KEY POINTS:
Andrew Montgomery
Yes. Clearly the music industry as it has been over the last 80 years or so is history. The rate of decline of record sales and royalties will be exponential. Musicians will need to perform live to make money. That's life.
Ashley
Reading the various responses on this site is enough to send a chill up anyones spine. I do not think I have ever heard so many different ways of justifying theft.
Robert
The Recording Industry is always quick to blame lower CD sales as the result of piracy. They dont seem to consider the possibility that consumers are not interested in the same music year after year. I have not purchased a single CD in a couple of years now. I buy my music (legit) online. I am also more into internet Radio and Indie music as there is a lot of great unknown talent. Could it just be the Recording Industry is behind the times with their business model? Itunes, Indie music websites all give great alternatives to purchasing your music from a CD store. It would be nice if more New Zealand music was available for legal purchase online in mp3 format.
Ben
Illegal downloading is basically the chickens coming home to roost for a greedy music industry. Ever since the introduction of the cheap to produce CD was introduced and prices pushed up with little of that money going to the artist, they have forced the hand of the music fan. Hopefully with the demise of the major labels and with the power being put back into the hands of the artists via legal downloading and the internet, a balance will be struck which will see ease of access for the fans who want to hear their favourite artists, with the money going into the hands of those artists.
M
I find it hard to believe that Bics fans are rampant downloaders, but who knows. Bic basically lives overseas these days so maybe the record companies slacked off the marketing while she was gone. CDs are expensive though for a reason. The artist gets paid maybe 18 per cent of the $20 trade price, then the song writer gets paid 8 per cent, then the record company adds their margin, then the retailer adds their margin and that all adds up to $35. I do not know why the record companies do not sell direct to the public. They would piss of the Warehouse et all but at least they could sell a CD for $20-25.
John
While I do agree that illegally downloading music from the internet causes some impact on the music industry, I do not feel it is to the extent the music companies are leading us to believe! The reality is people want to get there content online. This has been relayed to the music industry for many years and they have chosen to ignore it at their own peril! However we all have is a long way to go. Many companies still view downloading from the internet as a threat and are very resentful at having to offer this option. This can be easily seen in pricing, in many cases you still pay just as much for each song as if you had purchased the CD from the store!
Why? You have not paid for a physical CD, you have not paid for that CD to be transported to a store, and you also have not paid for rent, power water wages etc etc! Once we have more realistic pricing then everyone will win, music companies artists fans. Thank you for your time.
Damien
Face it, "major", "high profile" New Zealand music artists in the whole, make pretty bad music. The only influence the internet might be having here is giving us more choice in the music we listen to. This means we are voting with our feet, and buying quality, not rubbish. A high percentage of kiwi music is rubbish as it is propped up with govt funding. Bic Runga etc might have a bit of state sponsored advertising hype, but as Ribena just found out, hype cant hide the facts for long.
Ivan
Bic Runga is not worth paying $30 for a CD, NZ artists are simply crap and not good enough to make the money and sales the artist of the 80's and the 90's could. Nobody is going to buy a CD for which one of the 20 songs on the CD is what they want to hear. I sure wouldnt that just stupid so therefore we turn to file sharing. Also the increasing trend of mp3 devices etc force ripping of CD's etc. It is just soo much easier to download the song in 3 minutes. Im a IT professional, so I do use file sharing, however, I still buy music CDs if they are worth it. Im not going to bother downloading entire Queen album.
Jamie
Despite what the recording industry wants us to believe, there is not a lot of evidence to show that illegal downloads are hurting artists. Such downloads are a great promotional tool, and often lead to the "criminals" paying for legitimate downloads or buying concert tickets. The recording industry makes its money by taking a sizable cut of the music distribution revenue. Because of this cut, the artists make next to nothing from music sales. Instead, most of their money comes from concert ticket sales and memorabilia. While the music market has been evolving, the recording industry has not. There are numerous methods of getting music to people that dont involve the big players. Lily Allen used MySpace. Ok Go used YouTube. Unless the industry changes to take advantage of the new technology, it is only going to estrange customers and eventually wither and die.
