The current state of the music industry is nothing to sing
about.
For the second year in a row, U.S. album sales have declined,
plummeting 8.7 percent to nearly 650 million units in 2002 ““
the worst drop in over a decade. And record labels desperate to
entice consumers have set off a price war: The cost of new compact
discs has dipped in some cases to under $7, resulting in sinking
total revenues and operating profits.
An industry that seemed to take double-digit growth for granted
during the early ’90s has been left pointing fingers at
everything from the slumping economy to file-sharers ““
everything and everyone but itself, some UCLA students contend.
“I think instead of always blaming things like Kazaa, they
(recording companies) should take up some responsibility and learn
from this. They don’t deserve my money if they’re just
gonna sit back and repackage old Elvis and Rolling Stones
hits,” said first-year neuroscience student Sepand Salehian.
“And if one label does something original, everyone has to
copy it and beat it to death “¦ like by the time The Vines
come around, you’re just sick of the whole garage rock
thing.”
Salehian’s point has merit. Almost all the top-selling pop
albums of the past year were by artists touted (often by
themselves) as different or unique: Eminem, Nelly, Avril Lavigne
and Pink were each among the top five best-selling artists of
2002.
Yet, when questioned about their music buying habits, many
students at UCLA say that file-sharing, not the closed-minded
nature of the music industry, has directly led to a decrease in
their CD purchases.
“I haven’t bought a single CD since I moved
in,” said Saabir Kapoor, a first-year business economics
student. “Do I still listen to music? More than ever. But
with the free high speed internet on campus, who needs to pay for
it?”
The prevailing sentiment among UCLA students appears to be that
college is expensive enough as it is. It’s impractical to
squander hard-earned cash on CDs that could simply be downloaded or
burned in a matter of minutes. Last year marked the first year in
which the sales of blank CDs exceeded that of prerecorded ones.
“I burn all my CDs,” first-year biology student
Emily Lieu said. “Burned CDs are free, and free is obviously
a good thing. Plus, by burning CDs, I can choose what songs I play,
instead of being stuck with a certain selection.”
But is such an attitude enough to leave a significant dent in CD
sales?
“Absolutely,” said Brooke Back, assistant manager at
Pug’z New and Used Music on Westwood Boulevard. “I
think people are burning CDs, and it’s definitely taking a
toll on the music business. Everybody’s suffering.”
Back noted the closing of the nearby Wherehouse Music and
acknowledged a recent decrease in sales.
“The college kids are definitely taking advantage,”
she said.
Subsequently, Pug’z itself is shutting down business in
Westwood.
The slumping economy is another oft-cited reason for the
decrease in music sales. At first this seems like a reasonable
assertion, considering that CD sales began to tail off in 1999, the
year the current market downturn began, and then steadily dropped
along with the economy.
But a look at skyrocketing DVD movie sales discredits the
theory. DVD sales have approximately doubled every year since 1999;
clearly, the weakened economy has had little effect on the
willingness of consumers to spend money on home entertainment.
Interestingly enough, 1999 was also the year the infamous
file-sharing program Napster was introduced to the public.
For students at UCLA, the music industry’s dwindling sales
aren’t a problem. The consumer’s popular stance is that
music will be heard regardless of how the industry deals with their
problem.