Ok, then what’s causing it? Its not a shrinking economy, its MUCH larger then that.
I work as a publisher in the music industry, the bottom line is that CD sales are LOW, lower then ever and continuing to shrink at alarming rates. If research concludes that piracy & downloads aren’t to blame then the only other cause is that people aren’t listening to music as much. But the popularity of the iPod contradicts that. So what’s your conclusion?
I think you're the victim of fallacious logic. For one, piracy & downloads aren't the same thing. And I'd say the popularity of the iPod shows you're missing the real point; it's not that people aren't listening to music, they just aren't listening the same way anymore. Your (and my) paradigm, of pouring a glass of something, turning down the lights and critically listening to a peice of music, I'd say that's dead for the most part. People now are consumers of music, not fans. CDs are on the losing end of a battle for market share. Look at it another way- compare the amount of money spend on DVDs, videogames, consoles, bigscreen TVs, sports /golf equipment, powerboats, jetskis, etc. Now since the real wealth of Americans, adjusted for inflation, isn't a mulitple of that figure from 30 years ago, you have to conclude we have a similar amount of money now, but it's being allocated differently.
When I was a kid, videogames were a novelty. I enjoyed them, but no adult took them seriously, nor was there a huge amount of money in them compared to today. Do you have children? If so how many games do they own? At the height of the original PlayStations popularity I had 100 games, purchased at $20-$40 apeice. Obviously that's money that could have bought a lot of CDs. For the record, I have no pirated music and I've never downloaded a commercial pop song, legally or illegally.
The real problem for the industry is that their product is no longer competitive. As an interesting article in Discover magazine points out, music is getting "blander" and more homogenized. I'd say that the current attiduted of "me-too-ism" is stifling creativity. Most CDs of today are sonically atrocious, with rampant compression. And the pricing just doesn't make any sense at all, at least to a consumer. Consider that the price of a CD is as high today as it was in '86 (remember how the price was high to pay for all the new gear need to press them? But it never came down...). How much does a CD cost to make? Even a very very expensive one would cost only a couple million. How much did Lord of the Rings cost to make? $150,000,000? I'm not sure how the promotional costs compare between a big movie and, say, a Janet Jackson CD, but I have to wonder why I can buy that movie cheaper than the CD. And if I have $20 in hand and can only buy one, I have to seriously think about whether I want to give that money to a company that's been suing my friends, working tirelessly to limit how I can use my purchase, all so I can have a mediocre sounding album of mediocre music, crippled with whatever malware that company choses to hide on the disc.
The truth of things as I see them is this: the Big Five haven't kept up with the times. They put out an obsolete product at a price point that's not competitive with other forms of entertainment. They alienate fans by suing them and assaulting us with one odious DRM scheme after another in an attempt to limit the usefullness of our purchases. Is it any surprise that CD sales are falling, given how hard the industry has worked to make CDs unappealing?
