's 10 times ever, in a year, or whatever, since this summation of the report doesn't tell me and I'm not bothering with that pdf). Furthermore, that means a full quarter of Canadian music listeners never buy things they p2p, which is startling. And those most willing to simply steal and not buy are teens, which is problematic in itself.

Also, only 28% of respondents could say they bought more music than a year ago, which is also sad. These stats don't exactly seem rosy, despite the best intentions of the reporter who cherrypicked them and the potential biases of their sources (people are being asked to make honest admissions about their buying/stealing/borrowing habits, which I'd guess tilts the results favorably toward "borrowing" and "buying")

 Yeah, I agree. The industry is fucked up. But to me it's at least suggestive that the numbers aren't as skewed as people upthread were guesstimating. "For ever [2 purchasers] there are 50 who never buy anything..."

It would be illuminating to see similar statistics from the 1980s. What proportion of young people bought albums at that time? I wouldn't be surprised if 30% never bought anything.

dj/rupture weighs in. he doesn't really have any conclusions, though, although he kind of implicitly makes the case that OiNK is pretty much what the neverneverland subscription-based licensed, legal, universal music library should look like.

Also, I would posit that the allure of OiNK was the velvet-rope-insiderness of it and their demand for "only the best" quality mp3 uploads—as well as operating the outside the law for mere mortals ("we don't need no steenking badges!").



I have also referred to this in the past as The Culture of Pre-Release...you have to get the secret handshake to get in.



ugh.

billrockscleveland is so otm it isn't funny. there is so much bending over backwards justification going on all over the internet, you'd think a netwide yoga symposium had broken out.



i also like how everyone invokes the spectre of the riaa every time they're confronted with actually PAYING FOR RECORDED MUSIC. because of course you only download and don't buy major-label stuff, right? right.

and also, it should be pointed out that the touring-music industry is not exactly in optimum health right now, either. it ain't all piles of money and roses out there.

music is getting its ass handed to it by films/dvds, video games, and tv-- all of which people value enough to own and pay for. Music is in a serious decline, and this idea that its worth = $0 is one of the underlining causes. edit: or, at the very least, one of the most telling results. probably a bit of both though.

Posted by: maura



i also like how everyone invokes the spectre of the riaa every time they're confronted with actually PAYING FOR RECORDED MUSIC. because of course you only download and don't buy major-label stuff, right? right.

The P2P network to which I belong doesn't allow RIAA stuff.  So I either preview the stuff on AOL, or get a really good feeling, or just don't bother with it.  Hate to have those sorts of blinders, but life is life and CDs are $18.99.

And I've no doubt there are people who don't buy music, and people who don't buy music suck.  I can't be responsible for others' behavior, and obviously we're talking a huge mass of illegal activity, but it's a system that works for me as a fan and as a consumer.

Posted by: scottp4kmusic is getting its ass handed to it by films/dvds, video games, and tv-- all of which people value enough to own and pay for. Music is in a serious decline, and this idea that its worth = $0 is one of the underlining causes. edit: or, at the very least, one of the most telling results. probably a bit of both though.

 

If music has no value, none of us would be here talking, let alone trading advert tips.

Posted by: scottp4kmusic is getting its ass handed to it by films/dvds, video games, and tv-- all of which people value enough to own and pay for. Music is in a serious decline, and this idea that its worth = $0 is one of the underlining causes. edit: or, at the very least, one of the most telling results. probably a bit of both though.

not totally sure i can sign off on this connection completely; i mean i think it's a matter of ease and availablity with music.   i mean, it's certainly possible to rip a DVD or video game (with the latter, I'm assuming it's possible), but it's not as easy or institutionally-sanctioned as ripping CDs.  i mean, the DVD player on my mac doesn't give me the "Import" option, if you know what I mean, and television operates on a much more ephemeral mode of transmission, and it's subscription-based. 

however, i totally agree with you that kids are growing up thinking that music has less "value".  also, i think the worth it's gained now with them is a "use" worth instead of a "poetic" worth.  like, i think it's pretty common for the average bittorrent user to go and find so-and-so's greatest hits on some random bittorrent site (or acc. to my students, Limewire) because they want to play it at their house party during Homecoming weekend. 

in a way, music's turning into digital cable if anything, in terms of the mode of transmission.  available 24 hours a day, largely a la carte, requiring a 700 dollar receiver and a 50 dollar-a-month cable bill.

 

 

squashed, you are going to make a great member of the media elite in five years or so

you know what i love about elbo.ws?  this thread discussing the future of the music biz and whatever is sandwiched nicely between an elbo.ws ranking algorithm discussion and a link exchange open enrollment.







the future's so bright, i gotta wear shades

Posted by: adam_beggars



the future's so bright, i gotta wear shades

As long as you pay for those shades, motherfucker. 

