Reading the paper today I saw that music sale in Ireland are down 20% on last year and almost a third in the US. Since I got a MP3 player, I bought 1 CD brought it back to the shop got a gift voucher in return and bring it to another store and do the same thing. Or else I download songs. Is this the end of music retailers such as HMV and Virgin?

I still purchase CD's, but only ones I really like and deserve my support. If the music industry werent so obsessed with overprivcing cd's then they would get more sales and people would be more inclined to buy them.

They were even complaining about sites which sell cd's cheaply now aswell.

I love buying CD's. There's nothing like unwrapping the film and slipping yourn shiny new purchase into the player. I have a lot of dwonloaded tracks but they mostly fall into the following categories:

1) Tracks that I've downloaded becuase I want to listen to them at work and can't be arsed to bring it in and rip it

2) Tracks that I've downloaded because I'm thinking about buying the album and want to hear stuff first.

If it's shit, it doesn't deserve space on my hard drive

I hardly ever buy CDs anymore. I only buy stuff if I really love the band or already have everything they've done.

I saw that artcile in the paper about cheap online reatailers being shouted at. Thing is, if its a choice between paying £13.99 for a cd in a shop or £6.99 online including delivery, where do they think I'll go? And if they force said online folks to shut down, its back to my old friend Kazaa.

I download the occasional track, but if I listen to it a lot, I'll but the album.

I download most of my stuff, though thats not a lot really! I agree with Dazzla though, its nice to have the case, the album art and the physical object!

On another, more sinister note, has anyone noticed the increasing availability of vinyl (and not just DJ vinyl) in record stores? Its becoming "cooler" to have stuff on vinyl, from which also happen to be very difficult to get a digitally distributable copy off.

ywi

if the music business is in such a bad state why the fuck are these record companies doing mad things like giving robbie williams 80million quid??

I download albums occasionally, but i buy a heck of a lot of albums. Usually i download something if it's not out yet and buy it when its released, or download an album im not sure about before buying. Otherwise it's mostly stuff that is hard to get hold of or i'd have to get imported etc.

I tend to download some tracks and buy the album if it sound good.

however on monday I bought Franz Ferdinand and Mortorcycle on CD single, the first CD singles i've bought for a while.

Vinyl sales have actually increased, largely due to the bedroom DJ and the fact that certain remixes were unavailable on CD. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues now that the maxi CD single is allowed back in the charts and will contain most remixes if not all of them.

if you have winny xp os you download evertything
i never buy it, if i want to send a guy bucks i send him sumt

I say fuck paying for any music. 80 million to Williams. Persisting with shit like Posh and Baby etc, the fuckers don't deserve our money. Musicians should make their living by flogging their arses in live gigs like the middle ages minstrels had to.

Never been a fan of downloading music - paid for or otherwise - known far too many hard-drives go poof and lose all data.

Prefer to buy CD's, but as ever - price is an issue. Same with DVD's - some of my mates spend so long downloading DVD rips, fooking about trying to burn them and then marvel at how much they've saved as they try and watch it - overly compressed, shitty sound and all.

Bollox - you can buy DVD's online for £3 upwards - and if you don't mind waiting 6 months everything appears in a sale.

yeah...

but the interesting thing is that the only artist to actually attempt to do anything about THEIR music being "exploited" is metalica... if i was a person who was being downloaded lots i rekon id just be happy to have my art out there. and maybe im crazy....

but yeah i think that if you're commited to a band then you will go and buy the album, or at least you should, but we're living in an age where the mantra is "try before you buy" so what do they expect...?

The fact is that Metallica (at that time) were inactive as a band - meaning they weren't touring and they weren't recording.
The vast majority of Metallica's income is through back catalogue sales.

Hence the reason why they sued napster....

yeah. but somebody would have sued napster. it was illegal.

but now with the gigantic dollar sucking loophole that is kazaa... there's nothing anyone can do. (unless you're someone like the australian police who wanna go trawling through university computers to find people downloading stuff)

If the artist wants payment and you appreciate what they do then it's not right to expect not to have to give anything in return, if the problem is people being stinking rich then thats not something unique to the music industry, I can't see many people stealing from Asda as the have a higher share value than Morrisons, hmm.. apart from shareholders, ponder ponder..

Shaareaza's still good for d/loading. I can't believe people still pay for music.

I know, it gives me a warm glow to think of all those people doing the right thing.

Try giving someone a Xmas present of their favourite artist on a blank cd that you downloaded from the internet.

You can't download blank cd's off the internet, not actual blank cd's.

As I see it if you want to pay 11 quid for a bit of paper(sleeve notes etc) that's your choice. Me, I've never had any probs with d/loaded music, not got any blank cds either. Free music is good.

