Facts about the music industry

Sales of CD's have decreased since people began burning CD's? A loss of between 700 million and 1.5 billion dollars worth is the latest estimate mostly lost by US owned companies. Smaller bands have become less profitable due to the demand for access to their free mp3s.

1. Sales of CD's have decreased since people began burning CD's? A loss of between 700 million and 1.5 billion dollars worth is the latest estimate mostly lost by US owned companies.

2. Smaller bands have become less profitable due to the demand for access to their free mp3s. Small bands are struggling more because overall CD sales are down even at small local shows and small record shops. Most bands must give away their songs just to get low paying gigs. Most websites that sell indie CD's report low to nonexistent sales while demand for their free mp3s nearly overload their website's bandwidth proving free mp3s are not helping to nurture more new bands trying to break into a very expensive industry.

3. CD manufacturers are making a lot of money off blank CD sales but all other aspects of the music industry are loosing money; from large record companies, big record chains, popular musicians no matter how large or small and even indie record labels, smaller bands, and small mom and pop record stores.

4. Many businesses such as Napster and mp3.com are opening to supply music to the buying public legitimately. They are now a legitimate business selling licensed products. They are now selling songs for from 88 to 99 cents per song for a single person to use thus legitimizing the business. This has not however revitalized the industry as many have hoped and many users continue to download and burn CD's illegally.

This leads me to wonder If people can get away with burning CD's and illegally downloading has it contributed collaterally to the decay of our values making people crave more things for which they haven't paid? Also now that people seem to expect things like music for free is its quality and value lessened for all of us because of it? I'd love to hear what you think about this subject. Let me know at tmoss@silver-dragon-records.com

Terry Moss (A&R Dept - Silver Dragon Records)