Think Music Piracy is Harmless?

[Jim Casey]

US sales shocker from EMI
Nick Goodway, Evening Standard
4 January 2003

MUSIC publisher EMI's CD sales in the world's most important market, the United States, slumped by 28% last year according to figures released last night.

The company had warned of a fall but it was much worse expected. EMI was the only one of the world's big five music companies to lose significant market share.

Data from Nielsen SoundScan shows that sales of EMI CDs in the US slumped from 75.7m in 2001 to 54.8m in the year to 29 December 2002.



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Universal Music Group, a division of Vivendi Universal, reinforced its position as the number one album producer, increasing its share of the US market from 26.4% to 28.9%. Its rap star Eminem took first and fifth places in the annual sales charts with the Eminem Show, which sold 7.6m CDs, and the soundtrack from his film 8 Mile (3.5m).

The market share of the other members of the big five - Warner Music, Sony Music and BMG (part of Bertelsmann) - and of the independent labels was static. A fall in the total market for the second consecutive year was blamed by music publishers on internet piracy and economic weakness. CD sales in the US fell by 8.8% to 649.5m from 712m in 2001, which was down 3% on 2000.

Alain Levy, brought in to run EMI's recorded music business in October 2001, admitted at the end of its first half in November that sales would fall by between 3% and 6%. Chairman Eric Nicoli said: 'In the second half of the financial year we expect the global recorded music market to continue to decline, but at a reducing rate.'

An EMI spokeswoman said that 2002 had been a year of major reorganisation with 'the elimination of a lot of loss-making labels'.

The latest figures round off an appalling year for EMI in which its shares have dropped by 64% from 390p to today's 147 1/4p.

The year began with the break-up with Mariah Carey after the US singer's Glitter album flopped. The split cost EMI £38.1m. In February it issued a profit warning and finance director Toby Bates departed. In March a fifth of the workforce lost their jobs and the dividend was halved. But in June EMI revealed that it had paid Levy's predecessor Ken Berry £6.1m to go away.

In September EMI dropped out of the FTSE 100 index and in October concluded six months of negotiations with Robbie Williams over a contract said to be worth up to £80m.

North America accounted for just over a third of EMI's total sales in the past six months.

[djxtreme]

our local Clear Channel radio station has frequenet commercials about piracy and analogies that kids can relate to (going to the store and stealing any cd)
i think this kind of thing has a real good effect.

[Wolfie]

Hi Jim,

To be sure, the RIAA will be first in line to blame "Internet piracy" for the recent downturn in album sales.

The thing is... "Internet piracy" is more of a catch-all phrase than an indicator of today's economy. There is no way to accurately track music piracy via computers. Therein lies the fallacy of the RIAA's argument.

The retail cost of new CDs has outpaced the average person's willingness to pay for them.

Just my thoughts.

[John Allo]

But the lack of decent product has NOTHING to do with their downturn, eh?

No matter how you try to sweeten it up for mass consumption, a crap sandwich is still a crap sandwich.

HEY MUSIC INDUSTRY!

Get some bands that can actually sing and not just screech their angst-ridden lyrics.

Get some musicians that know more than 3 chords.

Get some artists that don't have to have every third word either be bleeped for profanity or blatant sexual references.

Yeah, blame file sharing. Look in the mirror first, morons.

[Art Dearing]

Agree with John Allo, too much @#!$% words and sexual inuendos. I don't down-load and I don't copy other people's cd's!

AS A PROFESSIONAL, IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO PAY FOR YOUR MUSIC, THEN YOU SHOULDN'T BE IN THE DJ BUSINESS. A really professional DJ will not lie, cheat, steal or slander another DJ. Too bad the industry has bad apples and skeletons that fall from the closet. Not everyone is perfect! But we all should try to be P-R-O-F-E-S-S-I-0-N-A-L !!

"Les Mic, More Music For Dancing!"

Still spinning after all these years.

TwinSpin DJ

[dj4sale]

Other than the music service I subscribe to, the only cd worth buying this year was the Rolling Stones 2cd collection. I purchased nothing else at the record stores except for dvd's for the new player.

[MusicMixers]

Maybe I am just getting old but as an old ROCK & ROLL fan I bought nothing but a few country CD's this year. Seems the more modern Country artists are sounding more and more like the "old" Rock used to... I thought POP and most other music sucked this year and was not impressed with any of it really.

[Wolfie]

I agree.

John makes a valid point in reference to content. For some reason talent plays second banana to National Enquirer-type performers anymore.

To be sure, controversial artists have always been able to move records due to their rumored notoriety. However, these artists were talented vocalists and musicians to begin with. The notoriety came later. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Today it's all about television. Until recently TV was not seen as a medium for music. That was radio's department. Nowadays, music videos seem to take precedence over musical ability. Jennifer (Big Butt) Lopez's navel is more important than her music. It's style over substance.

And, to me anyhow, the saddest part of all... the truly talented artists on indie labels have fewer venues than ever before.

[diskjokk]

John,

$#@!#! I love your post!

Style, unfortunately, does win over talent these days in our Music Industry.

If you can measure the amount of actual talent that we have in the industry today and compare it to the kind of talent we had in the 70's and 80's, you may find that artists in the past had MUCH more talent than the artists the record industry forces on us today.

Where are artists/bands with the same caliber of talent as Prince, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson (when he was cool), The Commodores, Stevie Wonder, Nirvana? I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

Maybe the record industry should take a good, long, hard look at itself and figure out that maybe it should look for "real" talent. People who can actually sing and/or play an instrument.

Actually, I think music is way too much about money right now, and MP3's have no bearing on what the artists get paid anyway.. And as far as DJ's having to pay to promote music (which is exactly what we do when we play a song, and someone comes up to us and says "hey - I like this song - who is this?"), I think we should be at least officially dealt with (through paid licensing, sure).

I use PC-DJ (Red w/a Numark MP3 Controller)in my show, and I will admit that I do not own originals to every song (special remixes, in particular), but as long as I (and all other DJ's using MP3's) are ignored, I will not fret over the legalities.

On that subject, I would be willing to pay what radio stations pay (about 7% of gross) to ASCAP and BMI, if they made it all "official"...eventually, it will all be MP3, anyway...why not be licensed?