Music industry blame game
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- P2P file sharers aren’t the music industry’s deadliest enemies.
Instead, the distinction goes to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, “and a zillion games publishers,” says Charles Arthur in The Guardian.
He’s someone else whose attention was caught by the recent, and ridiculous, assertion that an astonishing 7,000,000 Britons are “stealing” Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music digital music files, in the process gaining, “free access to material worth £12bn“.
Arthur starts from the premise accepted years ago by most people with any knowledge of the Net that, “downloads are not lost sales”.
Instead, he says, “there’s only a limited amount of short-term spending cash available to people (which remains true, generally, despite credit bubbles)” and rather than spending what they have on music, “they choose to spend it on other things”.
“What other things might they spend it on?” – he wonders, going on »»»
Here’s a thought: people who spend on recorded music (CDs, the occasional music DVD) are also very likely to spend on things such as games and DVD purchases or rentals. They are all discretionary purchases. So I dug up the figures from the UK music industry: the British record industry’s trade association (the BPI), and the UK games industry (via its trade body, Elspa) as well as the DVD industry (through the UK Film Council and the British Video Association). The results are over on the Guardian Data Store (http://bit.ly/data01), because they are the sort of numbers that should be available to everyone to chew over.
What did I find? Total spending has grown – but music spending is being squeezed. The games industry – hardware and software – has grown from £1.4bn in 1999 (the year Napster started, and the music business stood rabbit-transfixed) to £4.04bn in 2008. That’s 12% annual compound growth. You’d kill for an endowment like that. Even DVD sales and rental take a £2.5bn bite out of consumers’ available funds, double that of 1999.
“I hope, though, this will finally shut up the idiotic debate about ‘lost sales’ and ‘lost jobs’ from filesharing,” he states.
It won’t. But never mind.
“True: filesharing isn’t good [who says?],” but the, “games industry has found the way to persuade people to buy its products. Locked-down consoles? Content you can’t transfer? Perhaps if they found some way that it was locked to a device – a phone? Or a subscription service? And it turns out both are being tried – Nokia Comes With Music, and Spotify (and, in some countries, Last.fm). The music business is having to adjust, sure. Everyone is.”
Finally, Arthur suggests in The Guardian, “let’s stop blaming imaginary lost sales for what are really changes in society”.
Yes. Let’s.
And let’s also factor in something else, which no one ever seems to mention.
Logging on
Punters may well be spending their money on games which, after all, have some intrinsic value, unlike the bulk of corporate music industry offerings.
But the Big 4 labels, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) have for the past six years, or so, been running a massive, carefully orchestrated international project to gain control of the Internet so they can use it exclusively to distribute their own products online, cutting out all forms of competition.
The failed French ‘Three strikes’ debacle is just one element. In another, the labels are trying to sue their own customers into compliancy.
However, in much the same way Big Music is locked into outmoded business practices which are entirely unsuited to the digital 21st-century, it’s also labouring under the illusion that the mainstream print and electronic media, which it largely controls, are still the primary news and information vehicles.
It’s wrong.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children around the world open Internet accounts , quickly coming into direct contact with others, individually and in groups, in the process completely bypassing the traditional corporate-controlled information media.
If the labels (or movie studios, come to that) believe the lawsuits against innocent people and the corruption of entire government departments are going unnoticed, they’d better think again.
The word is spreading, person to person — fast — and there’s absolutely no question this knowledge on the part of ordinary men and women is being reflected in huge, unacknowledged, sales losses.
“The music business is having to adjust, sure,” says The Guardian, adding:
“Everyone is. But let’s stop blaming imaginary lost sales for what are really changes in society. Everyone will feel a lot better for it.”
Stay tuned.
