Re: [microsound] music sales down 15.8%

[Tim Kugel <guitardo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

thank you Kerry

I live with a woman who used to work in the PR office for the RIAA. Lord she
hated it. But you could wear jeans...etc.   We often have to work against our
own interests here in this world (she was also less political when we met). Now
that everyone there she knew has been fired - or left - I can say more about all
that mess. Napster "the case" caused the RIAA to hire about 75 lawyers or
something like that. My last post was shorthand. The deeper story is, starting
in the mid 90s the RIAA had a bunch of techies and in cooperation with out
sources and the big 5, there was a big push to try to reach consensus on how to
go online. They could see it coming. But naturally no consensus. Greed in a
word. Vertical conflicts.

That 20% figure is approximate but it is actually a slope that began in 1997 I
think (you could check Billboard). [Sickeningly enough, I also once was a sort
of buddy with Bill Holland, a long time local jazz/blues musician who was
Washington Bureau Chief for Billboard. He often rallied against "Hillary," and
was banished. So I heard it from a few P.O.V.s.]

My take was of course, that's the fab marketplace.

However the lobbying, focus groups, intense piracy enforcement work, and PR
efforts all failed because people want to get it all free [wish I'd been in
those focus groups]. Look at our oil grab and the general public reaction to it.
It is a mode of the fractured American way of life. To paraphrase a line from a
book I read on Tammany Hall, "If your brother had a piece of land, say, and you
were in a position to tell him that the city was going to pay a lot to build a
bridge and was looking for a piece of land...well? wouldn't YOU?"

hey no need to paraphrase - it is on the web naturally!
http://www.uhb.fr/faulkner/ny/plunkitt.htm

"There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the
whole thing by sayin': "I seen my opportunities and I took'em."

Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city,
and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm
tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a
certain place.

I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up
all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or
that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land,
which nobody cared particular for before.

Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a
profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well,
that's honest graft.

Or, supposin' it's a new bridge they're goin' to build. I get tipped
off and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for
approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more
money in the bank.

Wouldn't you? It's just like lookin' ahead in Wall Street or in the
coffee or cotton market. It's honest graft, and I'm lookin' for it
every day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I've got a good
lot of it, too."

that's human nature, he's saying.

Kerry Uchida wrote:

> on 9/3/03 4:24 PM, Glenn Folkvord (Hyperion Media) at glenn@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Tim Kugel" <guitardo@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> >
> >> this is after like 3+ years of such 20% declines...
> >
> > So after 5 years of 20% declines, it will be a 100% decline in total, which
> > means in two years no records will be sold at all? :-))
> >
> > glenn
>
> no that's not how depricaition works.
>
> %20 of 100,000 = 80,000
> 20% of 80,000 = 64,000
> 20% of 64,000 = 51,200
>
> etc
>
> Kerry
>
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