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Are the remaining CDs on retail shelves hurting the music industry?
Pick up any CDs as stocking stuffers this year? Those might just be iTunes and Amazon MP3 gift cards next year.
At least, that’s how technology research and advisory company Gartner sees the future of music retailing, suggesting that it’s an immediate future.
The analyst firm has released a report “Christmas 2008: The Last Year of the Retail CD” that details its facts, figures and recommendations on the shift to digital music distribution—with aisles and shelves full of CDs in retail stores merely standing in the way of more immediate sales growth via online outlets.
“By propping up the CD business, rather than fully investing in online distribution alternatives, the major labels and the larger music industry have neither succeeded in stamping out piracy nor done much to recreate the business models of the old ‘record business,’” said Mike McGuire, research vice president at Gartner. “Music labels should instead emphasize ‘digital first,’ making all new releases and catalog issues via digital services and moving CDs to an on-demand publishing mode.”
Gartner notes that physical media music sales have plummeted from 91 percent market share in 2005 to 77 percent last year (and I’m guessing further down in 2008). Combine that with greater broadband penetration nationwide and greater accessibility through devices like mobile phones, and Gartner says the ‘digital first’ mentality should be embraced.
That way, music labels can cut costs by only burning and shipping on-demand CDs, releasing songs and albums online first, and capitalizing on the social networking boom.
And hey, with everyone touting their green practices these days, wouldn’t the music industry be able to better promote itself as a very green one if more of those plastic jewel cases went away and everything was done electronically?
It is really heartening to see other readers posting comments stressing the importance of quality. There was a great article in EH a couple of years ago entitled “When is good enough good enough?” with the sad conclusion that convenience and utility were more important than the actual quality of sound and video reproduction. As soon as we are able to download full resolution music (CD standard or better still SACD, DVD-Audio etc) to feed our high end music servers such as Naim, Linn and not just computers and iPods I will be more than happy to stop buying CDs. A download only business has huge advantages over CDs - no more guessing how many CDs will sell where, leading to stock outs and excess inventory. It should also enable access to a much broader catalogue than can be sustained on CDs. We just have to hope that the big corporate record companies do not try to censor our music consumption and lead us only to their most profitable product. I would recommend reading “The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa” by Evan Eisenberg.
As bandwidth increases, and storage costs go down, I don’t see any reason why they can’t sell -high quality- uncompressed recordings for those that want them. So yeah, I can see the CD being killed by high quality digital downloads.
.mp3’s are convenient when you have no option, but let’s face it, the quality is bad. As a sound-man (hobby only), I’d rather real bad live sound to .mp3 compression. Anything a normal PC and sound card and run-of-the-mill software can produce takes fidelity back 50 years or more. You can’t even burn a CD on your average PC at better than 16 bit depth (which is really hollow) - that’s a .wav file. Imagine how bad .mp3’s really are when burned on your home PC. I won’t be switching any time soon, except when I’m cutting the grass.
When iTunes starts selling lossless recordings, I may stop buying the physical medium, and go with all downloads. Until then, I for one, will buy CDs. I know there are sites that now sell “true” CD quality or better downloads, but they do not offer all of the popular music, or they are truly over priced, compared to their CD counterpart. Until most selections are offered as “true” fidelity downloads at a reasonable price, I think that true musical fidelity fans will resist the downlo(fidelity)ad.
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Give me a physical disc any day. I prefer to make my own destiny. I have zero respect for the music companies and there pathetic bottom line. Until they stop abusing the DMCA and stop treating there customers like criminals when they exercise there fair use rights, then maybe…