Canadian Music Industry Says Downloading Declining 238
An anonymous reader writes "A new survey conducted by a Canadian music collective that counts the recording industry as one of its members has found that music downloading has declined dramatically in Canada. The survey found that only 14 percent of Canadians download, down from 21 percent in 2002. The survey also found that P2P is rarely a reason for people who purchase less music."
What? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
On another note, using the same link there is a subsection on decline of Music Downloading in Canada. Since this was published in 2003, I can only say that this slashdot article is old news.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
The Canadians have internet?
Yes, we do, but we have to fill the tubes with antifreeze.
Time for the RIAA again, then. (Score:2)
CD Tax (Score:5, Interesting)
Though downloading may or may not be declining here in Canada, what do you think the chances are of them reducing or eliminating the blank media tax?
but it's NOT a TAX!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
My subject line is only quoting the idiots who are going to come along and say that the Canadian CD tax is not a tax, but it is actually a "levy" (which is defined, of course, as a type of tax). Maybe they will read this, and troll no more.
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In short, people object to calling it a tax because in common parlance, such a statement would be just as misleading as calling copyright infringement theft.
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Except that this meets the definition of a tax. Which zeroes out the analogy.
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His language was precise and I think his analogy holds.
Copyright infringement is "stealing" yes-- but there is a technical difference between theft and copyright infringement even tho they are very similar.
Levies are "taxes" yes-- but there is a technical difference between a levy and a tax even tho they are very similar.
Yup. Seems like a reasonably good analogy to me.
Ooo. SAT style
42) COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT:THEFT TAX: (CAR: FINE: TARRIFF: LEVY)
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How are they even similar? Nothing is taken during copyright infringement.
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I also agree that the term needs to be fought because copyright infringment is *like* stealing but it is *not* stealing.
However, if you and your 10,000 closest friends end up with copies of the artists song and the artist ends up with ZERO, NADA, begging for food on the street corner when they should have rightfully had at least a few grand then something bad happened and all your weasel wording won't hide that fact.
Artists *
Your weasel wording. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to realize that there are a lot more crimes than just theft and that pointing out that a particular crime is not theft is not a justification for that crime. The only "weaseling" here is in calling copyright infringment "theft".
We can use your specific example of the "artist begging for food on the street corner". How can this happen? Copyright infringement is one way. Another way is a violent crime which leaves him severely disabled. Another way is arson (burning down his house and his bestseller novel inside). Why point these out? These are all crimes, which can result in what you describe. However, none of them is "theft".
"Artists *should* be compensated for new works by people who consume those new works"
Speaking of abusing words, I recall a major recording artist who said "If you are consuming my music, you are doing something wrong". Look up the definition of "consume" at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consume [reference.com] There's no way you can consume music by listening to it in an MP3 player unless it has some sort of DRM which makes the song get "used up" after multiple listens. The only time I ever consumed music was when I played a modern LP in an old Victrola. The heavy needle made it a one-play-and-that's-all situation.
"You see it all the time- people do things wrong and rationalize it to themselves that it's not wrong and then they get in trouble because they lose proper caution."
"Put another way-- it's one thing to have a joint at a concert surrounded by 20,000 strangers and quite another to have one in the starbucks or casually walking down a major thoroughfare."
This is actually a sort of apt analogy, because smoking a joint is theft no less than copyright infringement is.
"I know that pro-infringers like to argue that and I've got just a few mp3's myself."
If pointing out that infringement is not theft makes one "pro-infringement", I have a question. Is murder the same as theft? If you deny it, that makes you pro-murder!!!!
Re:Your weasel wording. (Score:5, Insightful)
Today I listened to a digital copy of my favorite songs over and over. I didn't pay for it. I did not compensate the artist for it. And I plan to do it tomorrow or any other time I want. I took nothing from the artist that he had before. I deprived him/her of nothing he was assured of obtaining. Fact is, his/her life is no different for me having done so. Am I stealing?
