Forrester Research: MP3s beneficial for music biz

[TankGirl]

The Register has a story on a fresh survey by Forrester Research. 1000 music customers were interviewed, and the conclusions are interesting:

"The idea that digital music is responsible for slump is completely false," concludes Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff.

Forrester attributes the 15 per cent slump in music sales to a number of other factors. The economy is in a slump, there's much more competition from games, from DVDs - which saw an 80 per cent rise in sales - and most interestingly - from the "limited playlists" rotated by commercial US radio stations.

Forrester notes that one company, ClearChannel controls 60 per cent of radio, so new artists don't get the opportunity to be heard.

"Playlists are very short," it notes.

Check also Forrester's own summary in here.

- tg

[MagicMorpheus]

I wonder what RIAA gots to say about that.

And it's true that radio has got a pretty limited playlist.
That's why I like p2p. You can get anything you would like but would not normally pay for, from rap to rock to classical music.

[Merijn]

Forrester attributes the 15 per cent slump in music sales to a number of other factors. The economy is in a slump, there's much more competition from games, from DVDs - which saw an 80 per cent rise in sales - and most interestingly - from the "limited playlists" rotated by commercial US radio stations.

I'm guessing the insane high CD prices are to blame as well.... I bought two DVDs last week (LotR 2CD extra being one of those) and I could find a more expensive audio CD in 10 seconds.

[TankGirl]

Mainstream media is also gradually getting a clue. This fresh Washington Post story paints a rather realistic picture of what is going on, and refuses to echo the music biz propaganda.

from the story:

"All this smacks of desperation," says Eric Garland, president of BigChampagne, a company hired by major labels to measure online file-sharing traffic. "When you've got a consumer movement of this magnitude, when tens of millions of people say, 'I think CD copying is cool and I'm within my rights to do it,' it gets to the point where you have to say uncle and build a business model around it rather than fight it."

- tg

[JackSpratts]

nice article tg, thanks for the link - i'll make it a thread.

- js.