4 ms·

And it's totally a coincidence that the bottom has fallen out of the record industry since Napster.

rgoddard 16y ago
This is more due to the shift from buying albums to buying singles. This shift is made possible by digital distributions. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/the-death-of-the-album-in-handy-graph-form.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/the-death-of...
mmorris 16y ago
While I don't doubt that the increased ease and frequency of piracy has had an impact on the bottom line of the recording industry, I believe the decline of the industry as a whole has much more to do with the increased capabilities of home computers and the spread of broadband Internet access. The big recording companies provide a few main services to artists: production, distribution, and promotion. For years they kept CD prices artificially high because there weren't alternatives for most people (for artists to create albums or for consumers to obtain music). Once everyone could record and burn CDs expensive production studios became much less valuable, and broadband Internet makes distribution nearly free (relatively, at least). Simultaneously, radio has become a much less important means of promotion, so the connections that the recording companies had in that arena become much less valuable. In other words, the big record companies just don't offer the value they used to - either to artists or to consumers. And once the value your company offers disappears, so should your company (unfortunately this usually happens very slowly, with the company(/ies) trying everything to avoid extinction). So was it a coincidence that this all happened at around the time that Napster took off? I don't think so, I think there were just common causes that led to both results.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Right, because since the internet took off, huge, mass-media publicized "artists" have fallen to the wayside and been replaced with a wider variety of niche acts, many of whom weren't signed to labels at all? No. The labels aren't suffering because they have to compete with independent artists, they're suffering because they have to compete with the Pirate Bay and friends.
  - sophacles 16y ago
    Are you aware that the world is not binary?
    - philwelch 16y ago
      Very much so, as a matter of fact. Still, widely available piracy of major-label music has diminished record sales to a far greater degree than competition from independent artists. If the major-label hegemony was truly broken, we wouldn't see these mass-market pop stars on major labels get the publicity and record sales (compared to indie artists) that they do, nor would the top touring bands by major revenue continue to be major-label acts. On the contrary, major labels continue to be successful at choosing and promoting which acts achieve popularity and success--they are just less able to share in that success themselves.
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  The price of CDs were not "artificially high." That's copyrighted material. The copyright holder is supposed to have a monopoly on it. That means that they get to charge whatever they think the market will bear, not what you think is fair or the cost of production + x%. There were at least a few labels like Dischord that charged lower prices, but the masses didn't want that music. They wanted major label stars with lots of marketing behind them. If the copyright holders still had the ability to enforce copyright, the fact that internet distribution is cheap wouldn't mean anything, except that they would be able to charge less and still turn a profit. The real problem with the internet for them is that it made piracy on a massive scale easily accessible. You don't have to respect their copyright anymore. I'm kinda old now and don't follow pop music that closely anymore, but as far as I know the masses still want their top 40 pop music recorded by heavily marketed stars, not some dude on an indie label or no label at all who used his laptop as a recording studio. So the fact that said dude has an easier time now is irrelevant, except to the minority of people who are interested in hearing/recording that kind of thing.
baddox 16y ago
The bottom of the horse-drawn trailer business has fallen out since industrialization. New technology can make existing products worth less. The horse-drawn trailer industry didn't rely on legislation to keep its newly-obsolete business running—they either modified their product or died out.
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  The music industry always relied on intellectual property legislation, as do lots of businesses - including the automotive industry that replaced horsed-drawn trailers (they had and still have lots of patents). It's just not being enforced now. More generally, all businesses rely on legislation to keep their property from being stolen, whether that property is intellectual or physical. If those laws were widely ignored, it would be hard to do any kind of business.
  - baddox 16y ago
    Not true. The music industry used to rely on the fact that only a large conglomeration like themselves could afford to print vinyls, cassettes, and compact discs as well as distribute them nationally and internationally. The Information Age has changed that, and their only hope for remaining solvent (other than actually adapting their business model like most other businesses) is to lobby governments and harass downloaders. Also, you should really read up on copyright infringement legislation—it's absolutely nothing like theft. It's a completely separate legal notion.
chc 16y ago
Newspapers died at pretty much the same time. Also piracy?
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  No. Newspapers died because of competition from the internet, but since there was little or no copyright violation involved it wasn't piracy.
- robryan 16y ago
  Newspapers take out the breaking the law step by providing all their content online. I think if newspapers collectively as an industry refused to do this then their content would be pirated. I think a key difference is that each newspaper has something slightly different to offer, the same stories are written different in each. Whereas people are only interested in a song by one artist generally not the same song sung by many different artists. The point being that you would think that music subscription services would be even less successful than written content ones because written content on the same thing can come from many different angles and styles, music doesn't share that trait so it's easy for a pirate bay ect to provide everything a subscription service would.
scelerat 16y ago
The bottom has dropped out of everything since Napster, since Napster's rise coincided with the availability of high-speed internet access. The internet is an entertainment and information source, and all traditional entertainment and information sources have seen a decline. There's more supply out there. Demand for a specific commodity goes down because if it. It's really basic, and only peripherally related to piracy. Ask around: I'll bet you find close to 100% of your peers say if their TV watching habits have changed in the past ten years, hours in front of the set have only gone down. Extrapolate.

