Standing on the headland taking in the scene.

[reddragdiva]

"If people spent 1/10th as much on music as they did on corsets for instance, you wouldn`t see LJ full of bands whinging that the scene is dead." (markeris, on the goth scene, from here.)

I can hardly believe how much money I used to spend on records and how little I do now. Not that I spend it on clothes either. Nor am I making it up in MP3s. Mostly I'm just wishing I had my old vinyl here. With a laser turntable.

Discuss.

(By the way, full points to mickmercer for switching on comments at last. A lot of interesting ones, too.)

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Okay, I think I misinterpreted RDD's words: I was reading this as Deathboy released a self-produced CD of tracks that were working versions and bits left out of an "official" album released in parallel. I don't see that kind of thing as likely to pull sales from the "official" Deathboy release, but I suspect that those that purchase the self-produced will be buying it out of the "money I have to buy CDs with", which may well mean than a CD from a less-favored band may not end up getting purchased. If that other CD was a Brittany Spears album, then Brittany lost a sale, and the Industry says "Sales are slumping!"

How it differs from soulseek downloads is that while MP3s for download *may* (and I don't believe they do much) "steal sales" from the same band. Deathboy downloads may hurt Deathboy sales, and that's what the Industry bigwigs are maintaining. In the case of a parallel CD, few people are going to choose the parallel CD *instead of* the production album, but rather will puchase it *in adddition to* the production one. Since the parallel CD costs actual money, though, there's the perception that the buyer has purchased two CDs and spent 2 CD's worth of whatever mental budget for CDs they have running. And that probably means that some other CD doesn't get bought. So, instead of "stealing sales" from Deathboy, it steals sales from (a hypothetical only) Machinae X, who released a CD around the same time, but isn't as favored by the buyer of the full set of Deathboy.