The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Okay, these may be getting boring now, but I wrote this a few weeks back for my website (www.unitepunk.tk *apologises in advance for shameless plug*) so I figured I may as well post it up here. Some of the stuff in the topic was obviously inspired (or stolen from...) Goatboy's post on MP3s a while back... but anyhoo, here it is.
Record Companies are increasingly blaming a drop in sales on the peer to peer sharing of MP3s on programs such as Kazaa. The music industry seem to believe everyone who downloads songs from P2P programs is adding to the decline of music. But surely this cannot be true? Granted, people do use programs to download whole albums, and then burn the tracks onto CDs so they do not pay the bands or labels anything. But it is also true that far from everyone who downloads music does this.
Many (myself included) download songs to check out new artists to see if it's worth trying to get hold of an album. Recently I have bought a number of albums as a direct result of listening to tracks I downloaded. These include CDs by Red Animal War, Thursday and Kenisia, and are albums that I may not have bought had I not heard some MP3s before hand. But I also download some tracks just because I like them. For example, I heard 'Defy You' by The Offspring on The Lockup, and heard that it was only available on the 'Orange County' soundtrack. I wasn't about to buy a full CD to listen to one track, so I downloaded the track. If the MP3 had not been available, I still would not have bought the album, but with the MP3 I am able to listen to the track when I want.
MP3s are also a great way for new bands to get heard. Using MP3s people from anywhere in the world can hear bands from anywhere in the world. You'd think the Music Industry would see that MP3s can be a powerful and unrivalled marketing tool, but they simply wish to demonize the use of them. With MP3s people can hear the songs they want to hear, as opposed to listening to the radio that might only play a few songs someone likes in an hour. With MP3s there's much more scope for finding out about a band someone has just heard, as they are online and can look for the artists website, or search for similar bands. On the radio the listener is simply limited to listening to the next song on the playlist, whether they love it or hate it.
And whilst ignoring the positive points of MP3s may just about be forgivable for the Music Industry, what is not is their use of MP3s as a scapegoat. While bombarding music fans with figures and stats that show falling sales and supposedly prove MP3 is killing music, they ignore the fact that the economy has slowed down greatly (especially in the USA, which I suspect is one of the largest markets for music) and the fact that record labels still pay out vast sums of money to the latest pop star wannabes who will probably release a couple of singles that get into the charts and then fade away. Why not invest this money in some less well known artists who actually write their own songs, tour and have a loyal (if relatively small) fan base? Using the tens of millions they pay for a record deal with some big name stars, labels could invest in literally hundreds of smaller artists. And I'm not even talking about paying these artists a pittance. Give them a £100,000 contract each, and you get 100 artists for £10 million. So if they're making a loss, why not cut their costs and cut the amount they pay to the latest flavour of the month, instead investing in some artists that may actually have some staying power.
They also choose to ignore one aspect of the Internet which may actually be harming sales, sites such as Ebay which have vast numbers of new and second hand CDs up to bid on at considerably lower prices than your average high street store. There have always been stores that buy and sell second hand CDs, but auction sites now open this up to a huge nationwide and worldwide market, meaning there's a much better chance of finding what you want than in a second hand CD store (or indeed in your local branch of HMV or Virgin). This means CDs are being sold, but because they are sold outside of big high street stores, the industry will ignore the additional sales in their 'facts' and figures so they can blame their failings on MP3s rather than people finding somewhere with a bigger range of music for much lower prices.
The music industry should stop putting all their eggs in one basket, spread their risk a little more with a bunch of smaller artists rather than a couple of big popstars (or just cut some of their 'stars' wages, and maybe their egos too), and stop blaming anything new for their own shortcomings.
Record Companies are increasingly blaming a drop in sales on the peer to peer sharing of MP3s on programs such as Kazaa. The music industry seem to believe everyone who downloads songs from P2P programs is adding to the decline of music. But surely this cannot be true? Granted, people do use programs to download whole albums, and then burn the tracks onto CDs so they do not pay the bands or labels anything. But it is also true that far from everyone who downloads music does this.
Many (myself included) download songs to check out new artists to see if it's worth trying to get hold of an album. Recently I have bought a number of albums as a direct result of listening to tracks I downloaded. These include CDs by Red Animal War, Thursday and Kenisia, and are albums that I may not have bought had I not heard some MP3s before hand. But I also download some tracks just because I like them. For example, I heard 'Defy You' by The Offspring on The Lockup, and heard that it was only available on the 'Orange County' soundtrack. I wasn't about to buy a full CD to listen to one track, so I downloaded the track. If the MP3 had not been available, I still would not have bought the album, but with the MP3 I am able to listen to the track when I want.
