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Grex > Music > #49: The Thirtieth "Napsterization" Item |  |
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| 25 new of 55 responses total. |
krj
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response 31 of 55:
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Dec 3 18:54 UTC 2007 |
I suppose I should go look at the Roseville store; I've never heard of it.
I had no idea that there were 60 independent stores left in Michigan;
I wonder if that number includes the stores which sell primarily
used CDs?
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gull
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response 32 of 55:
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Dec 3 19:06 UTC 2007 |
Re resp:30: I really feel for Michigan. The national economy is about
to go into another recession, and Michigan hasn't even recovered from
the previous one yet.
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hera
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response 33 of 55:
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Dec 3 19:20 UTC 2007 |
Michigan is fine. We have the Great Lakes. And more. I see nothing for you
to feel negatively about, gull.
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mcnally
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response 34 of 55:
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Dec 3 19:48 UTC 2007 |
I was in California visiting a sister over Thanksgiving, which meant I had
an opportunity to peruse some of the sale circulars for Black Friday and
the rest of the post-Thanksgiving weekend.
Although I remember the advertisements for Best Buy, Circuit City, Target,
etc, prominently featuring sales on DVDs, I can't remember any of them
devoting a significant amount of space in their sale circulars to music.
In other words chain stores didn't even bother really promoting music sales
this Thanksgiving weekend, either because they knew they didn't have anything
that would draw in customers or because they expected other items (DVDs, etc)
to do better. Note that most of these chains had advertisments featuring
specials on MP3 players, so it's not that they didn't expect people to spend
money on equipment to listen to music, just not on the music itself..
(There's another possibility, though: I didn't study the advertisements
closely -- it's possible there *was* some music prominently featured but that
the titles were so forgettable to me that I even forgot about the
advertisement. I'm not sure that's a brighter scenario from the record
companies' points of view..)
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tod
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response 35 of 55:
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Dec 3 19:57 UTC 2007 |
Magazines and CDs are a loser in a storefront. You can get the info readily
online.
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twinkie
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response 36 of 55:
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Dec 3 22:17 UTC 2007 |
Which I suppose is a blessing and a curse.
Sure, there's something to be said about the instant gratification of getting
music online, but there are some titles that I want a full-fidelity (issues
about CD level boosting aside) rendition of.
I don't really care too much about the latest Rhianna song sonding a bit
compressed, but I care a whole lot about losing *anything* in a Kolacny
Brothers recording.
I used to love going to Harmony House to find more obscure albums... but then
their Novi store became a mega JoAnn Fabrics, followed by their Farmington
store becoming nothing.
So I found a new home at Record Collector in Livonia, forcing them to promptly
close.
Repeat the Beat in Plymouth? Gone.
Switched On CD's in Novi? Gone.
Even Borders has switched to mini kiosks of hypercompressed "everything in
the store" samples, instead of legitimate listening stations where you could
hear a full track if you wanted to.
At that rate, it begs the question: Why drive 30 minutes to listen to crappy
mp3 samples of music on headphones of dismal quality and questionable hygiene,
when I can listen to crappy mp3 samples of music on decent speakers on demand,
spend half as much money on the product, and save gas by not driving?
Then again, it also goes back to UScan. Much like I'm doing a cashier's job
at a store with a UScan, I'm doing the production factory's job buying and
burning my discs from iTunes or Amazon.
Anyway...
Music is broken.
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gull
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response 37 of 55:
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Dec 3 22:46 UTC 2007 |
Well, with broadband speeds being what they are, if there's a
significant demand for non-compressed content out there I'm sure sooner
or later it will be available. And I don't think the CD is going away
any time soon, but you may have to resort to mail-ordering them.
For me it's not that big a deal because stuff I want is rarely in stock
at music stores anyway. I figure if I have to wait for it to be shipped
anyway, I might as well just have it shipped to my doorstep.
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marcvh
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response 38 of 55:
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Dec 3 23:02 UTC 2007 |
Unfortunately, the demand for high-quality audio content (or video for
that matter) doesn't seem to be all that great. The trend is toward
quantity and convenience over quality.
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cyklone
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response 39 of 55:
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Dec 4 00:29 UTC 2007 |
We are DEVO.
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gull
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response 40 of 55:
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Dec 4 00:39 UTC 2007 |
Re resp:38: Well, audiophiles have always been a minority. And a lot of
them are still insisting on vinyl.
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tsty
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response 41 of 55:
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Dec 7 03:16 UTC 2007 |
i haerd that rcord cmpanies are no longer ot suport the cd format
as of jan 08 .. is this ture?
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mcnally
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response 42 of 55:
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Dec 7 03:36 UTC 2007 |
re #41: That's not even remotely plausible. January 2008 is only about
three weeks away at this point. What would they replace it with?
I suppose it's possible that by "no longer support the CD format" whatever
source you read that in means that record companies will no longer bother
ensuring their releases (especially the copy-protected ones) will play in
all spec-compliant CD players. They already crossed that Rubicon a while
ago, though..
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krj
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response 43 of 55:
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Dec 7 16:16 UTC 2007 |
I'd be curious, ts, if you can find the source on that. I follow
music biz news about as much as any consumer, and I have heard
nothing of the sort. The closest I can come up with is widespread
reports that the major chain retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Target,
Best Buy, and maybe even Borders, are going to cut 30% or more of
their CD space after the holidays, which would be January 2008.
