May 10, 2009
The state of the music business
I was in the mood for some new music -- at least, new to me -- this weekend, so I headed down to the local music store/head shop, the family-owned Salzer's. To say that I'm not into rap, hip-hop or most recently-recorded rock is the height of understatement; I gravitate to country, rock from the '60s through the '80s, classical and jazz.
Salzer's has a good selection of used CDs, new discs added daily as people cull through their collections, trading in the little-listened-to impulse purchases.
Although I found a dozen or so CDs that had songs I liked, none of them featured more than two or three songs that I wanted to hear, with the average price of the discs ranging from $6 to $9. That meant I'd end up paying somewhere around $3 a song, which doesn't make much sense when I can go online and buy a song from Apple's iTunes store for a buck, without getting the rest of the album -- and therefore paying for the tunes I don't want.
So, I ended up leaving the store empty handed.
But that got me thinking about the general state of the music business. The labels lament the poor sales they've been experiencing, but I can't help but think it has something (read: everything!) to do with the crap being recorded lately.
Whether it's Sinatra or Count Basie, Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington, I can buy a CD and know that I'll probably enjoy every track. Not so with new groups, even if they have one catchy tune.
Take, for instance, Chumbawumba. I came to the album Tubthumper about a decade late, but my delayed hip-factor aside, I really like the first track, Tubthumping, a catchy little ditty, perhaps in part because Rolling Stone considers it one of the most annoying songs ever recorded. I like it enough to buy the single -- if I can find it -- for 99 cents, but not enough to drop a ten spot for the whole CD, and certainly not the full price for a new copy, given that the band is comprised of a bunch of capitalism-hating anarchists.
Now, if the prospect of spending $10 for a used CD strikes me as a poor use of my entertainment dollars, imagine how dropping $18 for a new disc strikes a younger, less affluent consumer, who also may only be interested in a song or two.
At $9 each for the two tunes on that $18 CD that Sammy Saggy Pants actually wants, the savvy listener can buy two songs he wants for $2, or get the whole album online and download it ... for $9, not $18.
There was a time when I'd have left Salzer's with a half dozen CDs, containing the seven or eight songs I really liked, but those days are long gone. It just makes more sense to buy online, picking and choosing the tunes I want, and not the ones I don't.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 10, 2009 10:42 PM
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Comments
Not to mention that on line music is easier to store and is not subject to scratches that can ruin a disc.
Posted by: RW at May 11, 2009 11:28 AM
I haven't bought a CD in so long. I love the convenience of just being able to purchase 1 song for $1.00. Even buying a whole CD on ITunes is only $9.00 which is still a great deal opposed to buying the real thing.
Posted by: April Lief at May 12, 2009 12:17 AM
I'm enough of an old fart that I still prefer to have a disc in my hands even though the first thing I do with it is rip it into iTunes and put the disc into the Great Wall of Storage. (Psst, maybe I can e-mail you a "review copy" of "Tubthumping....)
And there are still services like Limewire which will allow you to find individual songs. And streaming internet radio. I've discovered several artists I never would have known that way.
Posted by: BlogDog at May 12, 2009 08:14 PM