Kazaa as ARIA sales tool
p2p feature / p2pnet: "I’m just really sick of all the propaganda the recording industry associations are feeding people," says Australian p2pnet reader JunkGarage who, for professional reasons, prefers to remain anonymous.
"I’m sick of the various recording industry associations making up BS stories about their sales data. Well here’s one from me – of course it tells a slightly different tale…"
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The Australian Record Industry Association recently announced its CD sales statistics for 2005 and highlighted the 9.5% in drop from 2004.
A closer analysis of sales data for the past ten years, however, may suggest there is a direct correlation between recent music industry misfortunes and the loss of Australian access to Kazaa:
| Year | Millions (A$) |
| 1995 | 421.5 |
| 1996 | 499.5 |
| 1997 | 486.0 |
| 1998 | 498.3 |
| 1999 | 524.9 |
| 2000 | 531.9 |
| 2001 | 576.4 |
| 2002 | 528.4 |
| 2003 | 539.6 |
| 2004 | 509.8 |
| 2005 | 461.1 |
ARIA, Australian Sales at
Wholesale Value for the
Years Ended 31 December –
|Physical Music Product
(March 2006).
Of some interest is the peak between 1999 and 2001 which by reasonable estimates was caused by the replacement cycle as consumers moved from tapes to CDs.
But more importantly, there was a further peak in 2003 when sales went up by more than 10 million, directly coinciding with the rise of Kazaa which obviously spurred on sales.
Then we see the wide spread introduction of DRM in 2004 & 2005 and the subsequent removal of access to Kazaa in late 2005.
The results speak for themselves.
In fact sales have been declining more as the litigation against Kazaa has intensified. So the clear answer to the Australian Record Industry is this: remove all DRM from CDs and bring back Kazaa as your most effective marketing tool ever.
And while you’re at it – sign some decent artists.
(Okay so this analysis is BS – but it’s equally valid compared to theirs.)
NOTE: For people, and companies such as SunnComm, who take obvious spoof posts seriously, THIS IS A SPOOF POST!
April 12th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
lol, “NOTE: For people, and companies such as SunnComm, who take obvious spoof posts seriously, THIS IS A SPOOF POST!” well given that’s been me a lot of times – THANKS – for noting that.
While the data from the various agencies all fail to note the obvious change in how the more durable media ‘cd’ has effected the market – people exchange them on various websites and trade them in at a few different music stores in exchange for new music – anything to spend less money..
If I (if I were the RIAA) were to produce 10 billion Brittney Spears cd’s – shipped them out to stores and then given her dismal talent only sold 50,000 of them…. the stores would return the remaining 8,999,950,000 copies back to me (if I were the RIAA) but those returns would NOT be taken into consideration in lost sales. No, in fact they count returns of worthless product like it never existed, like the cd’s are still out on the shelves.
To flip this around – If they were to produce 50,000 of the same cd’s and there was a potential demand for 10 billion, they’d never get there – either from their lack of faith in pushing good artists or their own stupidity.
I know – I’m in a bit out in space on this one but follow me for a second here. All ‘Artists’ are not created equal! The RIAA sit back and pretend all their ‘Artists’ are working from the same platform, are all equally promoted and that every download is a lost sale but even in your quick rundown made logical sense in your argument.
It’d be nice if some Harvard Instructor or similar reputable Instructor could take all the numbers reported globally for sales and watch the trends on how sales (discounting returns) trend up and down with the advent of p2p and when laws change making it harder/less safe to use p2p.
I suspect there will be a correlation with a ‘presumed’ downtrend in sales this year because of people like myself who stopped downloading when it became recognized as ‘illegal’ to download music a while back and at the same time, because my source of locating new music was taken away, stopped buying music altogether.
While I’m sure the RIAA enjoys cooking their books – and I do recognize they’re untouchables who control Global Governments like puppets – I’d love for the same laws applying to Enron’s cheating and lying were applied to the biggest liars of them all, the RIAA/MPAA. (I’m not holding my breath)
Just my 10 cents.
_-Jile-_