You would say yes, arguing **potential** income lost. But what is that? How do you calculate it? If you can't point to a single concrete, tangible effect of my having committed these atrocities, then whom did it hurt? It comes down to you insisting that if that digital copy of that song was not available to me at that instant, then I would have gone to the store and purchased it. Good luck with that and the rest of your research into alternate timelines.
My daughter also showed me some poses she learned in yoga class. So have I stolen from the yoga instructor? You would say yes even though I have taken nothing and harmed no one and he will never know anything happened.
By now I'm sure you have a stunningly clever rebuttal, so I'll admit it: I was listening to digital radio and playing my roommate's CDs! Mea culpa! And that's the problem: you might "know" what i did is "clearly wrong" but are now forced to admit it isn't because current legal vocabulary is not capable of discerning a difference between what you "know" is stealing and me listening to the radio. Unless you are prepared for people to be ruled against simply because we "know" they're guilty of something, though we can't articulate what "it" is, then admit that you are wrong. It is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but no existing definitions fit and you are wrong.
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"However, if you and your 10,000 closest friends end up with copies of the artists song and the artist ends up with ZERO, NADA, begging for food on the street corner when they should have rightfully had at least a few grand then something bad happened and all your weasel wording won't hide that fact."
...but this is simply where the pro-sharing folks come back with:
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Yes, they should. Let the RIAA and the labels know, so that the artists start getting more than a nickel for each CD they sell.
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PETER: Yeah.
JOANNA: Ok. That's not yours?
PETER: Well, it, it becomes ours.
JOANNA: How's that not stealing?
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Peter: It's called fraud. We'll do a con job.
Thanks for so clarifying this by bringing a third crime into it, that is neither theft nor copyright infringement (short of pirates selling pirated CD's).
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Oh god I hope so. (Score:2)
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That's the true value of that content in my opinion.
There's a limit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's a limit.... (Score:4, Funny)
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and more (Score:2)
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Re:There's a limit.... (Score:5, Informative)
"O Canada" was proclaimed Canada's national anthem on July 1, 1980, 100 years after it was first sung on June 24, 1880.
The first performance took place on June 24 (St Jean Baptist Day), 1880 at a banquet in the "Pavillon des Patineurs" in Quebec City as the climax of a "Mosaique sur des airs populaires canadiens" arranged by Joseph Vezina, a prominent composer and bandmaster.
The music was composed by Calixa Lavallee, a well-known composer; French lyrics to accompany the music were written by Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The song gained steadily in popularity. Many English versions have appeared over the years. The version on which the official English lyrics are based was written in 1908 by Mr. Justice Robert Stanley Weir. The official English version includes changes recommended in 1968 by a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons. The French lyrics remain unaltered.
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So, just long enough for the copyright to expire then?
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It is not quality, it is old stuff downloaded now (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Only sick music makes money today." -- Friedrich Nietzsche in 1888.
Re:It is not quality, it is old stuff downloaded n (Score:3, Informative)
See the decline in sales was due to people finishing their cassette-to-CD upgrade and no longer buying the huge amount of CDs they bought in the mid 90s.
I guess it'd be nice if people finish their CD-to-mp3 "up"grade and the RIAA could stop doing their chicken little act.
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I sense a big shakeup in the music industry, where the artists start taking control of the money they generate, instead of the big record companies gobbling it up to enrich a few unworthy executives.
Re:There's a limit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as many people here pooh-pooh the "everything sucks today" argument, an honest person has to take a hard look and see whether or not it's true. I know it's hard -- no, impossible -- to quantify the 'quality' of music. It's obviously a changing beast, dependent on the audience, and other variables.
I submit, as one small data point, the "Top Searches" [allmusic.com] page on allmusic.com [allmusic.com]. Notice a trend? Yup -- a good chunk of the artists on that list were in their prime is 10-to-40 years ago.
