In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Jenn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Eeyore wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
Most recent RIAA figures show that there has been a significant drop in
retail sales of all physical formats:
http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/...midYrStats.pdf
SACD down by 44.6%
DVD-A down by 35.1%
Vinyl down by 32.3%
CD was down by 14.3%
Note that the list of biggest losers was led by SACD, DVD-A and then
vinyl.
Contrast this with Harry's hype about booming sales of Hi-Rez formats.
IIRC, Harry's point was concerning number of titles available.
The traditional CD format, which amounted for about 99% of all sales,
outperformed the rest.
CD sales went up when Napster and the like were free.
snip
There's no evidence that I'm aware of that any bump in sales was due to
Napster.
Knowing about the sales pop during the Napster days was a matter of having
one's ears open at the time.
Exactly.
Music has been free as long as there has been radio. Recorded music has been
available at terrific discounts from record store prices as long as there
have been home audio recorders.
Of course.
I remember taping radio and LPs back in the
late 50s.
As do I, but in the late 60s and early 70s.
Therefore there's nothing new about people bootlegging popular
music. All Napster did is decrease the time and effort required for
bootleggng, at the cost of having music in a format that might be harder to
listen to when you were away from your PC. There may have also been SQ
issues, some pretty severe.
I think that you've understate this case. The SQ issue is a MAJOR
difference between recording off the radio with a cassette recorder
(what most people had) and a digital download.
A lot of people learned about music that was new to them via MP3 downloads
and exchanges, and ran right out and bought the CDs so they could enjoy the
music bette. Guilty as charged!
As I said, there's no solid evidence that this happened in large numbers.
What is clear is that when you talked to college aged people
(particularly before iTunes and other pay-per-song services) is that
their hard drives were full of illegal tracks, and that they almost
never bought music anymore.
Contrary to some people's apparent belief, college folks don't define the
market for music. College students are only a minority of all people who buy
music.
Last I looked, the 10-24 demographic was the largest segment of the
recorded music buying population.
They often don't have a lot of disposable income.
No kidding, but this doesn't entitle them to steal music, of course.