Music Retail Graphs

Here’s a really cool set of graphs from Hypebot (read my thoughts below):

MusicRetail R7 Mint Music Retail Graphs

Physical vs Digital:

16% growth in the past two years, wow.  Part of me is still surprised that physical products still outsell digital products.  The other part of me realizes that labels seem to do everything they can to prevent themselves from making money in the digital realm, so it’s not that surprising that physical products still provide most of their income.  Their only hope is that they open up to digital, learn how to make money with it, and reap the benefits.

Digital Retailer Market Share:

No surprise here.  iTunes rules the roost.  I can’t wait to see this chart the year after Spotify gets here.  I bet it will take a sizeable chunk of this chart.  For now, I’ll have to check out this “Other” store though, they seem to doing quite well.  (j/k)

Monthly Transactions Per User:

I really have to wonder if the variable pricing thing has anything to do with the chart going up.  The new iPhone 3GS also came out in July.  In any case, even the modest boost in Rhapsody‘s numbers show that people are very interested in music, we jsut need to have access to it.

Spending:

Simple version:

Subscription services have a steady, predictable, going-along-with-the-pricing-plans numbers here.  Napster lost a bunch of customers while Rhapsody and eMusic gained.

iTunes has the lowest spending per transaction, but has had a slight growth per user.  I’m betting $.69 to $1.29 per track is too high of a price point, otherwise their numbers would be higher in both categories.

FYE and CD Baby have the highest per transaction numbers because people are forced to buy the entire CD at retail prices.  You’ll notice people aren’t spending as much there as before.

Ray Beckerman

Yesterday, a Federal court made a ruling in a suit brought by the RIAA against Ray Beckerman, an defense attorney who specializes in copyright defense cases.  The court said he is not “vexatious”, as the RIAA claimed, but rather simply doing his job, albeit he’s not very forthcoming.

For those who don’t know Ray, I became a fan of his after reading his posts on Slashdot, a tech news site.  Ray posts under the NewYorkCountryLawyer and was the only lawyer (that I know of) that was actually involved in some of the cases discussed on Slashdot and tech-savvy enough to leave comments and answer questions from readers.  Pretty cool.  He also has a blog, Recording Industry vs The People, where he shares his views and news on copyright cases and particularly RIAA cases brought against his clients and others citizens.  Good news, Ray, keep up the good work!

Spotify

I’ve been hearing for months about this music service in Europe called Spotify and how it’s simply amazing.  They say it will be the death of the MP3.  They say it will rival iTunes.  They’ve said that about alot of stuff and none of it came true.

However, I just saw the demo video of the Spotify iPhone app and I have to say I’m pretty impressed.  I can see how this will make buying songs obsolete.  Why would you store songs on your iPhone when you could just stream them, anywhere, anytime, nearly instantly?  Plus, you’re not limited to the songs you own, you get all six million+ songs in their catalog.  That doesn’t even mention the fact that you can sync it with your iPhone to play them when you’re not connected to the Internet.  I know Elliot Van Buskirk at Wired really likes it.  Am I a new believer?  Yep, call me converted!

Recent news says that Spotify is coming to the US, but I’m sure our greedy labels and the RIAA will find a way to screw it up and/or make it ridiculously expensive.  Let’s also hope that Apple doesn’t get a case of the stupids and reject the app.

Check out this video.  You’ll be blown away. I’m thinking this is exactly what The Future of Music described. This IS the future of music.  If you’re an artist, you gotta find a way to get your stuff onto Spotify!

Best of 2008 list

I just noticed all the posts on the first page of my site are “Today’s Tweets from CJ”.  Sorry.  We just got moved into our new place and have almost finished unpacking all the boxes.  We’ve been extra diligent this time and have gone through every single box and storage bin and decided what really needed to stay.  It’s gratifying to have a massive pile of extra crap that gets taken to Goodwill and it out of your life forever!

So, now that the move is out of the way, I can do what I thought I’d never do: a “best of the past year” list.  I know they’re cheesy and a cheap way to fill the blog, but I’m going to do it anyway:

Best Gadget: iPhone 3G

Best Album: Kings of Leon‘s “Only By the Night”

Best Movie: The Dark Knight (although I saw Ironman in the theater three times)

Best Book: Odd Hours by Dean Koontz (we got it on audio book and listened during our holiday travels)

Best Book I Read This Year, But Was Published a While Ago: 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Best Christmas Gift: Flip Mino HD

Best News: RIAA ends prosecution of music fans

Best Artist I Found Out About This Year: Casey Frazier

I think I’ll reserve my predictions, hopes, and dreams for the new year for a separate post.  Gotta keep this blog up-to-date!  Happy New Year!

RIAA Calls Radio Piracy

You couldn’t make this stuff up.  Ironically, someone already did.  One of my favorite comedy sources in The Onion.  They wrote this article back in 2002 and it’s simultaneously funny and sad that it’s come true.

What I find truly sad is that an industry that is so obviously hurting to regain it’s popularity, profits, and dignity has stooped this low.  Mark my words, they will destroy themselves by being this greedy.

“We Don’t Need To Prove Infringement”

This is posting from one of my other blogs, “But I’m No Expert“.

The MPAA has stated today that they shouldn’t need to prove infringement occurs in order to collect fees from “law breakers”.

“Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances.” – MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert

Are you kidding me!?  This will just open the door to copyright owners being able to collect $150,000 from any person they choose to target.  The whole idea of taking someone to court that you have to prove it in order to win.

“It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement.”

Wah.  Boo-f’ing-hoo.  So you can’t catch them.  Too bad for you.  Either release your stuff and try to make money from it, release it for free to anyone who wants it, or don’t release it at all.  It’s not the government’s job to make sure that you’re able to make insane levels of profit.  It’s bad enough they have enabled you to have practically unlimited monopolies on your content, but now you want to collect money from just anybody!?

Puh-lease!  These quotes are regarding the Jammie Thomas case, where the RIAA authorized a company to download 24 files from Ms. Thomas’ computer.  I’m sorry, but if the RIAA authorized the downloading, then it’s not copyright infringment!  It was authorized!  Sorry, but you’ll not only need to prove that actual infringement occured, but you’ll need to prove that it wasn’t you guys doing it!  These people need to figure how to make money doing something other than suing people, but I’m no expert!