8 years after Napster, the RIAA still doesn’t understand why music sales are over the hill. It’s got nothing to do with piracy, although starting lawsuits against downloaders certainly didn’t help sell more CDs.
This is what I posted to Cnet.com:
Want to know why people aren’t buying as much music as they used to? It has nothing to do with the ability to download tracks! Here’s a lyric from an overplayed Britney Spears song that might give you the answer:
“Womanizer, woma-womanizer you’re a womanizer
Oh, womanizer oh, you’re a womanizer baby
You, you you are
You, you you are
Womanizer womanizer womanizer womanizer”
I’ve heard Hi-5 songs with more meaning than this.
Or, listen to the melody line of Jessica Mauboy’s song “Running Back”. During the entire song, she only actually sings three four notes.
I used to buy lots of CDs, and download only the songs that weren’t available to buy in my country. Now, there is almost NO mainstream music that agrees with my musical tastes. It’s been a long time since I bought an album and I rarely even download any music either. If the RIAA is serious about increasing record sales, it needs to give consumers the sort of talent (singing, playing, songwriting and composing) and genres that they were known to be buying years ago.
There is one more problem, and that’s to do with radio stations killing songs. If you were impressed by Beyonce Knowles’ latest song having only one chord, then I’m sure the novelty will wear off when you hear it three times every workday, five days a week. Even if you don’t get tired of hearing the song, why would you bother to buy a copy when you can hear it being played once every hour on the radio?
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Agree wholeheartedly. Music industry as a whole seems to have collapsed under it’s own weight. That is tragic, though. It is not the recording Execs that will feel it, but the artists (the true artists) of the industry will suffer. Many good bands never see the light of day because their songs don’t match up with what the recording industry thinks will sell. The state of the industry today is one reason I have flocked to much older music (think Sinatra) and some jazz. RIAA is doomed to collapse sooner or later, and here is (hopefully) the fist sign:
[url=http://www.prnewschannel.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=1061&z=4]Harvard v. RIAA[/url]