In Australia this past week, 3,600 record sales were enough to give a British metal band the number one position on the music chart - an all time low.
I'm never one to speak out against illegal downloading, which is undoubtedly the primary reason behind the recent low sales, but this is a completely alarming piece of information.
Is it perhaps time to ease up on the non-stop downloading and "torrenting" and give back, just a little, to the music industry?
The main thing to consider is who in fact it is hurting and how badly it's doing so. Major acts have always generated a significant portion of their revenue from touring and arguably have been able to cope rather comfortably with the surge in illegal downloads.
However, one has to wonder whether artists and their managers have quietly been attempting to compensate for the losses on the album-sales front by hiking up concert ticket prices, which have been steadily increasing for the past decade. If that's the case, fans, in the end, may still be paying for their piracy.
Such a tactic would also help explain why artists in more traditional genres, like jazz and blues, haven't been so quick to drive up their ticket prices. Fans of these acts, on average, are more supportive through album purchases and are more likely to be from a generation that is less savvy when it comes to the piracy process.
The other major hurtful consequence of the rise in illegal downloads is the effect on up-and-coming acts. In the traditional days of the music industry, record sales were the single most important gauge of a band's emerging popularity.
If you heard a song on the radio, you would go out and buy the album. If everyone liked it, it would reflect in the artist's record sales, and demand for the artist in the industry would go up. This would lead to more tours, more appearances, more promotions, and more help on their next record. That's how a band would be successful and get famous.
Because of the amount of people nowadays getting their music illegally, record sales are just no longer an entirely accurate representation of a band's popularity.
Additionally, album sales are proportionally a far more important source of revenue to developing artists than established ones. Without the support from record sales, some new bands might not be able to survive.
So what should be done?
In my opinion, making the effort to obtain just a fraction of the music one would otherwise illegally download through actual purchases would be a good start – even if it's just the ones that you would have actually purchased if the option to download had not been there. (If you need reminding, CDs are sold at most electronics and general merchandising stores.)
A complete abstinence from illegal downloads just doesn't seem warranted for a couple of reasons. Foremost, in many cases, because it is practically effortless, the songs or albums that one gets illegally would not have actually been the ones he/she would have otherwise purchased. While the stats about the growing proportion of illegal downloads to purchases are surely alarming, I have a hunch that they also show a huge increase in the overall amount of music being acquired as compared with the past.
Secondly, the availability that file sharing has created for music has given bands an exposure that is surely very helpful in establishing a new act's popularity.
Besides all that, there's also the gratification of just owning a CD as opposed to computer files in your download folder. That true sense of ownership is mysteriously absent with downloaded music.
I made my first CD purchase in almost a year this past week, and it felt pretty good. I highly recommend it.
