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If you want a list of people who produce good quality music using their own equipment but will probably never get a "record deal", look at MySpace. The only one I can name off the top of my head is Midnight Hour. Happy01000101 ( talk) 06:17, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
There most definitely needs to be more information on South Korea's recent dramatic increase in the music industry, the graphs and tables are very out of date. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
193.61.254.67 (
talk) 18:09, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
The business structure section contains a paragraph about the sale of sound recordings and how this translates into royalties for artists. Prior to my edits of 10 and 13 Sep 2009, this aspect of the music industry was characterized too simply. By failing to mention that the labels' revenues from sales of sound recordings are not "royalties", and that the disbursement of actual royalties from such sales depends on the contracts artists have with labels, the reader is misled into accepting the romantic notion that all artists receive royalties from any sales of the sound recordings they participated in, which is untrue — some recordings are "works for hire" for which the artist receives no royalties whatsoever, and more commonly, contracts with artists (such as one I have, myself) require a minimum level of sales to recoup the label's investment before the artists are entitled to any royalties. Furthermore, the vast majority of sound recordings generate little or no revenue, as demonstrated by PRS Chief Economist Will Page's recent article refuting the 'Long Tail' theory as it applies to online music sales. [1] That is, sales correspond to popularity, and the popular recordings are only a small portion of those available. Thus it's improper to imply that all recordings generate revenues, let alone royalties. IMHO such oversimplifications indicate bias, perhaps unintentional, in favor of the labels and publishers who stand to gain from it.
That's why I made the following edits, which were soon reverted by "David T Tokyo":
I went ahead and re-did my edits, adjusted a bit and incorporating "David T Tokyo"'s additional fixes, but omitting my back-catalogue clarification, so the paragraph now reads as follows: When CDs sell in stores or on websites such as the iTunes Store, part of the money obtained by the record label for the sales may be paid to the performers in the form of royalties. Of the recordings which generate substantial revenues for the labels, most do so only for a short period after they are released, after which the song becomes part of the label's "back catalogue" or library. A much smaller number of recordings have become "classics", with longstanding popularity, such as CDs by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. These albums have continued to generate revenue for the labels and often, in turn, royalties for artists, long after their original release.
Of course the fact remains that this entire section is mostly uncited. That shouldn't be used as an excuse to retain inaccurate and misleading generalizations. The entire article is fair game for continued improvement, and the addition of citations is part of that. I will devote as much time as I can to seeking out references where necessary. If there are specific claims that anyone feels need attributions more than others, please tag them as needing citations so I can give them higher priority. Thanks! — mjb ( talk) 07:14, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
This table is not very informative. The last column "change" - change of what? And compared to what? The sales - in what units are they? It's hard to believe the total sales were just over $12,000. For what period is it? I'm guessing one year. Which one? What's the source of these data?
Independovirus ( talk) 22:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
FYI On the "read" page, organization is spelled incorrectly. On the "edit" page, it is spelled incorrectly. Is this a computer "glitch"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.195.169.78 ( talk) 19:12, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
"Swiss" is not a country, it should be "Switzerland" Vinbrendel ( talk) 02:09, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
We need a graphic for dropping revenues in the music industry. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 20:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I find it very difficult to believe that streaming has made any real impact on the decline. Streaming services (such as Pandora, Spotify, etc.) pay notoriously little. I'd like to see some hard numbers. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 13:11, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Come to think of it, an even better number would be to estimate artists' gross income, by taking into consideration all the percentages involved. (a) Record companies take about 45% of retail to pay out unrecouped advances to artists, market and promote records, and, yes, to buy big houses, although not so much any more. (b) Retail stores take about 40% off the top (for rent, inventory risks, etc.) (c) Streaming services pay very small amounts, but there's not a published percentage that everybody knows. How do their royalty expenses relate to their income? This would be a good number to have. (d) Downloading services (such as iTunes) takes about 30% off the top for ... nothing much, really. Because they can. (d) What is the net for touring, on average? (e) And, of course, the net for artists from consumer electronics is zero. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 13:48, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Our original mini-edit war was over the question of whether streaming was earning enough money make up for the lost in revenues from other ways of selling recorded music. Do you any of your sources provide proof of this? The reason I ask is that (I believe) that Pandora and Rhapsody pay only fractions of a penny per spin, a very very little of that shows up in the bank accounts of musicians. I'm (coincidentally) talking to Pandora about this at the moment and I should have hard numbers soon. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 08:48, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I finally found time to actually read through your sources above. I signed each of my comments below, so feel free to reply in-between.
This article claims that the value of the "music industry" is increasing. However, these numbers are either completely fictional or extremely misleading. The value of the worldwide recording industry (which is what we're discussing) is dropping, and is now in the 20-30 billion range -- nowhere near the 168 billion as this info-graphic states. The only way to get this number is to include two sectors that pay almost nothing to musicians. (1) Consumer electronics, such as digital music players, at 100 billion or so I think. They pay 0% to musicians. (2) Radio advertising, which I would think is about 15 or 20 billion, which pays less than 1% to record companies (and, if you count independent promoters, they actually charge musicians money). If you add in live music (at around 20 billion) you get a number close what 168 billion. Some of these (consumer electronics, live music) are increasing in value, so that would explain why this info graphic reports an increase. But the lion's share of this increase is in consumer electronics. I think it's hardly fair to count "consumer electronics" as part of the music industry to give the impression that the music industry is increasing in value. If there's no musician in the money chain, it's not the music industry, as far as I'm concerned.