So what does that *particular* list say? It's a tough call. It may just be that AMG's site is too un-cool for the covetted tween to mid-20's music demographic, leaving us 30+ folks (I'm 34) who were weaned on 60's and 70's rock by our baby boomer parents who went on to be influenced by the 80's and 90's in our teen years. Perhaps there are sites more used by the younger generations that has a "top serach" function that other readers can add to the mix, for comparison.
But maybe -- just maybe -- that today there are fewer artists that actuall make good *albums* that won't sound dated in 10 years and can be listened to over and over in their entirety. Maybe the majority of entertainers that get radio play are optimized for one-hit-wonderhood, who get their 15 minutes and go out in a blaze of glory until they'll featured in ten years on "Where Are They Now?".
Or, perhaps, hind-sight is 20/20 and it's much easier to find the gems from 10+ years ago than it is to find the few that exist today but are lost in the crap that's been on the airwaves since the dawn of radio. :)
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I've always been interested by the fact that the top50 music listing on Amazon, for "Pop" music, regularly features some really baby-boomer / retiree stuff. Michael Bublé, Diana Krall, Bonnie Raitt, Faith Hill, Rod Stewart, Mark Knopfler, etc. These are not "top 40" to me in the sense that when I look at the actual Billboard top 40, it tends to feature Jay-Z much more than the likes of Bonnie frikkin' Rai
Thankfully (Score:2, Funny)
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
Why I buy less music (Score:5, Insightful)
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you listen to crap music
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The Arcade Fire
The New Pornographers
Need more?
Broken Social Scene
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band
Billy Talent
Mobile
Solo Artists:
Neko Case
Hawksley Workman
Sam Roberts
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She's an American, born in Virginia, grew up in Tacoma, WA. However, she started her musical career in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
More in wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
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First, Neko Case [wikipedia.org] is actually American, although she seems (to my ears) to be quite heavily influenced by her Canadian connections.
My additions to your list:
Violet Archers [thevioletarchers.com]
Final Fantasy [wikipedia.org] (aka: Owen Pallett)
Egger [zunior.com]
Tamara Williamson [tamarawilliamson.com]
As an added bonus, I'd like to point out (again, and again) that most of this great music can be bought in FLAC or MP3 format from Zunior [zunior.com]!
Re:Why I buy less music (Score:4, Informative)
Regardless, the first obvious answer to your question is Broken Social Scene's "Broken Social Scene". Frankly these guys are awesome, for me especially because they combine the actually good elements of indie pop with the instrumentation of a lot of good post-rock. Regardless, if that album doesn't do it for you (which I've listed since it was released in 2005), the even more obvious choice is "You Forgot It In People", which was probably one of the (if not the) best albums of 2002, anywhere. Some people say the 2005 album doesn't live up to it, I think that many of them reject it out of turn.
Next: The Hylozoists' "La Fin Du Monde". Awesome post-rock band that includes a couple of vibraphones, a violin, and a number of other things on top of the standard rock instrumentation. Besides being awesome live, I am listing this album and band because I think they would appeal to a larger audience than a lot of other "post-rock".
Finally, because I haven't had the time or money to get many new CDs this year, I'm gonna list three albums from the past couple of years that are basically awesome anyway:
Feist - Let it Die (awesome singer-songwriter-jazz-folk-pop-i-ness) 2004
Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet (ridiculously good jazz-influenced post-rock) 2002
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O. (over-the-top symphonic post-rock, from the band that is basically the centre of the rather influential Montreal post-rock scene) 2002
And I might as well tack on Death From Above 1979's "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine" (2004) since everyone loves ('d?) ridiculous dance-punk these days.
Frankly, people who complain about the state of Canadian music aren't listening to the right music.
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I don't think the radio is good for finding music anymore. It's just the internet is so much easier and better for that.