MP3s are also a great way for new bands to get heard. Using MP3s people from anywhere in the world can hear bands from anywhere in the world. You'd think the Music Industry would see that MP3s can be a powerful and unrivalled marketing tool, but they simply wish to demonize the use of them. With MP3s people can hear the songs they want to hear, as opposed to listening to the radio that might only play a few songs someone likes in an hour. With MP3s there's much more scope for finding out about a band someone has just heard, as they are online and can look for the artists website, or search for similar bands. On the radio the listener is simply limited to listening to the next song on the playlist, whether they love it or hate it.
And whilst ignoring the positive points of MP3s may just about be forgivable for the Music Industry, what is not is their use of MP3s as a scapegoat. While bombarding music fans with figures and stats that show falling sales and supposedly prove MP3 is killing music, they ignore the fact that the economy has slowed down greatly (especially in the USA, which I suspect is one of the largest markets for music) and the fact that record labels still pay out vast sums of money to the latest pop star wannabes who will probably release a couple of singles that get into the charts and then fade away. Why not invest this money in some less well known artists who actually write their own songs, tour and have a loyal (if relatively small) fan base? Using the tens of millions they pay for a record deal with some big name stars, labels could invest in literally hundreds of smaller artists. And I'm not even talking about paying these artists a pittance. Give them a £100,000 contract each, and you get 100 artists for £10 million. So if they're making a loss, why not cut their costs and cut the amount they pay to the latest flavour of the month, instead investing in some artists that may actually have some staying power.
They also choose to ignore one aspect of the Internet which may actually be harming sales, sites such as Ebay which have vast numbers of new and second hand CDs up to bid on at considerably lower prices than your average high street store. There have always been stores that buy and sell second hand CDs, but auction sites now open this up to a huge nationwide and worldwide market, meaning there's a much better chance of finding what you want than in a second hand CD store (or indeed in your local branch of HMV or Virgin). This means CDs are being sold, but because they are sold outside of big high street stores, the industry will ignore the additional sales in their 'facts' and figures so they can blame their failings on MP3s rather than people finding somewhere with a bigger range of music for much lower prices.
The music industry should stop putting all their eggs in one basket, spread their risk a little more with a bunch of smaller artists rather than a couple of big popstars (or just cut some of their 'stars' wages, and maybe their egos too), and stop blaming anything new for their own shortcomings.
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
Okay, these may be getting boring now, but I wrote this a few weeks back for my website (www.unitepunk.tk *apologises in advance for shameless plug*) so I figured I may as well post it up here. Some of the stuff in the topic was obviously inspired (or stolen from...) Goatboy's post on MP3s a while back... but anyhoo, here it is.
Record Companies are increasingly blaming a drop in sales on the peer to peer sharing of MP3s on programs such as Kazaa. The music industry seem to believe everyone who downloads songs from P2P programs is adding to the decline of music. But surely this cannot be true? Granted, people do use programs to download whole albums, and then burn the tracks onto CDs so they do not pay the bands or labels anything. But it is also true that far from everyone who downloads music does this.
Many (myself included) download songs to check out new artists to see if it's worth trying to get hold of an album. Recently I have bought a number of albums as a direct result of listening to tracks I downloaded. These include CDs by Red Animal War, Thursday and Kenisia, and are albums that I may not have bought had I not heard some MP3s before hand. But I also download some tracks just because I like them. For example, I heard 'Defy You' by The Offspring on The Lockup, and heard that it was only available on the 'Orange County' soundtrack. I wasn't about to buy a full CD to listen to one track, so I downloaded the track. If the MP3 had not been available, I still would not have bought the album, but with the MP3 I am able to listen to the track when I want.
MP3s are also a great way for new bands to get heard. Using MP3s people from anywhere in the world can hear bands from anywhere in the world. You'd think the Music Industry would see that MP3s can be a powerful and unrivalled marketing tool, but they simply wish to demonize the use of them. With MP3s people can hear the songs they want to hear, as opposed to listening to the radio that might only play a few songs someone likes in an hour. With MP3s there's much more scope for finding out about a band someone has just heard, as they are online and can look for the artists website, or search for similar bands. On the radio the listener is simply limited to listening to the next song on the playlist, whether they love it or hate it.