And DRM embedded on CD appears to be a completely dead issue for
normal consumer releases. There may still be some DRM software
applied to promo/review copies to try to control early file-sharing
leaks on new releases, but I believe that the four major labels
have dropped all copy-protection efforts on consumer CDs.
There were two things driving that decision:
(1) the messy fallout from the "Sony Rootkit" DRM;
(2) the labels finally were forced to accept that a
large number of CD purchasers intend to put the music on their iPods,
an operation which was obstructed by most of the on-CD DRM systems.
<krj realizes that the second paragraph is probably incomprehensible
to anyone who hasn't been following the "Music War" saga. >
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gull
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response 44 of 55:
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Dec 7 17:20 UTC 2007 |
Oddly, the movie industry doesn't seem to have learned from the music
industry's tribulations. Copy-protected DVDs are starting to appear.
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gull
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response 45 of 55:
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Dec 7 17:20 UTC 2007 |
(Copy protected in ways other than CSS encryption, I mean. They're
being designed to make it hard to copy the encrypted VOB file from the
CD to a computer.)
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hera
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response 46 of 55:
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Dec 7 17:36 UTC 2007 |
Who cares? The movie industry is greedy. After they have you pay to see the
movie in the theatre, they want to pick your back pocket for the DVD.
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krj
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response 47 of 55:
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Dec 7 18:07 UTC 2007 |
Gull: Bring us some references if you can? I'm so saturated in
music-biz coverage that I am not keeping up with much of what is
happening in Videoland.
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gull
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response 48 of 55:
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Dec 7 18:24 UTC 2007 |
I don't have any general news sources, just complaints on the MythTV
forum. (MythTV has a feature that allows "ripping" DVDs to files on a
hard disk, so you can view them more conveniently, just like you can rip
CDs to your hard disk to listen to them with greater ease.)
Apparently some DVD releases now have large numbers of intentional bad
sectors. Consumer DVD players ignore these and keep right on going, but
DVD-ROM drives spend a lot of time retrying them.
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krj
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response 49 of 55:
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Dec 7 18:34 UTC 2007 |
Ah, same sort of trick that was done by Cactus Data Shield, among
others, for the CD market.
Incidentally, I don't have the link immediately available, but
the expectation is that DVD sales are going to finish down 4%
for 2007, compared to the previous year. This will be the first
decline in DVD sales ever. I think these are USA numbers.
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mcnally
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response 50 of 55:
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Dec 7 20:22 UTC 2007 |
4% of the market sounds like a plausible estimate for Blu-Ray and
HD-DVD market share (combined) at this point, give or take a bit.
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tsty
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response 51 of 55:
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Dec 11 03:52 UTC 2007 |
hmmm a 0 or a 1 ?
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tsty
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response 52 of 55:
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Dec 13 11:02 UTC 2007 |
re 43 ... um, i;ll atake a look for yuo.. it was absorbed in passing so
i might ahv emis-something-or-othered the news.
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krj
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response 53 of 55:
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Dec 13 19:11 UTC 2007 |
This one is an ugly URL, sorry:
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNjcmZm
diZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcyMjc5OTMmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3
It's a report on New Jersey-based small CD labels which are
encountering more and more difficulty. The main label profiled in the
story is Shanachie, which handles a great deal of Celtic folk and
reggae. Indie rock label Bar/None is also in distress. In contrast,
metal label Eclipse is doing well; they get more from iTunes sales per
copy than from physical CD sales.
Shanachie says sales are down 20% over the last five years. The loss
of Tower Records and small retailers has been a blow. Borders is no
longer welcoming to small indie labels; they are demanding a $2/copy
"co-op" payment to stock the discs in their store. (I did not know
that Borders had moved to demanding a stocking fee from labels; I
thought that was only a policy at Trans World.)
Shanachie used to be able to work some with Wal-Mart (!!) but Wal-Mart
is now streamlining their CD selection and Shanachie and other
specialty labels are now mostly frozen out.
-----
The Nielsen Soundscan numbers for CD sales are turning into a rout
at the end of the year. These are gleaned from the week-by-week
sales reports from Billboard and no one story has yet assembled the
threads:
In early November, off the top of my head, year-to-date album sales
were down 14% from 2006.
For Thanksgiving week, including the famous Black Friday shopping
day, the downturn accelerated: sales for that one week were down
18% vs. that week year ago.
For the next week, the downturn accelerated again: sales for the one
week were down 23% vs. year-ago. That's the most recent sales report.
Those numbers are for album sales, defined as [CDs + downloads sold
in an album-bunch]. Including single track downloads probably makes
the number look a small bit better, but this is still awful for the
labels and for retailers. The rarely-reported numbers on physical
CD sales are usually -5% from the commonly cited album sales number,
so that would speculatively put last week's CD sales as -28% compared
to the same week last year.
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hera
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response 54 of 55:
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Dec 13 19:49 UTC 2007 |
Who cares? If your music is good, people will be begging for it.
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tsty
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response 55 of 55:
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Dec 13 20:53 UTC 2007 |
re 53 ... jhere ios the shlrot non-ugly version:
http://url.rexroof.com/16616
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