why are record sales so low?
- Thread starter siccness-user
- Start date
the standard answer is that there are two factors - number one is the availability of everything on the net and the predominantly young hip-hop audience (which means that even greater proportion of hip-hop fans are downloading that fans of other genres)
Second is that releases have been total crap for the last nearly 10 years (while their number has been steadily increasing). This actually forms a nice feedback loop with downloading because when people don't trust the albums that come out, they will have a much bigger incentive to download them - to "hear them and decide whether they will buy them". But once you have something for free, why paying for it? Add to this the explosion of mixtapes where you can hear all the good tracks while you feel even less obliged to buy them and you get the picture
There is a single solution to both problems (sales and music quality) that I've been thinking about but it will require big investments in technology, I will describe it later
Second is that releases have been total crap for the last nearly 10 years (while their number has been steadily increasing). This actually forms a nice feedback loop with downloading because when people don't trust the albums that come out, they will have a much bigger incentive to download them - to "hear them and decide whether they will buy them". But once you have something for free, why paying for it? Add to this the explosion of mixtapes where you can hear all the good tracks while you feel even less obliged to buy them and you get the picture
There is a single solution to both problems (sales and music quality) that I've been thinking about but it will require big investments in technology, I will describe it later
JUST A COUPLE OF REASONS... ONE PEOPLE DONT BUT MUSIC LIKE THEY USE TO BECAUSE ITS ALREADY ON THE NET FREE... #2... 2MUCH BULLSHIT OUT N MOST OF YA FAVORITE RAPPERS NOT DOIN WHAT MADE THEM BECOME YA FAVORITE RAPPER N DA BEGINNING OF THE CAREER.... WUTANG... NOT DA SAME... LOX, REDMAN METHOD MAN. DA LIST GOES ON N SO DO REASONS WHY SALES ARE SO LOw!!!!!!!
mainly because people can get it for free on the net
artists need to accept the fact that they're not gonna make a lot of money by selling records
they need to get creative with their hustle and make money other ways... ringtones, concerts, etc... because shit is gonna get worse for them before it gets better
artists need to accept the fact that they're not gonna make a lot of money by selling records
they need to get creative with their hustle and make money other ways... ringtones, concerts, etc... because shit is gonna get worse for them before it gets better
not only because it's free on the net, but also because you can get it pretty much right away
most of the shit i'm interested in pickin up (take for instance the new kutt calhoun cd) best buy wont pick up for a month unless i beg them to do it...fuck that! i support artists when i can, but it's bullshit stores like best buy making it difficult for me
most of the shit i'm interested in pickin up (take for instance the new kutt calhoun cd) best buy wont pick up for a month unless i beg them to do it...fuck that! i support artists when i can, but it's bullshit stores like best buy making it difficult for me
ThaG put it damn-near perfectly. There's hella reasons why, everyone added something from "availability" to "access" and everything in between. But, Times are changing... some things fans can control. Some, the industry. Others are outta anyone's hands.
I'll still go out and buy a record if I think that it's worth it. I also download music, probably more frequently... This helps me out as a consumer, because I can listen to an album and decide if it's worth my hard-earned money, or if I'm better off just keeping a couple "hot" songs and deleting the rest instantly.
I'll still go out and buy a record if I think that it's worth it. I also download music, probably more frequently... This helps me out as a consumer, because I can listen to an album and decide if it's worth my hard-earned money, or if I'm better off just keeping a couple "hot" songs and deleting the rest instantly.
the game has changed, they majors know about the downloading so they put out 2-3 siongles and the rest is filler. they hope to recoup from shit like concerts and ringtone sales and shit like that because putting a ton of money into promoting an album just isnt worth it anymore. I think the only way to increase album sales is if a purchase will lead to discounts on concert tickets and other merchandice and they do the math right that it would be in their favor.
OK, so what was the idea I was talking about:
First, we all agree that ultimately piracy isn't a good thing. And we also agree that the big label model that has been dictating the rules isn't a good thing either. Fortunately, it will be a history at some point in the not so distant future, because of piracy and music being easiliy available all over the net long before it's released.
Now imagine the following situation - I download an album, I listen quickly through it, and I never open the files again. Even more drastic example - I download something and I never even listen to it once. Am I guilty in piracy? Technically yes, but in reality no, because I would have never bought that album and I haven't done any harm to the artist by downloading his album. I have also not shared it, of course, but you don't do these things through P2P anymore anyway, there are file hosting services for that.
This gives me the following idea - if downloading is here to stay, and we have a problem with too much bullshit music being released, and we also have high bandwidth internet now (I listen to a lot of music on youtube, simply because I'm too lazy to look for the CD), we can do the following:
We stop releasing any music on portable drives or downloadable files (and we forget about DRM too). Then everybody who wants to listen to music gets a device that allows him to listen to whatever music he wishes from an archive that contains everything new being recorded. He can't record it, but he can listen to everything he wants, however many times he wants.
The artists will get paid on the basis of how many times each song thye made has been played, the first play per listener, however, will be free for each song. In the end of the year everybody gets charged some sane amount of money as a "music tax" on the basis of how much music he listened to. (and "music" will be quantified as the total time, not the number of tracks one has listened to to prevent artists from consciously making short tracks to make more money)
This way any crappy music that you listen to only once just to find out it sucks will be filtered out and the artists will not get paid for it. Which in turn will lead to the so much dreamed for separation of the real from the fake and the talented artists from the not so talented ones. It will also hopefully bring the creativity back into the music, for obvious reasons.
Of course, this can not be applied to already released music, but for everything after the system starts, it will work pretty well. And of course, it will never happen in the world we live in but I think it is still an interesting idea
First, we all agree that ultimately piracy isn't a good thing. And we also agree that the big label model that has been dictating the rules isn't a good thing either. Fortunately, it will be a history at some point in the not so distant future, because of piracy and music being easiliy available all over the net long before it's released.
Now imagine the following situation - I download an album, I listen quickly through it, and I never open the files again. Even more drastic example - I download something and I never even listen to it once. Am I guilty in piracy? Technically yes, but in reality no, because I would have never bought that album and I haven't done any harm to the artist by downloading his album. I have also not shared it, of course, but you don't do these things through P2P anymore anyway, there are file hosting services for that.
This gives me the following idea - if downloading is here to stay, and we have a problem with too much bullshit music being released, and we also have high bandwidth internet now (I listen to a lot of music on youtube, simply because I'm too lazy to look for the CD), we can do the following:
We stop releasing any music on portable drives or downloadable files (and we forget about DRM too). Then everybody who wants to listen to music gets a device that allows him to listen to whatever music he wishes from an archive that contains everything new being recorded. He can't record it, but he can listen to everything he wants, however many times he wants.
The artists will get paid on the basis of how many times each song thye made has been played, the first play per listener, however, will be free for each song. In the end of the year everybody gets charged some sane amount of money as a "music tax" on the basis of how much music he listened to. (and "music" will be quantified as the total time, not the number of tracks one has listened to to prevent artists from consciously making short tracks to make more money)
This way any crappy music that you listen to only once just to find out it sucks will be filtered out and the artists will not get paid for it. Which in turn will lead to the so much dreamed for separation of the real from the fake and the talented artists from the not so talented ones. It will also hopefully bring the creativity back into the music, for obvious reasons.
Of course, this can not be applied to already released music, but for everything after the system starts, it will work pretty well. And of course, it will never happen in the world we live in but I think it is still an interesting idea
