"The bottom just dropped out of the market for music catalog"

funny, Up until this year Urban Outfitters had vinyl on sale all the time. I was able to grab lots of records for about $5-$10 on sale. I even bought titles I wasnt familiar with because $5-$10 for a brand new record is too good to pass up, plus UO pretty much sticks to well known titles so I knew I would be able to flip em if I didn't like the music.

This year however I keep going back to see if they will have one of their sales and sofar I havent seen anything on sale like last year. not sure why...?

 

Urban Outfitters? These records are nothing more than trendy looking knick knacks to dress up the trendy urban outfitters apartment.
Along with the trendy turntable in said apartment I doubt they would get played much.
I know it's vinyl but I would rather buy it somewhere else anyway.

 

ECM has to be one of those labels that can still sell back catalog. It's not flavor-of-the-week music at all

 

I've never seen vinyl on sale there either, and I do drop in and look about once a month.

 

Yes. In the mid to late 1970s, there were large areas of music which were out of print--jazz and blues in particular that I know of. You just could not get thousands of older albums if you wanted to. For example, if you wanted to explore the 1950s Prestige jazz label or the 1960s ESP label, they were not available for purchase. Then sporadic reissuing started up, with new cover designs, but you still could not get a lot of what you hoped to check out.

 

I agree. This has been my experience at 5 independents that I shop at regularly in Portland, Or. I'm not really sure how my city compares, but we have a lot to choose from here. It's the best it's been in years.

 

I was in a meeting with an iTunes exec recently, and he was saying that catalog is even more important than ever to their business--that is, the percentage of catalog versus new music being sold was increasing, and so they were looking for ways to take advantage of that.

 

I buy a record occasionally from the Urban Outfitters here in Portland. I never go there to buy records. I walk by there when I'm going somewhere else. There are many record stores here. I get the feeling that UO just has the records there to compliment their vibe. It's such a small section, and just makes the store look a bit cooler.

 

Until the 50s people mostly bought single songs. 78s and then 45s. For a while people were buying both but then it was mostly albums. In the CD era if you wanted a song for the most part you had to buy an album. I knew people that liked a song from the radio and had to buy a CD to get that one song they were interested in. We are getting back to that. People can buy just the song they want from iTunes and listen to it until the next popular song comes around and then by that song.

I think the entire business model is changing. Look at the song "Thrift Shop". I saw it on youtube for months and now it's on the radio. I think more and more the entire business will be electronic and radio and physical media for "Popular Music" will cease to be relevant.

Chad

 

A good deal of their stuff is exclusives too, so I doubt it's brought in on consignment as was mentioned earlier. Most of what I'm aware of there (Charlie Brown xmas, Muppets xmas, Girls soundtrack, Perks of Being A Wallflower soundtrack, etc. Some may just be exclusive colors but exclusives none the less.

 

I bought that on vinyl.

 

It was rock and pop too. I recall first getting into music in the late 70s and there were a number of albums out of print that I wanted from the late 60s and early 70s. The cd era and the complete catalog releases were a godsend to this fan.

 

With the exception that back then, counterfeiting via digital copies was not available. Today, file "sharing" is rampant and even though you might think that many releases were short lived in the past, they at least made money on the sales back then as buyers actually paid for and held a product. That era is largely gone. Smart bands and labels will release records and not digital copy if they want to be paid at all.
-Bill

 

I somewhat agree. I think the smaller acts would be better served by releasing hard copies first before moving to digital and streaming. There's some money to be made, especially if they are putting out the release themselves, but once it hits the streaming outlets it's pennies for these "no name" artists.

 

The acts that self-release tend to do this (delay digital release). A recent example that comes to mind is Aimee Mann, who's newest album still wasn't on free digital outlets the last I looked...

 

Right. There is money to be made by selling hard copies off of web sites and offering whatever deluxe version of the release the artist can come up. It seems that they are taking money out of their own pocket and competing against themselves by throwing the tracks on Spotify and Pandora...

You used to occasionally see an artist sell the vinyl of a release a few weeks before the CD copy...maybe we'll see a return to that type of thinking in which the hard copies will go onsale a few weeks before it's released for "free" to the streaming sites.

I also wonder if there will ever be any (more) uprising against iTunes that will allow an artist to decide if individual tracks can be sold vs. only allowing a person to buy the full album or nothing.

 

That's for sure

 

And I imagine that classical and jazz labels stand apart from this model of rapidly-diminishing sales, at least to some extent. A good Beethoven or Mahler or Miles Davis recording will continue to sell, especially to audiences more enamored of physical media.

 

When the music's over, turn out the lights...

 

Interesting. I confess I don't really buy hardly anything in the way of new stuff. I know that by and large it's going to be crushed to death and such crap sound quality - even if the tunes are good - that I am not going to want to play it. Even if I did want to play it, it'd have to be ripped for playing on the netbook setup, which seems to be less awful with the modern trash production.
I am more likely to buy something 2nd hand, seek out an older pressing of old catalogue stuff that is OOP.
We don't bother with vinyl at all. Digital is too convenient for us, so that rules out scouring for vinyl releases for a little improvement in sound.

I think the industry seriously shot themselves in the foot when the decided to go mental with the loudness wars. I mean sure, there have been crap mastering and dodgy mixing and poor sources used for years, but the general music listener wouldn't really notice all that much. Push the level up by well over 6dB and it becomes glaringly obvious!
The poor sound quality has to have some impact on fatigue and the tolerance to listen to it - even with it being on TV and such. Ya just get bored of stuff like ya never did.

I think that also the general masses psyche is now more aimed at everything being instant satisfaction, short attention span, and quick boredom. People want everything on demand now. They may hear a tune, listen to it via the TV or main radio station (which seem even more likely to bombard the same **** day-in day-out), someone will plonk it on youtube, they'll listen to that on their portable internet enabled device and then they get bored with it.
The amount of friends who actually have bought CD's and only to see them rolling around the foot well of their car in a week or two seems crazy.
The folks who have the money (youngsters with all the family allowance given to them) waste it, but waste it over a large area - apps and mobile contracts, console games, not just on clothes and music.
Same kinda folks don't tend to bother with physical media so much any more.

For the older folks who grew up in a different society model, and who still want to hang on to some of that, can't listen to stuff in a shop any more. They don't get to hear what else is on an album and if they want it, unless they can get on youtube and unless someone has uploaded it all. So the youtube uploaded is potentially killing a few sales to the kids who will just listen to that, but is giving some folks the opportunity to audition which they otherwise wouldn't have.

 

The "Walmart type stuff for hit artists" isn't immune. The recent Fleetwood Mac Rumours 3CD set is being blown out at Target stores for only $5.

 

Streaming services pay artists only fractionally above $0.00.

 

I've never seen vinyl on sale at Urban Outfitters either, although I have snagged a couple on clearance (The Clash S/T and Wild Flag). Although come to think of it I haven't seen any clearance in a couple of years either.

 

Of course most don't pay for digital music, they just download it for free.

 

But the music is my special friend.