The only thing I hate more than buying a CD is buying digital product - they’re both 1s and 0s but at least I get a tangible case with CDs. With digital product, I’m essentially paying for the exact same files that thousands of people are downloading for free.
I’m writing this because I’m inspired by my recent purchase of the The National’s ‘Boxer’ on vinyl - which, importantly, included free high-quality mp3 downloads with it. As a consumer of music, I couldn’t have been happier: I got a tangible, valuable product that is now increasingly convergent with the digital media I use to store and listen to music.
I’m not saying necessarily that vinyl will be the future but labels need to deliver a consumption experience that combines users’ digital practices and offers them something to which they can pin value beyond a simple computer file or colour jewel case.
It’s about looking backwards to more forward. Digital music costs less to reproduce, is less pretty, and is less exciting - labels should not expect consumers to pay the same price they once did. And so consumers don’t. Or, at least, they don’t purchase as much as they once did.
The key to getting people to pay for recorded music in persuading them that the product is of value - a value to which consumers can readily assign a dollar amount. For me, buying vinyl that I can also transfer onto my iPod targeted the two main areas of my music listening practices and satisfied both. I now have a large, rather cool record that I can play at home and have on display, and I also have that same album in on my iPod to listen to when I’m out and about.
Of course, beyond the ease of consumption, the real reason digital took off is because the hardware - iPods - became so popular. Maybe labels should start pushing for an increase in turntables? I don’t know. Or maybe they should be pushing for bundled, targeted album packages that offer consumers both the musical product and something of value. Either that or drop the price of digital.
This is the first post on waycooljnr by soon-to-be regular contributor Matt Hickey. Matt is a music writer for Rave Magazine and Who The Hell. As well as having great music taste, he thinks really smartly about the changes happening across the music industry. His posts will provide some nice contrasts with mine. He disagrees with me that Weezer do a great job of their online marketing. He loves TV on the Radio.
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Bones 11.16.08 at 1:05 pm
Yer, I completely agree. I like to buy new vinyl, I’ve got some Strokes, Ryan Adams and Grinderman on vinyl and they just look great. A major plus for vinyl is that it brings back the importance of cover art. CDs are really too small to have brilliant, intricate art and a lot of people miss that from vinyl I’m sure. I read in jmag this ridiculous figure that in the days of vinyl budgets for cover art for big bands went up to 100 grand and now won’t go above 10 grand. I think we’ve seen the effects of this too, I haven’t seen a cover art I really want to have for a long while, except You Am I’s last effort. We need better turntables too. At the moment the better ones are targeted at DJs and people who just want to listen to records don’t have much choice apart from second hand ones, that’s what I’ve found anyway. We need great turntables that produce the best, dustless sound (while still maintaining that sound texture we love), and I reckon we have the technology now to do that.
Sophie 11.16.08 at 11:47 pm
Matt, I completely agree.
I bought Jenny Lewis’ new album Acid Tongue on vinyl a month or so ago. It came with a CD - best of all worlds really! I think eMusic is onto something - US 25-40 cents for a DRM-free mp3 is much more reasonable than what iTunes is expecting consumers to fork out for. I think the CD/very high quality mp3 option when buying vinyl is essential. Some music actually doesn’t sound better on vinyl - heavily produced rock/metal for example.
Ned Dwyer 11.27.08 at 5:38 pm
Vinyl sales have been seeing significant increases over the last 5 years as we’ve seen a decrease in growth and then in total sales of CD’s.
Personally I’ve only recently started to buy vinyl largely because a lot of smaller labels are putting out 12″ and by buying direct I can cut out a lot of the middlemen grabbing a bite of the pie.
I’ve noticed that few vinyl releases come with a digital download link. I’m not really sure why but this could be because they largely give away the digital copies for free or maybe they want to try to sell both the vinyl AND the digital version to the same people… Maybe they’re just different markets.