Anonymous
No, I do not think so, I mean yes, I download songs from Limewire, which is, I think a legal software used to get songs. But on the other had, if I think of it in the singers way, maybe it is bad, because if everybody just gets it from the internet, no-one buys the CDs. I think the main reason people avoid buying the disks, is that they are too expensive for some.
Garrett Rossini
Talented music artists do not suffer from such issues. The recording industry deserves payback regardless for the great CD scam, what happened to CDs lasting forever and sounded better than vinyl? That was the justification for the 50 per cent price hike for the change in medium.
Derek
Walked past a music store today after reading the article this morning and noted that their idea of a "sale" for CDs is "nothing more than $25". I recall reading a while back that prices for CDs had stayed more stable than any other leisure item over the last 10 years and I can believe it. It is amazing to me that these companies still think I will go and pay $25 for an album in a store when at best there might be a few songs I want on there. The question of whether to buy CDs or download MP3s is really a no-brainer. I can have a stack of CDs that clogs my shelves and takes up room in the car if I want to take more than a few with me, or I can shove 10,000 songs on a device the size of a deck of cards that I can take everywhere (including the car) like a portable jukebox... no contest. A few will always buy CDs (much like those who buy vinyl for its kitch value).
Then we get to DRM and here is the problem record people, I can download a song from a website for around $1.49 - $1.99 and use it on my computer, my MP3 player and maybe burn it onto a CD but if I "copy" it too many times it becomes worthless. Or I can search online, run the (fairly small) risk of getting something nasty on my computer and get the song for free to use as long as I like and copy as often as I like. Again, no contest! The solution is pretty simple, I dont like searching for songs online to download, it can be time consuming , you can get dud ones, and the quality isn't always the best. I would much rather be able to buy them for say 20c - 50c each, know I am getting a perfect copy, and be able to use and copy them as much as I like (much like if I bought a CD).
Tony Lee
If there really is a CD that I would like, I wait a few years then get it off online sites like Amazon, and Ebay. Dirt cheap, no illegal copying. But what about if I only want a single track from a CD? I am forced to pay an incredible amount for a cumbersome piece of plastic. If I get it online at a legal source, no doubt that it has digital encryption which restricts my listening at home with no guarantee that I can keep listening to it for as long as I like in the future. And if I do not have a credit card? Tough bikkies! The only people that really benefit are those CEOs of the music corporations sitting down on leather chairs with their high end cars and lobster dinners.
Brian
I do not get the impression from the article that Bic is worried by this situation. Campbell Smith is trying to get the Govt to take action - that should have taken place 5 - 10 years ago. NZ is a very small market. The NZ Music scene is a tiny pimple. Everyone has to multi task to make a career / living. Hello Campbell Smith is a lawyer, runs RIANZ, has a management /record/publishing company - as well as a touring component.
Shar
I agree with Bill, get a real job, and stop doing bad re-makes dog-gone-it. Put CD prices down, hire staff who do not look like they're gonna spit their nose-rings at you too. (nothing against nose-rings).
Linda
I am involved in a community radio. We pay fees for the right to play music however at no time are we required to furnish logs of who or what is played - so how do they then reliably diffie up the royalities It is a joke - the body protecting copyright is the biggest rip off!
Music Loving Guy
When Kiwi musos start creating and performing music that is worth downloading (or buying) then I may begin to care about this non-issue.
Jess
I download music. Having said then I also bought the last Brooke Fraser album that was released and the last Feelers album. Most of the music I download would cost me 45-50 bucks to buy in a shop because NZ just doesn't have the range of music that the US or the UK has and would have to import the CD in. I do think however, that the future of music will be in down-loadable singles, not in albums. Pretty much the album is dead because how many times have you bought the album, listened or ripped the one track that you like off it and then hid it away somewhere? Pretty much this guy has got to get his head out of the clouds if he thinks that extending/tightening DRM is going to work. Napster went down, Audiogalaxy came along. That got done, and then emule and limewire came along. You really think it is going to stop?
Zaphod
If 90 per cent of the music produced these days was not garbage that had a shelf life of around a year, maybe they wouldnt have a problem. Most of the music I purchase these days are either indie labels or bands from the 70s and 80s. (Anyone else noticed the resurgence of 70s bands? And the fact that they play to sell-out crowds?) The recording industry needs to change its business model, or it will die in the new age of technology. These days, an album can be produced, marketed and distributed on a home computer.
