Will Tunes Downloads Join LP’s as Ancient Relics?
Nielson Research reported recently that digital download music sales, synonymous with “tunes downloads,” were flat for the first half of 2010. As to be expected, no one in the music industry stopped long enough to perhaps think that any of their inventory was garbage, but they did immediately point fingers at pirating as the cause.
Poor pirates. They get blamed for everything these days – stolen music, stolen movies, stolen videos and soon, stolen eBooks. The days when a pirate could peacefully cruise around in the ocean looking for innocent merchant ships to raid is long gone. Now pirates have to face a constant barrage of lawsuits and federal marshals looking for digital contraband.
Pirate Captain: I miss the bloomin’ days when we could just go loot and pillage and pick up booty without havin’ ta shake it! First mate: Oh I agree yer captainship, times they’ve changed ain’t they? Pirate Captain: I don’t even know what a bloomin’ ‘tune’ is and I’m gettin’ blamed fer stealin’ ‘em! First mate: Yes, no one ever accused us of stealin’ nuthin’ back when it was all vinyl eh? Pirate Captain: Well this digital stuff is jest too much fer me. I’m thinkin’ a hangin’ up me cutlass. First mate: Well yer mucketymuckness, I’m a bit off on pillagin’ too. I think I’d like to just sing and dance, with silver buckle slippers and tight shiny pants… Pirate Captain: (silence, glares at first mate). That’s waaaay too much information matey…”
Of course it’s hard to feel sorry for an industry that changes the technology in a way that you have to re-buy things you already own. Clever, clever them. But baby boomers shouldn’t feel too sorry for themselves because all that started way before our time. We didn’t, ahem, start the proverbial fire (eternal thanks to Billy Joel for that line).
In the beginning there were Edison’s tin foil cylinders, but they were replaced by wax and some other materials, and by the late 1920’s the whole mess was tossed out for flat 12-inch discs called .78’s after the rpm speed they ran at. Young people in the 1920’s loved them. Their parents hated the noise.
We won’t try to recount the history of music media, but baby boomers came into the picture around the time of the first .45 rpm single-song per side records and the bigger .33 rpm LP’s with 10-minutes per side. Those were the halcyon days of analog and many of us can fondly remember, as kids, irritating parents by playing Disney songs over and over and over, and discovering our creative sides by remolding .45’s over a hot light bulb.
Mother: That was my favorite Elvis record!! You: Who’s Elvis? Mother: He’s who I should have married instead of your father!” You: ???
The biggest problem with vinyl records, from the music industry’s viewpoint, was that consumers got to own the music and weren’t interested in buying it all over again no matter how sexy or fancy the packaging could be. The other problem was that if sales tanked they had to admit that the music or the artist was crap and write off the whole thing. Do you remember the Mud Slurps? No? We rest our case.
If an artist was popular, they had to constantly produce new material to stay alive. If they weren’t popular they could go back to washing dishes at the diner with the Mud Slurps. However, with new technology and new media formats it was possible to sell the same content to the same consumer multiple times.
How many of us bought a Beatles album, then later on bought the 8-track (only to have it spew tape all over the inside of our car), then the cassette version because records were too big and clunky, and finally a cd version because cassette players miraculously disappeared all in one night? It was right about then you could hear yourself and others saying (loudly) “I’M NOT REPLACING MY COLLECTION YET AGAIN!”
It was also about the same time that Steve Jobs convinced the music industry to unbundle songs from albums and sell them one at a time, currently for $1.29 apiece, with the cool new name of “tunes.” Young people don’t quite get the concept that they are basically buying air at a premium, but it has made the music industry happy they can sell you what you already own, just in a different format.
Consumer: I need a record player. Store Clerk: What’s that? Consumer: You play music on it. Store Clerk: Never heard of it. Consumer: Okay. How about a cassette player? Store Clerk: What’s that? Consumer: You play music on it. Store Clerk: Never heard of it. Consumer: Fine. I’d like a DVD player. Store Clerk: We only have Blu-Ray. Consumer: What’s that? Store Clerk: You play movies on it. Consumer: Never heard of it. Where’s the book section? Store Clerk: What’s that?
If you want to start an interesting conversation, get on Facebook and ask your friends what the first record or cassette was they ever owned and what happened to it. Chances are they still have a lot of the records because of the album covers, but the tapes are long gone. So when boomers have all moved on and Gen-Y is facing retirement, what will they do when they sit down to their 30th anniversary dinners and want to play some romantic tunes from the old days? And what kind of music goes with ramen noodles and Mountain Dew anyway?
Note: PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that sales of all types of recorded music, including CDs, downloads, ringtones and streaming, will fall to $7 billion by 2012, slightly more than half the sales level of 2005. They suggest sales will climb again slowly after that. NPD Group reports the total market for digital download sales has leveled off at 40 million consumers, while ad-supported streaming sites like Pandora are showing better growth rates. Straus Zelnick, former chairman of Columbia Music Entertainment, blames pirating for the big drop in sales. Did we mention he is the former chairman?
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