When the label won't release the CD

I'm not even going to bother asking, "is this a thing". It apparently already is. I'm just trying to figure out the logic and the strategy to it.

Lizzy McAlpine, young singer-songwriter from Philadelphia is riding on her debut album with Harbour Artists, a London management firm who did a worldwide release for her 2022 album, Five Seconds Flat, after two earlier self-releases. An LP, a blue vinyl LP, a green vinyl LP, a deluxe edition (I assume extra tracks or tracks on a 2nd LP), and the inevitable digital download version.

Well yes, I definitely want one. Here I am, credit card in hand, standing in a sea of over 3,000 CD's which, at my last check, remains the top-selling music medium on the planet. Like the stats or not, like the medium or not, the majority of the music-buying marketplace - and the customers within - are already there, and have been for decades.

If you're an artist management firm, your responsibility is to your artist, not to your long-held belief that the only quality product possible is a vinyl product. If you're an artist management firm, your only business motive would be either to make yourself money, or to prove your worth to your artist, by making her money. Helping the artist build a reputation seems particularly hard when you're denying CD buyers the opportunity to enjoy the music.

So...why leave money on the table.

I don't follow a ton of new artists these days, but I do have a few favorites. And when yet another one of them tries to pass themselves off as a quality, and committed act by doing the whole vinyl-only promoting (while still selling their digital files online, so it's not as if they don't believe in the digital product), I begin to smell a rat.

 

This is all about money.
If the label choose to not issuing it on CD it is because there is currently not enough sales on that media for an artist like her.

 

I know I'm not exactly preaching to the choir here, the forum is clearly polarized about the value of grooves-vs-one's-and-zero's in their consuming habits. I grew up with one medium, I grew old committing to the other one. So I have as much an agenda as anybody else here. I've seen enough threads on the worn-out argument between one and the other, where I do see a lot of people in my camp who aren't ashamed of it or concerned by other people's commitment to going back to a $35 product with quality control concerns.

I'm also doing my best to embrace the new paradigm of streaming, while restricting myself to only streaming the digital product I've already purchased (considering what I've already got on shelves and in boxes and drawers downstairs, I don't really see that as much of a restriction).

But if an artist won't sell me a CD...does this mean the artist and management prefers I download it for free off YouTube, and bugger-all to supporting the artist? That's not really a logical way to encourage goodwill among a fanbase.

 

Actually, every artist "like her" has a CD for just about every album I've seen. They don't always come out at the same time as the initial release, but that also begs the question...why deny people with money in their hands, if it's "all about money"?

If you don't offer the option, you can't very well prove that now, can you?

 

My guess is that the label/artist/management feel that investing in CD production isn't economically viable.

 

Bottom line is this: vinyl is an upward-trending physical format with a newly (probably temporarily) loyal audience of indie and hipster types. CD is (or was until very recently) a downward-trending format seen as the part of the land of dinosaurs, only purchased by senior citizens who don't get computers. These, of course, are gross generalizations to the point of being kind of just wrong--but that is the perception. So your average indie label these days, especially ones who consider themselves cool and with it, are very interested in putting out vinyl--preferably in an array of colors and with published limitations, to appeal to the collector's market, just like Third Man or any number of other heavy hitters in that niche is doing. They are not at all interested in making a silver-plastic platter for what they see as the audience that buys Adele CDs at Starbucks.

I recall when the last War on Drugs album came out (on CD, thankfully), I called my local indie record store here in downtown Athens, GA (a somewhat hipster college town, if you aren't familiar). I know they had carried CDs as recently as a year or two prior. I was told on the phone when I inquired that they "didn't really carry CDs anymore" but could special order it for me. Basically, they have elected to lean entirely into the vinyl trend, and are content with leaving money on the table from people like me who prefer CDs.

It is what it is. CDs probably need to be uncool for a while before trends swing back around again. It's still too recent for the taste-makers to see any value in them; they are still just the thing that was displaced by streaming.

As far as economic viability goes, take it from someone who presses CDs as well as records half a dozen times a year: they are EXTREMELY economically viable, as long as you have a decent-sized fan base and some of them still buy them. I mean, they cost like a quarter or less as much to make. I can press 1000 CDs with full-color booklets and inserts for under $2000. I can't press half as many quality LPs for less than $4000. You need to sell less CDs to recoup your money, and you can sell them for less to goose sales a bit. But you need to still see the value in it--and admittedly, also be in a niche where people are somewhat loyal to them. Lucky for me, I press metal albums and there are a lot of metalheads who still love CDs. I don't know so much about indie label followers. They probably skew younger and maybe aren't as interested.

 

It use to really frustrate me when an artist didn't release an album in CD....but now I think "thank f$$k" and I'm simply grateful of the money I have saved. It s their loss at the end of the day.

 

I don't like not buying stuff and listening to it on the net. But I will not Spotify (or its alternatives) and although I have a pretty large vinyl collection, I will not go back to vinyl. They sold us CDs and CD players as an expensive alternative to vinyl and now they want to do the same again. Let others fall for it, I won't.

 

Artists simply don’t sell enough on CD to make it viable. There is no cool factor with a CD, and odds are there never will be again. The value of used CDs is dropping daily. Beyond that, for $10 a month, a subscription to Apple Music gives you just about whatever new album you want, in CD quality.

 

The data still proves your peer assumptions to be flawed. It's not as if people aren't buying CD, as you have led yourself to believe.

CD Sales Have Increased for the First Time in 17 Years

This is 2022 MRC Data stats. 2021 showed only the first year vinyl outsold CD, and here we see the compact disc gaining again in 2022.

"Cool" or no, when you're in the business of selling a thing, and the thing is being bought on roughly a 50/50 balance of versions of a product...why would you still let your unfounded instincts keep you from serving half your customers in the world? What kind of business are you in?

