Big Data wants the world to believe that the album format is dead and CDs are dying a rapid death. But they have a strong vested interest in this point of view; creating services that sell or find and allow the “sharing” of singles has been the tent-pole that supports much of the internet. Could their bias be infecting our perception? Could it be that albums are actually more popular than singles?
The following is an excerpt/sample chapter from the revolutionary new book on music business survival, 100 Answers to 50 Questions on the Music Business, by industry veteran, Moses Avalon. You’d think the answer to the title question above would be obvious: the public prefers Singles, of course. You hear story after story of people illegally downloading MP3 singles off the Internet. Who steals CDs from record stores anymore? Well, like most things, when you drill down the answer gets more interesting.
A better hypothetical question might be: Imagine two bins: One has CD singles and the other has CD albums. If nobody was watching, which bin would be emptied out quicker due to theft?
Ah . . . rephrased this way, the answer seems a bit more gray. And it is.
There has never been a definitive objective test of the public’s preference. The market research surveys that can help us here tell us that people enjoy buying more than one song at a time, and it makes sense that if they are going to buy several songs by the same artist, then it should be an album — which traditionally means a CD.
Until the mid-1960s everyone bought singles. Then labels introduced collections of singles on one large “long-playing" record, called an LP. But, with the “singles market" revitalized again due to iTunes and P2P, the public, for the first time in history, will get to decide the bundling (or un-bundling) of music instead of Execs, accountants, managers, and even the artists. And what does the public want..?
YOU MAY WANT, WHAT YOU ALREADY GOT
The votes so far seem to indicate a split decision. While singles are clearly a choice for the young or those new to the technology, as soon as iTunes began to offer albums, people began to buy them with almost the same fervor as singles.
In addition, cloud based digital “music lockers” may create a new need for CDs. Labels are trying to enforce restrictions on the types of files that can be loaded into these new services for fear that these same services might encourage theft. These restrictions will likely include terms stating that only those songs purchased legally, via CD and through approved vendors such as iTunes, Amazon, etc. are allowed to be uploaded on these premium cloud services.
Given the wholesale nature of the music locker concept, people might increasingly turn to mediums that naturally grouped songs together legally under one license, for easy upload — the CD or digital album.
BIG STARS WILL RIDE THE MARKET
Another influencing factor is that labels are going to begin insisting that marque acts be sold exclusively on CD for the first few months or “album only" in digital stores. In fact, this has already happened, but you probably didn’t hear about it.
In 2008 AC/DC and Kid Rock, two of that year’s biggest rock acts, insisted on CD “album-only" sales. Did this insistence pay off? Yep.
Kid Rock's and his label decided to forgo a digital release altogether and released Rock N Roll Jesus only on CD. It wasn't until a year had past, and over 1.7 million albums had sold, that they finally issued a digital license to Amazon MP3 to sell the record but in an “album only” format. Oddly absent from his chosen digital retailers is iTunes who were excluded by Kid Rock as they don’t allow artists to sell complete albums in the “album only” format. Kid Rock’s Rock N Roll Jesus was one of the top five albums of that year and has sold over 5 million units to date.
And AC/DC’s Black Ice album was released exclusively on CD and was only available at Wal-Mart (in North America), and trailed right behind Kid Rock’s as the fourth best-selling album of 2008, with 1.6 million copies sold. It charted number 1 in over 29 countries and has since shipped over 6 million copies… and not one of those copies was a single or a download.
Okay, that was 3 years ago: a lifetime in the world of digital music distribution. And then here come the hip, Facebook generation “experts.” Many claimed that Rock and AC/DC left a lot of money on the table by denying digital sales of singles. Their consensus seemed to feel that this type of “old school” move is only achievable by larger acts with very strong followings. A newer act wouldn’t dare experiment with this type of strategy.
They were and are still wrong.
In the indie world, sites like Bandcamp claim that their artists albums to singles on a 6:1 ratio in CD albums favor. And in the major label land, thier entire music business economy is based on the album configuration. (Both CD and download) and that will not change anytime soon. Artist advances are inextricably designed around and connected to the album format. A fact kept from the public.
So my money says expect to see more “album only” demands for new releases by those artists that can see the writing on the wall and afford to alienate few die- hard singles-only fans.
Yet, another reason albums will survive for quite some time; albums are cool! It’s a cohesive, 50-minute sound vision. Singles were created as an economic reality of selling albums, not as a substitute for them.
And as for albums in CD form, we can be sure that the CD format is not going to die anytime soon if we just look at the number of new CD players/recorders manufactured every day: well over 100,000! We use these players/recorders to archive favorite releases which helps ensure the formats place… at least for the near future.
THE HATERS
Technology innovators like Steve Jobs, don’t care about the integrity of music as art. No human who invented the best way to buy, catalog, and “share” music as individual tracks, can be a real fan of music as an art form. (Sorry Steve, I love your brain, but your heart..?)
I remember trying to get my mother to join the iPod generation years ago by telling her that it could hold her entire Classical collection. She said “But it cuts up the symphony into little bits." (old iPods/iTunes used to treat movements as if they were singles and wouldn’t play them seamlessly.) I was ashamed. My mother “got it" long before I did: music is about creativity, not the technology you play it on. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a music hater, even if they don’t know it. They have sold their souls to the tech-gods if they truly believe that artists should start making three-minute singles and forget about their album vision just because a digital retailer has decided that music is easirer to sell in bite sized chunks. That’s what radio tried to do to music, but albums survived that effort and they will survive this one too.
