Music CD Sales Dive, Online Sales Rise, Consumers Suffer . . . Again
The initial sales numbers are in and it looks terrible for the traditional music biz. For the third year in a row, sales of music CDs have dropped - somewhere between 12-14% below 2006. At the same time, online music sales have increased between 40-50% depending on which stats and reports you believe. No matter which source you use however, it's absolutely fair to say that music buying and the music industry in general are both changing dramatically.
So I say BOO HISS to all of you who are content with low fidelity MP3 downloads. Your willingness to accept terrible quality is the main reason the rest of us are going to eventually have to suffer with the same dreadful audio quality you insist on paying for. The music industry needed almost ten years to improve the audio quality of the (now) venerable music CD - it took awhile for compression technologies to catch up with the quality offered by LPs. But here we are, 25 years later, with music CD recordings which long ago put the nail in the LP coffin, and all consumers want to do is compress the life out of everything (reducing fidelity, clarity, nuance and entire instruments in the process), just so songs can be conveniently downloaded for 99 cents a pop.
Wake up folks! Music choices should have nothing to do with how easy it is to download a particular song. Music choices should be all about listening to the song with all of the recording present rather than permanently lost to the vagaries of MP3 compression.
Read this carefully: Unless you're buying (or ripping) tracks at 396Kbps variable bit rate, you're just not getting your money's worth - not at 99 cents, not even at 10 cents. Data storage space is cheap right now, and getting cheaper by the minute. Download speeds and bandwidth are getting better and better every month. Unlike the technical transition from LP to CD recording, there is no longer any obstacle standing in the way of full fidelity and full quality MP3 downloads from the major music sites. But as long as consumers accept crap, that's exactly what they're going to get.
Great brick & mortar music stores are dying every day throughout Europe and North America as consumers rush to purchase and download terrible quality MP3s. It's irrational.
Recently, I played some music (from CD) for friends visiting one weekend. One of the guests commented that he was familiar with a particular band's music and that the songs seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite place album. Turns out he already owned the album - purchased and downloaded from either iTunes or Rhapsody (can't remember which right now). The problem was, he'd never heard the original CD recording. Now that he has heard the real thing on a decent sound system, he feels ripped off. That's because he has been ripped off.
There's no question that consumers everywhere are going to rush toward the lowest cost retail offers. It's in our nature. Unfortunately, you only get what you pay for, and right now what you're paying for is low fidelity crap.
The only great thing about online music stores is that you can now pick and choose the contents of album downloads. I say Hallelujah and it's about time consumers had the option of ignoring the filler garbage which populates almost every LP and CD ever released.
The music industry around the world brought on the demise of traditional music marketing and merchandising because of the arrogance and foolishness which traditionally permeates the studios and distribution channels. What a bunch of dolts! Traditional brick & mortar retailers on the other hand, have always been the tail wagged by the dog. Bye-bye retailers.
So the music business is changing. No problem. But it should not be changing for the worse.
So I say BOO HISS to all of you who are content with low fidelity MP3 downloads. Your willingness to accept terrible quality is the main reason the rest of us are going to eventually have to suffer with the same dreadful audio quality you insist on paying for. The music industry needed almost ten years to improve the audio quality of the (now) venerable music CD - it took awhile for compression technologies to catch up with the quality offered by LPs. But here we are, 25 years later, with music CD recordings which long ago put the nail in the LP coffin, and all consumers want to do is compress the life out of everything (reducing fidelity, clarity, nuance and entire instruments in the process), just so songs can be conveniently downloaded for 99 cents a pop.
Wake up folks! Music choices should have nothing to do with how easy it is to download a particular song. Music choices should be all about listening to the song with all of the recording present rather than permanently lost to the vagaries of MP3 compression.
Read this carefully: Unless you're buying (or ripping) tracks at 396Kbps variable bit rate, you're just not getting your money's worth - not at 99 cents, not even at 10 cents. Data storage space is cheap right now, and getting cheaper by the minute. Download speeds and bandwidth are getting better and better every month. Unlike the technical transition from LP to CD recording, there is no longer any obstacle standing in the way of full fidelity and full quality MP3 downloads from the major music sites. But as long as consumers accept crap, that's exactly what they're going to get.
Great brick & mortar music stores are dying every day throughout Europe and North America as consumers rush to purchase and download terrible quality MP3s. It's irrational.
Recently, I played some music (from CD) for friends visiting one weekend. One of the guests commented that he was familiar with a particular band's music and that the songs seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite place album. Turns out he already owned the album - purchased and downloaded from either iTunes or Rhapsody (can't remember which right now). The problem was, he'd never heard the original CD recording. Now that he has heard the real thing on a decent sound system, he feels ripped off. That's because he has been ripped off.
There's no question that consumers everywhere are going to rush toward the lowest cost retail offers. It's in our nature. Unfortunately, you only get what you pay for, and right now what you're paying for is low fidelity crap.
The only great thing about online music stores is that you can now pick and choose the contents of album downloads. I say Hallelujah and it's about time consumers had the option of ignoring the filler garbage which populates almost every LP and CD ever released.
The music industry around the world brought on the demise of traditional music marketing and merchandising because of the arrogance and foolishness which traditionally permeates the studios and distribution channels. What a bunch of dolts! Traditional brick & mortar retailers on the other hand, have always been the tail wagged by the dog. Bye-bye retailers.
So the music business is changing. No problem. But it should not be changing for the worse.
posted by Howard Carson, Managing Editor @ 10:01 AM
