6 ms·

About 400 million people pay monthly for access to music instead of listening to radio, occasionally buying albums or piracy so idk if anything really backfired

About 400 million people pay monthly for access to music instead of listening to radio, occasionally buying albums or piracy so idk if anything really backfired...

Qub3d 6y ago
I would argue this happened in spite of their efforts. The music industry was dragged kicking and screaming into the streaming world for a variety of reasons, among them the fact that with centralized platforms, artists have no reason to use labels for "discovery" purposes any longer. Its long been known that the way to defeat piracy is to offer a better service. Its what Steam did, its what Netflix did. Ironically, the fragmentation of those ecosystems is bringing it back. Piracy is the ultimate invisible hand on the entertainment distribution industry.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Labels were never about discovery. They were about promotion, production, and all of the expensive stuff you need at scale. For example, Justin Beiber, Lorde, Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, were all discovered independently due to their own efforts and had decent success on their own. (Farther back in time, the Beatles and most classic rock bands similarly got signed to labels after demonstrating success.) But they're all signed to major labels now, because touring is expensive, and the scale of exposure you get with a label is very different from what you get on your own, and the income correspondingly increases as well. In many (but not all) cases, the artists usually also get lump-sum advances against new albums or singles which removes the financial risks for creating new music. Piracy was never about discovery. It was simply about people being too cheap to pay for other people's work. Sometimes, as with Adobe and Microsoft, they were okay with it because that just locked in their market dominance and created more future customers. But for fad-driven and taste-driven industries, privacy has a notable impact on creator's earnings.
  - depressedpanda 6y ago
    > But for fad-driven and taste-driven industries, privacy [sic] has a notable impact on creator's earnings. Do you have any data that doesn't make the ridiculous and false assertion that 1 download = 1 lost sale, with which to back that claim? Because from what I've read, piracy has the opposite effect.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      I'm not claiming that 1 download = 1 lost sale. But it's well-documented that piracy negatively affects music, film, and game studio income. See, e.g., https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/the-true-cost-of-sound-recording-piracy-to-the-us-economy https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/the-true-cost-of-sound... Piracy may the opposite effect for software but it definitely has a negative effect on entertainment related IP.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        If you read the fine print in that study, it is concluding the cost of the piracy purely in terms of 1 download = 0.2 lost sale. There's not even a discussion of the potential word-of-mouth effects or later sale generation potentials for pirated music.
      - benologist 6y ago
        What if they lied about how much music was worth though? You can stream 10,000+ songs in one month for the price of one album today, in the early 2000s we were asked to believe that was $10,000+ worth of music and their suffering was relative to that...
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Piracy may the opposite effect for software but it definitely has a negative effect on entertainment related IP. High school events where I grew up were basically an iMac with the student body officers' MP3 collections and a PA system. All the pirated MP3s people were playing at those various official and unofficial gatherings of my youth led to me buying CDs once I had money of my own. Has a non-industry-affiliated research group produced causal data (not just declining sales figures) showing that noncommercial entertainment piracy is a net harm?
  - qppo 6y ago
    Depending on the artist and label it's a giant question mark whether the label has any hand in the live performances or tours. Touring has always been expensive (and lucrative), but the agencies that deal with it traditionally haven't been labels. The traditional business model of a record label is almost entirely obsolete, and they need new revenue streams. That said, the people who run these businesses are antithetical to innovation and creativity in business and that's why industry groups like the RIAA exist in the first place.
- smolder 6y ago
  The commercial streaming solutions are only going to be good until they're the only game in town. Commercial entities don't simply build good things and leave them intact for people to benefit from with no profit motive. Once the leverage is there, there will be abusive monetization, consumers will be treated like crap, until perhaps some breaking point where it can be disrupted. How would streaming become the only game in town? Piracy and any other online mischief are being stamped out the hard way, by taking control of our technology from us. Approved operating system, approved drivers, approved software, approved browser, approved websites, no piracy, no privacy, no deviance.

