We’re number one!

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Well, the numbers are in from the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s first quarter of 2007 and Canada is now officially the biggest per-capita illegal music downloader in the world. We’ve once again proven those Yanks to be all thumbs on the keyboard, with a 35 per cent loss of record-industry revenue compared to the American RIAA’s measly reported 17 per cent. Rather sobering numbers either way, when you think that the first quarter of 2006, compared to 2005, only saw a reported loss of 12 per cent.

If major-label record execs haven’t learned how to say “would you like fries with that” yet, they’d better start, because darker days are imminent. Despite the pimping of ringtones and other attempts to throw a life preserver to the drowning record-industry rat, there were a recorded 1.3 billion illegal downloads, compared to 20 million legit downloads, recorded in 2006. Eeeyowza! CRIA president

Graham Henderson jabs his finger at lax copyright laws in Canada in regards to the increase of file sharing, and you can bet your bottom loonie that plans have already begun behind oak doors for strong lobbying on the part of the major labels. File-swapping servers like Limewire will once again feel the pressure to give up the IP addresses of dorm-dwelling downloaders while fat-cat lawyers wave subpoenas.

Being a confirmed record junkie, let me try to shed a little light on the dark issue. Those of us who make it past the point of mere “passive music listener” (the term coined for their main demographic by major-label marketing departments, which actually spend billions of dollars in promotion and savvy marketing tools to try to snare them) actually like to own the artwork, packaging and entire song sequence that the artist intended us to enjoy, and appreciate sound quality beyond compressed MP3 files. Hell, I even get a skip in my step knowing that the band might be able to put a little bit of my money in their gas tank.

Unfortunately, labels have made us geeks pay through the nose lately, with an average retail price of a CD being $20. I won’t go into the entire breakdown here, but suffice it to say, as of 2004, manufacturing a CD costs 30 cents and packaging costs 80 cents, so where does the $18.90 go? Well, an overwhelming amount goes to promotion and marketing, with the average major label P&M budget slash per CD being twice that of the artist’s royalty share. These pandering smoke-and-mirror tactics only inflate as sales continue to slump. Kind of like throwing a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Of course, most of the people reading this, including myself, have long since stopped buying major-label releases due to an overwhelming lack of quality, short-sightedness, pandering to lowest common denominator and basically feeling fleeced. With artists now only getting one record to prove themselves to shareholders, we are inundated with saccharine-laced shit while vanguard A&R people are being removed from their posts to be replaced by two more marketing and promotion humps.

This saga isn’t going to end here. Next week I will look into how retail, including local mom-and-pop shops, is affected by file-swapping as well as its positive and negative affects on the independent community

What’s your ringtone? Jonathan.cummins@gmail.com