Nuts For Music

I just read an interesting article over at Ars Technica entitled A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008. The information the author goes over isn’t really earth shattering in my opinion. Most people already see that the sales of music is moving faster and faster to the digital medium from the overpriced, and frankly outdated, compact disc. The music industry is losing money not because people download music for free, but because they’re buying only what they want via services like iTunes or eMusic. So people are buying their music, like I’d like to see in the cable television industry, “a la carte”. Why is this?

I’ll tell you why. Most mainstream albums were, and still are to a degree, made for the quick sale of a CD. Consumers hear that first “big single” on the radio or television and they go out and buy the album. They get home and listen to their favorite song first then try out the rest of the album. Guess what I think happens next? They might find 2 or 3 songs out of 10 or 12 that are good. Britney Spears comes to mind here. She sells albums with those catchy singles but do you ever hear anyone say how awesome any of the other tracks are? No.

So what does this mean? It means the recording industry needs to change gears. Let artists be creative. Let them record albums they want to record and you’ll get quality albums not just one or two catchy tunes. You can’t make a ton of money selling singles. For that fact, why do you think single albums are so expensive to begin with? You’ll make money selling albums. So make more quality albums and you’ll see more revenue. You see how “less known” bands such as Band Of Horsesand Rogue Waverecord a quality, complete album. They have to. That’s how they’ll sell their music. It’s not being played on the radio much, if at all, so that “hit singe” won’t do them any good to help them sell another 10 or 12 songs. The quality album that people talk about makes them their money, the way it should be.