Of course, I am speculating about the source of these numbers, and I could be wrong. There's no way to tell, because (ironically) the full article is not freely downloadable. They want to get paid. Ironic and hypocritical. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This article explicitly describes the downturn, and places the blame on piracy, which is the opposite of the point I think you're trying to make. To quote:
For the past ten years sales of recorded music have declined so steeply as to become a cautionary tale about the disruptive power of the internet. The rise of illegal file-sharing and the end of the digital “replacement cycle”, in which people bought CDs to replace tapes and records, caused spending to collapse. Sales of CDs, tapes and records have slid by 40% in Britain since 2001, according to the BPI, which represents record labels. In Japan, the world’s biggest CD sales market, the number of discs sold fell by 6% in 2008 and 24% in 2009. Price cuts meant that revenues dropped even more steeply.
The rise in digital music-sales is scant compensation. People tend to buy tracks, not albums, from sites like Apple’s iTunes. They can obtain their favourite music much more cheaply than they could in the CD era. And even digital sales are now stalling.
The article goes on to report on how revenues from live music and merchandise have increased, mostly because ticket prices for the big acts (U2, Gaga, etc.) have gone through the roof. As I said earlier, I think this is off-topic: the issue we are discussing is the decline in revenues for recorded music, not the increase in live music ticket prices. Live music obviously has no connection to piracy. (Unless you want to argue that the fact that I have two jobs means that I deserve to be paid less for my first job, which is nonsense.)
Having said that, I should say I'm happy to include a little more about the increase in revenue from live music, and maybe this even deserves it's own paragraph. This is a great citation for that. (We should probably also report that almost all of this new money is going from older people to a handful of well-established acts, and I would probably use the Lowery article as citation for this point.) ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This is a really solid source. They talk about how the "losses due to piracy" are impossible to calculate and that the numbers publicized by the RIAA in ten years ago were grossly exaggerated. They also note that these crap numbers have ruined the credibility of RIAA. We could add this, right after the sentence that calls the RIAA's efforts a "disaster".
The book also reports that research community has vastly improved its reliability over the decade. They write that, at this point, "we view the IIPA-cited rates [generated by the IFPI and others] as at least plausible and very possibly as understating the actual prevalence of pirated goods."
Note that this book is not discussing the downturn in revenues and does not dispute the IFPI or RIAA's numbers about this. This book is discussing "losses due to piracy", which is a different number. This article (deliberately) does not report anything about the losses due piracy, and, as I mentioned above, this article does not even go so far as to claim that there is a connection between piracy and the downturn (despite the fact that almost everyone in the industry believes this is the case). ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This has nothing about sales or streaming. It's just an opinion poll about how people feel about copyright enforcement and shows that they have mixed feelings: they want some enforcement, just small fines, nothing that violates privacy, and it should be okay to share with your family. Of course, this doesn't mean that they are right or wrong about this; it just shows that this is what they think. There is nothing in here about the issue we are discussing: the decline in revenues and the real causes of the decline. Also note that this article describes the enforcement option as a "disaster", so it's hard to accuse this article as being biased towards the music industry on the "enforcement" issue. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Unless I missed it, there is no comparison in this article between revenue decline in France and the drop in piracy in france. Without that, this article is an argument for the enforcement option. Did I miss it? Can you tell me which page this was on? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This article describes a study that showed (conclusively) that after France's Hadopi law was very publicly discussed, people bought more songs on iTunes relative to other countries, and therefor concluded that people were less to likely pirate music after they heard about the law. The article (correctly, I think) points out that it wasn't the law that turned people away from piracy, it was the discussion of the law that turned people away from piracy. The music industry claimed that this study shows enforcement works; torrent freak correctly points out that this conclusion is unwarranted. However, it does show that discussing enforcement works. (They also make a speculative argument that jump might have something to do with Spotify's rise to power the previous year, the idea being that this dropped sales in other countries. This argument requires us to believe that, for some reason, the buzz on Spotify skipped France and that the buzz suddenly stopped, coincidentally, the same month Hadopi was debated.) This is way too small a detail to be discussed in this article. At any rate, note that the article describes the enforcement option as a "disaster", so it is certainly not biased towards the music industry on the issue of enforcement. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This article questions whether the LimeWire shut down actually raised sales at iTunes, so it addresses the general issue of exactly how much money is lost to piracy. Similar to the previous. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This article documents the widespread belief throughout the industry that piracy is hurting the sales of the digital downloads. This is the opposite of the point you're trying to make, so I'm not sure why you included it. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
This notes how much digital sales have grown. This could be used as an additional citation and detail to the sentence in the article that says, "Legal digital downloads became widely available with the debut of the iTunes Store in 2003. The popularity of internet music distribution has increased and by 2012 digital music sales topped the physical sale of music." Note that the rise in digital sales has not been anywhere near enough to make for the loss of revenue from digital sources. (As the next sentence in the article states.) Also note that these two source do not contradict each other. Digital sales are rising, but not as fast as physical sales are falling, and they may be rising in spite of piracy. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 05:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Why is the content dated back to 2005? That was 7 years ago, time to get an update! -- J (t) 03:10, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
What exactly is wrong with the lead? I'm happy to fix it, just don't know why it was tagged. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 17:42, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Exactly which facts are disputed? There are no "disputed" tags on the page. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 17:43, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
The only possible section where "NPOV" is an issue would probably be the "21st century" section. All the facts in that section are well cited, and it tells the same story as the articles do. The citations are from main stream sources such as The New York Times and the Economist. The article takes great pains to report only the most certain and widely known facts about this issue. Every effort has been made to avoid bias towards either the technology industry or the music industry.