Andy
Campbell Smith needs to get his facts straight. 100,000 people downloading kiwi music? You cant even find names like Dave Dobbyn on most sites(!), let alone Bic Rungas or Scribes. I'd say they would probably do well to get a new manager too by the looks of things....
Ayamas
Just giving my 5 cents worth, regarding the theft of NZ music, as most sentiments show, NZ music is not widely traded in the international nor NZ market via torrent or peer-2-peer. If you do searches, you may find very obscure results, cant find any Holly Smith whatsoever. I think due to the vast amount of CD ripping software available at present, people are ripping these CDs and possibly sharing them around with each other. Thus the 6 degrees of separation theory comes into play. Thats how in my opinion the CD sales are falling. Within NZ, blank CD sales are up, store CD sales down.
John McCall
Piffle!! I do not buy CDs because they are too expensive and I download nothing. Actually, I find the radio a very good medium for music!! There are fewer ads and a great variety of music, but far too much chit-chat from egotistical DJs who love the sound of their own voices!!. If "only" 50,000 albums were sold at only $20 each that is $1,000,000. I would love to earn that sort of money for what is basically a hobby. This suggests that the artist is only receiving about $50,000 of this if they have to get a real job. So, that suggests the music companies are taking the rest. So, where does the problem really lie? This income is only for record sales - what about the royalties from Radio stations? I think there is a lot of misinformation here.....
Mick
Poor old musicians. Cant learn to budget! Write 1 hit song and think they are set for life. Why not make a new CD in stores $5 and I will stop downloading music forever. How come you can buy 100 blank CDs for next to nothing, yet put someones "talent" on it and you can charge $30 - $40 for it. I will bet you sales of a new artists record would go through the roof, allowing the luxurious lifestyle Bic wants if they were priced reasonably. $35 for an average record? Bic enjoy your shift at McDonalds!
Doug Dillon
It is not pirating and sharing of music that is affecting the music industry, it is the deteriorating quality of product, the cumulative affect of being ripped off with dud albums of two or three decent tracks, and the competition from other entertainment media, including video games. There has always been pirating and sharing of music between friends, of course this can happen on a much larger scale through the internet, but the internet has also increased the market for music exponentially. Sharing should be looked at as free advertising, as word of mouth is still the most powerful promotion for good music. But as there is so little good new music, perhaps that is what the music industry is really afraid of.
Peter Johnston
Sorry, the reason why Bic Rungas latest album sold only 50,000 copies is that it is dull as dishwater. I doubt many people would even have bothered to illegally download it.
Chris Dawson
If good music was not so expensive it would not be stolen as much. Artist now have to take the steps homeowners do, avoid the middleman. Then everyone would benefit. If this is done the normally less well known artist would have the same exposure as everyone else as long as they have a track recorded. That must be good. I think it is those who are used to getting rich through the old ways are a little scared of all things technical, which is the only this stopping a revolution in the music industry, which as I said can only benefit all except the fat cats! It is all about protect what is mind, and greed.
Lindsay
I rarely buy CDs any more. They are too expensive in comparison to a music DVD which I prefer; better sound (often 5.1) better images, longer (2+ hours) and usually a better price. I rarely download songs and when I do they are back catalogue or I can't find them anywhere else but online. Look at You Tube, its got pictures and music CD has not.
Sam
Call it what you like it is theft; no different than stealing sheep from a farmer that spent years raising and breeding, no different than copying a book that took years to write, no different than stealing a produce or money from a business. The artists and record companies spent time and money making the music and put it up for sale and not paying for something that is for sale that is not yours is theft. Sure some of them make thousand even millions but some of them lose money or make very little for the time spent making it. Dont fool yourself, if you download music (or movies) and dont pay for it you are a thief, if you copy it and on sell it you are a thief.
RJ
People who are into quality sound would find downloaded music quality unacceptable.Try telling someone who owns a SACD version Of Dark Side Of the Moon that he could have downloaded MP3 or other version for free or that he does not need it since he already has a CD. Question is how much quality music is being produced today? If some weirdo thinks the rattle he is producing is music and expects people to shell out 20/40 $ for it, he is hallucinating. If the music has the Oomph, after downloading people will go and get a CD or SACD as they will want to listen to it in the best quality they can afford,
and you will make good money. Mediocre music = Mediocre Income.
