smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Michael Bennett" <mrhonorama@hotmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: the death of the CD |
| Date | Fri, 05 Sep 2003 07:00:47 -0500 |
[Part 1 text/plain (2.0 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
How long has the album format been with us anyway? In the mid-'40s, artists
were still severely confined in the length of the song because you could
only fit a few minutes of music on a 10 or 12-inch 78. Of course, the song
is the original popular music format. Stephen Foster didn't sit around
thinking about cranking out 12 tunes at once, y'know? People used to buy
sheet music and sing along by the piano.
From the '60s through the late-'80s, the industry progressively weakened the
single as a marketing tool. Maybe in 1981 that made sense -- the margin on
a 45 or cassette singles wasn't so hot. I'd guess that a CD single would
actually be more profitable (oh...but for the downloading problem).
If music went back to the single (or the single downloadable song) as the
business model, this would be boon for songwriting -- too often I hear
albums where there isn't that one killer song -- the focus seems to be more
on filling 40 minutes than the one tune you can't ever get out of your
head...
Mike Bennett
Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com
>From: Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com>
>
>At 05:52 PM 9/4/2003 -0700, ronald and karen sanchez wrote:
> >Singles were the mass marketed items. Now there just is no audience for
> >singles, being replaced by downloads.
>
>Yeah, right. There's an audience for singles. They were DRIVEN to
>downloads, because in the '90s the major labels made a conscious decision
>to abandon the single as a format. "If the audience wants the song,
>they'll cough up $18.98 for the album!" Except the audience didn't.
>Instead, they said, "poop on you, major labels, if you don't want me to
>spend $2-4 for the one song I want to hear by this artist, I'll just
>download it and nobody will get a dime." The phrase "hoist by one's own
>petard" comes to mind.
_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive larger attachments with Hotmail Extra Storage.
http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.