[Perndog]

Originally Posted by Bennett

The problem with that is that record sales really do little for the artist, unless they sell an absolutely massive amount. It's the record executives and companies themselves that are hurting from lack of sales.

A pessimistic estimate puts between $0.60 and 2.00 in the pocket of an artist after all expenses for each copy sold (we'll say a buck average). Sell a thousand records, get a thousand dollars (along with the exposure that comes from people owning your album) - this is for the short time spent in the studio - days for unknown groups, weeks or months for bigger ones (and bands that can afford to spend more studio time are generally the ones who will sell mor records anyway). Record sales are good. Loss of record sales is painful, until there's a cushion of hundreds of thousands sold. But that's neither here nor elsewhere. This is the important point:

Originally Posted by Bennett

While you might think, "who cares, those guys are assholes anyway," this directly translates into what you hear on the radio/tv these days. The record companies have to make money, which is why you see so much manufactured tripe mass marketed and then dropped by the second or third album, when they've found the next big thing.

Well, yeah, the record companies have to make money. That's what they do. It doesn't matter whether they're losing ground or business is booming - they will do whatever makes them the most money. The process you just described is in no way a reaction to poor sales, it's how things are done, because it's profitable. They certainly aren't going to stop trying to make money when they're secure in their fortunes.

Originally Posted by Bennett

And downloading mp3's has become a much bigger problem for the industry than merely copying CD's. If copying were a problem it would have been one long ago when people could dub records or cassettes. There was no lawsuit or list of names of all the people who bought a ten-pack of blank magnavox cassettes. The fact that action is being taken now, i think, show it is a larger problem.

There were lawsuits regarding copying tapes - there was even legislation. I don't know if you were around in the 80s when everyone was copying tapes, but it was a big deal to the people in charge. They thought copying tapes was going to ruin the music industry, and the only thing that prevented things from getting really bad was the advent of CDs, which couldn't be easily copied by every Joe on the street. Now they can, and since it's very difficult to crack down on that, they target file sharers instead, even if they're only a small part of the problem.