Comment on Doom9's news of 6/5

[sPeziFisH]

Today when I picked up a spindle of CD-Rs and a couple of audio CDs I was once again musing why people buy less CDs.

I do that very often too and it's quite strange - there's nothing better than a bought CD, it has good quality (pressed, fine cover, etc.) and you are supporting the artist [info: an artist is that weird piece of human who fill your ears with those sounds you like - for those who forgot to know].
You don't have to buy every CD you want to have (it would also be too expensive), buying some CDs you like and burning some CDs you don't have is still ok in my opinion and it's better than the situation is now - I know people (and the number is unfortunately big) who didn't buy a CD the last 3 years and more.
The problem seems to be

a) you have the possibility to get _all_ your music for free - still illegal, ok no one cares (me too).
Obviously they have no problem with music of less quality and obviously they don't want to grab into the rack in 20-30 years to listen to 'their' music (and optionally 'bought in their time' which is much more cool than new stuff) - still the same with 70s LPs at the moment, my uncle and some other people still like it to take some LPs and listen to it, ...LPs except that CD/DVD is a medium which is in my opinion surely playable in future-hifi-equipment - at least I hope so, otherwise I have to buy one of the lasts discmen which will be produced, it's still a small thing I can carry with me everytime (with LPs you have to strap a gramophone on my back :-) ).

b) you still have a limited amount of money :-) (aaaah, you're damn clever)
But it seems to be more imortant to have enough money for daily new fashion and other stuff (booze, fuel (because you're too lazy to go that way by bike or even to walk), stuff you buy in your vacation, etc) than to investigate in some music as music is for free or is,at least, gettable for free (see 1). But 1-2 CDs are not that expensive with regard to the amount of money you have - but you still need the thought 'ok, that's worth the money, it's a fine piece of work and it gives my sth.'


I've never in my life bought a single compilation or best of CD, despite owning roughly a 100 audio CDs. Imagine what CD burners did to the people that used to buy such CDs. Why do you need a compilation or best of CD that contains no, or just one new song if you can create your own compilation/best of CDs using the CDs you already have? I'd really like to hear the RIAA's reaction to that.

In the last 5 years compilations become more and more crappy - but maybe this is because the mainstream-music became more and more... whatever

I am still missing that magic recording machine I always think of - I select my music and the machine makes my CD - I have full music at a given price. AFAIK there are some machines of this kind but not here...

RIAA takes off, they have panic, reasonable, but the laws don't has to be that hard they want to.

Have a nice weekend

[tiki4]

Well, I think the drops in CD sells have at least the following reasons (maybe nothing new, so don't read this):

1. CDs have been cheaper some years ago. A thing I have observed over the last year was that old CDs usually got cheaper after some years. Now even the prices for the old CDs are constantly high. This is the only mass product I can think of wher this is the case.

2. The big labels try to sell us even more and more crap. Well, I'm getting to my thirties slowly and this is the opinion of an old guy, but if I think of TV shows like 'Deutschland sucht den Superstar' or 'Star search' (I'm from Germany) I start screaming.

3. At least some people are to some extent very angry about this 'copy control'. This also includes me. I just rip CDs in order to play the resulting MP3's, AAC's, Ogg's and whatever (ah, I forgot Musepack) with Winamp or foobar2000 during my work on the PC. If I can't do so, because of CDS200 I start feeling deceived.

4. Maybe some people started downloading and sharing music in huge amounts. However, I still cannot believe that these are the people who really like music and are willing to pay for music of their favourite artists...


Just some stupid thoughts by me,

tiki4

[Soulhunter]

5. Maybe ppl have less money today (times gone harder etc.)... :D

6. Maybe they spend much more money for movies (fancy DVD's) than before (crappy VHS) ???


Bye

[eb]

Simple example:

Homemade CD:....................._ Shop CD:
60 minutes music /48 , 256/..... ~ 60 minutes music 44.1
+
video 720x576/DVD quality
+
slide show
+
lyrics
====================.
$0.25 + fun ......................... $10.00 + $0.25 + cry

eb

[Doom9]

there are so many reasons:

singles: who wants the same song in 5 versions if you're only going to listen to just one? Consumers eventually get smarter and figure out they're paying more than their money's worth.

