Re: [ARSCLIST] Clarifying the MAM-A gold comment

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bob:

That's a really good point. Accompanying article in NYTimes was about how record companies now 
demand parts of gate and merchandise from artists or they won't even release the records. I'm 
thinking, this will all backfire and the artists will gel around a few management companies that 
will handle publicity and selling digital downloads. Brick and mortar CD sales are probably DOA in 
less than 5 years, and the only thing Big Music brings to the table that a good management company 
can't is a distribution and manufacturing network. No need for that in the all-iTunes era. At that 
point it does get closer to singles economics because each song must stand in a digital marketplace 
on its own merits. Some artists will be talented and marketing-savvy enough to create a new digital 
album market (maybe called "tune suites" or something new-sounding) where you have several songs 
built around a common thread or sequencing theme. But most sales will be song-by-song and many 
artists who have been spoiled by album economics (ie put 2 or at most 3 popular tunes on a 
collection of dreck and sell it for full-album pricing) will have a hard go at it.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Olhsson" <olh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Clarifying the MAM-A gold comment


> Tom Fine writes:
> > Reduce that to
> > $7.50 and it suddenly
> > doesn't seem such a ripoff to most people.
>
> Yahoo is priced at 79 cents for a 192k windoze media file but that hasn't created much of a stir. 
> I really don't buy the idea that price is that much of a factor provided the quality is 
> acceptable. We've seen this in retail pricing. I remember being utterly shocked to see stores 
> almost never discounting CDs and most people never even blinking.
>
> Folks either want to buy a recording or they don't. It's just like they want to go to a concert or 
> they don't. There's no such thing as generic or commodity entertainment because we all value our 
> leisure time far too highly. I agree the future is two tiered but I suspect we've really just gone 
> back to singles vs. albums.
>
> Your mom and dad along with others created the market for albums out of nothing as a premium 
> product. It could even be argued that they created the Hi Fi industry as well. On the other hand 
> Motown was arguably the last of the great singles labels. Where I think most people are screwing 
> up today is that they confuse the values of singles with the values of albums. These have always 
> been two completely different universes.
>
> --
> Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
> Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
> Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
> 615.385.8051    http://www.hyperback.com