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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-12-2008 11:46 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
The retail price of CDs has NEVER been $20, all right?
Do you have a fye store near where you live? I've seen single disc CDs there for $20. Not many are below $18.99.
Nevertheless, many music only CDs can cost nearly as much if not more than concert and music video DVDs from the same artist. The music CD concept and its pricing is outdated. It has too much competition in the same price ranges. If the music industry just wants to go about business as usual they're going to keep losing more customers.
quote: Mike Blakesley
A three-fold brochure in a plain jewel box? Have you not bought a CD in the last five years?
CD packaging typically sucks compared what was possible with 12" vinyl LPs. It's all tiny design. There's much less of a need for elaborate illustrations. And there is no room for big fold out posters in a tiny CD case. The same problem affects movies. Movie posters these days are often just boring photography which is easily reduced to fit a DVD cover.
To answer the question, yes, I do still buy music CDs on occaision (but that's increasingly rare). It's rare for any CD packaging to be impressive at all.
10,000 Days from Tool had pretty interesting 3D imagery and fold out glasses, but it was tricky to use. And the paper sleeve for holding the disc was a really shitty design -good for scratching the disc surface all to hell. You're stuck with having to make a backup disc and never touch the original.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Anyone with two brain cells knows that CD sales are down because of downloading.
Well, if nothing special is put into the tangible CD product to justify it taking up space in the house why buy it at all? Downloading makes perfect sense in that regard.
quote:
I used to sell lotsa LP records back in the day. I never heard anyone say "I'm getting this because of the cool gatefold cover and the enclosed poster!"
Now I think you're just playing Devil's Advocate.
Back in the day the cassette tape was the main competition to vinyl LPs. The big LPs usually featured lyrics and lots of other stuff printed on the album sleeves. Posters and other stuff would be included as well -although that kind of died out at the end of the 1970s. Cassette tapes could offer any of that bonus material. And it they tried, the customer would have to break out a magnifying glass to read any of the type.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-13-2008 12:22 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Back in the day the cassette tape was the main competition to vinyl LPs. The big LPs usually featured lyrics and lots of other stuff printed on the album sleeves. Posters and other stuff would be included as well -although that kind of died out at the end of the 1970s.
Uh, Bobby, I remember the '70s well. I was there, dude. I got into the music business at the height of the 8-track era - 1970, so you don't have to school me about LPs and cassettes and why they sold. Cassettes got popular because you could record on them, they were smaller and they were easy to take in the car, and they were more reliable than 8-tracks. But LPs continued to be popular because they sounded better, mainly.
You are turned on by a fancy package -- there's nothing wrong with that. But the vast majority of people today don't give two shits about the packaging. Hell, half of them leave the CD package at home and just take the disk (or a copy) in their car. They just want the music, which is why downloading is popular. It's also the reason CD sales continue to slide, no matter what kind of extra crap they shove into the packages.
Oh, to answer your question - no, there's not an fye anywhere near here or even in this state, to my knowledge. But anyone who buys their music without price-shopping is just asking to be raped at the cash register. We still sell CDs at my day job. The price range is from $10.88 to $15.88, and almost all new releases are $11.88 (Universal titles) or $14.88 (non-Universal).
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-13-2008 10:50 AM
quote: Frank Bruno
Mike, what's the retail music landscape in Montana like? I had a friend in the Air Force out there, not sure where, who told me 2 or 3 years ago the major big box media retailers hadn't gotten out there, but there were local stores like them. HE described them as being like a Barnes & Noble or a Borders with a video game section.
That's pretty accurate. We have most of the "big" retailers like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sam's, Target, Costco. I'm not sure if Circuit City has gotten into Montana yet -- I know there isn't one in Billings, the biggest city. There are still a few mom-n-pop music stores in the state...at least one in each of the larger towns. My store is an auto parts store with a music department, which began in the early days of car stereo (mid '60s) and now sells mainly car stereo, CDs and some DVDs.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-13-2008 07:05 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
How should I know? I have no idea how old you are. But from your post, I didn't think you realized that I've been in the music business for a long time. I'm a geezer in that business.
You're not the only person I'm speaking to in this thread. I listed some of the nice bonuses that came with vinyl LPs mainly for the benefit of others reading this thread who were too young to have been able to buy vinyl LPs.
quote: Mike Blakesley
You say a CD isn't worth $10 to $15 anymore. Why is that?
Because the CD in its current, standard design and packaging is obsolete. That type of product is not keeping up with the times and responding to all sorts of new competition. It was state of the art 25 years ago. The CD is an antique now -ironically a "digital antique."
Why should I buy an entire CD album anymore? Why do I need to buy a disc that probably has only 3 or 4 good songs at most and another several tracks of filler? What is the music industry going to do to make that CD a bit more special to own versus cherry picking the best songs out of it via iTunes? It's not enough anymore to just stick a pretty photo under the front of the jewel case and a regular disc inside.
The very derivative, uninspired nature of so much popular music these days sours the deal further. And even worse, the audio is frequently engineered very poorly. I used to blast the crappy nature of severely compressed MP3 and iTunes audio files. But when the retail store CD doesn't sound any better due to its waveforms being all clipped to hell just to make the disc louder, it just makes the argument against buying CDs even more persuasive. Going further, online outlets like iTunes are offering more and more music in the form of lossless compressed files.
10,000 Days by Tool was a decent CD with innovative packaging (even though I had some issues with it). I applauded Nine Inch Nails and others who tried using the Dual Disc format (sandwiching CD and DVD layers back to back). I also think it's great performers like Neil Young are getting behind Blu-ray and using it as a means of distributing high resolution audio. They're not going about things in business as usual manner. In doing so, they're more likely to attract my attention and the dollars out of my wallet.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-13-2008 08:17 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Why should I buy an entire CD album anymore? Why do I need to buy a disc that probably has only 3 or 4 good songs at most and another several tracks of filler? What is the music industry going to do to make that CD a bit more special to own versus cherry picking the best songs out of it via iTunes? It's not enough anymore to just stick a pretty photo under the front of the jewel case and a regular disc inside.
OK. So let's solve this problem.
1. We know that most people don't care about the packaging, so it does very little good to spend a lot of money on it, even though you might think that's a good reason to buy a CD. (Besides, I've seen plenty of very good packages recently. I've already listed improvements that have been made in a previous post, which you must have missed.)
2. We know that more and more people are going to download the hit singles and ignore the rest, no matter how good or bad it is.
3. And finally, there is no way to quantify what a "good" song is. There are hundreds of huge hit albums where every song is a piece of crap to me, but are gigantic sellers, so somebody must like them. I am sure every artist who puts out a record thinks he's done 13 or 15 'good' songs and three or four 'great' ones, which hopefully will become hits.
So given the above, what exactly is the industry supposed to do to make the CD better and stop its slide into oblivion? Remember, you have to please everyone, not just yourself, and the record company and the artist still need to make some profit.
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