4 ms·

I don't think the problem is piracy. I think the "problem" stems from the huge amount of good quality cheap content we have available. I have around 1 hour of

I don't think the problem is piracy. I think the "problem" stems from the huge amount of good quality cheap content we have available. I have around 1 hour of free time each weekday to spend on entertainment. I have so many cheap sources of content, costing well under $1/hr, vying for my time. All available on demand. Content decays very slowly. A good show from the 90's is still worth watching today. Good music from the 80's and 90's is still worth listening to today. I just spent the last 3 months of my small amount of free time re-watching Friends. For the 2 months before that it was playing dota and watching starcraft2 videos on youtube.

coldtea 11y ago
That's part of it -- music today competes with YouTube, the internet, games, social media, mobile, tv series, 100+ channels, etc. Most teenagers -- the de facto pop music consumers -- don't care for music the way teenagers in decades without all these did, when a new album was a window to another world. But music sales have started declining even before all those become prevalent -- youtube, social media, mobile, all either began or become popular circa 2005. In 1997-2005, it was mostly the "free" downloads that did music sales in. Now it's a combination of these and of all the other stuff competing for people's attention and winning it.