Downloading is killing what now?

[andrewducker]

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Comments

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it does appear they're making less in music, even compared to 2004 when it changed. (And a BIG difference than 1999)

[andrewducker]

Buit the overall spend is going up, which indicates that money is just being spent elsewhere, rather than not being spent at all.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Because we're all downloading music, are we then spending more of our disposable income elsewhere?

The only increase the last few years appears to be in games - presumably down to the rise of things like the Wii possibly coupled with a thought process of, "I could buy a couple of albums or buy a game. I'll download the albums," which would usually result in more money being spent overall if 2 albums = £20 and a game = £35-40.

[andrewducker]

There'll be some of that, certainly. But games have gone ever-more mainstream over the last few years, and that'll be taking a bite out of our expendable cash.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

So downloading is not reducing entertainment spending, just diverting it to different areas. Presumably if music downloading stopped, the overall expenditure wouldn't change much, it would just shift back to a bigger music share and a smaller games share.

I'm amazed the RIAA haven't tried to get money out of the games companies yet cos they'll probably feel they're entitled to it :)

[andrewducker]

It's an interesting question of where the line would be drawn if there was no illegal downloading. Almost certainly not back where it was a few years ago.

And with services like Spotify/Last.fm music is less valiable, as you can have it for free a lot of the time.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

True, but I'm not sure the cause-effect of "More games as a consequence of cheap/free music" as opposed to "Less music as a consequence of more attractive games" is paticularly clear-cut.

[andrewducker]

More research needed!

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Would it? Bear in mind that there's plenty of illegal games downloading too...

[andrewducker]

Not so much for the 360/PS3/Wii is there?

And that's a massive chunk of the market.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Plenty, yes, but nowhere near as much I'd guess. Not sure where you'd find figures though - and even then the figures by data volume would be completely different to those by unit volume.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed the RIAA haven't tried to get money out of the games companies yet cos they'll probably feel they're entitled to it :)

RIAA hasn't, but some music studios have tried to renegotiate the royalty schemes... most especially on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series.

-- Steve still does see file-sharing as a problem for media vendors, but doesn't think it can be banned out of the picture anymore than prohibition eliminated bathtub gin.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Not in music though. The graph is only upward because of the growth in games sales. The graph seems to show that music sales are shrinking year on year.

[andrewducker]

But that was the point of the article. That it's a transition of spending that's killing music, as computer games get more and more mainstream, more of our spend goes on them, leaving less for "old media" like music.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

Yes...

And also the ability to buy just one track of an album--say, for an MP3 player--can't be overlooked either.

Personally, I think most albums put out now are crap. With the exception of "greatest hits" (which takes, what... two hit songs on different albums for them to come out with now, and includes new music*)... ...most "albums" have only one or two decent songs.

Heaven knows how many times over I've bought Billy Joel's "The Stranger" or Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet"... because almost all of the songs are just as decent as the rest.

*which is a particular annoyance of mine... a greatest hits album should never have new stuff.. ..well, with the possible exception of if the entire band is dead.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Music sales appear to have grown (slightly) from 1999 to 2003. There is a significant decline from 2004 to 2008, but the rise in game sales well more than makes up for it. Given that disposal income is finite, it looks very much like people are spending so much on games that they have reduced their music purchases.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

This is going on the assumption that people would bother to buy these products if they didnt get to have them for free. Which is bollocks.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Scratch that, I thought the figures were for money lost on media, not money spent.