CD prices and online trading.

[dlausevic]

Universal has decided to slash prices of CD's in an attempt to attract a larger customer base.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96394,00.html

In my opinion, online trading started out because of the unrelenting greed of the music industry. I'm not saying they shouldn't make a profit. Hell, you can't live without it. Until now, they've been ALL profit and NO content. I've lost count at the number of cd's I refused to buy because I only wanted one or two songs. It was easy enough to download it from napster. Singles are available, but only for one song. With my luck, I generally hate the singles. So, what's my point?

When cd's entered the market, many people were shocked at the cost of them. They averaged $5 more than identical content found on records. Tapes were even cheaper. Like any other industry, the market responded with the notion that the prices would eventually drop since the technology would improve and get cheaper. This never happened, at least not for that reason. Many critics of online trading argue that the cd's reflect the content burned on them <that is ludicrous since tapes are far cheaper>. Whereas, industry critics argue my point. People want content, and "the artistic quality of music has deteriorated." Here here to that.

I seriously doubt the quality of music will improve, for the industry has gone into an uncontrollable spin into an ocean of mediocrity. It is lucky for me that talk radio exists.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by dlausevic

I seriously doubt the quality of music will improve, for the industry has gone into an uncontrollable spin into an ocean of mediocrity. It is lucky for me that talk radio exists.

I would tend to agree. I'm not going to take the high road and say that I've never downloaded a song before, but I do try and buy the CD of an artist I like, even if there's only one or two songs I like on the album.

What's sad for me, though, is that my music tastes don't usually put me in the Popular Music section of any record store. I usually end up buying imports, or special ordering albums. What I'm afraid of is that mediocre music will get cheaper and easier to find, while the really good music will stay rare and pricey.

[blackbelt_jones]

Recently I've been listening to KCRW (http://kcrw.org) online, a great NPR station out of Santa Monica. KCRW is the only Public Radio Station that I know of whose musical format revolves around not classical or jazz, but around folk, blues, rock and roll, and even some hip hop. The surprise is that there is some really great music being made these days. You wouldn't know it if you listen to the mass culture... the good news is that you don't have to listen to the mass culture anymore.

The music industry really ahsn't got a handle on the real danger it faces. Here you have an audience that's increasingly fed up with music industy greed. Over there are the artists who are fed up with music industry greed. Now what do you need a record industry for in the first place? You need a record industry for promotion and distribution. And into this situation we introduce the internet....

Sooner or later, the artists and the audience are going to find ways to eliminate the middleman. By selling their work directly to the audience, musicians can keep more of what they earn, even if some piracy goes on.

Consider the adult entertainment industry. Pornography is shared and pirated on the internet all the time, perhaps as much as music. Has the internet killed porn? Hell no! The adult entetainment industry has exploded with the internet. There are several reasons for ths, but I think the most important reason was that the adult entertainment industry didn't hesitate to embrace the new technology , piracy or no. What matters to the bottom line is not that every customer is a paying customer, but whether or not plenty of paying customers were found. Unlike Porn, the music industry resisted a technology that could have brought them a lot of money. I wonder if they'll learn in time,.

[geezy]

A huge problem with the music industry is that they don't understand what's going on. They are plain and simple just being greedy. Personally I have not bought an actual cd from a store in about two to three years. I have not downloaded that much music in the past couple of years to add to that. But I think in general the music industry tries to put out too much music. Not everyone needs a cd! If an artist is good and has enough quality music to make a cd, so be it, and put one out, otherwise not every artist should have one. They can put out singles or cd's with fewer songs on them that are cheaper. The main issue is price, if cd's didn't cost $20 or there abouts new, then people would buy more original cd's and not download music and burn it. I mean 30cents for a blank cd vs. $20 for an original is ludicrous. Personally I would rather have an original cd but I'm not about to pay that much for it, I'll face it I'm a poor student. Right now artists sign a contract and then they have to put out a record by a certain time and they fill the cd with three good songs and the rest is crap. There is no way in that I or should anyone else pay for music that they don't want. I can't remeber the term at this point in time, but it is definitely illegal for businesses to package together to try and sell you something that you would definitely not buy otherwise.
Apple has a general idea of what to do, but still 99cents a song is still too much. I have friends that will buy a cd if they want to support the artist and won't buy the cd and just download the music if they don't want to support the artist. The music industry could definitely resolve this issue by dealing with the price issue. The technology has definitely gotten better and shouldn't cost as much as it does. If you look at a breakdown of the where the money goes per cd, the majority goes straight to the record company and not to artist. You more or less support the record company than the artist when you buy the music. There should definitely be a way to get around this for the artists and I'm sure someone will find one.
I shall respond later when I am in a more sober state!

[ookami01]

i was a musician before joining the army and can tell you first hand how much the quality of music today is in the toilet. Most of these bands that are in the mainstream are just power chord playing weenies. Bands like...well i won't say names but they are just musical versions of script kiddies. Someone teaches them the eMajor scale and they're bethoven.

now i don't know where most of the money goes to but i do know this. If you want music from a popular band then so do alot of people so the music is easy to get not to mention the fact that even though "most of the money goes to the music industry" as someone else said, they are still making millions of dollars. While the guys whose barely getting by you will probably have to buy his CD because no one else will have ripped it. So in that respect it evens out.

Its still a price issue more than a quality of music issue. Most people don't want to pay 20+ for a CD maybe 10. So you get some songs you dont you only paid xx dollars for it. so you can rationalize that way and it doesn't seem so bad.

anyway - people will still get the music you can't stop it - continue to make copy protection people will break it and the cycle continues ........

[Bam]

Originally posted by ookami01
Bands like...well i won't say names but they are just musical versions of script kiddies. Someone teaches them the eMajor scale and they're bethoven.



That is the best line I have read in a while..... :D

very true.

[mage492]

Of course, here's the funny thing:

It costs more to MAKE an audio cassette.

It costs more to BUY a cd.

Actually, I'm also a fan of the Apple music store. It's great to be able to hear clips of the songs. "Is that what I think it is?" is a question I often ask, and now I can find out the answer. I can now confidently download, buy, or put on my Christmas list songs that I KNOW are the ones I really want. It's also great to be able to search for stuff ("That SOUNDED like it was done by ..."). A lyric search would be nice, but that would be next to impossible to implement.

The only thing I have against the music store is that you're downloading compressed music. Yes, I know you're not supposed to be able to hear the difference, but... Try listening to the same song in mp3 and in AAC or OGG. You can hear it, believe me! Listening to AAC vs. WAV? Same thing. With the huge sizes hard drives are coming in, nowadays, I'm starting to keep some of my music in WAV format.

Oh, in case you're wondering, I also don't like JPEG for images. Yup, same reason.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by mage492
Oh, in case you're wondering, I also don't like JPEG for images. Yup, same reason. JPEG is lossy. It does a relatively good job with photos, because the random noise that it introduces is lost in the photo anyway.

However, if you're trying to compress an image that has large areas of a constant color, and where those areas border areas with very different colors, you WILL see artifacts near the border. Try generating a JPEG image that's one-half blue (RGB 0000FF) and one-half red (RGB FF0000) sometime, and you'll see what I mean. The border between the halves will be full of dots.

PNG doesn't have these problems, because it's lossless. It uses zlib compression at close to the highest setting (which is close to bzip2's compression ratios usually). Switch to PNGs if you can. ;)

[mage492]

Originally posted by bwkaz
Switch to PNGs if you can. ;)

I already have been. The nice thing is that browsers are finally starting to support them, so they're easier to use on web pages!