 

To think it’s their loss is an egotistical way of thinking.

There is no reason for anyone in the music biz to waste money and resources on a format that maybe a few hundred people might buy. There’s paying a graphic designer, storing product, distributing product, etc that the average consumer doesn’t consider.

 

My thoughts also.
Her fan base is most likely to have turntables and portables.

 

I guarantee that the results won’t be the same for 2022. Please note that this article states that Adele’s CD was the reason behind the uptick. In this year alone, as a retailer, I have seen the most dramatic dip in CD sales in my thirty years in the business.

 

It unfortunately seems to be becoming increasingly common, even though CDs are developing their own following, even among young people now, because vinyl has become very expensive and presumably will only become more so.

 

I buy vinyl and cd but there have been a few recent releases to either be download only or vinyl only where I would have bought them on cd. But that was not an option. So I did not buy them.
Even though I like both formats, I don't want everything on vinyl, esp. at inflated costs. And if something is download and streaming only then it may as well not exist for me.

 

I completely understand that the economics might not justify the production of my preferred format, and I accept that; however it's not a egotistical way of thinking, it's simply at that point we have reached stalemate. If a release doesn't come out on the format I buy, then I can't buy it.

Where the economics let this down is, if I can't buy a CD, I then can't enjoy the artist, which means I'm not buying concert tickets either - or merchandise, which is where artists do make money.

As I said, it use to frustrate me, but now I simply accept the way it is.

 

Great thread......I agree....physical c.d. or nothing at all for me....except when a collection like the REM-"RARITIES I.R.S. YEARS" And the REM--"RARITIES WARNERS YEAR'S " is only available as downloads which I have in my amazonmusic library.....wish they were physical c.d.'s though.

 

I love vinyl, but almost all of mine was either gotten literally for free, or for maybe a dollar an album!
I will never spend all kinda money on vinyl, not cause I do not like it, but its time has come and gone.
I simply do not see it as my "Go to" way to listen to new music and archive stuff I really love.

I mostly like it for nostalgia, stuff that will never come out on CD or things that are rare or just fun and usually free.
We were sold CD to fix the issues of vinyl, and as much as I love it, it has a lot of quality and built in issues. Just the nature of how it is pressed and read with a stylus moving back and forth.

It is not that CD or SACD or DVD-A are far better than a record, but that those discs never vary, do not have noise of any kind and will play the same each and every time.

They simply seem more of a permanent document to me, and one that tends to sound far more similar than different even on other systems.(Play back decks)

 

Could be economics, probably an image thing. Heck, I've seen some recent bands offering cassettes! Knew the day when all releases would come out on CD were numbered. It's the demise of vinyl all over again, but this time it's CDs.

As long as the music is available for streaming, I'm fine with their decisions. I don't see a big difference anymore between putting on a CD or pressing a button on my iPhone. And, I wouldn't be surprised if the artist made more $$ off the streaming (as low as it is) than the CD release.

Streaming and old age are severely making me cut down on my physical media purchases. If I could get a good price, I'd happily sell off most of my CDs.

 

you’re making it all about yourself, and stating that it’s the artists loss. Nope. You are making a silly choice to not enjoy the music or concerts based on your love of a dead format.

It’s no different than someone whose water glass isn’t filled up fast enough for their liking, not taking into account that the server has other diners to deal with and is being run ragged, yet has to ‘complain to the manager’.

 

There's an awful lot of assumptions going on here. Too many people throw out the "not economically viable" with no supporting facts. They ignore the earlier post saying it costs $2000 to put together 1000 CD's. Then you get the pointing of fingers at the sales numbers as though global numbers are important to any and all artists. It's lazy thinking, imo.

I don't recall the label, but I had the same experience as the OP. I contacted them and asked if a CD would be forthcoming and was told, "it's up to the artist." So I guess they have a say.

As for economics, profit on Vinyl is going to be a factor. They can gouge Vinyl buyers far easier. As for digital, I assume the music was released digitally on streaming sites, etc. So a CD can simply be seen as unnecessary.

 

a) It's not dead.
b) Some people can't afford to go back to paying $30 an album
c) If you don't have a record deck, buying one can be expensive (and no, cheap decks aren't worth it)

But this is old old old stuff....

 

If you think people are being gouged by the price of vinyl, I suggest that you look into the cost of pressing vinyl, the time factor and investment to make it, and then add in the potential costs of studio time, mixing, mastering, graphic design, marketing.

nobody os getting gouged. Artists are fighting to survive and make a living.

 

but who can’t afford $10 per month for Apple music, where they can listen to anything they want in CD quality? I never stated that it’s vinyl or nothing.

I am a retailer. The monetary value of used CDs has crashed harder in 2022 than any other year in the 30 years I’ve been doing this. If you have other real world experience in this other than CDs being your preferred format, I’d like to hear them.

 

I have no intention in this thread to prosecute the same old vinyl-vs-CD arguments. I have many times here expressed my understanding of both as viable mediums, even as I expressed my preference for the one I've been buying for the past 40 years over the one I was buying for the 20 years before that.

But when a company decides to give us no choice of something we have been used to supporting, I want to discuss the strategy and motives instead. I want to know what makes a producer look at sales charts and determine, "let's just screw over 50% of our marketplace in hopes we'll trick them into putting up with it".

Let's again go over the profit motive in producing an LP versus producing a CD versus vending digital files versus streaming digital files the user doesn't actually own but has to pay for endlessly... AH-THERE it is...!
And, that may be the industry's preference, and that may be the label's preference...but, is it really in the artist's best interest, either in the short term of building a career, or longterm interests of exploiting their own catalog in their future...?