The comparison only comes about because of the relatively new concept of cheaply buying a whole season of TV in one package. Something you could argue is new to 2007.
Is an "album" a "season"?
Twelve songs on a CD vs. twelve episodes on DVD?
Does a song take as much effort and money to create as an episode of a TV show? Is it a fair comparison? Can you really compare a three minute song to an hour long TV show in terms of any kind of "value"?
Or is a musician's entire back catalog a "season"?
Twelve hours of music vs. twelve hours of episodes?
Perhaps if a "band" had ten writers, and a different director per song, and hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown at each song...
Could you imagine a band releasing a song a week for twelve weeks in the "ratings season"? Advert supported? Fans of the bands music sitting through a couple of adverts before they could hear the song for free? Or waiting for their local radio station to play it? Or by-passing the adverts by buying the music through iTunes?
Or just waiting a few months and buying all twelve songs on CD to listen at their convenience?
It doesn't sounds completely crazy to me. Neither does the idea of subscribing to a band. I decide I like Regurgitator. I've listened to the last few albums and loved them and decide that everything they pump out from now on, I'm happy to pay for. Please sent it my way the second it's done.
Then... when I decide they suck, I'll unsubscribe.
But for TV, selling the shows on DVD is a new thing. A new money maker. A side effect. It isn't their aim. For CDs, selling the physical CD to the masses is the whole point.
Radio stations don't pay record companies to play their music. Record companies send it to radio for free. Radio pays the composer of the song a fee every time it is played, but they pay nothing to the record company, or even the artist who recorded the song.
Radio then makes a heap of money from advertising that is played in between the songs. Record companies hope the radio play turns into CD sales.
Radio also creates their own content, but usually it isn't music. That costs them money, a lot more than playing music, but it keeps people listening to those adverts.
TV stations on the other hand pay production companies a heap of money for the right to play their TV show. Usually that would be the right to play it once. Repeat rights would cost more. TV stations also make a heap of money from the advertising played during the TV show. The production company has already made money... but as a nice side effect, popular shows sell on DVD too. The "composers" (ie. the writers) get nothing from either of these transactions.
Thus the writers strike.
But you can see how the TV/production company relationship is the exact opposite of the radio/record company relationship, and yet the output is ultimately the same thing... entertainment is broadcast for free by a broadcast company, then sold as a physical product by the production company.
Imagine if TV we radio? Production companies would give TV stations their product for free, in the hope that it will be popular enough to translate into enough sales to justify the cost. Meanwhile, every time TV stations play an episode or movie, they send APRA (or VPRA?) a fee to send to the writers.
Craziness!
Better than CDs in a lot of cases.
Is is possible that the public today are simply more visual? Perhaps people would just prefer to buy their music with a visual element?
Has a couple of decades of Rage, Video Hits and MTV created a music buying public who prefer to watch music?
Or perhaps it's as simple as the fact that it is harder (and more expensive, bandwidth wise) to download a DVD?
Or... perhaps it's a perception of content vs. price? You could buy a CD for $20, or you could buy a DVD for $20 and get all that music, plus a thousand hours of extras.
Or... perhaps it's the fact a DVD is often cheaper than the CD, PLUS has a lot more content. Why buy the Greatest Hits of Queen for the hugely discounted price of $15 when you could buy the Greatest Hits of Queen on DVD for $10?
Are so many DVDs so cheap compared to CDs because of some quirk in the royalty contracts?
Or are they cheap because they're over stocked and won't sell otherwise?
Cheap DVDs are going a long way to alter my perception of what a CD should cost. Why buy the soundtrack for $25 (if you can find it), when you could buy the whole movie for $10?
A whole Season of a multi-million-dollar TV show can be bought for $40. Twelve hours of content. Hundreds of people involved. Thousands of hours to conceive and create... all sold for $40? And then the soundtrack for the series. All 40 minutes of it, whose production cost is included in the cost of the whole series... is $30? $20 if you're lucky. Same goes for a movie.
Is it a case of buying part is more expensive than the whole? Why then can't I buy the entire back catalog of Metallica, or Pearl Jam, or Red Hot Chilli Peppers, or The Beatles in a single box for $40?
The reason probably has a lot to do with why the writers are all on strike at the moment...
