Jul 02 2009
The Death Of CD Singles?
I’ve just read a short piece on the internet today that I found a little bit disturbing. One of the major chain stores here in Australia has decided to stop selling CD singles completely, citing very poor sales - figures as low as 350 for a number one selling single nationwide.
Obviously this is a direct result of downloads. The equivalent download figures for the poorly performing physical counterpart number in the thousands. I’ve always thought that the market that will be most affected by downloads will be the pop/top 40 market, and it looks like it’s happening. What concerns me is the current trend among record companies and distributors in treating all genres the same way.
During the 3-4 years I worked in the CD store, which was a jazz specialist, I noticed things going that way. The first to go were the reps; over time every rep from every distributor including the majors, was let go, so we longer had anybody coming round to tell us what was new and what was coming out in the months ahead. The companies were downsizing, first with the people and now with the media. Why keep pressing CDs when you can put it all in bytes and let the customers deal with it? There’s no pressing plant to deal with, no shipping companies to take the stock out of the warehouse, no distributor to deal with, no returns - from their point of view it makes sound economic sense, and we have to remember that the music business is a business. It always has been and always will be.
My greatest concern is that the death of the CD single also forecasts the death of not only CD albums but also some genres. It’s already hard enough to get a jazz album, so what happens when they all get moved to download? My guess is that most of the people that buy jazz and some other genres aren’t interested in downloading music. That seemed to be the way with most of the customers I used to deal with. Sure, independent labels can keep recording new music and releasing CDs, but what about all the great catalogue stuff that’s owned by the majors? What happens when they put those up for download, and no one buys them because it’s aimed at the wrong market? Will they stop making them available? Where will we be then, hmm?
Dark days ahead, my friends…
Nick
I think I’m fundamentally in agreement with you on most of the points you have raised here, but my underlying concern is that in time the only way we’ll be able to get music is in digital/download format. While I agree the music industry needs a massive change in the way business is done, I don’t think streamlining everything so we are forced to get music digitally is the answer. I don’t see why physical and digital can’t and shouldn’t co-exist. Maybe they will; we’ll see in time.
As far as your point about sampling music for free - great. And the suggested options that come up as well - great. Really though, isn’t that what used to happen at a good record store back in the day anyway?
The problem now of course is the amount of illegal, already free downloading that goes on; something like 49% of all downloads are illegal, and therefore NOBODY makes any money from it. My problem with that is that possibly in time people will expect to get everything for nothing - some do already. I’ve met a number of people who tell me that they no longer pay for music, they get it all for free. That’s fine to a point, but if enough people eventually do that, then what would be the point of making recordings at all? It’s all very well to have a huge number of listeners, but you have to eat too! There’s something about that equation that doesn’t quite square for me - spending thousands of dollars making your album and then everyone gets it for free. How many of your students really paid for all that music they have?
My other question is, would the attitude of paying nothing/minimal amounts for recorded music eventually affect the attitude towards paying musicians for playing?