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Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

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Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#91

Post by cubefox »

fipar wrote: post #81
cubefox wrote: post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

That graph does not show cassettes were responsible for that, it just shows revenue numbers. There are other possible causes. As someone who lived through part of that (I’m from ‘78 but for a country that was lagging in media developments; we got CDs in the early 90s) I can say that cassettes were a lousy medium. I love them because I grew up with my Walkman and I loved the tape swapping scene (physically compiled an…

> That graph does not show cassettes were responsible for that, it just shows revenue numbers. There are other possible causes.

You don't mention any of these possible causes though.

> interpreted as people willing to buy music just fine provided it sounded good and kept sounding good

Yes, CDs replaced cassettes and records. They had better audio quality and were nearly as small as cassettes. But cassettes weren't much worse overall than records. The audio quality wasn't as good as vinyl (though that came mostly from cheaper tapes, good tapes has fairly competitive audio) and aged more quickly, but they were much smaller, which was a big advantage. So overall, cassette piracy was competitive with vinyl sales, but not with CD sales.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#92

Post by seba_dos1 »

cubefox wrote: post #57
Kuinox wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to collerate loss of revenue with the loss caused by piracy, without any data of loss caused by piracy. Also, showing a graph without the last 10 years is making the data lying: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database The music industry earnings has never been that high than today. Also, actual studies shows piracy helped sales, not hindered earnings: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-fin…

> You are trying to collerate loss of revenue with the loss caused by piracy, without any data of loss caused by piracy. The only explanation for the complete collapse of CD sales starting in 1999 is piracy. Napster & Co. Anything else is dishonest. > Also, showing a graph without the last 10 years is making the data lying: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database No, this data is lying because it ignores inflation. H…

About a decade ago there used to be a site in the Polish internet called "Strata Kazika" (Kazik's Loss). At that time Kazik was one of the most vocal anti-piracy artists who equaled copying to stealing.

So the site's shtick was to take Kazik's newest album and copy it. Then delete to make place for another copy. In a loop. The site then counted how much money has been already stolen from Kazik in the process, and you could also copy albums by yourself locally and report it on the site, incrementing the overall counter. I have to admit that I have participated in this highly unethical venture myself, and as far as I remember we have collectively managed to steal billions of dollars this way.

We were supposed to split our loot and all get super rich. However, the site isn't available anymore. I suspect its author simply took the money and ran away...

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#93

Post by zirgs »

expertentipp wrote: post #82
zirgs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone pirated in the Eastern Europe back then. You bought a CD only if you were a big fan of the band. The rest was downloaded off the net. I've never bought a single CD in my life. Transitioned straight from pirating to Spotify.

Ha! the dial up internet was ruled by extortionist state monopoly and local ISPs were plagued with equipment thievery... the only way to acquire pirated music was physically exchanging hard drives with acquaintances.

That was true in the late 1990s, but by mid-2000s everyone could get fast internet with no data caps.

That's when Steam started taking off, but music industry was still stuck in the previous century.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#94

Post by cubefox »

zirgs wrote: post #74
cubefox wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks to reasonable streaming prices What you view as reasonable is so low that musicians hardly make any money from it.

Well, before spotify they made zero money from me and a lot of other people. Spotify also allowed a lot more people to publish their music. Increased supply and higher competition leads to lower prices. 1999 with its overpriced CDs is never coming back.

> Increased supply and higher competition leads to lower prices.

The "supply" of music, including music sold on CDs, is equally unlimited. What leads to the low Spotify price is that they have to compete with music piracy. CD prices weren't higher because CDs were expensive to manufacture and therefore limited in supply -- they weren't. Instead, they were more expensive because they didn't have to compete against piracy.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#95

Post by justsomehnguy »

cubefox wrote: post #87
justsomehnguy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compensate for lost CD revenue Oh poor, poor Sony/BMG/EMI CEOs who absolutely couldn't buy another yacht while lowering their expenses by literally making money out of thin air by literally copying digital music. /me wets a handkerchief with the tears of compassion. You are spamming that graph, but only because you think it supports your opinion. Except it does not. Go to RIAA, select Adjusted for inflation and sel…

> Oh poor, poor Sony/BMG/EMI CEOs who absolutely couldn't buy another yacht while lowering their expenses by literally making money out of thin air by literally copying digital music. /me wets a handkerchief with the tears of compassion. You are conveniently ignoring the musicians which are hardest hit by our piracy. They make hardly any money from Spotify. > You would see what by 2017 the revenue is on par with 1981…

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Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#96

Post by cubefox »

zirgs wrote: post #79
cubefox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hole in revenue in the early 2000 was because pirating was the only real option to get music online, you had no other choice. You had absolutely the choice to buy CDs and not pirate anything from the Web. And the "hole" never nearly got filled with legal online services anyway even when they existed. 1999 CD sales are still the peak of music revenue.

