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BPI Hails Cut Price CDs & Legitimate Downloads As Sales Increase


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Old 10-02-2004, 17:34
Everything Goes
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The BPI have been cheering the success of cut price CDs which have helped to increase album sales by 5.6% in 2003 citeing that 62% of single albums sell for £9.99 or less. (Just as long as thoese CDs are sourced from within the EU I guess!)

BPI - CD album sales rise, but illegal downloading hits singles sales in 2003.


Meanwhile the BPI have also been crowing the success of legitiamte downloads via MyCokeMusic. Which sold 150,000 in January 2004. More than was sold on CD, Cassette, DVD and Vinyl.

BPI - Legal downloads begin to make their mark.

How many years has it taken thoese idiots to realise all this then?!
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Old 10-02-2004, 17:45
aka
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They asked CDWow to increase prices, now they...
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Old 10-02-2004, 19:47
d'@ve
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Originally posted by Everything Goes
Meanwhile the BPI have also been crowing the success of legitiamte downloads via MyCokeMusic. Which sold 150,000 in January 2004. More than was sold on CD, Cassette, DVD and Vinyl.
BPI - Legal downloads begin to make their mark.
Erm, not quite! This is what it actually says:

"This means that a digital format has outsold physical formats for the first time, with downloads now outselling vinyl, cassettes and DVD."

It's *very* badly worded but close scrutiny reveals that CD singles have NOT been outsold by legal downloads. If they had, the market would have had to totally collapse!
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Old 11-02-2004, 16:17
andygrif
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Originally posted by d'@ve
Erm, not quite! This is what it actually says:

"This means that a digital format has outsold physical formats for the first time, with downloads now outselling vinyl, cassettes and DVD."

It's *very* badly worded but close scrutiny reveals that CD singles have NOT been outsold by legal downloads. If they had, the market would have had to totally collapse!
I don't think this is the case. legal downloads in the US of singles have surpased the number of physical CD singles sold there, but there is still a viable market (for now) in making CD singles.

You're right about the bad wording however, but then this has been the BPI's trademark in the last few months. Something tells me that they have a new PR person over there, and that they didn't quite finish the journalist course in middle school!

Seriously though, I am sickened to be a part of this ridiculous music industry right now. The labels are running round in circles, the licensing bodies are trying to find new ways to generate money for their members (penalising legitimare business in music in the process and pushing costs higher) and the BPI? Well I was quite happy when the BPI went round putting on the Brit Awards every year. As a music body they make a great party organiser!

As someone once said...let's look at the facts:

1. The BPI is campaigning for excemption or reduced VAT rates for recorded music products. Why? Because, they say, the cost of buying CDs is too high.

2. The BPI launched unprecedented legal action against two smaller retailers, for importing legitimately acquired product (in the case of CD Wow they sourced from not only within the EU but also from the record labels directly outside of it). There is nothing in any rule book (including the copyright rule book) that says this is not permitted. Indeed, British law makes pretty much watertight provision to allow this to happen, and it was indeed happening with the permission of the labels that were authorised to sell it in the first place.

Now call me synical, but retailers like CD Wow have been responsible in knock-on reductions on the high street, places like Tesco and Asda as well as Amazon, have all started selling product at under ten £10. This is stimilated the record buying market in the UK.

3. And it has done so to the tune of 7.6% increases in the number of albums sold last year - in fact the BPI announced that there were more albums sold in the UK last year than ever before.

Single sales were down. Singles cost £4. Albums cost £8. You see my point?

4. The BPI are now saying how great downloading music is - as long as the money stays in the UK. The BPI has been very anti offshore operations such as iTunes (anti in terms of letting them operate without agreements from each of the EU labels).

Now during January the BPI states that there were 150,000 tracks were downloaded during January. Now correct me if I am wrong but to get to number one the recent Pop Idol winner sold around 50,000 copies, and to stay there only around 30,000 copies per week.

Oh, and by the way if you do dare to share some music on peer to peer networks, the BPI 'may' come after you.

Personally I feel that the BPI is issue so many contradictorary statements right now that people are not going to take anything they say seriously.
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Old 11-02-2004, 17:49
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So I 'may' get the bpi coming after me If I download anything from Su***ova then?
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Old 12-02-2004, 01:12
d'@ve
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Originally posted by andygrif
I don't think this is the case.
Yes it is! My quote was accurate.

In the first BPI link you gave, it says this:

"...the singles market in which unit shipments were down 30.7% to 36.4m..." The vast majority of that is CD singles. Now, 36.4m a year is 700,000 a week. Somewhat more than the 50,000 legal downloads in the last week of January.

And don't forget, many of the 50,000 downloads will have been album tracks so the number of *singles* downloads was much less.

I do agree with most of the rest of what you said though, the record industry themselves are largely responsible for the mess they are in regarding singles. But as the vast majority of their income ( 94%) is now from albums, we don't need to feel sorry for them at all.
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Old 12-02-2004, 01:14
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oops, duplicate message
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Old 12-02-2004, 10:18
andygrif
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Originally posted by d'@ve
Yes it is! My quote was accurate.

Sorry my original post was a little ambiguous - what I mean meant was that I don't think it would be the case that the singles market would collapse. I agree with your other comments.

As I eluded to, single sales are down largely due to the cost of albums falling, plus the music industry making a rod for its own back by releasing many singles at the same time on compilation albums, sometimes even before their single release date.

Why would anyone buy a CD single for £4 when they can get this track, the next single plus 10 more tracks for £8?

What's needed is a similar price war on the cost of singles - EMI started it by releasing the 2 track CD single - but this is still poor comparative value - they should really be releasing existing CD singles at £1.50 to £2 a unit to stimulate the market in the same manner.

Of course singles sales are only here for a while anyway - some in the industry predict as few as four or five years before singles are gone - and then people can download exactly what they want for a quid - which will produce a much more interesting sales chart, with less focuss on releases and release dates and much more reflective of what users are actually wanting to listen to - which can only be a good thing.
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Old 17-02-2004, 16:15
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From this week's Music Week.....

Reports in the national press are indicating that Andrew Yeates is on course to exit his post as director general of the BPI.

The Guardian suggests that Yeates, who took up in the role in July 2000 as replacement for the long-serving John Deacon, is presently in negotiations about his departure. Nobody at the BPI was available for comment.

Yeates joined the BPI from Channel 4 in the role of director of legal affairs, before being elevated to director general. However, in 2002 the organisation created an executive chairman's post occupied by Peter Jamieson.
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