One exception is CBC radio 3, which does a program on CBC radio 2 (yea, they really make is simple for us) on saturday nights from like, 7:30pm-12am or something (it's live, so where I'm from it starts at 4:30pm). I just record the stream using this guy (probably linux only) [polite.se] and listen to it at work during the week.
CBC3 also has a chart here [radio3.cbc.ca] with links to a site where you can listen to
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Luc Doucet (anything from him, the guy is a genius.)
Emily Haines (lead singer from Metric.)
Emm Gryner's new one is tremendous
The Dears
Be Good Tanyas
I think I'd agree that Sam Roberts is one of the best bands out there. He's beginning to do pretty well (especially live) in the US and UK.
In my opinion the last truly good Tragically Hip album was maybe Fully Completely, with honorable mention for Day for Night. Past that they have bored me to tears, including live. Which is sad.
People need to move
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Keyword there is 'appears'. If you don't live in a 250k+ population city and you don't have satellite radio, it is -very- difficult to find out about new bands that don't fall into the categories of "Rap / Hip-Hop" or "Emo", and even for that you have to stay up un
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
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So while it's possible that the lawsuits in the US are causing Cannucks to think twice, I tend to agree with the other sentiments on this story: the stuff coming out isn't worth the bandwidth it costs to download....
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Reasons (Score:2, Funny)
Two reasons (Score:2)
Sharing? (Score:3, Insightful)
I download less too because pop music is crap (Score:2)
However, during my visit to Auckland, I found a somewhat small CD/DVD store that is more for music enthusiasts. They had listening booths, and through that I found an indie artist's CD published by a local company. Listened to it, loved it, plopped down NZD$30 because it's not crap,not to mention over there, they are not influenced by RIAA, especially its indepe
Honest responses? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, people might be more likely to say they are not downloading music when, in fact, they are downloading as much or more. The fear of recrimination for admitting to downloading may be pushing people to simply be dishonest when surveyed.
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2) We are Canadians, we do not get sued by the **AA
To quote the article (for those too lazy to read it, my emphasis):
From personal observation, I doubt it (Score:2, Insightful)
When they do these polls, they typically call a house. My wife or I might respond to a request like this, my 13 year-old-daughter never would.
In the last year, my downloading has dropped off the map - Got satilite (sp bad I know) radio in both vehicles, so despite having grotequely bad local radio in my city, I hear lots of new stuff in my primary "place of listening". Don't need to download for that.
On the othe
Re:From personal observation, I doubt it (Score:5, Funny)
I wandered into the middle of your post and saw this. Context is everything.
Sales? (Score:2)
We just learnt (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't idownloading mus legal for Canadians anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Isn't idownloading mus legal for Canadians anyw (Score:3, Interesting)
Downloading is perfectly legal.
Uploading is perfecttly legal.
However distributing (that is actively or passively) to multiple parties is a more sketchy ground. I wouldn't call it legal anyway.
The big differance is how the two legal systems (Canada vs the USA) are set up to allow for the proscutions of such offences. In the USA I hear what happens is the RIAA initially sues a "John Doe" on an ISP from a particular state that allows this. The whole point of this, is to for
Whoa, whoa! Hold on there! (Score:4, Funny)
Flaw? (Score:2)
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obvoiusly (Score:3, Funny)
Broken Record (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all artists care if their music is downloaded. Many artists make the most from their live shows, so many want you to download away as long as you buy a ticket to the concert. Sure the record company might suffer a little, but they often screw the artists to begin with (Warner Bros vs Zappa comes to mind).
One good song does NOT make an entire album worth buying. If you suck but have a good song or two, or you're simply a one-hit-wonder, don't expect to sell a ton of records. People will most likely want to save their money for good ALBUMS while downloading your one good song. Want to sell a whole CD? Write worth-while stuff, you rehashed, tired, same-old-garbage dumbasses.
Make the CD worth owning in other ways, too. I think I may spend another $13.99 on a second copy of Beck's new "The Information" because a) the entire disc is excellent and the included DVD is great b) the stickers to create your own unique cover is genius.
