Digital music gains, but CD losses a pain
Consumers are increasingly willing to pay for songs they acquire over the Internet, but declining interest in CDs is dragging down overall music consumption among Internet users.
During the third quarter, there was an increase both in the number of people buying digital downloads and in the number of tracks sold, according to market researcher NPD Group. Legal music downloads were up 29 percent from the same period last year, and sites such as iTunes and Amazon MP3 chalked up an additional 2.8 million music buyers, to a total of 15 percent of Internet users.
That jibes with reports from Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. Both labels have recently seen vigorous growth in sales of digital music. Warner, for instance, said last month that in the third quarter, digital music sales rose 27 percent to $167 million.
Peer-to-peer sites, meanwhile, saw an increase in the overall volume of song files being shared, up 23 percent for the same quarter last year, though some of that increase was attributed to a greater number of downloads per user, according to NPD. The number of P2P sharers among Internet users, NPD reported, stayed flat at 14 percent.
Not surprisingly, teenagers were a big factor in the gains--they accounted for 34 percent more paid downloads than in the third quarter of 2007, and P2P downloading spiked 46 percent among 13- to 17-year-olds.
Also, credit popular video games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero with spurring consumers to make a music purchase of some sort. In many cases, "gaming can help remind customers of the music they grew up with...and to re-engage with the artist," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD.
But the music labels, knocked off their stride by the advent of the digital music era, still face challenges.
Among Internet users, according to NPD, overall music demand was down 2 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2008. That figure takes into account purchased CDs, purchased digital music downloads, files obtained via P2P sites, and music files borrowed to rip to a computer or burn to a CD.
Largely, that slippage is a result of the continuing drop in sales of CDs (down 19 percent in the third quarter), most notably among teens and young adults, but also including adults over the age of 36.
"The value of each music customer is declining," Crupnick said. But, he added, "anytime you can add 2 (million) to 3 million buyers year over year, that's very encouraging."
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon. 
I have no interest in the compressed lo-fi of digital downloads. Speaking of overpriced, 99-cents a track for lo-fi downloads is the real rip-off.
One example: http://www.lincomatic.com/mp3/mp3quality.html
Besides, not many mp3 players ship with quality earbuds anyways. I guess I shouldn't feed the troll/pirate, but I hate seeing false information being tossed around.
What false information? CD's have superior sound quality: that is a quantifiable fact. We are talking about digital bits here.
Whether YOU can hear it, or whether even MOST people can hear it, is irrelevant. The fact is CD's have better sound quality. If someone prefers CD's for that reason, that is a perfectly valid stance to take.
What you're saying is akin to arguing that you think TV looks fine with your analog rabbit ears, so it's false information that HDTV looks better.
I never once said that CDs didn't have superior sound quality. I was defending the mp3 from being called "lo-fi" and particularity defending the quality from Amazon which was mentioned above.
In fact I always said "near cd quality". I never said an mp3 was better, or that a CD was worse. The false information is the bashing of mp3s "... compressed lo-fi of digital downloads." Maybe if they were 128Kbps then I could agree that they were lo-fi. Anyway, if you want to carry around portable CD players forever, then so be it. I'll be with everyone else sporting several gigs of lo-fi music in a device that fits in my pocket and has little or no moving parts.
Personally I really think what most people hear when listening to low bit rate audio is the hard brick wall filtering that's done to the signal to reduce bandwidth and conserve bits.
It's a shame when people choose to listen to a lower quality source for music when it's just not necessary.
Go to Bob Katz site at Digital Domain to learn more about digital audio. Or read his book, "Mastering Audio". Good info.
I don't mind using Pepsi Points to purchase DRM free MP3s from Amazon, but I'll avoid buying music from iTunes until they are completely DRM free.
The cr@p factory known as the RIAA is also something past its expiration date. Both they and the music studios are desperately clinging to a sales and business model like a small girl clings to her recently deceased pony. Both stink and both need to be put in to a hole.
Robert
Yeah, i buy music on iTunes from time to time, but then , i burn the music to a CDR; and miss the cover art...
Another thing i miss, is liner notes and booklet design or pictures. Not every album on iTunes have them, so.... :-(
If Amazon and other download services offered an option for a non-DRM'd lossless compression format, like FLAC (along with some album art and info), I'd be more OK with bypassing the CD.
- by darkr December 19, 2008 3:59 PM PST
- cd covers are downloadable
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(21 Comments)www.cdcovers.cc