If there are specific statements that are biased, let's discuss them, and let's compare sources (as we have been doing above). The tag at the top of the page is not helpful, because it's not clear exactly what you think is biased. In my opinion, the article isn't biased. Without additional information, I will remove the tag in a few days or weeks.
We need to recognize that the music industry's difficulties in the 21st century is a an emotional issue, especially for some Wikipedians, who tend to side with the technology industry on this one. Let's just stick to what the mainstream sources say, and leave out the fringe analysis. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 17:53, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I went through the section (now named "Rise of Digital distribution") and checked source-content correlation. I couldn't find any that support the 29% worldwide decline in music revenue, but given that exact numbers are given, and fact that US revenue dropped 50%, it seems quite unlikely these numbers are just made up. Everything else seems either sourced or quite reasonable. I'd welcome further improvement of sources, but I don't think any of the information here is just conjecture. Forbes72 ( talk) 04:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
How big do the sections have to be? There's nothing in the guideline about this. This is easy to fix, if you don't like it; just edit the article. Why tag it? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 18:17, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
subject statelitlet — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.6.245.4 ( talk) 03:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
While the parent companies of Universal Music (Vivendi, France) and Sony Music (Sony, Japan) are based outside the United States, the actual music business is still based within the USA; the international arm of Universal Music is based in London, but I doubt it has significant control.
More information should also be given on the large Asian markets (Various Arabic/Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Various SEA). Only Sony and Universal have any significant interests in Asia, and Sony's share is probably far larger in Asia. Weewaterasia ( talk) 01:52, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
I removed this section, because it simply isn't true:
In addition to these traditional business relationships, new ways of doing business are being developed in the 2000s. Technology, such as music production software and the Internet has had an enormous impact on how music is created and distributed. In the 1970s and 1980s, if a pop or rock band wanted to make a recording, they had to go to a professional recording studio to have the recording made, and then get a record label to market and distribute physical copies of the LP, tape, or in the 1980s, the CD. During that same time period, if a contemporary classical composer wanted to have a score and musical parts for her new symphony prepared, she would have to go to a music publishing company which had the capability to prepare professional scores and parts. Doubtful In the 2000s, a band can record an album using a USB mic and a high-end laptop with a digital recording software such as Garageband and then sell digital copies online through the band's website. In the 2000s, a symphony composer can prepare a professional-level score and parts herself using digital score-writing software such as Finale.
There are several problems:
This is an article about the music industry, that is, people who make a living from music. This paragraph is wishful thinking, about a "future of music" that hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 04:49, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
Hi guys, the % change column of the total revenue by year table in the stats section makes absolutely no sense and is completely inaccurate from a year to year perspective. Going from $14.97 billion to $15 billion is not a 3.2% change, and decreasing from $18.8 billion to $18.4 billion is not an 8% decrease. I would change them immediately but I want to make sure that I haven't missed something completely. The odd part is that the sources agree with the stated percentages while also agreeing with the stated revenues. I'm very confused, but I think the hard revenue numbers hold more weight year to year, so I'll adjust the percentages to match later unless anyone has any objections. 73.186.191.139 ( talk) 00:46, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Could somebody please find, transform (by discussing this with the original creator/s) or create a statistic on the progression of music revenue by medium?
Here's what I found so far:
Also the pretty unrelated Sony Center right at the top should probably be removed in turn.
-- Fixuture ( talk) 01:06, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Presido locality is music artist Presido localty ( talk) 20:15, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
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I notice the article has information from 2014.. Does anyone have access to newer information? That South Korean and Spanish music markets grew from 2013 to 2014 is not terribly relevant given that we're already 3+ months into 2018. 158.106.215.138 ( talk) 16:12, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Records are said to outsell CD's in 2020 For the first time since 1987. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.189.230.115 ( talk) 00:02, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Diagram of 40 years of music sales, by type. TGCP ( talk) 14:23, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
The redirect Business for the Creative Industries has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 14 § Business for the Creative Industries until a consensus is reached. Utopes ( talk / cont) 00:46, 14 April 2024 (UTC)