Rock still Rocks
p2pnet.net News:- “This is an exciting time to be a music fan,” according to RIAA truth-adjuster-in-chief Mitch Bainwol.
“Never before in the music community’s history has there been so many ways to enjoy music legitimately,” he says in the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) 2003 Consumer Profile.
Tell that to all the innocent men, women and children the RIAA’s owners, the Big Five record labels, have victimized through the US legal system.
Bainwol regularly claims his paymaster, Big Music, is being ‘devastated’ by p2p networking. But the truth is: the Big Five record labels are doing just fine and reporting record sales.
With that in mind, at 25.2% rock music remained the most purchased genre, says the RIAA. That’s up from 24.7 the previous year.
“In 2003, non-music-only outlet purchases continued to grow from 50.7 percent in 2002 to 52.8 percent in 2003,” it states. “These types of stores include, but are not limited to, mass merchandisers, discount department stores, electronics stores and book stores.”
At 13.3%t of the market, Rap/Hip Hop was once again in second place with R&B and country music in thirdf and fourth places, respectively.
Online music purchases were up by 5%, “while digital downloads increased to 1.3 percent of the market in 2003, up from 0.5 percent in 2002,” says the RIAA, going on that “Purchases at conventional record stores continued to decline in 2003, from 36.8 percent in 2002 to 33.2 percent in 2003″.
“Females” comprised 50.9% of music buyers, up slightly from 2002, and a comparison of the distribution of purchases by age for 2002 and 2003 shows a decrease in the proportion of units purchased by tweens, teens, and young adults (10-24 years of age) and a larger share purchased by buyers over age 45, compared to purchasing patterns of other age groups,, says the RIAA.
“Tweens, teens, and young adults collectively made up 33.7 percent of music purchasers in 2002 and only 30 percent of purchasers in 2003,” it says.
“Buyers over age 45 rose again this year, when they made up 25.5 percent of purchasers in 2002 and 26.6 percent in 2003.
Quoting statistics from a report designed, commissioned and paid for by the music industry, “[...] a recent study by Voter Consumer Research affirmed that consumers who download more are buying less,” says Bainwol. “In that study, 33 percent of people between the ages of 18-24 who download said they bought less music than in the past year.”
An independent study said p2p file sharing has no negative effect on legitimate music sales, dirfectly contradicting music industry claims.
April 23rd, 2004 at 6:35 pm
Okay now what a minute guys, what am I missing here…
it says 33 percent OF THE 18-24 group (not 33% of all the sample count in the report) are buying less music… Does that mean 67% will bought MORE music? doesnt that mean that people DO buy more music with downloading?
April 23rd, 2004 at 7:18 pm
Not to mention that they found that downloading actually increased purchasing habits in older age groups!
April 23rd, 2004 at 8:04 pm
Good point…what of other age groups, Being from the RIAA they would want to show case the worst examples to make a point, well 67% increase spending with downloading isnt very convincing on the RIAA’s half. Also I wish they would show how they do the sampling to get these results? Anyone who’s taken economic classes or read the fine print or just uses common sense realizes how poor sample tests can be, specially when is biased before the sample. What if you already picked out biased results. I mean the RIAA is hardly the poster child of honesty and unbiased practices. They make Micro$oft look like small fry considering how long the RIAA has been screwing the whole world. Remember its not just consumers getting screwed, kids, grandparents, the average john doe, countless bands, other industries, countries, governments, the whole world has had laws bent over backwards in favor of the RIAA. Man even Hitler and Stalin or Hussein would have wished they could have been a Record Executive.
April 24th, 2004 at 2:22 am
so what they’re saying is “P2P is destroying the industry”, but in the same breath they also say “Sales are consistantly increasing”.
And the age group of 18-24, with a third of them buying less music in the past year, if their anything like me their buying less of everything because their at university and therefore have little in the way of ready cash to spend of fripperys like CDs.