NYT: Industry concerned digital downloads may have maxed out

[GA Russell]

Here's a Jan. 23 NYT article that says that the record industry is concerned that legitimate downloading may not grow to the extent they were counting on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/technology/24music.html?_r=1

[Dave James]

Here's a thought. Start putting out better music.

[ejp626]

Here's a thought. Start putting out better music.

Or maybe package downloads with PDFs of the cover art and liner notes. It really does burn me up that I don't get any of that with eMusic and essentially never off Amazon downloads either. Small issue, but I think it would help at the margins.

[7/4]

opps...that didn't work out.

[Peter Johnson]

Regret the CD yet?

[Teasing the Korean]

How appropriate that, considering the topic at hand, the Universal Music COO is named Max Hole.

[JSngry]

Or maybe package downloads with PDFs of the cover art and liner notes. It really does burn me up that I don't get any of that with eMusic and essentially never off Amazon downloads either. Small issue, but I think it would help at the margins.

Yep.

[Peter Johnson]

How appropriate that, considering the topic at hand, the Universal Music COO is named Max Hole.

LMAO

I had the same thought!

[7/4]

bring back the CD!

[Christiern]

It began when lawyers and accountants replaced music people. Soon the bottom line (sizeable, in those days) blinded them, but it could never be big enough, so they fumbled around to pump it up. Damn! Expenses were getting in the way, so they looked around this strange new field, which was still new to them, and saw the magic word: reissues! They really went to town with that until it maxed. Or did it? Now the original reissues were ready to be reissued! They maxed the reissued reissues, too. What to do? Reissue the reissued reissues, but shuffle them! Hey, it worked, so they threw in some bones stuff that musicians never got paid for and didn't want anybody to hear. Hey! that also worked!

Now everybody had six copies of everything and consumers were waking up to that fact. Gore invented the Internet so housewives and teeny-coppers could go to town bringing all those reissued reissues home for free. The FBI and, perhaps, even the CIA took a dim view of this, but none as dim as that taken by the RIAA, defender of the industry. Sons of lawyers who had set the wrecking ball in motion could now swing on it seek millions of dollars to satisfy a new kind of arson: disc burning.

It looked as if everything was maxing out favorably, but the blindness caused by throbbing, expanding bottom lines had led to deafness. Well, that affliction had ben there all along, but no one had noticed. No one, except the public. Someone out there—we don't know who—had a Hand Christian Andersen moment and, struck by acute clarity, exclaimed "The music died!" Indeed it had, and the evidence was nowhere more convincing than on the Grammy show. Its annually increasing mediocrity was long blamed on the Cossette productions, which were without value, but the thumping blob in the gutter of tastelessness turned out to be the music itself. Oh, there was Steve Jobs, he gave sales a boost, 99¢ at a time, but nobody could stop the fat lady from singing.

She is the one performer not ready for reissue.

[GA Russell]

Well said, Chris. You know something's wrong when not even the kids are interested anymore.

[papsrus]

The NY Times article somewhat vaguely implicates piracy, and to a lesser and more vague degree streaming services, for a drop in music sales. Piracy is one thing. Streaming, on the other hand, is just part of a new distribution model, isn't it?

The article also doesn't give much weight -- if any -- to that little thing called the Great Recession and its possible impact on music sales. But never mind that.

This article from Wired in 2004 is obviously a bit dated, but still offers some insight into the staggering success of certain entertainment distribution models.

I think this captures the main thrust of things fairly well:

What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are (see "Anatomy of the Long Tail"). In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."

Food for thought.