Sookey faces, lol. Massive decline in music sales over past years because music has been getting suckier over the past years.

The problem is the ridiculously high costs of CDs and whatnot. They are charging damn near $20 for a CD that used to be only $8-$10 just a handful of years ago. And there's no reason for it other than greed, The production costs for one CD is virtually pennies. So their greed has led to theri downfall.
Same reason people download software. Who can afford $500 for Photoshop? Come on...

I agree with the Photoshop part! I mean, $500 could buy me a new PC! Although it is a wonderful and brilliant product, $500 is way too FUCKING expensive.

But I disagree with the Music Albums part. They're only $12-15 nowdays, not $20, and that's only in Canadian. I haven't visited HMV lately, so the prices might have risen. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Does anyone ever think that maybe,just mabye the legal
staff at "RIAA" is a little slow at this time, and need to shuffle some paperwork to make the payment on the (House,Car,Boat,Vacation,Private Jet,Housemaid's,
Timeshare dues, WELL I think that you get it by now.)
???????

Anyone who absolutely needs thousands of mp3's couldn't possibly listen to them all in an entire lifetime or they are just totally obsessed and should get professional help. Anyone else is probably an entertainer like a DJ that will make money from playing music and should not have a gripe about paying a small monthly fee to access songs.

Solution:
For $9.99/mo. subscribe to Real Rhapsody internet radio (or another service}.
You can choose any song at any time and make your own play lists. If you need to copy, just record it to your hard drive. Sure it takes a few minutes to record however, by the time you weed through all the bad files you download for free, it will actually take less time. Good deal considering you could get 100's of hours of music for less than the cost of a few CD's.

I went into my local Blockbuster Video today in the UK and saw they sell "ex" rental DVD's for about $17. On many of these DVD's there are big printed messages saying "FOR RENTAL USE ONLY" "NOT FOR RESALE". So is blockbuster breaking the law? IF so why don't the RIAA and movie people sue Blockbuster and any retailer who resells 2nd hand or ex rental games, dvd's musical CDs? What next Ebay sued for letting people sell second hand things?

Havard research proved that P2P isn't really affecting music sales.

Titles like Games X Copy didn't really allow you to pirate games, for online PC games you need a VAILD reg code, so you still have to buy the game if you want to play multiplayer even if you could run the game without the CD.

Music wise, I noticed in my HMV and Virgin in the UK that about 50% and more is for DVD sales and about 10% for games for PC/PS2/Xbox etc. Music/CDS sells less thanks to decent PC/consoles entertainment and the fact people love DVD's and film in general more than we all we had was crappy VHS. People also watch less TV thanks to DVD/Net and Games, should the TV industry sue next?

When I hear of TV companies suing TIVO and Panasonic for making Hard drive VCR's that break copyright laws for recording TV programmes then i would say the RIAA has the moral highground.

Perhaps the RIAA should sue APPLE and RIO for making devices that are even marketted for ripping content? And Yes apple and MS have sussed this and made the legal stores so they can pretend people never ever back up theres CD's to any form of Hraddrive or memory stick walkman/ipod devices...

Funny the RIAA go for the little people don't they? To make us scared of ever downloading anything of the internet full stop.

Are we breaking the law if we download midi files? What about song lyrics?

Thing about the RIAA folks is the net spells there death. Artist will distribute direct through the internet over the next decade. The RIAA will fade and dissappear.

And I say good riddance.

I live in the UK. But what I have seen the RIAA do to people downloading a few tunes of P2P sites in the states sickens me. Especially as the smart padmins types who probably downloaded terrabytes of content knew how to hide thir IP and are untracable. So the people caught appear to be new net users how joined a P2P site and downloaded a couple of songs. If the RIAA of america really cared they would warn people not to do it again and confiscate their hard disk/ipods.

Or just make them pay for the real albums.

The joke is the RIAA are bullies, tyrants if you like.

And we all know what the USA does to tyrants....

MB

And we all know what the USA does to tyrants....

Give them high level government jobs, like President?

As far as CD pricing, I live in New York. maybe that's why,
Mind, you.. I live in one of the other boroughs, not
Manhattan, so i'm not paying insane city prices. But if you go
to Sam Goody records, Tower Records, etc. CDs are in the
$16-$20 range.

I man, if you catch a sale, or if it's a special promotional price,
etc, yeah, it may be a little cheaper, but just consider this:

If you buy 3 CDs, and only get 6 or 7 songs you actually want
to hear, you're paying anywhere from $48-$60 for 3 CDs.
Contrast that to FREE. No contest.

Now, that being said, Apple's iTunes MP3 downloads shop is
about as good as it's going to get and it's a fair price,
especially since you can purchase just the songs you want.
And for the record, Apple didn't create the store to justify
their iPod player, they did it to push sales of the player
through the roof, which it did. Apple was actually losing
millions of dollars running the iTunes sop for most of it's
existence. it wasn't until late last year that they actually began
to turn a profit from the store and recoup their initial outlay.

Also, I think the argument some peopel make aboutsome fans
still buying CDs because they want the liner notes and album
cover, etc. is wishful thinking.
Eventually, all your CDs wind up in a CD tower/case/closet,
never to be listened to or even dusted off except for once in a
very blue moon.

At BEST, they selected good songs get ripped to MP3 and put
into a playlist or an iPod/MP3 walkman.

