an canadian profesor of jura had a closer look on the numbers the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) gave out and found out that they cant be right. find out more here: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_4/geist/index.html
Oh man. I can't wait to see how this one unfolds. Well, I'm gonna tell you this right now. 99% of albums don't make a dime. Not one single cent of profit, so when I see people downloading music from filesharing services, I tend to get a bit angry. Then, when people try to legitimize it by making iTunes and all that other garbage, I got even more mad. I don't know, I tend to think a really good collection of songs is worth more than just 99c a peice. But people that live by using iTunes make me rather ill. I have hundreds of CD's that I legitimately bought, instead of leeching.
What shepps said for one... Also, an album doesnt usually contain a bunch of good songs (par example.. the spice girls, spice world ). £1 Is exceptionally fair for a 3-4 minute song. Hollywood puts alot more into each film than record companies will into bands, theres alot more people involved, you can't watch it before you buy it without paying (like you can music on the radio), and they charge "much" fairer prices for them. Sure, some people lose out from filesharing, but to say "album sales have dropped and that firesharers are the main reason why artists go broke" is complete ********. Record companies take a massive amount from album sales, far more than any individual artist. The people who workwith bands are likely paid pittence what there worth. But, to top it off (cause were not screwed enough yet) they say... "Internet downloading is hurting out poor defenceless artists! We, the great and mighty god fairing people at the RIAA will take it upon ourselfs to sue the fans of the band who are downloading there music!" *under there breath*because there only kids and cant afford £10-£15 for an album when they just want the song...*/under their breath* And they make EVEN MORE MONEY! Even though the impact has been minimal! The RIAA suck. The MPAA are doing it too, but with them im onboard! Maybe if the RIAA commanded such good values when it came to quality and fair pricing, I would agree with them! But as it is, na.
Because there are the artists like Britney Spears that cover the enormous debt of some artists. And it's not like these people just run record companies and nothing else. These people also own media companies that make money hand over fist, which in effect, continues to cover their asses.
That doesn't answer the question. Why do they keep signing new artists which are 99% likely to loose them money? Why don't they just keep Britney and spend more time on their lucrative media companies?
oh a sarcasm detector, thats a real useful invention. 99% of artists, erm no, even if it was as much as 90% who cares! Sony Records makes SO much more money that sony electronics, remeber sony electronics bough em back in the 80s to help launch the Audio CD (they blamed beta max's failure on a lack of content, it was technically better than VHS, so they didn't want the same to happen with audio CD). Sony electronics are in trouble their direction is been dictated by sony records, because records make SOO much money. So in short, when i got by a Zero7 album, or a Mono album, it really dosen't matter if the record companies subsidising it. Delivery methods don't matter. the only valid argument against iTunes is that people won't buy whole albums, and artists will be turned into one hit wounders. Now i can kinda understand this, you get some Albums like Daft Punk Discovery, which once you get to about track 4/5 (this is from memory so don't flame me if i'm wrong) it becomes placid and crap. Given the chance i wouldn't pay for the rest of that album. thats the only way it can hurt the industry imo. it hurts the user with stupid DRM, and worst of all you've paid 99c, i want FLAC/APE/PCM for that. as cartman would say "suck my balls 99c", it really gets me anoyed that. Music needs to do what DVD has done, its become cheaper to make/master this mediams, more people are buying them than ever, lower the price. no way u'd pirate a DVD, say its a DVDr, that costs you 20p, the bandwidth to download that 5gig cost you about £1.50 to £3 depending what your on, when you can buy that DVD9 for £7. Thing is if i want to buy a rather old album (say gomez, yes i know i'm a uni student) i will have to pay a stupid amount of dosh, we're talking best part of £10 if not more here, for a 7 year old album, thats already made the record label enough money, and no artist deserves more than £1m per year from record sales, they should be forced to tour more so poor-er fans can see em too (increase the supply -> lower the price). The film industry isn't perfect but the record industry could learn a bit about their recent changes.
