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

The guy referenced in the first post.

 

I'd be curious if this person was mostly releasing artists' new material, or like Omnivore or Wounded Bird where they're just repackaging catalog material.

I think the bottom has dropped out because people just have too much stuff. They've bought LP's, then cassettes, then CD's, while also having VHS tapes, DVD's, blu-rays...I think a lot of "normal" people have just hit a breaking point with sheer stuff. No one really wants to talk about it, but I think it's an underlying cause of the decline of all these industries, since with streaming (audio and video) you don't really need all that stuff cluttering up your house.

 

Actually, what I meant by "on sale " was "on clearance"

 

Average consumer wants easy and cheap. Digital streaming music is easy. It is also cheap. It is a win for the casual consumer. Someone has to lose.

 

Everyone loses when artists can't earn enough money to continue to make music.

 

I agree.

 

And yet we have posters on this very forum who make it a point to tell us that they never buy new music. Not reissues from 30 or 40 years ago, I mean new music from new artists.

I stream music - I've used music subscription services for many years now. But I also purchase music that I've sampled from these services and ending up liking. I see nothing wrong with that setup.

 

This thread reminded me of how many decent releases I've seen in the cut-out bin or clearance bin at Hastings. I remember several of the 2 CD Cure reissues were there for 4.99 a piece. Not to mention I found several decent LPs for about the same price (and a few of these might eBay for $30-$50, like System of a Down's "Toxicity" LP). So you know, you may check a local Hastings to see if you can find something for cheap. I always see a lot of new, non-used CDs on sale there for $7 or less, usually in the $3-$5 range.

 

Must've been mono copies. Those were blown out as cutouts in 1969-71.

 

Yup...The monos wound up as overstock/deletions. The stereo albums never did.

 

This certainly jives with what the owners of a record store here in town told me just before they closed (due to lease reasons and wanting a change in life). They were barely selling any deep catalogue titles on cd anymore. New titles would sell initially on cd but after that, sales dropped to virtually nil. They didn't really need all that space for cds any longer. They did do well on vinyl and were moving towards a 100% vinyl only store with just new releases on cd available for a week or two.

 

My personal experience suggests that low-to-no-cost digital streaming leads to less careful listening. There is so much low-to-no cost stuff to listen to that it is easy to grow impatient with something that seems less-than-terrific on first listen. That can lead to a lot of jumping around with little patience to allow something unfamiliar/challenging to sink in. I find that frustrating and fatiguing. Buying a CD makes it much more likely that I will give the music a good listen as well as look into learning more about the the performers and where they're coming from. I'm not unwilling to pay for such an experience.

 

The OP doesn't surprise me at all, because there's pretty much no incentive to buy an album after the release week, unless you catch wind of the band on SNL or something like that and just have to have it. I've said it before, but compare CD pricing to DVD/Blu-Ray pricing at your average B&M retailer.
A DVD/BR is released. It costs $24.99 at Target, but the first week they put it on sale for $19.99. Next week, it's at the regular price.
Two months later, $19.99 becomes the regular price.
Two months after that, it's $14.99.
Three months after that, whaddya know, it's $10.
A year or so after the original release, it's on a $5 value endcap.

A CD is released. It costs $13.99 at Target, but the first week they put it on sale for $9.99. Next week, it's at the regular price.
Two months later, it's still $13.99.
Two months after that, it's still $13.99......

And then, when the album is about ten years old, it might find its way into the Wal-mart $5 bargain bin.

I get that the Beatles have a provision in their contract that prevents their albums from selling at less-than-premium prices. I get that Hendrix CDs still move at $13.99. But if I'm thinking about getting last year's Bruno Mars CD, why would I pay $14 a year after the fact when I wasn't willing to pay $10 the week it was released? At that point I might as well wait to get a used copy for half that price somewhere.

Actually, in the last few weeks Target has put a few recent titles on sale, so maybe they are getting the idea. I just hope it's not too little, too late.

 

If we're talking back catalog, the labels were going to hit a wall at some point. The Classic Rock era has been mined over and over again on CD. Almost everything of commercial value has been released again and again on the format. Fatigue has set in for the consumer, tired of chasing the perpetual reissues.