But regardless of the reasons, DVDs, particularly TV on DVD, haven't help the situation for music CDs.
On a content per dollar comparison, DVDs kill CDs. Even though more DVDs are watched once. Even though much of what is put on a DVD is never watched. Even though a lot of cheap DVDs are never watched period... it's a "value" comparison that is impossible to ignore.
What's happening is obvious; consumers are making far more purchases than ever before, but are often choosing to grab only selected tracks rather than complete albums. The album may not be dying in a general way, but it has certainly lost its importance as the primary way that buyers in the digital era get their music. Bands with a track record of putting out uneven albums won't be able to milk that strategy for massive profits anymore, nor will any labels that nurture such acts.That has translated into a grim situation at the major labels [...]
The article uses eMusic (digital music hub selling indie music in MP3 format) as a case study. eMusic's CEO is David Pakman:
Whatever artists and labels might think their music is worth, Pakman believes that consumers see music as simply being worth less than movies. If a thriller can be made for $80 million but be sold for $7.50, why should music remain in the $11 to $14 range? At those prices, fans would much rather 1) use P2P services and pay nothing, 2) pay a tiny amount to pick up the "hits" from online music vendors, or 3) purchase digital albums online for under $10.
When I first got into music, the industry was dominated by cassettes. You only ever bought music on cassettes in the late 80s. Records were still popular, but I never saw anyone buy one.
Not long after (early 90s), the CD gained popularity. I saw and bought music on both CD and tape. Classic albums such as Nirvana's "Nevermind" (1991), Metallica's "Black" (1991) and even Smashing Pumpkin's "Siamese Dream" (1993) were bought on tape in significant numbers.
But from the time I started buying music for myself (mid 90s), the format was CD all the way, and by the time I started buying what I would consider significant amount of music (1999/2000)... all other formats were long dead.
I honestly can't remember going into a music store and seeing new records (vinyl) or cassettes for sale outside of the rarities corner or the bargain bin. I must have, but I can't remember. I vaguely remember pre-recorded minidiscs but I doubt anyone actually bought any.
It really is impossible to say... but I don't think I would have bought anywhere near as much music as I did if the dominant format had remained cassettes. I just can't imagine those weirdo short stubby spins lined up on a shelf.
I may have collected vinyl had it remained... but knowing the effort involved in looking after them when compared to CD, I don't think I could ever get my brain into that frame of mind. My soon-to-be father-in-law collected music in a way that I believe would perhaps have matched my behaviour at the time (late 70s, when vinyl WAS king and collectors laughed at 8-Track)...
But that's possibly the important point... I'm a collector. I think such format decisions would be foreign to most...
From the time I started collecting CDs I have never had to choose between formats. I've never stood in a store and thought "I could buy this on cassette for cheaper, or on CD for better quality, or on vinyl for the huge and awesome cover art, or on minidisc because I love pain".
I never remember thinking CD needed to be better. I remember thinking it was better than tape and better than vinyl, just from a quality point of view, and I remember wishing they had a little more room for cover art, but I never remember thinking "we need a new format that kicks CDs out of the water". It was so much better than the alternative, it immediately killed them all.
If you bought music, you bought on CD. Even when cassettes were still around, buying one seemed... stupid. It just wasn't that kind of format.
One reason to buy a cassette over a CD might have been for portability. Most people had a Walkman (portable cassette player) and almost no-one had a portable CD player. But everyone also had a tape deck at home that could record. For years I bought CDs, came home, transferred them immediately to tape so I could carry the music around with me...
In fact, the only reason 8-Track did as well as it did, is in-car stereos. Playing a vinyl in the bumpy environment of a car is nearly impossible, not to mention an 8-Track cartridge takes up a lot less room than a 12" vinyl disc, and is less likely to melt in the sun.
When cassettes as we know (knew?) them replaced 8-Track, everyone recorded their vinyl for the car. It really is a surprise that anyone bought pre-recorded cassettes at all when blank tapes were cheap and vinyls were so much more... awesome.
I suppose the trade off between portable and tape-hiss vs. awesome cover art and pops/clicks was fairly even. If you listened most in the car, you bought tape, while if you listened mostly at home, you bought vinyl... and taped for the car.
(As a side note, I wonder what the radio industry thought when portable in-car music became possible and popular?)
