AlanBarber.Org
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Could the RIAA be wrong?
The BBC News has a rather good read about how the RIAA could be wrong about the impact of music swappers on the net.For those too lazy to read here's the skinny on the article...
The BBC News is claming that the RIAA claims of file swapping ruining sales are wrong. Why you may ask?
1) Organized crime has gotten into the counterfeit music biz!
2) Much of the growth was from the boom of people replacing vinyl records with CDs
3) In this new age of technology young buyers (who make up most of music sales) are spending less money of music and more on things like moves, clothes, games, etc.
I'd have to say I wouldn't have thought about those things. However they make sense and are very true. counterfeit software, music, movies, etc is huge in Asia and eastern Europe and it is a new age where kids don't just buy music.
Just think of it this way. little Tommy wants a game system. He has to save up around $200 just to buy the console, extra controllers, memory cards, etc! Then he has to plan on spending another $40-$50 per game he buys. So lets say Tommy buys the console and two games. He's just spend $300 that in the past would have gone to buying CDs! At a rough cost of $20 per cd that $300 would have covered Tommy buying 1 cd every month for a whole year. Now figure there are millions of kids like Tommy. You can easily see how that adds up!
Hey RIAA you aren't loosing billions to file swapping. You're loosing billions because kids aren't buying your crap anymore! Least that's what I think.
on 08/07/2003 at 06:29 PM