Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
But what you, and several other posters are doing, is adamantly refusing to accept that the huge, unprecedented decline in music shown on that chart - ten year drop that coincides pretty well with the widespread availability of pirated music - might, just might, be due to piracy.
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1) People who with no need or desire to buy new music, especially modern bands/acts - people whose tastes have fossilized (aging Baby Boomers, mostly, due to lack of interest in new stuff, but also plenty of younger folk whose tastes got stuck around their late teens & early 20s) - slowed down their buying dramatically, if not completely.
2) Anyone who has finished converting their music collection to CD has also mostly dropped back their music acquisition, though they likely buy more new music than category 1 (it's only less in comparison because of the necessity of buying large volumes before).
3) Plenty of people are buying digitally by the song now instead of by the album. This cuts down on profits a fair bit. The more technologically literate of the first two categories also likely converted most of their CDs to MP3s (might be piracy to the RIAA & Co., but the vast majority of people do NOT find anything at all wrong with format-shifting, and it's still legal in many jurisdictions), and thus aren't participating nearly as much in this category.
4) One that hasn't been mentioned yet, I think, and is probably the biggest reason: the rise of satellite/digital cable TV and digital radio. If my local cable company's any example, a digital TV subscriber has access to around 40 genre-specific and commerical-free (or at least DJ-free) music feeds. I assume satellite TV is the same. A LOT of people are quite happy to listen to random music of the genre they like rather than obtaining albums. Then you add in those who have satellite radio (also mostly commercial-free and covering just about any genre you might be interested in) and you have many millions of people (maybe even hundreds of millions thanks to the forced conversion to digital TV) who have no desire to ever buy new music again.
Frankly, all of these things have FAR more effect on music-buying rates than the free downloaders (only a tiny minority of which are the "Screw you, I'm getting it for free!" type that downloaders get characterized as rather than the more normal "Eh. Not something I'd buy myself, but since it's there, I might as well..." crowd) or the sharers (ie, tossing off a copy for family or a friend).