The way I see morally that's your choice, I'm sure it all comes round though so if your saying it's true and someone copys something you've spent time on and distributes it to the point that it's not worth anything, you'll have no argument for saying you've been wronged by it.

mmmm.. but you have to concider that its not just the artist who is being diced by us not paying.

the graphic artist and the manufacturers and the record company are also missing out.

my theory is that its morally ok (almost?) to download chart stuff because they will make a killing anyway...

but independant artists and alternative stuff should be payed for in my opinion, lest they stop making music :(

I always had a soft spot for artists.

yeah i think everyone does.

anyone who can make a living out of their craft deserves my 11 quid. lol

but yeah if u just want one song off an album then download it... gaaaah its messing with my head.

Just be mean I always am.

If it's something I want to listen to out of curiosity, I will download it. If I like what I have heard, I will go out and buy the album.

I currently own 1000+ cd albums.....

unordinarychild spouted:
If it's something I want to listen to out of curiosity, I will download it. If I like what I have heard, I will go out and buy the album.

thanks for putting my meandering thoughts to words.

i can now sleep at night.

If the band are on a little label, I buy. Big label bands, I download.

All you're doing by paying for music is giving the labels enough money to keep giving deals to the likes of Posh and Bunton.

rammsteinrainbo spouted:
If the band are on a little label, I buy. Big label bands, I download.

I don't even think about the label - If it's a band I like, I couldn't give a shit who they're signed with...

95% of the mp3's I own, I have encoded myself as I already own the cd album.

The other 5% is single songs I have downloaded, and may purchase the album.

unordinarychild spouted:
I don't even think about the label - If it's a band I like, I couldn't give a shit who they're signed with...

95% of the mp3's I own, I have encoded myself as I already own the cd album.

The other 5% is single songs I have downloaded, and may purchase the album.

Me too..

Infact, I only have 4 illegal MP3s currently, but the CD is on order and will be here at the end of the week anyway.

i support local bands, that is it. Record companys dont need the billions they get, and even with p2p theyll carry on to recieve millions, if only from the technologically neive

With the crap that record companies stodge the charts up and with (the stodge that receives blanket coverage across all radio stations all over the country), it's only natural that people will find alternative means of getting music that isn't part of that, if only to escape from it all...

The BPI are planning to do what the RIAA has been castigated for, I only hope the list of 'stolen' files is published. It would be interesting to see how much of the Top 10 is being downloaded compared to the more esoteric bands on their books.

If the record industry reduced prices it wouldn't be a problem. It costs a few pence to make a CD, the money goes on their insistance on paying stupidly high prices to the big artists in contract payments so it's their own fault. I usually do buy the CDs but I won't pay over a tenner for the CD,also if I don't like the whole album just one song, I'll download it, what's the point of buying a whole album I don't like. If the music companies don't like it they should sell the tracks themselves, I'd be quite happy to pay about 50p for the odd track from a band I wouldn't otherwise like.

Of course the other issue is try before you buy, without file sharing I would never have discovered (and subsequently bought albums by) Moloko, Aphex Twin Free assosiation and David Holmes

IM(not so H)0 if there is any Music Industry Crisis, then they only have themselves to blame. They've been the architects of their own downfall. The music industry devalued its own product by reducing it to the level of latter day nursery rhymes performed by waged eye candy aimed at the ever increasing disposable income of the pre-teen market. Music used to stir the soul. Now it sits uncomfortably in-between cheap generic japanese cartoons designed to flog the latest toy company piece of tat on saturday morning kids TV shows.

Its no wonder they're finding it increasingly hard to push a product even the kiddies are growing rapidly tired of. Maybe they should have asked Mattel how fickle their new market demographic is before they started down that road.

The tired formulaic crap they push today owes more to cabaret than it does to rock n roll. Case in point: how often to you see the latest identi-kit pop star these days being rolled off the assembly line without enough backing dancers to give Busby Berkley a wet dream?. Still, its a good way to keep the kiddies distracted from how little bang they're getting for their buck.

But of course its all really the evil Peer to Peer networks fault isn't it?, cruelly sucking away their profits until there's barely enough cocaine left to go round the boardroom table.

Now I dont deny for a second that P2P networks do indeed lose them money, but for a different reason than the one they usually try to tout through their RIAA mouthpiece.

P2P has shown Joe Public that a distribution model exists that makes a mockery of the supposed high production costs they try to justify. Instead of embracing this new distribution model they tried to stamp it out with an almost fanatical fervor to protect the gouging prices they demand for an increasingly valueless product.

Sucks to be them, dunnit?.

the fact is that companies like HMV and Virgin get their cd's in for 7 quid max (i know as i worked for a small online company). why the hell should the general public pay another 50% on top for the product. if they cant cope without the prices being artificially held up then they shouldnt be in business. oh and metallica deserve to be ripped off for putting out such a lame album