About 400 million people pay monthly for access to music instead of listening to radio, occasionally buying albums or piracy so idk if anything really backfired...

Qub3d 6y ago

I would argue this happened in spite of their efforts. The music industry was dragged kicking and screaming into the streaming world for a variety of reasons, among them the fact that with centralized platforms, artists have no reason to use labels for "discovery" purposes any longer. Its long been known that the way to defeat piracy is to offer a better service. Its what Steam did, its what Netflix did. Ironically, the fragmentation of those ecosystems is bringing it back. Piracy is the ultimate invisible hand on the entertainment distribution industry.

gamblor956 6y ago
Labels were never about discovery. They were about promotion, production, and all of the expensive stuff you need at scale. For example, Justin Beiber, Lorde, Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, were all discovered independently due to their own efforts and had decent success on their own. (Farther back in time, the Beatles and most classic rock bands similarly got signed to labels after demonstrating success.) But they're all signed to major labels now, because touring is expensive, and the scale of exposure you get with a label is very different from what you get on your own, and the income correspondingly increases as well. In many (but not all) cases, the artists usually also get lump-sum advances against new albums or singles which removes the financial risks for creating new music. Piracy was never about discovery. It was simply about people being too cheap to pay for other people's work. Sometimes, as with Adobe and Microsoft, they were okay with it because that just locked in their market dominance and created more future customers. But for fad-driven and taste-driven industries, privacy has a notable impact on creator's earnings.
- depressedpanda 6y ago
  > But for fad-driven and taste-driven industries, privacy [sic] has a notable impact on creator's earnings. Do you have any data that doesn't make the ridiculous and false assertion that 1 download = 1 lost sale, with which to back that claim? Because from what I've read, piracy has the opposite effect.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    I'm not claiming that 1 download = 1 lost sale. But it's well-documented that piracy negatively affects music, film, and game studio income. See, e.g., https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/the-true-cost-of-sound-recording-piracy-to-the-us-economy https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/the-true-cost-of-sound... Piracy may the opposite effect for software but it definitely has a negative effect on entertainment related IP.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      If you read the fine print in that study, it is concluding the cost of the piracy purely in terms of 1 download = 0.2 lost sale. There's not even a discussion of the potential word-of-mouth effects or later sale generation potentials for pirated music.
    - benologist 6y ago
      What if they lied about how much music was worth though? You can stream 10,000+ songs in one month for the price of one album today, in the early 2000s we were asked to believe that was $10,000+ worth of music and their suffering was relative to that...
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Piracy may the opposite effect for software but it definitely has a negative effect on entertainment related IP. High school events where I grew up were basically an iMac with the student body officers' MP3 collections and a PA system. All the pirated MP3s people were playing at those various official and unofficial gatherings of my youth led to me buying CDs once I had money of my own. Has a non-industry-affiliated research group produced causal data (not just declining sales figures) showing that noncommercial entertainment piracy is a net harm?
- qppo 6y ago
  Depending on the artist and label it's a giant question mark whether the label has any hand in the live performances or tours. Touring has always been expensive (and lucrative), but the agencies that deal with it traditionally haven't been labels. The traditional business model of a record label is almost entirely obsolete, and they need new revenue streams. That said, the people who run these businesses are antithetical to innovation and creativity in business and that's why industry groups like the RIAA exist in the first place.
smolder 6y ago
The commercial streaming solutions are only going to be good until they're the only game in town. Commercial entities don't simply build good things and leave them intact for people to benefit from with no profit motive. Once the leverage is there, there will be abusive monetization, consumers will be treated like crap, until perhaps some breaking point where it can be disrupted. How would streaming become the only game in town? Piracy and any other online mischief are being stamped out the hard way, by taking control of our technology from us. Approved operating system, approved drivers, approved software, approved browser, approved websites, no piracy, no privacy, no deviance.