To: GraceZ who wrote (5959 ) 8/30/2002 5:21:21 PM From: Lizzie Tudor Read Replies (1) | Respond to plus people are skeptical of claims from the RIAA... check the tone of this article in the SJ merc today... this is not directed at teenagers-Decline in CD shipments apparently unrelated to proliferation of bad music "Illegal Internet downloading is displacing sales and helping explain a 7 percent drop in CD shipments." This according to a midyear report from the Recording Industry Association of America. In the RIAA study of 860 music consumers ages 12 to 54 with Internet access, 63 percent said they have acquired at least one home-recorded, or "burned," compact disc during the past year. Of those, 24 percent acquired 11 or more burned CDs -- a 10 percent increase over last year. The survey, it should be noted, offers no information about consumer attitudes on other factors widely held to be affecting CD sales, among them the vapidity of so many new releases and the lack of easy-to-use online services from the major recording labels. Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, a lobbying group that promotes the sale of music over the Internet, was quick to dismiss the survey's findings. "The way to defeat illegal music distribution services is to offer comprehensive, innovative, fairly priced legal services," Potter told Reuters. "Until the record companies offer their content ubiquitously in a consumer-friendly way, studies like this are useless." But won't industry-sanctioned subscription services be unable to compete with free services? Potter doesn't think so. "I'd like to introduce the recording industry to something called bottled water," Potter said. "The point is if there were a high-quality product that was affordable and available across multiple services, they would be able to defeat the free services." siliconvalley.com