If CDs were priced honestly, it wouldn't be such an issue. If
artist got a REAL chunk of the profits, then their fans might
care
But the reality is that most artists that go on tour could care
less if their CD is bootlegged. They make far more money of
the tour and promotional merchandise tham they would ever
get from record sales.

This Jihaad against filesharing is really and truly is about
lining the pockets of the label heads and executives, bald-
headed pony tail wearing pricks...

The real reason music sales have dropped is all this RIAA suing BULLSHIT. Don't buy any form of pre-recorded music until these gestapo tactics stop!!

Just around the same time that Napster was shutdown, brand new released music cds were in the range of 20-25 dollars. Now you say the prices are 16-20 dollars yes because of piracy. Thanks to that CD prices are starting to fall and since RIAA has now help from the government its a no-brainer it will continue until piracy is stopped. But i refuse to pay over 15 dollars for a cd that you may only know of the singles they have released from the cd.

there way to expensive... but the ipod idea is good b\c i normally i like 2-3 songs a cd which is $2-$3 off of the shop instead of 16.99+ for the c.d. and the RIAA and artist still get some money per song sold, at least me thinks

I wonder when they are going to sue the people that record songs from the radio or movies off of TV. Many of the files that are on P2P are being broadcast as I write this. Some person that has been recording of the air gets on the sue list and the gestapo crashes his house, he'll be nailed for everything he has got no mater where it came from.

What is ironic, the very entertainment industry that is crying fowl about P2P is the same industry that will screw the artists and supporting companies out of millions of dollars without batting an eye. There are some artists and small studios that have never been paid a cent for work that the big studios have used. Some of them quit the big labels to form their own companies. The reason for these artist's the break-away from the big entertainment complexes is not only being shafted out of money, once they get under a big studio, they loose all control of their work, most of their life, and artistic integrity. Much of the crap put out now is because some big studio types wanted it done,....Sort of like ordering an artist to create a painting to match ones throw pillows...The resulting painting will never be a true work of art....

The real problem is the artist. When was the last time you bought/downloaded an album which you wanted to listen to every song? The average artist records one or two hooks per album and fills the rest with CRAP!! he cd price should reflect the number of hits on it.

I dissagree with the idea that it is the artist that controls the content of a published cd. It is the producers, many of which are also controlled by the recording studio. If a studio sees that a group of singles are going gold. They will not put them all on one cd. The label will split them up to different cds in order to maximize profits. There have been a few artists that the studios have had problems doing this because nearly 100 percent of the output by the artists were hits. The Beatles and Elvis were in this catagory. Even when an artist breaks off and starts their own lable, their producers will fight to spred the the 'hits' over several cds.

We all know profits are not down.

We all know making DVD is cheap, super cheap. Hell it has alwasy been cheaper (it is just now cheap for the average joe (or jane) to do), to mass produce DVD & CD than VHS * Audio cassetes. But they still cost more? grrrrr!

I still buy movies. I love my movie collection. I enjoy watching movies at home on the Widescreen HD rather than sitting in a theater where I can not control my surroundings. (ie kids, cell phones, over-priced goodes, annoying people and don't get me started on hunting for a seat in a packed theater - screw all that.

I have no problem with forking over the currency for a movie I like, no probelm at all.

So let's strike a deal. I will stop P2P-ing. If I don't have to spend an arm and a leg everytime I want to just check out a movie or cd. Once a movie is set to come out on dvd and goes into mass production...it gets cheaper by the copy.

And in addition! The movie companies made profits long before VHS, DVD and what ever is coming out next.

Quick math: 2 movies tickets avg. $25-30 dollars.

Then if you like the movie you can buy it for anywhere for $15-30 bucks.

So the movie studio want an average of 60 per average joe? No thanks.

Stop making shitty movies and then we'll talk...

i will sue everyone reading this. you are infringing copyright- you making copies of this in your eyes, brain. it is not fair. either pay me 20 $ for an comment either i will sue you. transfer funds to bank :
jkhefyheywg
account number:9879867867556987897089987676

---------
:)

i think some stuff is overpriced. in USA music cd is often 15- 20-30 $. i don't know how do you get bargains, but thats what i see at least for music i like. i don't think that to make a cd isx more expensive or even equal than a movie.

other world. cds, dvds are much more expensive in other world . especially in east europe, russia, other countries. charge the same price as in usa, and imagine at least 5 times smaller monthly earnings.

with all these dvd regions and dvd translations i don't see any point why prices are the same in such countries.

it is a greed. money. RIAA can sell their own parients for some money...

i will sue everyone reading this. you are infringing copyright- you making copies of this in your eyes, brain. it is not fair. either pay me 20 $ for an comment either i will sue you. transfer funds to bank :
jkhefyheywg
account number:9879867867556987897089987676

---------
:)

i think some stuff is overpriced. in USA music cd is often 15- 20-30 $. i don't know how do you get bargains, but thats what i see at least for music i like. i don't think that to make a cd isx more expensive or even equal than a movie.

other world. cds, dvds are much more expensive in other world . especially in east europe, russia, other countries. charge the same price as in usa, and imagine at least 5 times smaller monthly earnings.

with all these dvd regions and dvd translations i don't see any point why prices are the same in such countries.

it is a greed. money. RIAA can sell their own parients for some money...

photoshop is owerpriced sh*t. i think "picture window" does even better for very small price. get "gimp" if you need use something on linux or get freeware Photofiltre or RahmanImager for free on windows.