Posts by Simon Grigg
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as is the sale of an album
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are units now single songs? just asking cos its something I'm not clear on.
Units are and have always been sales as a single transaction whether it's one track or 12. The sale of a 45 is a unit sale with two tracks as the sale of an album.
In the digital age the sales of a album unit are falling, whereas the sales of a single track, be it a ringtone, digital download or video are rising.
I think I'm a perfect example. Yesterday I bought a track I love by a band who've been around for a wee while. On physical it's only on CD album, on iTunes I bought the track by itself. The record company and the other interested parties have lost income of some $25 since I only paid $1.59 for the track I like. They will never recover that $25.
The problem is, the record labels, big and small, but especially the big ones, have learned to reply on me spending that $25 but I no longer do and thus the economics that define their very existence are threatened by the fact I don't.
In the music industry, that is the massive change...that and the fact that when music was booming there was little else for kids to spend their dosh on.
Now, regardless of evidence or not, I do accept that piracy is an issue and there is some lost revenue, but it pales against the change in buying habits and how that youth dollar is now spent.
tainting your view on what 4 big corporates do is a mistake.
Maybe, but it's also a fact that independent music is thriving worldwide, in a way we could never have dreamed off in the pre-digital age.
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I've now got several album tracks off Hype Machine and am looking for a torrent
but shit, you realise what this is gonna mean...a massive downturn in gig attendence in Chch....
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then I don't see how you can extrapolate your own experience and say that it applies to such a large group of people.
Ok I accept that but the two bits of data we do have are that unit sales are rising..quite a bit in some territories, and that people are downloading lots and lots of music.
So quite clearly either unit sales would be increasing dramatically more than they are now if online piracy did not exist and was not allegedly causing these massive losses (and that things like video games which are booming and targeting the same dollar, were not having an effect) and the record companies would be in the middle of some commercial golden age, or a false equivalence is being drawn to explain the loss in turnover of record companies (but not, lets be clear, publishers or songwriters who are also doing pretty well right now...we know that from released data too) rather than looking at the major reason, which is a change in buying habits.
The hard information we have to hand would, right now, suggest the latter.
The quote from Mike Smith indicates, and my understanding from my many impromptu talks with label folks is that mostly they accept that but are unable to publicly admit it since they're fighting a survival war out there as they see it, and every dollar counts.
Piracy is a problem, I agree ,but from a multi billion dollar corporation's pov the fact that their customers only want to buy 1/12 of their product is a much, much bigger one.
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I think it was mark as questioner of all statistics not personally gathered by himself, as also noed by giovanni.
Yes, I know Mark questioned but I was meaning by myself. I don't think there is any question people download songs...I do from time to time.
But I don't think any act has ever lost a sale or a penny because I've done so and that covers most people downloading. I'm still quite a spender on music but rarely buy albums at all anymore, and that, in your rather confused spiral, if you will, of what is and is not a fact, is the one pertinent thing you missed in that Guardian piece.
That being Mike Smith from Columbia saying:
will lead the public back towards the pleasure of owning an original CD album
Which is the problem faced by big labels and the overwhelming reason their turnover has dropped, and why they may not survive as content providers.....few buy albums anymore, they buy tracks. We know that is a 'fact' from the released data. We don't know that people mostly think music is free from data. It's a series of opinions, oft voiced, but rather offset by the fact, much less voiced, that people are still paying for music in some quantities, and increasingly so....and film for that matter.
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Nope, never in 104 pages been quibbled about Rob. Nobody has ever denied that people download and vast amounts is downloaded.
But there is no evidence of any vast loss to the industry caused by people stealing music. None. Myself I think there are losses but most of those are caused by changed buying habits (and there there is a mountain of evidence to support that, some posted here over the 104 pages).
Just wondering where the 'facts' are in that Guardian story relating to the recording industry. It's a bunch of opinions.
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70% of kids illegally download? what's he doing bandying about those statistics without an approved source sited?
Repeat...no-body has ever quibbled with that, but we're all still wondering where the evidence that backs the vast losses allegedly caused by this. It seems to be MIA.
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Russell, the iTunes podcasts seem to have stopped after EP 16.
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But it was an internal tourism ad: it was meant to impress the rest of the country ...
I was pointed to it by an organisation aimed at NZers abroad so somewhere along the line that intent got sidetracked.
The inclusion of this stylistic nod means that Auckland is reterritorialised as fairytale America
Which misses the point that much of Auckland is a strange mutation of Americana, as is much of the world, but with strong local flavours overlaid and interwoven. But I for one couldn't look at that advert, regardless of any cinematographic stylings, and see any other city that I've spent time in..certainly no city in the United States, fairy tale or otherwise.
The placement of those global chain stores was however the one thing that seemed thoroughly incongruous. One point of difference between Auckland and much of the world is that it's styling thankfully isn't dominated by the mass market designer brands that you see everywhere else from Sydney to Bangkok to NYC.
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people don't move to NZ for a cosmopolitan lifestyle.
True that but I get thoroughly irked by the endless need to compete on a cosmopolitan level. I was pissed of by the person who though it was smart to put a clear shot of the Gucci and LV stores in that Auckland promo thingy I saw oh YouTube.
The rest I loved, it made me feel rather warm and it was so what I miss, but the Gucci store (which are in every bloody mall in the rest of the world and are little more than an upmarket Postie Plus) felt like a desperate attempt to say 'we are sophisticated, see...'
Auckland is one of the world's wonders on its own terms and doesn't need to to do that...it's a wee bit sad.