MD
What the guy is saying is illegal downloads are drawing interest away from NZ artists, causing people to no longer buy their albums - because they dont need to - because they are listening to the illegal downloads instead. This will impact the quality of New Zealand artists work. This is not a good thing. The trends created by new media are not going to go away and the larger problem - aside from clowns dissing NZ music merely because they dont listen to it - is the industry needs to change with the trends or they will become obsolete.
Attila
I totally agree with Producers comment two below. There is no way illegal downloads and file sharing is gonna be prevented. Just like you cant control the copying of copyrighted CDs and video tapes. The artists will need to get some of their revenues indirectly, from manufacturers of blank CDs, blank DVDs and from internet service providers. These sectors and the music industry rely on each other nowadays, so it makes sense that they make some kind of arrangements to share their profits. Unfortunately, this kind of arrangement will have to result in an increase in internet prices and the prices of black recording media.
David A B
Ludicrous. It is now 2007, and record companies still, unbelievably want $30.50 of hard earned cash for a CD, despite the fact that you can have it for no cost if you have an internet connection, right or wrong that may be. The thought of trying to squash free internet downloads is preposterous, because it is akin to that game where you pop the moles on the head with a hammer. The Napster example ought to have taught everyone that free downloading of music is here to stay whatever your opinion of it: spend millions out of your multi-national legal budget to eradicate it, only to find theres a Limewire here or a Kazaa there. People will take freebies if they can, it is ingrained in our collective psyches. If you dont believe me, watch videos of what people do to shops during disasters or riots, when the law cant operate normally. Right or wrong. What is the NZ government gong to do? Dawn raids to bust the naughty illegal downloaders asses? Please.
Martin
Look , those guys are overpaid at the best of times, take Michael Jackson as a prime example. If they do not like it, people hearing there songs ,without having paid for it well stop singing, and get a real job (:-)
Hugh Mann
Musicians have only ever been rich because of technology. Well guess what? Technology has moved on!
Brendan
I wonder if our friends at the record companies have had a look at DVD sales over the last 3 years. Now if they did they would find huge growth. But wait whats that on bit torrent, 100s of movies free for illegal download and yet the legal DVD sales industry is booming. Rather than constantly blaming illegal downloads, maybe have a look at some external factors. -When was the last time average Joe bought a CD player? He didn't. He bought a DVD player.
Rod
Dont the record companies and the "artists" realise that the reason sales are falling is because of the rubbish they are offering?
Peter
It is possible that Bic Runga is one of the few clients this guy has who are still making a living, but if she has sold 310,000 CDs since the first one came out in 1998, and the record company pays her say $2 per CD, that is still $620,000. Not a bad income for 9 years really (and she didnt release an album for 5 of those years), especially as I bet she loves her job a lot more than most of us do. If the record company pays her 13 per cent of every album sale (quoting an earlier commenter), then that is $7,750,000 in sales at $25 per CD, and a little over a million for Bic herself. There are worse ways to make a million bucks! Music tastes are fickle things and the bulk of album sales to the yoof market are driven by record companies ramming marketing down kids throats and saturating music channels with their videos. The current trend is for emo rock and record companies are driving that, so it is actually them who are denying Bic Runga income more than people who download her songs. New Zealand is a small marketplace and only a few can make a decent living at it. If Neil Finn did not have massive reserves from international sales he would not be making a living either, and if Dave Dobbyn did not write a patriotic song for every single occasion he would not be making a living either.
BMike
I am 54 years old.For me, music has always been my life force. I have also enjoyed the gravy train along the way. But now as a full time student on a student allowance, there is absolutely no way I can afford CDs even at Warehouse prices. Try and buy an import for less than $35. Unfortunately my musical tastes lean toward imported indie labels and these can cost up to $80. So I download! If Bic is looking for a second job, we could do with a housefrau. Remuneration will be by way of downloaded CDs.
Dan
Z musicians - a rare thing until the government started forking out "NZ on Air" money. Now they complain that their mediocre tunes are not being snapped up as CDs by our tiny population. "I know I'll blame the consumers for not thinking my music is worth $30! How dare they not like my music enough to pay for it!" - at that price, who is the thief? Being an artist is a privilege and your audience is fickle. It is, and always has been, up to the artist to win the people over - not abuse them!