But I don't really know. I wasn't really there. As I said, in my musically conscious time, there were CDs, and only CDs.
But I do remember a car full of tapes with hand written labels...
Cassette was the format that opened up home piracy.
Everyone had a tape deck. Everyone taped from everyone. Libraries, friends, themselves. They made compilation tapes. Even when vinyl died and CDs arrived, everyone still taped.
Cassette tapes were the ultimate disposable portability enabler. Music on a cassette was playable in your Walkman and in your car. Blank tapes were cheap, and the copying itself was free. You could carry a tape easily to a friend's place without fear of losing something expensive, or your could make a compilation for a lover.
You don't see recordable cassettes anymore...
I remember a time when you bought a car and it came with a tape deck. I remember around when that changed to CD player/tape deck combos, not long followed by CD player only.
If you look back... it's hard to believe anyone really needed a combo unit for any reason other than so could still listen to their pirated tape as well as their freshly bought new CDs. I suppose a few had cassette collections they hadn't yet had replaced... but a few more years of rust...
It could be a coincidence, but around the time CDrs and home CD ripping/recording became cheap and easy, cars started dropping tape decks from their standard packages.
For a brief moment in the 90s... there was a time when you had a choice. You either bought a CD, or your taped onto the horrible hissy cassette format... but at least it was portable.
Toward the end of the 90s, anti-skip technology got good enough, and the players themselves got cheap enough, to make small, portable CD players viable for the general public and not just the rich. The portability argument of cassettes may well have eventually died it's own death...
But along came the CDr...
What makes me wonder, is if the very fact that cassettes were easy created at home, may have helped in reduce their desirability as a commercial music format?
Was there ever a time when anyone ever though cassettes would be the only format in the way vinyl was and CDs are?
It's hard not to think of the cassette as anything but a bridging format. Never a serious format, never one that anyone, in hindsight, would ever want to buy in a pre-recorded format.
Like the Minidisc.
Cassettes worked because there was nothing more portable nor perfect for the car or Walkman. The fact you could make them yourself solidified them in the market for decades.
The Minidisc failed because by then everyone had portable CD players, and they weren't better enough (or cheap enough) to kill the tape.
Cassettes (and minidisc) died when everyone got CD burners.
And then CD was all there was.
To me... digital music (as in, that which exists only digitally and not physically), is like the pre-recorded cassette... or really, more like the minidisc.
Computers are cool because they make copying things easy. In the context of music, it's easy to use a computer to record your own music, or put music on another computer (like a friend's computer, or onto a portable music playing computer).
For me... digital music is my cassette. My CDr. I no longer have to copy a CD to a tape or CDr to play in the car. Now, I copy it onto my digital music player. My little portable computer. When I'm done I delete it, or just leave it hanging around until my computer dies. Same thing really.
But the "format", the "digital music" has about as much "value" as a copied tape or a CDr. Less even. Because it doesn't exist.
The article suggests that the problem isn't less people buying music, it's people buying it in a different format. The new format war is apparently CD vs. digital.
But as I said... digital isn't really a format. It's only cool because of what you can do with it... not because of what it is. It's my cassette. I can't imagine wanting to buy pre-recorded cassettes... nor can you imagine buying pre-recorded digital music.
But people are. More so than CDs.
They're still buying music, but now they're able to buy single songs instead of whole albums. And as the vast majority of the music buying public prefers the hit songs, that's all they'll buy. When before they'd pay $15 for an album to get one or two songs, they'll now pay $1 for the song they wanted.
Pre-recorded physical product doesn't play well with such choice. You can't just buy "Alive" from Pearl Jam's "Ten" on CD. You have to buy the whole CD. If all you want is "Alive", why spend $15 when you could spend $1?
You may not get anything physical, but you save $14. And it's only a $1. And you could spend that $14 on 14 other songs instead of 10 you don't want.
It's sad, and it doesn't fit my mindset, but convenience could very well kill the physical CD.
Will the CD go the way of the vinyl? Will it still exist but only for collectors? For the crazies that go on about how much better quality it is to the new "compressed" formats?
There is no physical format that is going to come along to beat CDs.
The new war is mass produced product vs. digital distribution.
Mass produced product can't win.
There may well never be another physical music format again.
I could have my own monkey!