CDs: people have to pay cell phone bills, ringtones they download, DVD movies they buy and games they buy (you might remember the story I've had about Hollywood making less money because people buy more games)

prices have gone up in the last couple of years whereas prices of games and movies came down in the same priod. Makes one think about alternatives..

there's less of a choice.. less music is produced these few recent years

quality of music has gone down (technically that's undoubtable, but when it comes to how good a piece of music is, that's debateable.. though personally I'm sick of all the bands that are literally created in a studio exec's office.. never liked 'em and I never will)

P2P networks are certainly also a factor to be counted in (same goes for singles), why pay for something you can get for free with little risk.

Widespread availability of CD burners reduced the need for compilation and best-of CDs. You might recall some numbers I published to back this up.. sales have strongly decreased for this type of CDs, and if you consider what people burn with their burners, it's really no surprise.

throw all those together (plus I'm sure there are more) and you have a pretty good reason for a 10-20% decline in sales (though technically, units shipped and we've seen that stores actually sell more CDs which means the RIAA is just flat out lying, not that it would surprise anybody, but still.)

[dani82]

games haven't gone down, some are just cheaper than others; ex: when Super Mario 3 came out, it's was $50, today a good rpg still comes out at $50*

* i know there's a different between $50 15 years ago and $50 today; but to me, it's still to much

[nanga parbat]

Obviously they have no problem with music of less quality

excuse me, but this is not entirely true.
i agree that maybe a many of the popular music available on those - how do i put it - 'questionable markets' is of inferior quality. or in other words: many that get that kind of music there don't really bother about quality.
however if you prefer a style that is not so common - and that means common if you'd just go out on the street and would evaluate what the average guy thinks about your listening habits - you will most likely find that, given the right 'questionable' places, you are in a very good situation speaking of availability and quality of your not so common music.
i.e. if you like that single from small label xy which was pressed in 1990 only a thousand times or so (which btw. you have maybe only found because of that 'questionable markets'), you will try to obtain (means buy here) an original, which is often an unsolvable task.

but that kind of user is obviousely a minority, taken out of calculations about impact of p2p on music sales, because if those records were sold, that minority would create a reverse effect (meaning more sales).

nanga.

[((( atom )))]

i think decreasing sales of music is a very complicated set of circumstances:

first of all times are getting harder (at least where i live - in germany), so people think twice before spending money.

then music is available online and for free and ppl don't care about quality, since most of them would not have ever heard a proper hifi-system.

i would believe that the biggest factor, thoug are the kids: the target-audience for singles and most pop productions are teenagers. teenagers are high-tech, have pcs and love hanging round in the internet. teenagers love doing illegal things and teenagers rather buy beer than cds, if music is for free. teenagers don't listen to their music for too long, so it makes little sense for them to spent too much money on it. when i was a teenager, someone always had the cd/record and copied it to tape for friends from where it got copied again maybe. today you quickly make a bunch of copies for your friends and they can do the same very simple.

what i could imagine and i'd really love to see happening is that the market for teenager pop-productions will suffer hard, so that "young talents" would stop from even wanting to be pop-stars just for fame and money.
real musicians make music also if they have no millions in sight and some are lucky to become rich, wich is totally ok with me..

the music market is having a hard time but many other markets are having one as well. the music industry is pretending not to see that, so they can go on blaming someone - the pirate downloader - for something that is a lot more subtle.

personally i go out and buy a cd every now and then for the following reasons:
if i really like an artist - mostly non-mainstream but good musicians i have a good feeling in supporting their work by spending my money for their cd.
if i really like a cd i want to have it in proper quality. ever really made the test? i tested lame --alt-preset-extreme vs. cds and the cd was very easy to spot each and every time. really made me wonder about those ongoing listening tests where ppl. don't hear a difference..

[Soulhunter]

Originally posted by ((( atom )))
If i really like a cd i want to have it in proper quality. ever really made the test? i tested lame --alt-preset-extreme vs. cds and the cd was very easy to spot each and every time. really made me wonder about those ongoing listening tests where ppl. don't hear a difference..
True, but you need a proper HiFi system to hear the difference... ;)


Bye

[eb]

I think that today the main source for free and good in technical sense music and video clips are satelite radio and tv.
Plenty of them are using so called studio records with parameters that are much higher in comparison to the products from the shop. and digital satelite transmission is practictly loosless.

eb

[theReal]

I recently bought a nice sampler (less popular reggae stuff, but very very nice, imo) and it was labelled "fair price - 6.99 EUR"
The CD contains 14 songs, over an hour of good music.