If you prevent people from using Kazaa, they'll use limewire. If you prevent them from using limewire, they'll switch to bearshare. or shareaza. or iMesh, or morpheus, or
Most people I know can't stand the radio these days. Sitting through all those shitty songs and ads and talk for what? Most music is so devoid of any real content or originality now that people may as well use internet radio and p2p to get what they want rather than play russian-roulette with FM. Use that internet vehicle to promote the good new artists, and have ads that help generate revenue, or something. Get with it, you archaic imbeciles - people don't want the new band that sounds like Nickelback the third, but also aren't willing to sit through the overplayed garbage in the hopes a new, worthwhile band will have something played. It is difficult to discover new bands right now, and often the easiest way is through sites that have comparisons to other bands and genres. The chances of the radio Gods selecting something new that you'll like is slim, and then the chances that you haven't died of boredom while waiting for them to play it on top of that doesn't help the situation.
All in all, fighting the internet now is like fighting sliced bread. Bang rocks together, guys.
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Except that they have to make sure that they don't bang the rocks together in a rhythm that has been played by someone else in the past, otherwise they'll be liable and likely to face a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
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Amen to that brother! I got so fed up with FM that I went the route of Sirius once it started up here in Canada, and I couldn't be happier. There's still the odd commentary, but I've got 70+ channels to go thro
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Basically, be original. (I'm not saying "don't do cover tunes", but if you do, it had better be signifcantly better or different from the original.) I've heard so many songs that base the whole song around one small riff in another song. For example, if you think you're writing a new song, but you're playing an Aerosmith or Zeppelin riff over and over (but they only used it for a bar or two, so you thought no one would notice), you probably won't
In other words (Score:5, Funny)
That number may not be inaccurate (Score:2)
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Why bother downloading... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Only 5000? I've got at least 2 million. Hey copying CD's doesn't harm anyo... <sound of CD avalanch> NO CARRIER...
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Everything I do... (Score:3, Informative)
Lies, damn lies and statistics. (Score:2)
Hmmm.. In a survey of one... (Score:3, Funny)
The answer was, "no."
To the question, "have you bought any music?" the answer was, "no"
To the question, "why?" the answer was, "because there's nothing worth buying or downloading."
This poll has a margin of error or 50%.
Thank you all!
Re:Just another case (Score:4, Funny)
We know the truth about those dirty pirates STEALING all of the poor artists.
After all, our sales are down, and the ONLY possible explenation is that people are STEALING our^W The Artists' hard work!
Please, won't SOMEONE think of the Artists?
Thank you,
The MPAA
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Re:Just another case (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just another case (Score:5, Informative)
A Recent survey of Canadians showed that Canadians are 75% more likely to lie on an over-the-phone survey than they were 10 years ago. Studies suggest that this has to do with the common practice of entering bogus information online to protect personal privacy.
And before anyone moderates this informative, it was meant to be either funny or thought provoking :P
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Court overtuns levy:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2005/07/28/ipodlevy0
Court refuses to require ISP's to turn over names:
http://www.out-law.com/page-5742 [out-law.com]
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Yes, I saw that stupid movie too [imdb.com]. I certainly lock my door, as do most people I know.
He must have had his eyes closed when he visited Toronto
Also, please tell him to keep his damn o [michaelmoore.com]
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In Wellington NZ, where I am from, the house I grew up in was never locked. I lived there until 18 and thought it was strange to lock the door, especially if someone is home. We wouldn't even lock it if we were going on holiday so that our neighbours could get in if they needed to (feed cats, get lawnmower + RCD, etc). It was commonplace for us to simply walk into each other's house as if it were ours.
For me, I'd much rather grow up like this, in a friendly neighbourhood, rather than lock my house knowing
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I'm launching iTunes as I'm typing this and my credit card is ready!