How Much Of The Collapse Of Recorded Music Sales Revenue Was Due To The End Of Illegal Price Fixing?
from the just-saying.. dept
Harold Feld has made a very important point that has been totally ignored in the debate over the state of the recorded music business. In Cary Sherman's diatribe about how the evil tech industry is destroying the music industry, not only does he pretend that recorded music is representative of the wider music industry's situation (it's not... at all), but he seems to have carefully chosen the date of 1999 as his starting point for the supposed "collapse." Why? Because in 1999 the major record labels (i.e., exactly who the RIAA represents) were charged with illegal price fixing... a practice they then agreed to cease. And, of course, when you stop price fixing, generally speaking your revenue goes down:This is important because in 1999, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the major labels were engaged in an illegal price fixing scheme. The major labels agreed to discontinue their price-fixing practices as part of settlement decree in May 2000. Not surprisingly, once the major labels stopped violating antitrust law, their artificially inflated profits declined and independent competitors saw a significant rise in profits.This is a pretty important point. The "high point" for recorded music sales was completely artificial, not just because of a "legal" monopoly right, but because of illegal antitrust activities in the form of price fixing.
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Filed Under: antitrust, cary sherman, music industry, price fixing, recording industry
Companies: riaa
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... would somebody please think of the cats.
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it is supposed to be
but....but...but.. think of our children. You analysis ignores the effect of piracy on our children. How are we supposed to maintain our lavish life style? Also if it was not for piracy we never would have had antitrust allegations.
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It seems that if I go to Itunes or Amazon, prices for music are pretty well fixed as specific points.
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Piracy is the real reason
Just like how cell towers increase birth rates - statistics never lie...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/dec/17/mobile-phone-masts-birth-rate
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Re: Piracy is the real reason
Yeah, but too bad they're all mutants...
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I think you mean "illegal trust activities" instead, as price fixing is clearly not helping to fight against mega-corporations.
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The Pre-Nabster Era was really the Illegal Price Fixing Era.
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Shadow boxing
Then again, given how quickly RIAA jumps at chances to treat the consumers as criminals, threaten people (proven guilty or not) via extortion, so the labels can continue to shit on both the artist and consumer... I highly doubt the members of these "trade" organizations (The Former Four Families -- EMI going under UMG's wing now) care if this gets out.
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Illegal?
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Re: Illegal?
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If anything, the prices have gone up, especially those of indie artists who see no problem asking for $15-$25 for a single CD.
Sorry, nice try at a slam, but a total failure.
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I'm sorry, what were you saying?
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First: How much of the previous sales were due to people repurchasing music they already had on other formats?
Second: How much of the losses were due to the growth of other entertainment options (the rise of video games, home theater, and computers)?
Third: How much of the loses were due to the fact that the economy had just crapped it's pants during the dot-com bubble burst and people were buying less of everything?
So claiming that the sales losses were only due to price dropping is completely inaccurate and was never claimed in the article.
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Oh, and, you forgot "widespread piracy" on your list. FTFY.
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Going from personal experience, people that I've known who were massive pirates would never have bought most of the things they were pirating anyway (and most of the things they did buy were pirated first).
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If I pirate something, and I like it, I buy it later when I can find it.
I don't buy very much entertainment these days, but when I was buying stuff up, I liked to get a sample first...
Oh, and of course, there's the whole issue of getting stuff that's no longer licensed and cannot be found anywhere...
Or was never brought over to my country in the first place.
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Yet another unfounded assumption. Don't you guys get tired of those?
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Did you ever go to school?
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Naturally, since the per-unit cost for indies with far fewer orders was far greater than the big companies, who were still reaping major profits off their mass-produced cds.
A major's cd would cost 15-35 cents to produce, and sell for $14.99-18.99.
An indie's cd would cost, depending on the run, $2.50-$4.00 and sell for $15.99-$18.99.
Yet, the major's mp3 would still cost $14.99-$18.99, while the indie's mp3 would cost $9.99-$14.99.
the mp3 for both would have the SAME overhead/production cost, but the major's would still cost more!
Why?
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Are you suggesting that (gasp!) they are actually figuring their up front costs into the price per unit? Don't say this too loud, Mike will come down and scold you for not understanding marginal pricing!
If you are paying $2.50 - $4 for CDs, you deserve to fail.
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With a "marginal cost" of $1.59 a unit, Indie acts should be able to make a profit at $2 a disk.
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Another point to add.
All the major re-sellers have EXCLUSIVE contracts..
And there are a few caveats in it..
1. I will only sell THAT corps music/albums..
2. return/NOT returnable. I can buy from the corp CHEAPER if we have a non-return to them..Store does the returns and just destroys the music/album.
3. you can BUY a location in the store. registers, endcaps are the HIGH sales points.
There is tons more in the contracts. But I think it all breaks down to restriction of trade for the OTHERS record distributors.
Theaters BEGAN, as independent owners. and its an ODD history, and a movie was made about it. BOMBED/SOLD OUT/UNDERCUT by the Major distributors, MANY went under or just QUIT.
This has been going on for YEARS.. BOTH music/movies industry OWN the distribution system in the USA.
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The rise of the internet (not to mention several prosecutions for Payola, like the one by Spitzer in 2005) put a serious kink in that plan. Suddenly the independents had avenues to finally get widespread exposure for their music.
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The law won't stop 'em
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/11/billboard-magazine-declares-that-discounted-music-does nt-count.html
Billboard Declares Discounted Music Doesn't Count
unit sales for albums priced below $3.49 will no longer be eligible for the Billboard charts and won't be counted in Nielsen SoundScan sales data during their first four weeks of release. The new rules may be in response to Amazon's Lady Gaga 99 cent sale, but also serve to discourage artists and labels from using price as a marketing tool.
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Re: The law won't stop 'em
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Meh.
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also Meh.
But illegal downloading doesn't put a dent in CD sales or digital music sales nearly as much as the absolutely horrific sound quality of the mp3's sold online. At least when record companies were screwing us in the 90's they weren't compressing the music to 5% of the frequencies. At a dollar a piece on itunes, which is approximately the same price as a CD, you can have the same songs with significantly reduced audio quality and no hard copy. I would buy internet music if it was lossless. Until then, I'll just keep listening to NPR.
I'd also be skeptical of the idea that the industry is still struggling with an anti-trust lawsuit they dealt with thirteen years ago. They have got to be the least efficient industry in the world if they haven't figured out a way to make a profit legally in that amount of time. They're victims of the fact that there are so many legal ways to get an entertainment fix for free. Between hulu, youtube, spotify, pandora, social networks, blogs, podcasts, and TED.com most people that have other responsibilities (read: not 13 year old girls) can keep themselves entertained without having to keep a music collection.
I don't know. Maybe we should embrace the idea that people have hobbies instead of vibrating air and flashing squares that make them think they don't need hobbies.
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