Max
I love buying music tracks legitimately off the internet. For $1.75 I can buy a track. That is s about $30 for a CD full of music I know I like, it is a bargain! (compared to having to buy a CD from a store when I dont like all the tracks). But what if I cant find a song I want for sale? That is when I wonder if there is a way to obtain the music illegally? If the music companies make the music easy to buy and keep the price down then illegal sharing will drop.
Listener1
The Truth About Music and Diamonds. Music is not as valuable to consumers as it once was. In the past the music industry was able to sustain monopoly profits due to restricting a cheaply made product supplied by way of relatively cheap forms of distribution for which they charged monopoly sums of money. During this time the profits for some were obscene. That monopoly has now now gone. The product and forms of distribution are not appealing for the price expected and music has now become commoditised. There should be no pity for an industry that has produced this outcome. The artists are no different from anyone else producing a product that consumers no longer want to the degree they did. Its just music. There is no difference in this market place to any other.Make an appealing product and make it easily available for a reasonable price and sell a lot of it. Make good music available easily for a reasonable price. Simple economics, music is a commodity that for a while consumers thought were diamonds....that other low value commodity.
John Watman
The music industry needs to recognise that the era of the CD as a music distribution medium is finished. If what they do now is not working, then do something different - use a different paradigm to sell music. Many artists worldwide are taking this new web marketing paradigm on-board and into their own hands, with great success and opportunity. Resistance to change is natural but it is the flexible who will do well.
Alison
I agree with the general consensus here... more record company propaganda. It is not piracy that is to blame, it is an outdated business model. DRM is an issue too. I would buy a couple of albums a week through iTunes if they didn't have the 5x restriction. After upgrading my work and personal laptops and doing 3 system restores in six months, I have already used up the 5x limit. It is ridiculous I cant play the music I legitimately buy anywhere I like. I boycott itunes now for that very reason. I want to buy online, I dont want to go to a store. The result = I just dont buy music any more. Everybody loses.
Jerry
For years we have bought albums containing 2 or 3 good tracks and lots of second rate stuff from musicians who have enriched themselves at our expense. Music performers have no more right to be rich than anyone else - only the very best should make lots of money. If Bic Runga cant sell any albums, perhaps she should look to what she is recording.
Sue
Frankly I would not waste my time downloading what currently passes for music. Maybe the problem is it is all just too ho-hum and folk have better things to spend their hard earned cash on. Some musos are just so bland, boring and miserable looking. Bic Runga and her ilk make the most dreary, suicide tracks and that bored supercilious expression she and others adopt in live performances is enough to put anyone off.
Dunkster
Face it, multitasking is just about essential for any musician starting out these days. I know several musos who have day jobs (a lot of them in the IT sector), which they do on limited-term contracts so they can finance instruments, recording, tours, etc. The ones who are really dedicated just get on with it, and they use the Internet to get their name out there. A free or cheap single available to download with the artists permission can be a huge publicity vehicle, can be used to promote tours, and can counter the illegal download sites. That is the way to boost sales - not whining to politicians, demanding draconian laws, DRM software, etc. That attitude is just making fans defiant, feeling they're taking on the big industry types who finance their lavish lifestyles from the sweat of the performers.
Patricia Fields
Bic Runga should look at herself in the mirror - perhaps she will find there whom is to blame for poor sales. Actually, the good sales of previous years is because of all the people who downloaded a music clip of their songs and rushed to buy the CD. Sorry, Bic, your time is over as a musician. Stop blaming technology.
Goby
Lets face it. CDs are too expensive. If they made them $10 each I am sure people would prefer to buy rather than bothering to download. All the old bands are regrouping maybe its the extra competition they are worried about.
Martin
If you dont move with the market then you go out of business. Those artists who have made their music available for download at a reasonable fee have done very well. The marketing model of try to sell a music CD for $40 is gone. Most people will happily pay a reasonable fee not the rip off prices. I buy my CDs at the Warehouse for $10 - $20 max I wont go to a music store and pay $40 for the same thing.