JN
The Guardian – Filesharing isn’t music’s biggest foe, June 11, 2009
ridiculous – 7 million Britons are file sharing thieves!, May 29, 2009
7,000,000 Britons – Big 4 record label creative statistics, June 8, 2009
worth £12bn – Entertainment industry bullshit, May 30, 2009
‘Three strikes’ debacle – HADOPI is dead. Here comes Loppsi, June 11, 2009
sue their own customers – Jammie Thomas-Rasset: file sharing thief, June 10, 2009
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June 11th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Good article. When I look at my own spending over the past several years, I can definitely see the pattern described. I do download TV shows but only because it’s a lot easier than maintaining timers on the PVR and the quality is usually better (especially when it’s HD). With movies it’s either rent or borrow and only if it’s Bluray (obviously I’ve become a huge HD nut heh). Ever since the movie and music industries have shown their true colors, I’ve done my best to boycott them. I don’t buy music at all anymore for example. I don’t go to the theater anymore either (and the list is pretty damn long as to why). Even so, I still need my regular entertainment fix like everyone else. So where has my spending shifted to? Just like the article points out, video games!
Sure, games can cost more than a Bluray disc or music CD, but dollar for dollar the game will almost always win. One movie is worth anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours of entertainment. A music CD is worth one hour at most. Compare that with the 10 to 100+ hours of enjoyment you can get out of a good video game! More if the game has good replay value or you like getting missed achievements (aka nerd cred lol). I used to be a PC gamer, but not so much anymore ever since buying an Xbox 360. Wireless controller + 52″ HDTV + 7.1 Digital Surround Sound + comfy cushy recliner = nerd heaven! Now take into account that most games don’t take very long at all to hit the bargain bin, the fact that they’re not just for children anymore (haven’t been for some years now) and the fact that they’ve also become more and more co-op centric over the last few years in addition to the usual multiplayer aspects and it’s not at all hard to see why folks are choosing to spend what little spare income they have each month in this fashion.
Entertainment is all about escaping the weariness of our daily lives and it’s hard to beat the high immersion factor of a good video game when it comes to escaping reality. Instead of being a passive observer like with movies, you’re an active participant in the story being told which in turn can make you feel much more connected to the characters. Mind you, gaming consoles aren’t completely perfect either. Everything is laden with DRM nowadays, especially on the Xbox 360. When my first machine died out of warranty, I had to buy a new one. Since the Live Arcade titles you purchase via the Marketplace are tied to the unique hardware ID of the machine, changing to a new machine presents a bit of a problem. On the originating machine, anybody could login using any ID and play all the Arcade titles. On the new machine, the account that was used to purchase those Arcade titles must be logged in or they won’t work. All were bought with my ID but about half actually belong to my wife. She can’t play any of her games unless I log in and run the game.
Anyways, good read. Hopefully the movie and music industries will eventually catch on to what seems so obvious to everyone else. It’s doubtful they ever will though. If they ever do manage to change, it will be in the 11th hour and only because they had no other choice left to them. It’s either that or die, both of which are perfectly fine with me. There is simply no room for outdated 20th century thinking and business models in the 21st century. I look forward to seeing what rises from the ashes.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Replying to above comment:
“A music CD is worth one hour at most. Compare that with the 10 to 100+ hours of enjoyment you can get out of a good video game! ”
Wait, you buy an album and only ever listen to it once, yet play a game repeatedly in your calculation. I have albums I have listened to far longer than any computer game has been played, heck some of the albums I have listened to on and off since the 80’s. Be fair in your assessment.
Otherwise, this article basically says what I and others have said for years, people only have a finite amount of money to spend on entertainment, we cannot spend more than we can afford and these days it has to be spread around much wider than ever before. A PS3 game costs the price of around 4 albums, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out where the money is going, personally a chunk of it going towards Sony’s PS3 divisions rather than Sony’s music divisions, but they still get it one way or another. I can’t spend more money than I have, no matter how much I may have or may not have downloaded I still spend on entertainment in the form of movies, music and games. One way or another, the companies still get it, sadly those very people just don’t get “it”, they failt to understand this.
Charles Arthur is bang on the money, trouble is it won’t change a thing.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:24 am
Even with the advent of newer blu ray cd, some people could not afford it thus others would still opt to buy DVD instead. Every thing has its on consumer.