Home taping didn’t kill music

Anyone who thinks that filesharing hasn't totally killed record industry profits is either crazy rationalizing or stupid beyond belief.

I can tell you that I would have bought many, many albums if things like bittorrent didn't exist. Since I can just get mp3's from bittorrent or my friends, unscrupulous people like me can basically get unlimited free music, although I do often buy music on iTunes to get a high bitrate non-defective copy of an album I especially like (Tea for the Tillerman, Neon Bible, Trial of Van Occupanther). I hate going to concerts, so I only do it when people convince me to go along, and certainly no more than I would if music wasn't free. The bands I like are probably about the same as the ones I liked pre-filesharing, minus ones I've grown out of (Tool, Radiohead, Weezer -- I've bought albums from all these bands pre-filesharing days) plus ones I randomly found on iTunes, plus ones I heard my wife listening to or on Last.FM. I haven't found any new music via filesharing really.

The argument about filesharing is that it is impossible to stop, so attempting to do so is pointless. The amount of government intervention necessary to effectively end sharing of music (and thus violating copyright law) is so draconian that given the balance of (good done by enforcing law) - (harm done by enforcing law) is extremely in the negative.

When the government tries to enforce laws that people will not follow, it does great harm to people's respect for the Law. Marijuana laws, too-low speed limits and other laws that are ignored put people in the habit of ignoring the law if they can get away with it. While Jeffersonians like me generally see this as a healthy attitude (as no one gets hurt), it should still be our goal to establish laws that aren't bullshit, if only for practical reasons (like using the police to work on crime that we actually care about instead of people going 65 instead of 55 on a flat, straight highway).

Since there is no way to stop filesharing, and reducing it at all will involve huge monitoring of the internet, fuck it, change copyright law to reflect reality, and let big music publishers join horse-shoe makers and coal delivery men in the history books.

If bittorrent and Kazaa, Napster didn't exist, I wouldn't have even heard of or even tried hundreds of artists, that then resulted in me buying their albums and attending their concerts.

I estimate (very conservatively) because of Napster, Kazaa, Bittorrent, etc., I've spent thousands of dollars I otherwise wouldn't have on music, both on CD purchases and at concerts.

The record industry is dead. Anyone still trying to justify downloading in that it has not affected the industry is just plain old stupid. Millions of people who would have purchased did not because the music was available for free. The selling of records industry is completely dead.

Music is not going anywhere, and the large payments that musicians have will not be going anywhere either - they can easily make this money in concerts.

This is actually good - proceeds from a concert are spread out across a lot more people than proceeds from a CD.

Taping is lossy. Digital copying is not (unless you want it to be).

Taping doesn't scale easily (tape trees notwithstanding).

Both these served to limit taping's impact.

Well Apple did see a business model and made money.

Every time I read these articles I guess -people that at movie/music industry - are they too old for technologies or what?

I don't need a CD, just content.

The problem with biased analysis (like this article) is that it never gives you a clear picture. I think we all know the music industry inflates their numbers drastically to make the problem of music downloads appear worse than it is. But the Norwegian study that says those who download music are 10 times more likely to spend money on music is also pretty easy to debunk (the sample size alone is enough reason to discredit it)

In the end I think the music industry is losing money not because of pirates but because their market has evolved. Now people can buy the one good song on an album and leave the rest behind (which cuts 90% of the record company’s revenue). That alone explains their losses. But they’re clearly in denial about it and looking for a bad guy. Music piracy fits the bill.

So imho most of the anti-piracy rhetoric is just label execs hoping there’s a solution to their revenue problem (e.g. "if we just stop the pirates our revenue will go back up")

Nothing has "killed" music. There is still plenty of music being made and listened to. Record labels- organizations that existed to finance the manufacture of media and marketing of music are dead, because the marginal cost of manufacturing bits is low, and marketing doesn't require payola to hundreds of radio stations anymore, etc.

A great solution to goods with extremely low marginal cost is reasonably priced unlimited subscription services. It's cheap, convenient, legal, and benefits everyone.

Unfortunately Apple has used their near-monopoly in the music player market to prevent subscription services, so Napster, Rhapsody, et al are cut off from the majority of the market.

If a consumer decides not to spend money on copyrighted material it seems to me they are likely choosing to spend that money elsewhere so it's unlikely piracy causes any real harm to most economies. It may hurt a specific segment but that's just the evolution of supply & demand at work.

I think the best argument against piracy being a major crisis in entertainment is the quality of the products we've seen in the last few years since piracy has really hit the mainstream. Lots of great movies, lots of good TV (so I hear) and when it comes to music I would argue that for most people who previously had a very limited spectrum of musical choices we're now in a renaissance. I don't see any of my favorite bands going out of business, quitting, or putting out subpar products. If anything we're seeing less mainstream acts flourish since, for the first time, they can actually compete with the mainstream.

To be fair: it wasn't as easy, quick, or high fidelity to tape music as it currently is with ripping or pirating.

Not that I think either of those will "kill music"... it just kind of bothers me when people make the comparison as if it's an exact analog (ha!).