 

Business models come and go, and the business model of foisting "albums" on the public has gone. It's a 70s concept. They did well out of it for a very long time.

But now it's back to basics: people just want a song that they want. Whether it's going to town to buy a John Philip Sousa sheet or downloading some Bieber it's all the same thing. Follow that business model and you'll make a buck.

The Great Album Scam is over - even if you think gods came down from heaven to create them.

 

Going back to the first post, what sounds like a 'poor poor record industry' story is slightly misleading.

Thanks to the internet, word of mouth on a new release gets to a large proportion of the potential marketplace very early. In fact, most of us are chomping at the bit before a pre-order is advertised, so the record companies are seeing significant returns on their investment in week one. Some of them probably adjust their pressing numbers based on pre-orders as well. And because they know that there are no significant sales coming in year two, they dump their stock and take a tax loss on any failures in the year of issue; there's no need to hang onto expensive inventory for years.

Furthermore, many record companies take a small proportion of their sales in direct sales to the customer, cutting out retail and other internet retailers. That's a big advantage on a small volume of sales, which is why Universal is trying out incentives to buy directly from them (such as the Moody Blues 'cassette').

It's not difficult to see the increasing number of low-limitation items as a response by companies to the fact that speculative high manufacturing runs are just no longer needed any more. The new 'hit & run' record industry is leaner and less likely to be hit by total catastrophes. Even with their supposedly larger named artists (e.g. Lana Del Rey) they do a first run of the album and then, if a repress is called for, they do a special edition that shakes the tree again on people who like the album enough to buy it twice. Win/Win.

I'm not saying that there aren't smaller companies bleeding here, but it's not all bad news by any means, and the small companies complaining about a small marketplace now are probably the same ones complaining about the necessity for a huge marketing budget in the pre-internet days.

 

It might be prudent for record companies (especially smaller ones) when planning albums to adopt a sort of 'kickstarter' model - and seek orders from fans prior to the album's release (perhaps using short previews of the tracks). I expect that fans of an artist will always fork out for an album.

However, I notice comments, even on this forum, about certain artists, along the lines of "I haven't bought any of their stuff for 10/20/25/30 years." In some cases this may well be justified - but how can anyone expect record sales to be buoyant if no one buys new music? And by that I mean both new music by established artists AND new music by up and coming artists. I know some people are still buying new stuff (I am) but it seems like less and less people are.

I also read comments about how well vinyl is selling - but I observe 2 things about vinyl. One, very few places actually sell vinyl (in my experience) and I have never seen anyone actually buying new vinyl (other than myself). I have seen people buying second-hand vinyl, but that's hardly helping artists!

As far as catalog sales go - how many times can the same old catalog albums be resold/repackaged? Little wonder the industry is going downhill at a rate of knots if they are relying on sales of albums that might well be 30, 40 or 50 years old...

I do understand that the general public probably prefer downloads because they can just pick the tracks they already like - just as many people no doubt once liked singles.

 

I don't think so. Prove me wrong with facts.

 

The average music consumer, at least here in Scandinavia, is getting all the (new and old) music they need from Spotify or Rdio. Buy a new mobilephone and a subscription to a streaming service is likely to be included in package.

 

..and because nobody buys back catalogue albums anymore, we see more and more famous musicians touring for top money all year round instead of staying at home. People like Peter Gabriel, Springsteen, The Police (for some time), Roger Waters, McCartney, Fleetwood Mac started to do big concert tours (again) (even without having new albums to promote) at exactly the same point in time when their sales started to drop. They only have one reason for this: to maintain their expensive lifestyles. And who would blame them?

 

Agreed, it may also be for different reasons, but I'm sure The Police, Simon and Garfunkel, Genesis, The Beach Boys and Fleetwood Mac did not get back together because they missed each other's company so much...

 

Of course these things happen, the same way as home taping was happening before. The industry must find a way to make a good business out of these behaviours. (By the way, the music videos on YouTube generate revenue for the labels because they get a share of the ad revenue from Google.)

It is not true that music has no monetary value. Google is obviously making money from people visiting YouTube so if that's the way people consume music the content providers can get a slice of the pie if they are able to negotiate properly.
There are many services that are free to the end user but still make money. Do you pay to use Google's search engine? No, however Google still makes billions with it.