Music was one of the first businesses to get hit hard. What happened there? Was it all piracy?This is one of those questions that is hard to answer. It’s very hard to say exactly what caused what, and I would argue that separating those things out is impossible. Right now, the single biggest problem with CD sales is all the stores where you used to buy CDs are closed. Well, what caused that? Well, people started buying songs online. That became a problem because people were only buying singles instead of albums and they weren’t spending a lot. Well, why did that happen? Because piracy put so much downward pressure on prices that you have to take any deal, whether it’s a good deal or a bad deal. It’s very hard to separate these things. Any study where people say this has nothing to do with piracy is a bunch of bullshit.
Does culture really want to be free? - Salon.com
You’re not really encouraging me to take your arguments seriously when you get this many things wrong. First of all, it’s not obvious to everyone that it’s a “problem” when I can buy all the music I want without getting out of my chair, instead of having to get in the car and drive to a record store where they might have what I’m looking for.
Second, Steve Jobs worked very hard to convince the music companies that if he made it really, really easy for people to buy music, then they would (a) buy rather than pirate, (b) buy tons of singles, and © impulse-buy Lord knows how many whole albums that they weren’t looking to buy. And he turned out to be right on all counts. So the idea that the digital-music business in itself has been bad for record companies is ludicrous.