This is gonna be like when they attack EZarchive. The internet simply re-route and re-implement.



count down, 2 years until everything is permanently online.

It seems the  "no excusers" (not here as much as in  general) have never posted a song that wasn't cleared with the artist or ever accepted a mixtape.



cause if they're going to make it black and white.....then it's illegality not quantity***.



I'm definitely conflicted...and I definitely want bands to get real paid....I'd also love to see another pattern emerge....I like Bond's ideas here....http://elbo.ws/vanilla/comments.php?DiscussionID=1949&page=2#Item_8



I also second the catbird opinion that download doesn't equate to one less purchase, it is usually amounts to 1+ listen.  A lot of bands have gotten 12 bucks from me because I trial-ran their album.....I know it may not be the norm....but could it be?



I also speed, take things from the bulk bin (especially sesame sticks....mmmmm), i've stolen cable, and one time I cast the first stone.



Download hating/arresting will not sell more records.....And you can cast ballots/judgments/angry comments but I assert that we have no choice but to find a better way....



For the record....I don't buy wall art (wish I could) or TV (wouldn't if I had the chance) .....Netflix is cool (See aforementioned Bond comments.)



***edited for snarkiness

I do think that the whole "fragmentation of consumer's time/money" thing is taking much more of a toll on the industry than everyone thinks. Sure, I do think that file-trading/P2P has hurt the industry, but I think it's a really bad assumption to think that the complete dismantling (were it even possible) of the whole file-trading system would work as a panacea for the industry's ailments. I honestly don't think that 2000 downloads of an album on Oink equates to 2000 lost sales of an album-- I think that moreso, it simply equates to 2000 people hearing the album that otherwise wouldn't have done. Now that Oink is gone, all those kids are not suddenly going to go out and drop $15 for that new John Vanderslice CD because now that's the only way they can get it -- they're just going to go without it. And that doesn't seem like it benefits *anyone*. I mean, which is better? Selling 1000 CDs and having 1000 people hear your music, or selling 1000 CDs, but having 3000 people hear your music? To the accountant, it doesn't matter; bottom line is 1000 CDs sold. But what about to the artist, or, for that matter, to *anyone* who has an interest in that artist's career in the long term (manager, label, booking agent... the list goes on)?

This is exactly what I think, too. In fact, I agree with it so much I'm not even going to abbreviate the phrase "on the money."

Not to go all squashed on you, but -- from the New York Times about a month ago:

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/whats-the-future-of-the-music-industry-a-freakonomics-quorum/



Koleman Strumpf, professor of business economics at the University of Kansas Business School whose papers include “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales”:

It is important to remember that sales downturns are not atypical in the music business, and that investors remain interested in selling records. The current situation closely mirrors the post-disco bust in the early 1980s. Specifically, real revenues fell by the same percentage during the years 1979 to 1985 and 1999 to 2006. The record industry also continues to generate profits and attract interest from investors. For example, a private equity firm just last month completed a ?3 billion takeover of EMI, and an investment group purchased the Warner Music Group in 2004 for $2.6 billion.

Investors seek out high returns, and these large investments suggest that many believe that they can make money in the record business. It also implies that the industry is still profitable. While profit data can be hard to come by, we get a small window from Warner, the only publicly traded standalone record company in the U.S., which enjoyed operating margins of 7 percent and 10 percent from its recorded music segments in 2005 and 2006.

As for the future, I am dubious about making forecasts. Much will depend on the choices the major labels make on key issues (will they run experiments to determine the optimal pricing of digital downloads?) and the arrival of still-unforeseen technologies (which could allow labels to more cheaply distribute music, or lead to new forms of piracy). At the same time, I reject the argument that recorded music is close to death, simply because the financial incentives to create music have never been particularly high. In 2005, less than one in five albums were released on a major label, and even among those releases, fewer than one in fifteen went gold (the usual measure of record success). With such daunting odds, recording an album may have seemed like a pointless task. But in that year, nearly 44,000 albums were released — enough to provide almost three consecutive years of listening. Regardless of what happens to companies that produce and distribute music, I am sure that recorded music will continue to be made.

Also, credit -- I got to this by following links from Ryan Catbird's CMJ "Talk to the Kids on MySpace" piece.

 

Posted by: SongbyToadAnd Ryan is absolutely right about what seems to be a grim determination to completely alienate every last customer on behalf of the recording industry.  Depressing to watch.  But not much more so than people squirming about trying to justify paying nothing for music.  It's the same greed, just directed somewhere slightly different.

 i agree with every point made in this paragraph.

...

Yeah, Idolator's coverage on this on has been good.  And that fire quote was a great find.