48% of Teenagers Bought No CDs in 2007

Here in central Mexico, you can buy pirate SVCDs for 10-15 pesos ($1-$1.50 dollars) (not very good copies) or full blown DVDs with menu for 15-20 pesos ($1.50-$2.00 dollars) that are often fairly good copies. The copies sometimes aren’t so good but most of the vendors will let you swap for something else or try another.

A 3 movie theater a few miles from where I live now charges $3.50 up from $2.00 when I first moved here and they just jacked the soda fountain drinks from $1.50 for a medium up to $1.80, a 30 cent increase with no change in service.

They have had ANTS and chemicals in the drinks, not to mention flat. Plus screwed up the schedules so bad its a real chore to go see a local movie these days. The manager/owner is a nice guy but he is trying way too hard to modernize and increase the prices without justification in my opinion. I don’t mind paying more if I can see that something has been done to improve and they have added some lighting so the $3.50 is ok. But now they patch local ads that take fully 20 minutes to play out before a movie.

But I think overall, that his incessant additional charges are hurting business. I used to go there usually two times a week (3 movie selections) and eat at the restuarant until a rude waiter popped off trying to be funny in front of several tables of mexicans..thinking I didn’t understand spanish…the whole plaza is owned by one family with various members running the different stores and they rent other spaces.

I cussed out the rude waiter in spanish and stormed out about a year ago and haven’t been back. This restaurant has a bad reputation for dirty kitchen and often less than decent food but they think they have a captive audience for all the desperate gringos who go there to be seen, so they have no interest in correcting their problems.

Besides myself, I know several other people who don’t go there anymore for various reasons. Too many places to eat here to put up with bad service.

I know I shouldn’t buy pirate anythings but I look at it as previews, where for a movie I like, I will go to the theater for the full big screen experience. And I know a lot of people who download youtube and other video site archives, then strip out the audio to MP3s. So with all thats available, this report caught my eye to see the reduction in purchasing CDs.

“48% of teenagers bought no CDs at all in 2007, up from 38% in 2006. Music downloads continue to grow, though, with iTunes leading the way. The illegal sharing of music online continued to soar in 2007, but there was one sign of hope that legal downloading was picking up steam. In the last year, Apple Inc.’s iTunes store, which sells only digital downloads, jumped ahead of Best Buy Co. to become the No. 2 U.S. music seller, trailing Wal-Mart Stores Inc.” – Source

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