Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits
After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.One thing to note:
Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales.Does this signal and end to "filler" tracks on
Thanks to MadRocketScientist for the pointer.
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2 comments:
Of course, no one mentions that the reason digital downloads do so poorly is because the DRM is just too much of a pain to deal with.
Quite a few people have remarked to me that given the choice of buying a DRM free tune from iTunes for $0.99 and trying to find and download one for free, they'd pay just to avoid the hassle. But if the song is loaded down with DRM, even if it is really cheap, the lack of portability from one device to another is a dealbreaker.
You know, they've done nothing but shoot themselves in the foot since the demise of my beloved vinyl. Yeah, I like the pops and scratches-- so what? CDs were cheaper to produce and yet the price went up? It's hard to feel sorry for the industry. I admire forward thinkers like Radiohead who released online first and still had a massive hit when they released a physical disc for sale, and also Imogen Heap who sold her house to buy the equipment to have her own studio and release the cd she conceived rather than bend to the will of A&R people at a hit-hungry label.
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