The poor, pitiful music industry
> The music industry continues to howl and cry poverty when it comes to the declining sales of compact discs.
>
I have no sympathy for them, since they brought this problem on themselves with one boneheaded decision: Killing off the single.
>
For all you kiddies out there who have no idea what a "single" was, it was one song pressed onto a small vinyl record that you could buy instead of having to shell out the big bucks for the whole album. Adults bought albums. Kids didn't have that kind of money, so we bought singles.
>
So when I was a kid, if I heard a song on the radio that I really liked, I'd head to Turtles or Richway and buy the single. Singles were $1.69, as opposed to the $10 or more you'd pay for the LP or cassette. This was the way it was done since the 1950s.
>
Then all hell broke loose.
>
First, cassette tapes began outselling LPs because every car built after 1983 had a cassette player in it. Your music, where you wanted it, when you wanted it. What could be cooler? To keep up, record companies began issuing singles in cassette form (the "cassette single," or, "cassingle"), and by 1990 the vinyl single was on the way out. But by 1990, compact discs were the primary method of buying albums, and so we saw a smattering of CD singles.
>
But not for long.
>
By the time CD singles came along, the major record labels had figured out that it cost about $2 to produce a CD of any kind, whether it had two songs on it or 12. And they could charge more for 12. So they abandoned CD singles, cassette singles, vinyl singles, all singles. POOF! Gone. You want a song? Buy the $15 album. Can't afford it? Tough noogies.
>
The music industry thought there was no alternative and that we would be forced to buy albums on CD from then on. The consumers who stopped buying recorded music altogether were made up for by the ridiculous profit margin of selling a CD that cost $2 to make for $15.99, as opposed to the LP or cassette that cost the same to produce but could only be sold for $8-$10. They talked up how superior the sound of CDs was compared to LPs and cassettes and justified their profits by claiming that they were providing a better-sounding product. And it worked from about 1991 to 1998...
>
Then came the internet. Uh-oh.
>
Soon enough, people found that CDs were easily copied onto a computer and could be traded for free, song by song. This opened the door for Napster and a million other file-sharing sites that allowed people to download only the songs they wanted. For free!
>
And at that point, the revolution began and continues to this day, in the form of lower revenues for record labels and tons of free music floating around. The only real victim here is the poor artist, who was screwed by the very system he was forced into when he became a contracted musician. How was he to know that his employer's greed would eventually bite him and his fellow musicians on the ass?
>
>
I have no sympathy for them, since they brought this problem on themselves with one boneheaded decision: Killing off the single.
>
For all you kiddies out there who have no idea what a "single" was, it was one song pressed onto a small vinyl record that you could buy instead of having to shell out the big bucks for the whole album. Adults bought albums. Kids didn't have that kind of money, so we bought singles.
>
So when I was a kid, if I heard a song on the radio that I really liked, I'd head to Turtles or Richway and buy the single. Singles were $1.69, as opposed to the $10 or more you'd pay for the LP or cassette. This was the way it was done since the 1950s.
>
Then all hell broke loose.
>
First, cassette tapes began outselling LPs because every car built after 1983 had a cassette player in it. Your music, where you wanted it, when you wanted it. What could be cooler? To keep up, record companies began issuing singles in cassette form (the "cassette single," or, "cassingle"), and by 1990 the vinyl single was on the way out. But by 1990, compact discs were the primary method of buying albums, and so we saw a smattering of CD singles.
>
But not for long.
>
By the time CD singles came along, the major record labels had figured out that it cost about $2 to produce a CD of any kind, whether it had two songs on it or 12. And they could charge more for 12. So they abandoned CD singles, cassette singles, vinyl singles, all singles. POOF! Gone. You want a song? Buy the $15 album. Can't afford it? Tough noogies.
>
The music industry thought there was no alternative and that we would be forced to buy albums on CD from then on. The consumers who stopped buying recorded music altogether were made up for by the ridiculous profit margin of selling a CD that cost $2 to make for $15.99, as opposed to the LP or cassette that cost the same to produce but could only be sold for $8-$10. They talked up how superior the sound of CDs was compared to LPs and cassettes and justified their profits by claiming that they were providing a better-sounding product. And it worked from about 1991 to 1998...
>
Then came the internet. Uh-oh.
>
Soon enough, people found that CDs were easily copied onto a computer and could be traded for free, song by song. This opened the door for Napster and a million other file-sharing sites that allowed people to download only the songs they wanted. For free!
>
And at that point, the revolution began and continues to this day, in the form of lower revenues for record labels and tons of free music floating around. The only real victim here is the poor artist, who was screwed by the very system he was forced into when he became a contracted musician. How was he to know that his employer's greed would eventually bite him and his fellow musicians on the ass?
>
I believe that, if the single had never gone away and that if the generation that followed me had been brought up with the single as a way of getting just the songs they wanted, Napster and file-sharing never would have taken hold of the music industry the way that it did. Most people are decent and want to do the right thing and they wouldn't have thought twice about paying a couple of bucks for a song they liked, just like I never minded paying for music because I knew no other way of getting it. But in the absence of a cost-effective, legal avenue, consumers (who are smarter than they are generally given credit for) made their own way, and I can't blame them.
>
It's cost the record industry a fortune just to try and keep up as they lay billions into iTunes and strike deals with their artists to license individual tracks to Amazon for 99 cents each.
>
It's cost the record industry a fortune just to try and keep up as they lay billions into iTunes and strike deals with their artists to license individual tracks to Amazon for 99 cents each.
>
All because they got greedy and decided to kill the single.
All because they got greedy and decided to kill the single.
posted by Brian @ 5/28/2008
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Let it be known I read this post. However, I am also too sleepy to conjure a real comment, though. Very informative.
I so agree with what you said about the new President. I think the President has very limited power and acts more as a figure head, like the Queen of England. I do think that Obama is just what the racists need. Time to move away from this whole, "You owe me 'cause your great great great grandfather owned my great great great grandfather. And yeah, neither of us ever knew either of them alive, but I want a handout just the same." I have my prejudices, just like the rest of the humans inhabiting the earth. I just think that we've learned to judge people on a one-on-one basis and not let color get in the way. Obama didn't get elected because he's black; although, I think some black people really think he did. (I just love the T-shirts that say,"He's black and I'm proud." I guess they've already forgotten that he's only half black.) The majority of voters are still white and THEY voted him in. I think that should be proof enough that the oppression we have in America is not racially biased. There are poor whites suffering the same as any race. It's not the white power heads running the country into the ground, it's just the power heads. They think and act on their own behalf and say it's for the betterment of the country...bullshit! I just hope EVERYONE realizes, that while Obama may seem cool and all, he's still just another politician in power. He will fail us all in one way or another because he just can't do everything we expect of him. He just doesn't have the power. But great blog; I always enjoy it :)
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