Ever since the days of Napster around the turn of the century, RIAA (spokesmen for the music industry) has whined and moaned over and over about losing money from the internet. What was their action? To catch on? To find alternate methods of generating revenue? No, they first attacked the sites (like Napster) that allowed the downloading and then the individuals that did the downloading. Thanks to iTunes, Rhapsody, and other legal download sites, the music industry finally saw that there might be a ray of hope for making their usual gratuitous fortune off of remixed and rehashed crap.
RIAA admitted that legal internet downloads for 2005 had just about supplemented the loss of revenue generated from CD sales. Still, it is down over all from the past. What monotonous drum do they bang on? Yup, they still blame downloads!
I just read in this article that their problem might not be the internet after all. No big surprise here.
In the article, people are asked why they think the sales are down. All of the ruckus and rumors have succeeded:
"Overall, music fans were split on why music sales have been declining for the past five years: 33 percent said it was because of illegal downloads, 29 percent said it was because of competition from other forms of entertainment, 21 percent blamed it on the quality of music getting worse and 13 percent said it was because CDs are too expensive."
When the same people were asked why they didn't buy as many CD's the answers were in the opposite order as what were guessed.
"Eighty percent of the respondents consider it stealing to download music for free without the copyright holder's permission, and 92 percent say they've never done it, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine.
Meanwhile, three-quarters of music fans say compact discs are too expensive, and 58 percent say music in general is getting worse."
Duh! We don't want to go out and buy a whole CD for $20 when all we get are covers of songs that were good at one time or songs that are just plain rotten. We're not all resorting to downloading from the internet, we are just content listening to the songs we already have that are worth listening to.
RIAA is too proud to admit that the music they're pumping out is not worth the wattage it takes to play it. And they are defiantly too greedy to charge us less.
Why are CD's so expensive anyway? I wanted to get a Dave Matthews Band concert CD once. I went to the store and found the CD double set for $21. I then went to the DVD section, and bought the same entire concert with special features, multiple angles, and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround for $16. Why pay more for less? Why does an older and outdated technology like CDs cost more than DVDs? Greed. I bought the DVD and copied the audio to CD. I got both for the price of less than the CD.
Until RIAA catches on, provides better music, and does it at a more reasonable rate, my dollars stay with me and I'll pay $0.10 each for the songs that I actually want to hear.
Stick that in our CD player and spin it, RIAA!
1 comment:
Where are you getting song for $.10 each? I have to know your secret!
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