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Do you still pay for music?
- Thread starter JeffVanter
- Start date
My personal opinion (yeah, valid or not we all have those) is that a lot of people in the music industry have lost sight of the importance and function of a good promoter. Bill Graham could pack a stadium with 2 or 3 top bands and another 3 lesser but still great supporting bands for "A Day On The Green" event several times a season back in the day. That method of "Bundling" was a great way of expanding exposure and potential record sales for the lesser bands.
If you fast forward to 2014 one way you could do that "Bundling" from a CD standpoint is to bundle some of the lesser know bands with the more popular band sales. So, you could set it up such that if I buy any full CD enclosed in that CD case is a coupon for 3 free songs or a bonus CD featuring a different but similar band or bands (kind of a physical version of the typical Amazon - if you like that artist you may also like this artist). If I really like those songs I'll probably end up buying the rest of their albums as well, each of which would also include a bonus CD or coupon to other artists, which in turn might lead to even more sales.
Right now about the only way I get exposed to new music is on the radio in my car (which half the time is on a classic rock station so really doesn't drive new music sales) or by watching movies that have a noticeable sound track that catches my interest or on Pandora where they do a constant push of similar artists to the one you selected.
Pandora more than any other current forum has led me to purchase more CDs that I wouldn't have normally purchased. As a CD seller maybe you could use a less virtual method of Pandora's "bundling" to accomplish something similar.
For the record I'm not a huge iTunes fan. My computer and iPad and iPhone aren't connected to my home or car stereo system beyond a normal Bluetooth link so I don't invest a lot of time or energy in building up a virtual music library. I have an extensive tangible music collection with media that spans all the way from the early 1900's 78rpm victrola recordings to 45 records and LPs and current CDs (sorry, no 8 tracks here). I figure if I physically own it I can do whatever I want with it.
If you like pandora I'd highly suggest lastfm.com
very similar but lastfm gives you access to unsigned and underground music in any genre. pandora does not have that.
5 of the top ten bands I listen to I discovered via lastfm and three of them have under 2000 likes on facebook. not big time by any means.
I buy all the music I can.
I have a two exceptions:
1) The artist is over seas and there is no real way to purchase their music here. (this bands are not on the American side of iTunes, etc.) I do exhaust all outlets before hand. and then I still just end up with the music, I would like some of the booklets and extras that come with the CD.
2) The album/CD is out of print and can not be purchased, period. (Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction: Tattooed Beat Messiah for example). Though I had purchased the cassette back in the 80's and still have it. It sounds like a 30 year old cassette. You can only by a remaster of one song legally.
Including goodies with the CD will help, in my opinion. I love that stuff.
That is how Yasushi Akimoto did with AKB48. He is partially responsible for Japan passing the U.S. in music sales last year (80% were on a physical medium such as CD's). He includes passes to handshake events, ballot to vote for the member's elections, etc with the CD. Items the fans really want and have to buy the CD to get. There have been news stories in Japan of fans that purchase 10 - 20 copies of the same CD to get the ballots for the membership election.
The man is a genius when it comes to making money..
I have a two exceptions:
1) The artist is over seas and there is no real way to purchase their music here. (this bands are not on the American side of iTunes, etc.) I do exhaust all outlets before hand. and then I still just end up with the music, I would like some of the booklets and extras that come with the CD.
2) The album/CD is out of print and can not be purchased, period. (Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction: Tattooed Beat Messiah for example). Though I had purchased the cassette back in the 80's and still have it. It sounds like a 30 year old cassette. You can only by a remaster of one song legally.
Including goodies with the CD will help, in my opinion. I love that stuff.
That is how Yasushi Akimoto did with AKB48. He is partially responsible for Japan passing the U.S. in music sales last year (80% were on a physical medium such as CD's). He includes passes to handshake events, ballot to vote for the member's elections, etc with the CD. Items the fans really want and have to buy the CD to get. There have been news stories in Japan of fans that purchase 10 - 20 copies of the same CD to get the ballots for the membership election.
The man is a genius when it comes to making money..
I typically only buy new releases these days. I don't download anything off torrents / p2p but I will go to people that I know and take what I want from their music collection or go to the library and rip CDs. The best way to support an artist is to see them live and tell your friends about them.
If you're downloading copyrighted tracks from illicit sources (like torrents) and saving them to your computer, then that's theft, plain and simple. There is no other way to describe it.
If you're just streaming music from one of the major content providers like Youtube, then your culpability is really no different from radio listeners in the past. The real thieves there are the content streamers, like Google (via YouTube), who pay a tiny fraction of the royalties they should while profiting from all of the advertising revenue.
In the last few years, Google has finally negotiated royalty agreements with major music publishers (and acquired RightsFlow to help with their accounting), but that only accounts for songwriter/publisher royalties. Performing artist royalties are still negotiated on a per-label basis, and usually then only for their "official" channels.
If you are an independent artist/performer and your content gets uploaded by a 3rd party to YouTube, you see no revenue at all.
With respect to online streaming of recordings, the vast majority of the money right now being coughed up goes to music publishers and a few large record labels.
Unless the artist is offering free tracks, you should always pay for music if the music is for sale and you want it.
Otherwise, you're a tool who just stole something.
Otherwise, you're a tool who just stole something.
Indeed. Just because it is easy to do and and impossible to police, doesnt change it from stealing. More like lazy looting.
I still buy music. I just like having a hard-copy. *shrug*
I rarely look at the liner notes. Maybe when I first get it or when I'm feeling nostalgic, but that's about it.
A sticker from the band would be cool though. I like stickers. I also like posters... Black and white with no words. If a band included a "free" poster of a live show (definitely live) that was black and white and had nothing written on it, that would rule.