And whilst ignoring the positive points of MP3s may just about be forgivable for the Music Industry, what is not is their use of MP3s as a scapegoat. While bombarding music fans with figures and stats that show falling sales and supposedly prove MP3 is killing music, they ignore the fact that the economy has slowed down greatly (especially in the USA, which I suspect is one of the largest markets for music) and the fact that record labels still pay out vast sums of money to the latest pop star wannabes who will probably release a couple of singles that get into the charts and then fade away. Why not invest this money in some less well known artists who actually write their own songs, tour and have a loyal (if relatively small) fan base? Using the tens of millions they pay for a record deal with some big name stars, labels could invest in literally hundreds of smaller artists. And I'm not even talking about paying these artists a pittance. Give them a £100,000 contract each, and you get 100 artists for £10 million. So if they're making a loss, why not cut their costs and cut the amount they pay to the latest flavour of the month, instead investing in some artists that may actually have some staying power.
They also choose to ignore one aspect of the Internet which may actually be harming sales, sites such as Ebay which have vast numbers of new and second hand CDs up to bid on at considerably lower prices than your average high street store. There have always been stores that buy and sell second hand CDs, but auction sites now open this up to a huge nationwide and worldwide market, meaning there's a much better chance of finding what you want than in a second hand CD store (or indeed in your local branch of HMV or Virgin). This means CDs are being sold, but because they are sold outside of big high street stores, the industry will ignore the additional sales in their 'facts' and figures so they can blame their failings on MP3s rather than people finding somewhere with a bigger range of music for much lower prices.
The music industry should stop putting all their eggs in one basket, spread their risk a little more with a bunch of smaller artists rather than a couple of big popstars (or just cut some of their 'stars' wages, and maybe their egos too), and stop blaming anything new for their own shortcomings.
Record Companies are increasingly blaming a drop in sales on the peer to peer sharing of MP3s on programs such as Kazaa. The music industry seem to believe everyone who downloads songs from P2P programs is adding to the decline of music. But surely this cannot be true? Granted, people do use programs to download whole albums, and then burn the tracks onto CDs so they do not pay the bands or labels anything. But it is also true that far from everyone who downloads music does this.
Many (myself included) download songs to check out new artists to see if it's worth trying to get hold of an album. Recently I have bought a number of albums as a direct result of listening to tracks I downloaded. These include CDs by Red Animal War, Thursday and Kenisia, and are albums that I may not have bought had I not heard some MP3s before hand. But I also download some tracks just because I like them. For example, I heard 'Defy You' by The Offspring on The Lockup, and heard that it was only available on the 'Orange County' soundtrack. I wasn't about to buy a full CD to listen to one track, so I downloaded the track. If the MP3 had not been available, I still would not have bought the album, but with the MP3 I am able to listen to the track when I want.
MP3s are also a great way for new bands to get heard. Using MP3s people from anywhere in the world can hear bands from anywhere in the world. You'd think the Music Industry would see that MP3s can be a powerful and unrivalled marketing tool, but they simply wish to demonize the use of them. With MP3s people can hear the songs they want to hear, as opposed to listening to the radio that might only play a few songs someone likes in an hour. With MP3s there's much more scope for finding out about a band someone has just heard, as they are online and can look for the artists website, or search for similar bands. On the radio the listener is simply limited to listening to the next song on the playlist, whether they love it or hate it.
And whilst ignoring the positive points of MP3s may just about be forgivable for the Music Industry, what is not is their use of MP3s as a scapegoat. While bombarding music fans with figures and stats that show falling sales and supposedly prove MP3 is killing music, they ignore the fact that the economy has slowed down greatly (especially in the USA, which I suspect is one of the largest markets for music) and the fact that record labels still pay out vast sums of money to the latest pop star wannabes who will probably release a couple of singles that get into the charts and then fade away. Why not invest this money in some less well known artists who actually write their own songs, tour and have a loyal (if relatively small) fan base? Using the tens of millions they pay for a record deal with some big name stars, labels could invest in literally hundreds of smaller artists. And I'm not even talking about paying these artists a pittance. Give them a £100,000 contract each, and you get 100 artists for £10 million. So if they're making a loss, why not cut their costs and cut the amount they pay to the latest flavour of the month, instead investing in some artists that may actually have some staying power.
They also choose to ignore one aspect of the Internet which may actually be harming sales, sites such as Ebay which have vast numbers of new and second hand CDs up to bid on at considerably lower prices than your average high street store. There have always been stores that buy and sell second hand CDs, but auction sites now open this up to a huge nationwide and worldwide market, meaning there's a much better chance of finding what you want than in a second hand CD store (or indeed in your local branch of HMV or Virgin). This means CDs are being sold, but because they are sold outside of big high street stores, the industry will ignore the additional sales in their 'facts' and figures so they can blame their failings on MP3s rather than people finding somewhere with a bigger range of music for much lower prices.
The music industry should stop putting all their eggs in one basket, spread their risk a little more with a bunch of smaller artists rather than a couple of big popstars (or just cut some of their 'stars' wages, and maybe their egos too), and stop blaming anything new for their own shortcomings.