ATTN HW-Bootlegs on Ebay

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 02/08/2005 01:09, Cyberkrel wrote:
> That's what they said about vinyl about 17 years ago and look at it - sales
> of 7 inch singles up 87% while sales of CD singles are down 23 %!!

I'm not sure that's the *best* measure of things -- 17 years ago it was
the late 80s, most record shops I went into had a lot of vinyl.
Everything came out on vinyl!  Nowadays, though, vinyl is very much a
specialty item I think.  I mean, how many major label releases move much
product on vinyl compared to CD (or, gods help us, as ringtones!)?

And singles are ... sort of an anomaly in my book!  I mean, I think I
can count the number of vinyl *and* CD singles I ever bought in my whole
life without running out of digits (at least not by much) -- and I've
bought more music that the average person, I think!  Perhaps this is a
generational thing, but I never understood why anyone would buy a single
unless it had an otherwise unavailable track that I *really* wanted.
Otherwise, the album is always more cost effective.  I guess vinyl
singles made sense back before the LP became established, and back when
singles regularly featured non-album hits, but that latter was clearly
not a good marketing move and so it went away.  What's up with singles
in this day and age?

So, if we peg singles as something for collectors, and vinyl as
something for collectors, then I'm not surprised to see vinyl singles
making a little rebound from where they were some years ago. Retro cool
always helps sell stuff :)  But I'm not sure singles are a good
yardstick for judging the bulk of music sales ....

> It's the usual thing though - if enough people believe that the CD is dying
> then it probably becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy until someone realises
> what's going on and puts the brakes on just in time. You can bet you rbottom
> dollar that the last thing the music industry wants is the CD to disappear,
> although it's arguable even there as the costs for Universal, for example,
> just to have  aload of bods in the office puting tracks on websites all day
> long would no doubt be far preferable than having to worry about "those
> godawful record shop things"!!!!
> Dontcha just love "progress" - sadly, it nearly always seems to put
> technology forst and people last!!!

I dunno.  I think if the record industry figures out how to get DRM
working in such a way that it doesn't violently annoy customers, and
there gets to be enough bandwidth around, they'll be very happy to move
away from CDs.  (Obviously, getting rid of physical media entirely means
you need enough bandwidth globally).  But they could, after all,
theoretically move more product at less cost with purely "software"
sales, and that's gotta sound good to the bean counters.

Still, I think it's very hard to predict just what's going to happen in
the music industry in the coming years.  A lot is going to depend on how
Digital Right Managements moves along, and how fast how many places get
ridiculous bandwidth.  I think these are tough to predict just yet.

I guess there will always be "marketing blocks" vending pop hits (even
if they don't turn out to be the currently familiar "traditional
labels"), but hopefully there will be a broader playing field with more
opportunities for artists outside the "major label pop stable" types.
And I think there'll be more of the band-centric download sales thing
that you see a lot of for the US jamband scene, moving more into studio
recordings being delivered that way as well (perhaps especially in
Europe where its hard to tour that much).  I could see, for example, a
distinction between buying a "subscription" for a band (for the
fanatics, where you get to  check out the working demos and stuff as
they work on something) and individual sales (for non-maniacs who just
want to buy the final hit single, thank you).

But now I'm definitely rambling off into (extremely) idle speculation,
and so I'll shut up :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
mailto:cea at carlaz.com
http://www.carlaz.com/