Downloads put music stores on endangered species list
Posted 7/17/2003 11:46 AM
By Jay Loomis, The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Ron Masciandaro is spending more time at a second job playing the piano for clubs and parties. He needs the extra income to help support his family.
Music stores lose sales of CDs by artists ranging from Justin Timberlake to Frank Sinatra to Internet music sites.
AP
A business he also owns, Central Compact Disc, has a selection of 50,000 CD titles by artists ranging from Madonna to Frank Sinatra. But sales have fallen at the White Plains, N.Y. store in recent years, forcing him to lay off employees.
"It is pretty gloomy in the music business," the 41-year-old Masciandaro said.
CD sales are plummeting at music stores across the country. One culprit: the growing legions of music lovers who are bypassing traditional retail outlets to download favorite tunes from the Internet for free or at reduced prices.
The Internet is fast making music stores an endangered species. The survivors worry about the implications of technology they can't control.
"We have lost a whole generation of younger customers," said Joe Merigliano, owner of Love Music in New Rochelle, N.Y. "The kids used to come here on Saturday mornings with their mom and dad. They aren't coming much any more."
The store is scrambling to make up for lost CD sales any way it can. One way is to sell speakers, amplifiers and sound equipment. Another is by offering hard-to-find imported CDs and collectibles.
"In the old days, people loved the experience of going to a store and listening to songs," Merigliano said. "Now people just stay at home, download by computer and ship songs from house to house... Technology has caught up with the music companies and they don't know how to respond."
CD shipments totaled 803.3 million last year, a decline of nearly 15% in two years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Industry executives blame rampant online piracy and bootlegging for accelerating the decline.
Users illegally download 2.6 billion files a month from unauthorized networks dealing in illegal music, with college campuses a focal point of the activity, the association said. Losing an estimated $300 million a year to illegal song copying and distribution, the industry has recently become aggressive at filing lawsuits against some users, including college students.
"Despite education campaigns about the illegality of file sharing, and despite numerous court decisions clearly holding that copying music, movies and other copyrighted files is against the law, there is an alarming disregard among students for Internet theft," Hilary Rosen, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in testimony before a congressional committee this year.
The impact of the Internet is evident at stores across the region. At Yellow Bird Music in Mount Vernon, N.Y., manager C. Moore complained that sales have fallen as the store faced competition from a bootleg market in the community.
"Business is slow, terribly slow," Moore said. "We have been in this community 25 years. ... September 11 and the economy also have hurt us."
And Central Compact Disc is lucky to sell 12 CDs during the first week of a new album's release. That's down from 30 CDs six years ago.
"It bothers me because I also am a musician," Masciandaro said. "One of my dreams in life was to have a song on the radio and have people buy my music. But it's dim for artists. The problem is that intellectual property got construed as being free, and it's not."
Masciandaro said the record labels deserve some of the blame. A new CD can sell for $18.98, up by $2 from five years ago. The high prices, he said, simply encouraged some to download songs for free.
"As soon as the technology came in, it should have raised a red flag for the industry to lower its prices," Masciandaro said. "But they didn't. Now they are paying for their sins. ... It costs the manufacturers less than $1 to make these things. How greedy can they get?"
AI