I've also bought the "limited releases" from a couple bands. Got a signed Dinosaur Jr poster when I bought the limited release of Farm. Got a Slayer poster when I bought the limited release of World Painted Blood. That stuff is kinda fun, but only if it's a bonus and not much more money.
I rarely look at the liner notes. Maybe when I first get it or when I'm feeling nostalgic, but that's about it.
A sticker from the band would be cool though. I like stickers. I also like posters... Black and white with no words. If a band included a "free" poster of a live show (definitely live) that was black and white and had nothing written on it, that would rule.
I've also bought the "limited releases" from a couple bands. Got a signed Dinosaur Jr poster when I bought the limited release of Farm. Got a Slayer poster when I bought the limited release of World Painted Blood. That stuff is kinda fun, but only if it's a bonus and not much more money.
How will I know if I like something if I don't listen to it first? I torrent albums all the time. However, I also spend more money on music/concerts/merch/etc. than anyone I know. I try to buy a few CD's and records a month as well as possibly buying a digital copy via websites such as bandcamp. I try to avoid iTunes due to lesser audio quality (even though they have stepped it up to 256 kbps...).
I'm a HUGE music fan so I am constantly scouring the internet trying to find my near-future flavour of the week. I'm 19 so I feel like I can accurately represent the "young" crowd. I'm proud to say that most of my friends still buy music and actually have an appreciation for higher quality music and the physical copy of the album. Is there anything better than owning a physical copy of an album and flipping through the liner notes and soaking in the artwork? Not in my mind, that's for sure.
A lot of bands are giving away their music free now anyways because they realize the real fans will end up supporting them somehow whether it be seeing them live, buying merch, and even buying a physical copy of the album later down the road. Also, A LOT of the music I like is difficult to find in stores so I'll need something to tie me over while I anxiously wait for a local record store to get it in stock.
Anyways, I could talk about this all day but I'm going to stop now. Have a great night folks!
I'm a HUGE music fan so I am constantly scouring the internet trying to find my near-future flavour of the week. I'm 19 so I feel like I can accurately represent the "young" crowd. I'm proud to say that most of my friends still buy music and actually have an appreciation for higher quality music and the physical copy of the album. Is there anything better than owning a physical copy of an album and flipping through the liner notes and soaking in the artwork? Not in my mind, that's for sure.
A lot of bands are giving away their music free now anyways because they realize the real fans will end up supporting them somehow whether it be seeing them live, buying merch, and even buying a physical copy of the album later down the road. Also, A LOT of the music I like is difficult to find in stores so I'll need something to tie me over while I anxiously wait for a local record store to get it in stock.
Anyways, I could talk about this all day but I'm going to stop now. Have a great night folks!
As I grow older and (hopefully) richer, I plan on expanding my vinyl collection. Right now, paying for all the music I listen to is just not something I can afford, but I do muster an effort to purchase some of the albums I really enjoy.
Record sales were so much higher back then. It's dramatically dropped since the use of he internet. It continues to drop.
My friend buys on average 10 CDs every month. He's also rich, and maybe it has to do with the economy? If people make more money and jobs become easier to get in the future, maybe they will rise? The number of records sold each year that is.
Exactly. The "ripping" he was describing (radio to tape) was no good. Radio is a lo-fidelity source in the first place; combined with tape losses and the complexity of the equipment/setup basically relegated this type of thing to a few. No one really saw this approach as a way to avoid paying for music (although copying tapes was indeed fairly ubiquitous, but you were still limited to the tapes your friends happened to have, as well as generation loss, which basically limited the abuse.)
And if you think the industry wasn't concerned about it even back then, you're off your rocker. Read up on the history of the DAT format (which meant the "fidelity" limitations of the earlier mechanisms were now gone) and the hurdles the industry put on that technology due only to the potential for abuse.
By contrast, today anyone with a computer (i.e., everyone) can get CD-quality rips of copyrighted music for free, using free software, anonymously. No special equipment is required, and just about any idiot can do it within minutes. In fact, it's often easier to grab music this way than entering payment information and downloading tracks legitimately from sites like Amazon.
The convenience, first-rate audio fidelity, and anonymity all make this a first-rate alternative to paying for music from a legitimate store, if you have no morals.
Furthermore, unlicensed usage of music on streaming platforms like YouTube has skyrocketed. Users upload more than 100 hours of video every minute (and growing), and very little is done to make sure the "video" content complies with copyright law, other than a legal notice/warning shown to uploaders. It's usually up to copyright owners to perform their own "policing" by scanning YouTube, and they have little power to stop the abuse. They can file a request with YouTube/Google to take content down, but if you have ever done this you would see the hurdles involved, including the threats of lawsuit from Google.
Google's policy boils down to: After filing a claim with us, if we discover you are not the exclusive copyright owner, we will sue your pants off. Even if you ARE the exclusive copyright owner, we may still sue your pants off, because the video may still be considered "fair usage", and if we get it declared as such in court, then we will sue you for all of our corporate legal expenses. In other words, don't bother us unless you have a team of lawyers working for you. We're busy making too much money off of your copyrighted music.
The Internet has dramatically increased the scale of non-royalty music usage. Anyone who claims otherwise has their head buried in the sand.
As a kid, I am truly disgusted in how my peers go about getting their music. Downloading from YouTube into their phones, never paying for anything.
My rule is that if I want to hear an album, I download it from a site called www.what.cd, in high quality. If I like it, I buy it in vinyl, CD, donate to the artist, ect.
If I don't like it? It gets deleted, no hard feelings to the artist.
My rule is that if I want to hear an album, I download it from a site called www.what.cd, in high quality. If I like it, I buy it in vinyl, CD, donate to the artist, ect.
If I don't like it? It gets deleted, no hard feelings to the artist.
