Music piracy is down but still very much in play
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Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#2Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#3Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?
I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics.
FTA: But the music industry is still trying to recover from piracy's heyday. Last year, total music industry revenue was about $15 billion worldwide, well below the 1999 peak of $38 billion.
Ouch - think about that, seeing >60% of your industry revenue go up in smoke. And please don't give me the old line about labels ripping off artists - big labels did, somewhat, but they weren't nearly as bad as Courtney Love made out, and meantime tons of small labels went to the wall because they didn't have the revenue cushion that the big ones did. I was a DJ back in the 90s (and I was probably spending a couple of thousand $ a year on music at the time) and it was a much more economically diverse industry pre-Napster. I can't say I regard the commodification of music as an improvement, really.
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#4Piracy is the reason that labels license their content to streaming services like Spotify. Without the threat of piracy, they would happily maintain the CD-era pricing.
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#5Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?
I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics. FTA: But t…
At least we have vinyl sales rising now, though I expect digital to take the majority of the lost CD sales for obvious reasons.
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#6I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old)
So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and similar error once again despite me having credit on UK site and buying for years electronics and just about everything else for myself.
So in end I went to google and found what I wanted on mp3juices.is or something like that.
These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers.
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#7I legally download all the music I want for free without any effort. Because here we "pay for that music by buying a device". Too bad the wrong people receive that money. So I can't say that I like it, but on the other hand I barely download any music. It's maybe one track per month.
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#8Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?
I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics. FTA: But t…
Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' - but you could say the same about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle when they could have been adapting to the new landscape.
As for the indie labels - it's a massive shame, I agree, although many adapted and survived. But I'd argue indie artists have it easier than before - you can record and distribute an album for basically the cost of your time these days. (Although, that in itself is both a good, and bad thing.)
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#9Record companies seem to be solving the piracy issue by promoting terrible music.
Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play
#10I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…
In fairness, I would say that this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area.
It is remarkably difficult to just trade money in exchange for goods and services online. Between fraud, transaction costs, anti-"money laundering" requirements and general complexity the systems that actually exist are just not very good. If you fall outside the realm of a simple money-in-exchange-for-stuff paradigm, you are screwed.
Actual online retailers interfacing with customers need to make this mess as invisible as possible, but they are working with crappy inputs.
I increasingly suspect that the banking industry is the biggest economic bottleneck in advanced economies.