Arthur
As a long-term and enthusiastic buyer of music and now an increasingly heavy-action downloader and sharer. I would like to know how record companies have ever been able to justify restricting what music I own or even listen to by the prices they set. If I could only ever legitimately listen to music that I owned because I had bought a copy I could only ever afford to hear about 1% of all the music I might want to. The record companies offer me thousands of titles each week; they would love me to buy thousands of titles each week; yet they restrict how much of that music I can own by the prices they set. In that respect I find them morally repugnant. I will listen to what I like when I like thanks very much and if I can get it for nothing because I have already spent my cash on other titles then that is what I will do.
Jason
I give everything away for free, thus I will download for free. It is sharing, its not a crime to state this and its not a crime to download. The ISPs take all our money, telecon crushes our promised bandwidth and the government does nothing about it. The music industrial simply ripped of musicians and consumers for ages past, its as simple as that, nothing else to say. If we didnt download, we would have empires of money and white collar monopoly from here to Timbucktoo. Think about it. If people were not trying on some free downloads, where would the industrial be? Even Lars Ulrich from Metallica who started all this via sueing Napster, later told everyone that he had made a mistake and seen that their sales were actually increasing as an offshoot of downloading, not decreasing. He stated it was a massive learning curve, not a way to stop being ripped off, or a way to make more money. As before, "if there wasnt downloading, there would be monopoly" - just as telecom would rip us off like you have ever seen if there wasnt ihug or Telstra etc; they would openly say, "we are shafting you" - oh hang on, they have already said that eh, dah. Its actually a very very good thing, and a very very needed piece of the industrial now. Whats wrong with having a second job, huh? I make music and have 2 other jobs. I am fine with that - just let me know if you want some of my music, leave ya email, ill send it "for free". I love it - and you deserve to listen to it. Who needs a golden door knob on their spare room that never gets used - why do you need millions and millions of dollars? How much can one person eat?
Lindsay
If it werent for illegal downloads, I really dont think that as many NZ bands would have the following they do. We need to be able to access their music to become a fan, and this is the easiest way to do it. Without the downloads they would almost definitely have less fans and ergo less gigs, and less revenue.
Bill
The headline reads "Downloads force music stars to seek second jobs". Given the rubbish some of these so-called musicians put out as music shouldnt the headline read "Downloads force music stars to seek real jobs" (of the daylight kind?).
Grant Stone
Piracy isnt killing music. I love music and have purchased thousands of CDs, but in the last few years this has dwindled to nothing because of the homogenisation of record stores. I dont think my musical tastes are particularly obscure, but they cant be mainstream either, because I cant find anything I want to listen to in the major CD stores any more. If you want to download music legally, there are options. An album on iTunes is cheaper than CD. emusic.com is cheaper again, easier to use and, to my tastes, has a great selection of music. I know someone who no longer buys CDs but instead purchases concert DVDs. The price is similar, the sound is great and there is extra content; if nothing else you can see the artist as well as hear. Artists who are able to work on their art full time are in a very privileged position. Think of how many full-time novelists there are in comparison to the masses of people typing away in whatever free time they can chisel out from their day job or family. And the piracy explanation cant be applied there.
Laurie Cross
Ha! Illegal downloads killing music my beard!!! Bic Rungas last album sold crap cos it was crap, aimless songs self indulgently sung... same goes for others, to see how to embrace new technology see Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys etc! Copyright should be to protect artist composition, not big business coffers, DRM just stops me from using something I have purchased in any way I want, but doesnt stop anyone from stripping it off and offering illegal downloads...
Emma
Sell music for a reasonable price, without DRM - or under a DRM system which is not locked into a music player or operating system - and I will buy it legitimately online. Till then, I dont buy CD's - I dont have sufficient disposable income to throw $30 away for a CD I may or may not like. Further, I dont run Windows at home - so the few music stores that have been available in New Zealand (prior to the opening of the NZ ITunes store) are inaccessible to me (as their music is sold in Windows-only formats).
Db
What a laugh. Bic sells 50 000 CDs and she cant make a living. Thats $1.5 million for those who can't add up. So why is Bic unable to make a living? The record industry can shove off.
Danshi
Bic Rungas latest CD wasnt that great. Maybe thats the problem with sales?
Mark
I have noticed th
