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Re: [ARSCLIST] "All hail the analogue revolution..."
Tom,
there is something with vinyl that deserves further thinking, of why is it
popular - someone cannot copy 1:1 vinyl records, and vinyl is the subject of
constant degradation, from one listen to another, so... it can be profitable
to record companies.
Regards
Milan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] "All hail the analogue revolution..."
I love the little bit at the end about people who buy LPs "to use like a
poster ... especially if they don't have a record player." Vinyl posers!!
One comment -- a millions LPs sold in the UK does not a trend make. How
many million iPods were sold in the UK? No, vinyl is not "making a
comeback" but it was never killed off and is now a profitable niche for
some. Unlike the CD, I could see the vinyl niche surviving into the
all-download era around the corner. The economics of that niche are such
that you can be (mildly) profitable with short runs and
inventory/warehouses. CD's are essentially an overpriced commodity right
now, which is why the economics don't work. The music companies would love
to do away with manufacturing and warehousing and having to rely on the
likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon to sell physical products. If they could
figure out some way to get Joe Public to pay the same net
profit-per-artist in a completely "virtual" online transaction, they'd be
there tomorrow. The problems are that first of all Joe Public first of all
doesn't want to pay for all the junk songs on most albums, so the net
recoverable per artist goes down and second of all there are all the
piracy fears (which may or may not be overblown). And then there are those
of us who think 99 cents for a crappy-sounding MP4 file with semi-onerous
copy protection is the biggest ripoff going. But the key thing is, the
prime music-buying agegroup is inexorably moving away from physical CD's
and to the iPod/download world, so that's where the business will
inevitably go. LPs will be there as a niche, no doubt. And I think
high-resolution digital may survive as a download model, but the pricing
will be such that it won't be mainstream. I can't for the life of me
understand why Apple doesn't nip the quality issue in the bud and put a
security wrapper around their Apple Lossless Format and offer high-rez (CD
quality) downloads for maybe $1.25 or $12 per album. Apparently, quality
isn't an issue to the vast fat middle of their market.
BTW, the trend away from physical libraries of music is also big in the
upper crust. I know a guy who gets $5 per CD to rip it into iTunes and
turn over a loaded hard drive to his clients. They send him their whole CD
library. He loads up a hard drive with MP3 or AAC or ALF or WAV or
whatever they ask for (to his credit, he advocates ALF or WAV but you'd be
surprised how many clients get all tight-wallet about a 400gig drive vs. a
200gig drive). He then installs the hard drive in their system and reads
it all into their iTunes. Sometimes they pay him another $150 to load up
their iPod so they can be the coolest player in business class on their
next flight without having to actually know or do anything "technical."
This guy has all the business he can do, just from advertising in a few
Upper East Side society-type publications. In fact last I heard, he had
farmed out the ripping jobs to his kid brother and the brother's college
buddies. Oh, and some of his clients don't want the CD's back, so he does
a booming trade in used CD's (that's how I got to know him).
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Milan P. Milovanovic" <mijel@xxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 5:23 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] "All hail the analogue revolution..."
Well,
our subject is even at Yahoo, today:
http://www.yahoo.com/s/397244