Is there a theory on this?

I'm not sure what theory would fit into this. So let me just explain what I am thinking about.


Piracy is, in fact, illegal. I don't care right now if it should be or not, but there is something in that that rings a bell on me.

Physical CD sales have indeed dropped from 588 million pieces to 500 million pieces. Music industries have all the right (and they *are* right) saying that this is because of piracy. It is true, we just have to face it.

However, iTunes sold 1.8 *billion* tracks in same time. That 588->500 was from 2006 to 2007, I don't know what figures they have for our current (2008) year. iTunes also have 60% market share, telling us that 3 billion tracks were sold.

It is not, then, a miracle that music industry are doing profits of a lifetime. They are however trying to battle against themselves by trying to keep same old distribution model even when they are shown with a silver plate that there exist an another one that even does more profit.

I'm serious though, is there a theory that explains this?

i think the theory your looking for is split in to a few smaller theorys..

1/ the companies are ran by boards ect, and guarenteed they are completly stuck in their ways when it comes to distribution of their artists / tracks. their will always be a market for CD's and vinyl. (i can only get my own music released on vinyl, which im very happy about)

2/Very soon we are going to see a move from cd to solid state media being used. basicly selling albums with pics and loads of added content in a fancy usb flash drive thats been write protected.
(this is very cheap, and what i am aiming to do my first album on)

3/greed and shortsighted ness.

(im only an amature, but i know it mainly comes down to money, if the companies stop making that 500 million units thats possibly 500 million lost sales, as the people who buy cd's and vinyl probably dont want to buy music online, i know i dont want to buy online, ill stick with me big black disks )

Everything will be free in the future.

It will be beamed directly into your brain using microwaves.

[edit on 10-9-2008 by moonrat]

Originally posted by moonrat
Everything will be free in the future.

It will be beamed directly into your brain using microwaves.

[edit on 10-9-2008 by moonrat]

Only one problem though:

The schedule of transmission will have been chosen for you by a computer.

if the record companies wanted to stop piracy. All they have to do is stop releasing cds. Just go back to vinyl, you could still have streaming music on websites and what not but Most people wouldn't be bothered to take the time to rip vinyl into a digital format. it sounds better anyway.

Yes, there are a number of research studies on it. There is no "theory" here, but there are a number of "hypotheses" (to use the scientific terms.)

The research goes back to 2003 and earlier:
papers.ssrn.com...

If you'd like to read more on it, google up "music industry" and "downloads" on scholar.google.com... and see what people were studying. There's a number of market reports in business journals, also.

another thing to consider with iTunes sales - no longer do you have to buy an entire album (well some artists force you to, even on iTunes) - now you can just buy a single. So instead of paying $15 for an album of crap, and a single song you wanted, you pay $1 for that one song... so of course lots of sales will be down based on that alone.