That really made me think - I'd buy a lot more CDs (and probably spend more in the end) if they all were sold for a fair price of 6.99EUR per CD instead of up to 20EUR...

btw. about that listening comparisons: the German c't magazine performed listening tests with mp3@128 vs. mp3@256 vs. CD on the most perfect HiFi equipment: best professional studio monitoring loudspeakers plus a more than perfect headphones-system (I can't remember the brand names, but the headphones and amplifier were adjusted to each other and worth about 10,000 USD together...).
The people listening were half professionals and half hobby-HiFi Freaks.

The result was that mp3@128 was easily distinguishable from CD, while the mp3@256 was different from CD, but the listeners couldn't really say what was CD and what was mp3. In some cases (for some kinds of music) most of the listeners said the mp3@256 sounded definitely better because it had a "warmer sound" (of course they all thought they picked the CD sample in that case...)

[nanga parbat]

i think it all depend on the sources available.
i.e. if you make a comparision between compressed formats where the source was the cd content or where it was a master of much higher quality. in the second case i would think that high bitrates should at least be not of lesser quality than the cd.

well, i cannot find the link anymore, but there was an interesting site which dealt with current trends in cd mastering. things like 'loudness wars'. you can easily see that cd-audio doesn't necessarily mean high qualiy. especially recent ones. it all comes down to listeners wanting a 'full sound' - meaning loudness - not full sound as in good dynamics.
so basically there are a lot of poor ears around there. ;)

[edit] not only does this apply to music. yesterday i watched 'blade runner'. apart from being such a visionary movie if you consider the date 1982 i felt like 'man they knew how to create an athmosphere with the soundtrack'. vangelis made it, and it just so much fits. they didn't need an extra channel for kick-ass bass.

[Bootsy]

Originally posted by nanga parbat
well, i cannot find the link anymore, but there was an interesting site which dealt with current trends in cd mastering. things like 'loudness wars'. you can easily see that cd-audio doesn't necessarily mean high qualiy. especially recent ones. it all comes down to listeners wanting a 'full sound' - meaning loudness - not full sound as in good dynamics.

You mean http://www.loudnessrace.net/? BTW if you want loud, why not buy an amplifier that goes to 11 ;) You'll probably find lots of info on this on http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/ too.

[((( atom )))]

Originally posted by theReal
btw. about that listening comparisons: the German c't magazine performed listening tests ... i read ct and it are right these tests that make me wonder. to become precise: i sat down with a friend who actually works in a recording studio and refused to believe mp3s could be any good. so we took some very well engineered cds and made mp3s using eac and lame -apx wich we burned back to cds to have them in the same player for comparison. then we listened to them on my accuphase e207 amp with b&w matrix 802 speakers. after seconds the differences were clear in a blind test with every track again. the mp3s sounded kinda dead, without athmosphere. very amazing since i also have read about studio people and musicians claim the differences to be extremely subtle and not always negative for mp3. our experience was totally different.

enough ot from me today ;)

[edit]
..and i think thereal is totally right: if prices for cds were lower i would: a, buy more and b, even spend more money overall on cds. they could make more on me, if they were smarter.. ;)

[theReal]

it all comes down to listeners wanting a 'full sound' - meaning loudness - not full sound as in good dynamics.

The "compressor wars" ;)

CD-producers (especially those making senseless elevator music like most charts stuff) but also radio stations and tv stations are driven by the knowledge that people will switch away as soon as the sound level isn't constantly loud (compressed).

So, the end product is an output that leaves like 2-3dB dynamics, hitting 0dB almost all of the time...
(i.e. I've seen MTV Germany on cable that was so loud that it sometimes even slightly distorted - only to get that 1 or 2dB more than Viva :rolleyes: )

[Brother Darrell]

Originally posted by sPeziFisH

a) (BIG EDIT).. my uncle and some other people still like it to take some LPs and listen to it, ...LPs except that CD/DVD is a medium which is in my opinion surely playable in future-hifi-equipment - at least I hope so,...

needles are so damned HARD on cd's... :D