Piracy is a service problem. Back in the early 2000s pirates simply offered a better service. The gaming industry understood that and quickly created online marketplaces for games. The music industry didn't - and instead of creating Spotify a decade earlier - spent the 2000s trying to sue grandmas who filmed their kids dancing to copyrighted music.

> Piracy is a service problem.

Maybe for two short years until iTunes came out. Then there was no service problem anymore. But CD sales kept collapsing while digital sales were hardly worth noting. Which proves that people loved pirated music because it was free, not because they couldn't buy it.

> created online marketplaces for games. The music industry didn't - and instead of creating Spotify a decade earlier -

Spotify exists for quite a long while now and revenue still hasn't returned, despite the world economy growing substantially since then, which refutes your theory. Spotify is so cheap because of piracy.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#97

Post by justsomehnguy »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
cubefox wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no 'right to revenue', iTunes or Spotify did not compensate because they are different media with different usage patterns and a different audience. No, because they had to compete against music piracy, which is hard, as pirated music is free.

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Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#98

Post by cubefox »

realusername wrote: post #86
cubefox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hole in revenue in the early 2000 was because pirating was the only real option to get music online, you had no other choice. You had absolutely the choice to buy CDs and not pirate anything from the Web. And the "hole" never nearly got filled with legal online services anyway even when they existed. 1999 CD sales are still the peak of music revenue.

Napster launched in 1999, The Pirate Bay launched in 2003, Spotify only launched internationally in 2010 / 2011. There's been a decade without proper legal options to get music. Buying CDs wasn't a reasonable choice anymore in the digital age, CDs were outdated and not fit in the age where people could buy portable mp3 players. The music industry was beyond late, they were a full decade late to the party and paid the…

> Napster launched in 1999, The Pirate Bay launched in 2003, Spotify only launched internationally in 2010 / 2011. There's been a decade without proper legal options to get music.

That's simply false, iTunes launched in 2001.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#99

Post by thallian »

Semaphor wrote: post #61
zirgs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is not on streaming services? From my experience - if it's not on spotify then it's on youtube.

Very little, nowadays, but most stuff from Eric Ravn (metal/rock, somewhat famous for Wuthering Heights) [0] is not even available to buy other than as CDs that you order via HTML form ;) A few years ago, German medieval/folk band Die Streuner also wasn’t available on streaming services. Both have in common, that they have their own label. [0]: https://nagelfestmusic.com/shop/

Ha, die Streuner were the original inspiration for me to write my own dumb and small music streaming service. Seeing them mentioned here might just give me the motivation to pick that project up again.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#100

Post by cubefox »

colonwqbang wrote: post #71
cubefox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CDs used to be crazy expensive. They cost much more than what was reasonable. A market economy determines the value of goods by what people are willing to pay for it. Apparently, halfing the record price would not have doubled the sales, so the vinyl/CD price reflected the value of the music pretty well. But nowadays, legal music streaming has to compete against illegal piracy, which is free and only a little incon…

That's true, but the music market is special in some ways. * Artificial scarcity. Recorded music is a scarce good only because the law says so. You wouldn't download a car and so on. * Non-fungibility. Music isn't all the same. Customers want a record with their favourite artist and not just any record of similar "quality". There was a very limited time in human history where musicians could get rich by only selling…

> * Artificial scarcity. Recorded music is a scarce good only because the law says so. You wouldn't download a car and so on

But this scarcity is good. It enables, or would enable, production of music which wouldn't otherwise be produced. If music piracy weren't so much an issue today, the music industry size would probably be several times its current size (it would have simply grown with the rest of the economy, as it did ik the 90s) which would mean far more musicians could earn a living with their work. Especially musicians which make a type of music which isn't well suited for concerts. As a consequence, a lot of this music simply doesn't get made today. Yes, we instead got impossibly cheap Spotify (I don't think cheap flat rate streaming would have ever become a thing if it wasn't for piracy making actually selling tracks near impossible), but we also got less music, and consequently, less good music.

Compare this to the video game market, where piracy isn't as big of a problem as in music, due to much larger file sizes and better copy protection. Many of the great games we have couldn't have been made if video game piracy was significantly more common.

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