Who suffers the most from music piracy?

[KingAl]

Hey! I came up first with that statement!

Jelco

Writing large blocks of text makes people think you have more to say.

For example, contrast this paragraph with the previous sentence. It is significantly less substantial in terms of actual content, waffling on in a demented recursive self-referential (and in that previous case tautological) mess and yet to all appearances it covers more ground, hence those looking to impress others with their own argumentativeness - or do I mean insight? - reply to it rather than the preceding, significantly more concise expression of the same ideals. This tendency ultimately leads to the obscuring of the actual content of the argument, which ironically works against the purported motive of having a meaningful debate or discussion. Indeed, due to the appearance of greater analysis of an issue and greater time dedicated to the argument, such paragraphs unfairly attract more comments congratulating the original author on their insight (often derived from their over-analysis of the minutiae of a subject rather than comprehension of the big picture). Such is life, eh?

EDIT: Yes, that was meant to be a terrible protracted joke.

[wwarnick]

Hey! I came up first with that statement!

Oh yeah? When?!

wwarnick

[blackhole12]

Writing large blocks of text makes people think you have more to say.

Its frightening how true that is.

[Spacemonkey]

I think it's the people who buy the music that suffer the most, not only do they have to deal with all the content protection stuff, music is still quite expensive because record companies have to keep the price up to cover costs because of piracy.

CDs have been the same price since they came out (which was before internet piracy was a problem), so the price of music has nothing to do with piracy. If anything CD prices have come down slightly since piracy became an issue.

Did you actully bother to read all my post?

However, it was the record companies fault to begin with, they should of dropped the prices along time ago, but they didn't.

Take this for example, when CDs first came out, they were much cheaper to manufacture then tapes, but for the same album, the CD would cost an average $10 more then the tape (thats here in NZ). The record companies kept this price structure for more then 10 years after CDs came out.

[Spacemonkey]

In most cases because they don't know the music. Given that radio only plays a very limited set of music there is a lot of music that you may be interested in but have no way to legally listen to it for free. It is an expensive gamble to buy a CD you have never heard. A huge part of illegal downloads is people trying new music out.

I disagree, there are many websites that offer free steaming music, http://music.msn.com/, http://www.allmusic.com/, and there are many more out there, so people have many ways to legally listen to music for free.

However I have no problem with people downloading a few tracks just to try it out.

What I don't like though is people who download entire albums for artists they like, surely if they really liked an artist, they should be supporting them buy buying their album.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Did you actully bother to read all my post?

I did in fact. However, nothing in the rest of your post changes the fact that piracy has not been shown to increase CD prices at all. I largely agree with the rest of your post, but the statement that piracy keeps CD prices up is totally unsupported.

I disagree, there are many websites that offer free steaming music, http://music.msn.com/, http://www.allmusic.com/, and there are many more out there, so people have many ways to legally listen to music for free.

Yes, but even with non-radio broadcasts you still don't come anywhere close to covering all music.

However I have no problem with people downloading a few tracks just to try it out.

What I don't like though is people who download entire albums for artists they like, surely if they really liked an artist, they should be supporting them buy buying their album.

If they really wanted to support the artists they should go to a concert as artists generally don't make much from the CD. It'd be interesting to see an artists put up a donation box on their website where people who wanted to support them could drop a few bucks. That way you could support the artist without paying so much to the record companies.

[KingAl]

... piracy has not been shown to increase CD prices at all.

Though it could be argued - albeit without any tangible proof - that CDs would have decreased in price due to their ubiquity were it not for record companies trying to 'cover the cost' of piracy. I highly suspect this isn't the case, though - companies of all sorts will always sell their products at the upper ranges of what people consider reasonable.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

... piracy has not been shown to increase CD prices at all.

Though it could be argued - albeit without any tangible proof - that CDs would have decreased in price due to their ubiquity were it not for record companies trying to 'cover the cost' of piracy. I highly suspect this isn't the case, though - companies of all sorts will always sell their products at the upper ranges of what people consider reasonable.

You rarely see price reductions in media like this. Price drops on items are generally the result of reduced manufacturing costs. Since the manufacturing cost of a CD is a tiny percentage of its market price, you wouldn't expect to see a price drop.

[wwarnick]

The price may reduce when the demand shifts.

Demand goes down, supply stays the same -> equilibrium price goes down -> price goes down.

wwarnick

[Torp]

In most cases because they don't know the music. Given that radio only plays a very limited set of music there is a lot of music that you may be interested in but have no way to legally listen to it for free. It is an expensive gamble to buy a CD you have never heard. A huge part of illegal downloads is people trying new music out.

I disagree, there are many websites that offer free steaming music, http://music.msn.com/, http://www.allmusic.com/, and there are many more out there, so people have many ways to legally listen to music for free.

However I have no problem with people downloading a few tracks just to try it out.

What I don't like though is people who download entire albums for artists they like, surely if they really liked an artist, they should be supporting them buy buying their album.

I will support the artists I like the way I want to support them, thankyouverymuch. Concerts, buying band merchandise from the bands (I'm sitting here in a tshirt with the logo of my favourite band, actually, bought from their very own webshop). And, well, okay, buying their CDs, too, once in a while. At least when the band stands to gain from it.

The truth is, by buying a record, you usually don't support the band very much. Sure, if the band is a big one (and by big I don't mean the latest pop fad, I mean bands that have been around for some time, who are proven to sell and be popular, and who has had the chance to renegotiate their contract), or it is on an independent label, then the band will often get a good share, but buying from, say, Universal, won't give them much. They get a lot more if you use all the money you'd use on their CDs on their concerts.

Furthermore, in many cases downloading music will cause people to buy CDs. I am a good example of this. I have just under 2000 songs in my music library, plus a lot more lying around other places (most of it downloaded while it was still "legal" where I live, or ripped from CDs I own - not because it has become illegal, but because I moved and lost my great internet connection). I also have about 100 CDs, almost none of which come from bands I hadn't listened to on my computer before I bought them. I bought them because I wanted the full albums, real and physical, with full CD quality to the sound. Most of the bands I listen to are not mainstream, and don't get much radioplay. In fact, to get the CDs for at least one of the bands, I will probably have to write to the fanclub. I might not even be able to buy the CDs online. But I've bought CDs from such bands, because I like the music. I haven't bought any CDs from bands that I've downloaded from, found to be not that much to my liking, but still worth listening to once in a while.

[faemir]

if big internet stores would only remove drm, then they would see a good increase in sales in my opinion. Internet selling should of been a massive boost, but they wasted the opporunity. It's also too expensive - take the itunes store for example. last time i checked it was 79p a track[in uk]. Put that in album number terms... it's at the worst more than what I pay for the real cds, and at the best a similar price! If they would lower the cost, which they could, and would still makes a huge pile of cash, quite possibly more. Companies can't feasibly charge near the same cost as a physical copy.

Pirating music isn't killing the industry, it never was. Piracy might be hurting it somewhat, but ruining online sales is hurting it significantly more.