Music lives! Albums live! And for now, the sales numbers prove it.
The following is an excerpt/sample chapter from the revolutionary new book on music business survival, 100 Answers to 50 Questions on the Music Business, by industry veteran, Moses Avalon. You’d think the answer to the title question above would be obvious: the public prefers Singles, of course. You hear story after story of people illegally downloading MP3 singles off the Internet. Who steals CDs from record stores anymore? Well, like most things, when you drill down the answer gets more interesting.
A better hypothetical question might be: Imagine two bins: One has CD singles and the other has CD albums. If nobody was watching, which bin would be emptied out quicker due to theft?
Ah . . . rephrased this way, the answer seems a bit more gray. And it is.
There has never been a definitive objective test of the public’s preference. The market research surveys that can help us here tell us that people enjoy buying more than one song at a time, and it makes sense that if they are going to buy several songs by the same artist, then it should be an album — which traditionally means a CD.
Until the mid-1960s everyone bought singles. Then labels introduced collections of singles on one large “long-playing" record, called an LP. But, with the “singles market" revitalized again due to iTunes and P2P, the public, for the first time in history, will get to decide the bundling (or un-bundling) of music instead of Execs, accountants, managers, and even the artists. And what does the public want..?
YOU MAY WANT, WHAT YOU ALREADY GOT
The votes so far seem to indicate a split decision. While singles are clearly a choice for the young or those new to the technology, as soon as iTunes began to offer albums, people began to buy them with almost the same fervor as singles.
In addition, cloud based digital “music lockers” may create a new need for CDs. Labels are trying to enforce restrictions on the types of files that can be loaded into these new services for fear that these same services might encourage theft. These restrictions will likely include terms stating that only those songs purchased legally, via CD and through approved vendors such as iTunes, Amazon, etc. are allowed to be uploaded on these premium cloud services.
Given the wholesale nature of the music locker concept, people might increasingly turn to mediums that naturally grouped songs together legally under one license, for easy upload — the CD or digital album.
BIG STARS WILL RIDE THE MARKET
Another influencing factor is that labels are going to begin insisting that marque acts be sold exclusively on CD for the first few months or “album only" in digital stores. In fact, this has already happened, but you probably didn’t hear about it.
In 2008 AC/DC and Kid Rock, two of that year’s biggest rock acts, insisted on CD “album-only" sales. Did this insistence pay off? Yep.
Kid Rock's and his label decided to forgo a digital release altogether and released Rock N Roll Jesus only on CD. It wasn't until a year had past, and over 1.7 million albums had sold, that they finally issued a digital license to Amazon MP3 to sell the record but in an “album only” format. Oddly absent from his chosen digital retailers is iTunes who were excluded by Kid Rock as they don’t allow artists to sell complete albums in the “album only” format. Kid Rock’s Rock N Roll Jesus was one of the top five albums of that year and has sold over 5 million units to date.
And AC/DC’s Black Ice album was released exclusively on CD and was only available at Wal-Mart (in North America), and trailed right behind Kid Rock’s as the fourth best-selling album of 2008, with 1.6 million copies sold. It charted number 1 in over 29 countries and has since shipped over 6 million copies… and not one of those copies was a single or a download.
Okay, that was 3 years ago: a lifetime in the world of digital music distribution. And then here come the hip, Facebook generation “experts.” Many claimed that Rock and AC/DC left a lot of money on the table by denying digital sales of singles. Their consensus seemed to feel that this type of “old school” move is only achievable by larger acts with very strong followings. A newer act wouldn’t dare experiment with this type of strategy.
They were and are still wrong.
In the indie world, sites like Bandcamp claim that their artists albums to singles on a 6:1 ratio in CD albums favor. And in the major label land, thier entire music business economy is based on the album configuration. (Both CD and download) and that will not change anytime soon. Artist advances are inextricably designed around and connected to the album format. A fact kept from the public.
So my money says expect to see more “album only” demands for new releases by those artists that can see the writing on the wall and afford to alienate few die- hard singles-only fans.
Yet, another reason albums will survive for quite some time; albums are cool! It’s a cohesive, 50-minute sound vision. Singles were created as an economic reality of selling albums, not as a substitute for them.
And as for albums in CD form, we can be sure that the CD format is not going to die anytime soon if we just look at the number of new CD players/recorders manufactured every day: well over 100,000! We use these players/recorders to archive favorite releases which helps ensure the formats place… at least for the near future.
THE HATERS
Technology innovators like Steve Jobs, don’t care about the integrity of music as art. No human who invented the best way to buy, catalog, and “share” music as individual tracks, can be a real fan of music as an art form. (Sorry Steve, I love your brain, but your heart..?)
I remember trying to get my mother to join the iPod generation years ago by telling her that it could hold her entire Classical collection. She said “But it cuts up the symphony into little bits." (old iPods/iTunes used to treat movements as if they were singles and wouldn’t play them seamlessly.) I was ashamed. My mother “got it" long before I did: music is about creativity, not the technology you play it on. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a music hater, even if they don’t know it. They have sold their souls to the tech-gods if they truly believe that artists should start making three-minute singles and forget about their album vision just because a digital retailer has decided that music is easirer to sell in bite sized chunks. That’s what radio tried to do to music, but albums survived that effort and they will survive this one too.
Music lives! Albums live! And for now, the sales numbers prove it.
