“The amount of music legally bought from online music stores was up — 29 million people bought music online last year, a 21% jump from 24 million in 2006. But that boost didn’t offset the drop in CD sales and the effects of people illegally downloading music. Last year, about 1 million consumers stopped buying CDs, according to NPD.
Going to a store and buying a CD is no longer a rite of passage for many teenagers. But illegally downloading a song might be. Last year, 48% of teenagers did not buy a single CD, compared with 38% in 2006. And illegally downloading music continued to grow among teenagers, the report said.
The average Internet user acquired 6% more music last year via legal downloads, CDs and illegal file-sharing, the report said. But they spent 10% less on music — $40 per user, compared with $44 a year before.
The report underlined a generational split. The increase in legal online sales was driven by people age 36 to 50, the report said, giving the music industry an opportunity to target these customers by tapping into its older catalogs.” – LA Times
This article presumes that basic numbers tell the entire story, without any skepticism for correlation. Are people purchasing entire albums online, or a la carte songs? Because while it may hurt the release of more experimental music, there are plenty of people who aren’t interested in spending money for songs they won’t listen to, and having the option not to spend 15 dollars on an entire album when you can just buy the 3 singles you want to hear certainly changes the way revenue is made in the music industry.
Perhaps this report (source not specified in the article) surveys students to find out how much they’re illegally downloading, but there’s no way to tell that it isn’t just another statistic produced by the RIAA that is as fallacious as their “lost sales” figures, which presume that every person who downloaded a song would have purchased that song, as if some 13 year old who downloads the entire Aerosmith collection on a lark could possibly afford to purchase all of the music he is downloading.
I guess my point is that I read articles like this that make declarations about youth trends without a way to trace these figures as being (however unintentially) marketing for the Recording Industry Association of America.
EDIT: I sent a similar comment to the author of this story, who replied with “wow, great points. do you want to post online?” Heh. She said the LA Times will turn on commenting in a few. I guess it really is a modern world.
I wonder if they’ll start asking questions like:
If didn’t buy (or bought significantly less) CDs in the last year, did any of the following contribute:
There isn’t much worth buying (it’s crap)
Saving money for other purchases
Don’t have money to spare
My preferred artist(s) didn’t release any new albums
My preferred artist(s) did release an album, but there weren’t enough good songs on it to make it worth my time
My preferred artist(s) released new material online, free of cost.
Bought Digital music from an online retailer (more convenient)
Downloaded music from other sources (friends, p2p etc)
The article does name the source (at least, it does now): the NPD Group market research firm. Next question: Who paid them to do the research, and what was the research’s stated goal?
According to the NPD Group’s press release, they do an annual survey like this. It still doesn’t say who paid for it or why.
Ah, in the original post, it did not say who the source was (nor was there a picture, like there is now)
I always wonder at the curious nature of those numbers, much as you have done. Well bowled, sir, well bowled.
And I see that and go….hhhmmmm, times are hard, people are broke, why shell out 15-20 for an entire cd, when you can get the song you want for a buck……
Yeah, that’s what I said up there in my comment – why spend 15 bucks on an entire album when you can get the three singles (or the one song) for much less?
On the flip side of this, vinyl sales are actually going up again.