Quote:
Originally posted by Melusine:
I comepletely agree with your first paragraph Groj, and I think downloading habits like yours are indeed beneficial for the music industry (if not the hit-pushing kind).
But there's one thing I've noticed, re: your second paragraph. I've seen quite a lot of children recently who really have gotten so used to illegal music being available online, that they would never consider buying a CD because they hardly know any better. They are used to the (auditively inferior) MP3 format and the notion of buying music (or films, or games) that they can get for free is ludicrous to them. So I don't see a problem now, but there may very well be one in coming years. There's a huge difference between people who download because they love music (like you) and people who in downloading show that they don't in fact give a crap about it.
|
True, we'll have to wait and see how this is going to work out in later years - I do think a large part of them will come around when they get older (a part of it will just do it for the heck of it, though I somehow wonder they would have bought anything if it wasn't for the 'Net), but it will also depend on how smart the movie and music industry are going to deal with all this. Most of them have less than a foothold on the Internet, and I do expect this will change in the future - movie-streams becoming available for a small fee online is in the works for example (and definitely an interesting prospect for the future, which would slowly but gradually be the perfect 21st century replacement for video-rental stores, or maybe even tv in the end), and legal file-sharing initiatives like ipod and the new Napster are also picking up and quickly turning into a whole new booming business, *especially* ipod. There's definitely a market for legal music and film purchases over the Internet (even if it doesn't involve every annoying little hormone-driven pock on the Earth's crust
), it's however still severly underdeveloped at this point - and until it has reached its fullest potential, we simply can't say a single thing of how the current generation of teenagers will look upon movies and music when they get older and become "more responsible".
One major miscalculation on the RIAA's part is that they can somehow undo the impact of the Internet and go back to the old status quo in which the major labels controlled output and exposure for the most part, because that's simply impossible with a medium as huge and chaotic as the Internet. You'll always have illegal file-sharing; and even though in a way illegal music has been around for decades already (bootlegs, home-taping, illegal compilations or hit records sold on the black market), it's just that it has become more mainstream and easier to do so.
The main problem is that most major labels have gone through a golden age during the 80s and 90s, and are now suddenly roughly awakened by the end of that era, forcing them to take a step back - which doesn't work well with the overly positive multi-record multi-million dollar record contracts they had signed with certain artists when everything still seemed to be going smoothly (and who are selling a lot less than expected, like Metallica, R.E.M., U2 etc), too optimistically expecting business to improve even more throughout the first decade of the 21st century. They've severly underestimated the Internet's potential, and are now lagging behind.
I'm confident however that the Internet is not going to be the end of the music industry, even taking into accounts worst case scenarios with regards to the current "future" of our counry, the 12-18 year olds - it's going to be a new start altogether. [img]smile.gif[/img] These teenagers aren't as much snubbing cds and dvds as they are embracing new technologies (an mp3-player is a lot more convenient than the old walk/discman, for example), and it's vitally important for the MPAA and the RIAA to look into that behaviour to tap it to its fullest potential. The Internet is here to stay, as well as its potential illegal use, but that doesn't mean it would be the end of either the movie or the music industry. Heck, creating a service to sell movies and music in digital format could actually be rather lucrative, as you don't have to deal with the huge costs involved with distribution that there used to be - Animal's article mentioned something about major label albums being printed in >1 million batches and only 10% of those being actually lucrative, but if there's indeed a public tending towards digital purchases rather than regular ones, you could save a lot of money by some changes in this department. Sure, there are other important factors to be taken into account (advertisements, publicity, exposure on popular media like tv and radio), but not only could cds become a lot cheaper this way without the major labels losing money over it, the risks involved could be a lot less as well.
Of course, let me note that the above is only a possible solution to the problem; I don't have huge teams of statisticians backing me up with studies regarding future behavioral patterns, but if a large group of people is indeed interested in music offered in digital format rather than on vinyl or cd in case of lower costs involved and a wider availability, then that will become a substantial part of the Industry's future.