This is more due to the shift from buying albums to buying singles. This shift is made possible by digital distributions. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/the-death-of-the-album-in-handy-graph-form.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/the-death-of...

mmorris 16y ago

While I don't doubt that the increased ease and frequency of piracy has had an impact on the bottom line of the recording industry, I believe the decline of the industry as a whole has much more to do with the increased capabilities of home computers and the spread of broadband Internet access. The big recording companies provide a few main services to artists: production, distribution, and promotion. For years they kept CD prices artificially high because there weren't alternatives for most people (for artists to create albums or for consumers to obtain music). Once everyone could record and burn CDs expensive production studios became much less valuable, and broadband Internet makes distribution nearly free (relatively, at least). Simultaneously, radio has become a much less important means of promotion, so the connections that the recording companies had in that arena become much less valuable. In other words, the big record companies just don't offer the value they used to - either to artists or to consumers. And once the value your company offers disappears, so should your company (unfortunately this usually happens very slowly, with the company(/ies) trying everything to avoid extinction). So was it a coincidence that this all happened at around the time that Napster took off? I don't think so, I think there were just common causes that led to both results.

philwelch 16y ago
Right, because since the internet took off, huge, mass-media publicized "artists" have fallen to the wayside and been replaced with a wider variety of niche acts, many of whom weren't signed to labels at all? No. The labels aren't suffering because they have to compete with independent artists, they're suffering because they have to compete with the Pirate Bay and friends.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Are you aware that the world is not binary?
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Very much so, as a matter of fact. Still, widely available piracy of major-label music has diminished record sales to a far greater degree than competition from independent artists. If the major-label hegemony was truly broken, we wouldn't see these mass-market pop stars on major labels get the publicity and record sales (compared to indie artists) that they do, nor would the top touring bands by major revenue continue to be major-label acts. On the contrary, major labels continue to be successful at choosing and promoting which acts achieve popularity and success--they are just less able to share in that success themselves.
rsheridan6 16y ago
The price of CDs were not "artificially high." That's copyrighted material. The copyright holder is supposed to have a monopoly on it. That means that they get to charge whatever they think the market will bear, not what you think is fair or the cost of production + x%. There were at least a few labels like Dischord that charged lower prices, but the masses didn't want that music. They wanted major label stars with lots of marketing behind them. If the copyright holders still had the ability to enforce copyright, the fact that internet distribution is cheap wouldn't mean anything, except that they would be able to charge less and still turn a profit. The real problem with the internet for them is that it made piracy on a massive scale easily accessible. You don't have to respect their copyright anymore. I'm kinda old now and don't follow pop music that closely anymore, but as far as I know the masses still want their top 40 pop music recorded by heavily marketed stars, not some dude on an indie label or no label at all who used his laptop as a recording studio. So the fact that said dude has an easier time now is irrelevant, except to the minority of people who are interested in hearing/recording that kind of thing.

baddox 16y ago

The bottom of the horse-drawn trailer business has fallen out since industrialization. New technology can make existing products worth less. The horse-drawn trailer industry didn't rely on legislation to keep its newly-obsolete business running—they either modified their product or died out.

rsheridan6 16y ago
The music industry always relied on intellectual property legislation, as do lots of businesses - including the automotive industry that replaced horsed-drawn trailers (they had and still have lots of patents). It's just not being enforced now. More generally, all businesses rely on legislation to keep their property from being stolen, whether that property is intellectual or physical. If those laws were widely ignored, it would be hard to do any kind of business.
- baddox 16y ago
  Not true. The music industry used to rely on the fact that only a large conglomeration like themselves could afford to print vinyls, cassettes, and compact discs as well as distribute them nationally and internationally. The Information Age has changed that, and their only hope for remaining solvent (other than actually adapting their business model like most other businesses) is to lobby governments and harass downloaders. Also, you should really read up on copyright infringement legislation—it's absolutely nothing like theft. It's a completely separate legal notion.

chc 16y ago

Newspapers died at pretty much the same time. Also piracy?

rsheridan6 16y ago
No. Newspapers died because of competition from the internet, but since there was little or no copyright violation involved it wasn't piracy.
robryan 16y ago
Newspapers take out the breaking the law step by providing all their content online. I think if newspapers collectively as an industry refused to do this then their content would be pirated. I think a key difference is that each newspaper has something slightly different to offer, the same stories are written different in each. Whereas people are only interested in a song by one artist generally not the same song sung by many different artists. The point being that you would think that music subscription services would be even less successful than written content ones because written content on the same thing can come from many different angles and styles, music doesn't share that trait so it's easy for a pirate bay ect to provide everything a subscription service would.

scelerat 16y ago

The bottom has dropped out of everything since Napster, since Napster's rise coincided with the availability of high-speed internet access. The internet is an entertainment and information source, and all traditional entertainment and information sources have seen a decline. There's more supply out there. Demand for a specific commodity goes down because if it. It's really basic, and only peripherally related to piracy. Ask around: I'll bet you find close to 100% of your peers say if their TV watching habits have changed in the past ten years, hours in front of the set have only gone down. Extrapolate.