mp3s are killing the record industry

[david turgeon <dt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > The big losers are the independents who are not generally availabe in every
> > record store or supermarket. Here it is to much trouble finding and 
> ordering a
> > record compared to just downloading it (and make some greedy 
> filsharingservice
> > owner happy).
>where are the studies & facts to back that claim up?...in fact it was
>independent labels who first embraced file sharing and the mp3 as a
>promotional tool...

indeed...  all studies that i've seen so far focus only on the major 
labels.  & it's understandable that majors would lose money, given that 
their whole business model is based on the lack of musical taste from the 
common people, who are just, after all, looking for "party anthems", 
pre-teen glitz, or more generally songs that comfort them in their 
otherwise mediocre life.  these people have no particular ethics in regards 
to where they get the music.  if it comes to them by radio, TV, MP3, 
they'll take it.  barring all that, & if their pay allows them, they might 
shell out money for a CD or two every once in a while.  so where's the big 
surprise?

this is not to say that downloading is the _only_ reason sales are 
dropping...  but considering that the young IT workforce who had some money 
5 years ago are now back to working in burger joints...  how surprising 
that they don't spend their money on CDs anymore?  on that topic, i wonder 
how many CDs ex-worldcom employees bought last year...

i'm sure the same phenomenon happens with the independents, but on a much 
smaller scale.  it's a different game down here & MP3s might still be more 
beneficial than anything to 'us'.  this doesn't mean we are completely 
immune, particularly if downloading commercial MP3s becomes a banal thing, 
& nobody sees the ethical questions about this anymore.  so in a sense, it 
might only be a matter of years or even months before the indies begin 
noticing the same drops in sales as the majors do.  i'm as MP3-friendly as 
the next guy, but i can't delude myself either.  in the end, discs that are 
less about hits & more about music are likely to suffer the least.

now, i'd be very happy if the upper side of the industry was to be taken 
down by filesharing.  there's this one snippet i saw on a mailing list the 
other day, some artist (who i've never heard of) who is supposedly very 
popular (probably with pre-teen girls)--yet, his label still has to sell 
something like 28 million copies of his CDs _before they make a single 
profit_.  can you imagine how much money they invested in _marketing_ in 
order to shove down this folk down the pre-teen girls' collective 
throat?  what does that say about this kind of business model?  that it 
deserves to die a painful death?  funny, i thought the same.

just my 3.04812 canadian cents...

have a nice day
~ david

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