moving the deckchairs on the titanic
Honey, guess what, amazing news! We can now buy MP3s from Korn for a $1.30..
It seems that every week a music company partners up with a technology company to offer us the ability to buy more music online. This time it’s the turn of EMI and Snocap, a new venture that includes Shawn Fanning of Napster fame. [Slight irony in that one.] Here’s why I see it as a short-sighted move - people are buying less music, even from iTunes, because of the same old reason they bought fewer CDs in the past, the music isn’t that great. Unless that is, they search the web and find music that they had never heard and didn’t know existed, then I believe they make a purchase; and that’s where the Long Tail theory kicks in - many more artists are selling 1s and 2s of their CDs and the blockbusters are declining because of that. Offering me the ability to buy Korn or Yellowcard from music blogs is about as exciting as having my spleen removed without ansthesia.
Here’s the story from the New York Times: Music blogs and social networking sites like MySpace are playing an increasingly important part in record companies’ marketing plans. Now they will also be able to sell songs from a major label that will play on the iPod from Apple. EMI Music and Snocap are to announce today that Snocap will sell the label’s music in its MyStores, online shops that can be added to various sites on the Internet. Snocap’s MyStores would be placed on the Web sites of EMI artists like Korn, Suzanne Vega and Yellowcard, as well as on artists’ MySpace pages. Fans would also be able to place MyStores “widgets” on their own sites and MySpace pages, although Snocap would still control sales. Read the rest of the article.
Related Posts: DRM free MP3s from EMI, EMI, there goes another label
June 29th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Looking back over the past 40+ years of corporate rock, clearly the majority of tracks have been a combination of 2nd rate stuff, filler, and junk. Napster - and the ability to maintain / sort / listen to music with a substantially more effective tool, a computer or ipod - render the notion of a 12 track LP ridiculous. Why would I pay for two good songs and ten bad songs and call them all equally valuable? With itunes / downloading, I don’t have to. Which makes those who maintain the standard format obsolete.
I don’t have to pay for junk and therefore I won’t pay for junk. Probably 90% of new music I listen to in the past year has come from music blogs. From a dialectic of these blogs I responded by buying 8 or 9 CDs in the past year. Rolling Stone? Corrupt old people. Maximum Rock & Roll? A cabal of conservative cronies. Pitchfork? Yawn.
It’s inevitable these horrible corrupt people will invade all forums and formats of musical congregation to sell their junk.
(BTW I rummaged around and found Damaged Goods on a cassette mix tape some cutie pie made for me in must have been 1985? I can’t remember her name or face but the tune is still very cool.)
June 29th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I agree all around. I’ve never bought the idea that the internet or file sharing caused all the damage to record sales. The fact that record labels were happy to pawn ever more dross onto the consumer has come back to bite them hard. The internet really just exposed the fraud…..thanks for props too.
June 29th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Damaged Goods…hate to get all fanboy on here, but that’s the song that made me a Gang lover in the first place. Wasn’t long before I had to get everything. That lovely, athletic bass playing…hot damn.
Oh, and Cheeseburger is also great for drunken singalongs. But seriously though, coffee along with the fries and burger? EWWWWWWW.
Heh.
June 29th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Hey yeah Fanboy!! Is it so english to want coffee with yer burgers and fries???
June 29th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
I guess I’m one of those midwesterner beer-n-burger types. In other news, in addition to SNOCAP being cheesy with EMI, they are also SLOOOOOWWWWW. I signed on ages ago and have heard not a peep in spite of emails to them asking WTF.
When I read the news of Snocap and EMI, all I could hear was John Lydon’s voice. “Gooooodbyyyyyyyyeeeeee”. Where’s Sir John Read when you need him? HAH. OK. not really.
June 30th, 2007 at 8:29 am
I received one of those contracts from Snocap to look over and decided against the service as the terms were not very favorable. Not least the one that said that if a third party licensor doesn’t pay you then you must track them down to get paid, inoter words it’s nothing to do with Snocap. That falls into the “yeah rights, that’ll work” column……
July 1st, 2007 at 6:36 am
lovely athletic bass playing! nice.
I have a snocap player on the bedm myspace. it’s easy to embed and seems to work OK but I’m not sure what the download/purchase process is like. The snocap registration is included in cdbaby’s digital distro package (which is both convenient and awesome and I believe they only take 8%!) so the songs are already loaded up—I just needed to register an account with snocap with a link cdbaby sent me, which was a cinch. The one thing I don’t get about the streaming content is why only 30 seconds of the song? does it save space? perhaps the player could have a ‘hook’ button for the song to go right to THE part but otherwise play the whole thing? eh?
I think MP3s will be better when they are standardized at 250k with lyrics/art/info/links/etc in the file. 128k has washy cymbals and weird compression on the bass. why market a dumbed down format? convenience vs. quality? Itunes has phatter files for MORE money too. what the hell is that all about? we pay more to help them pay for more disc space in order to make a REAL product? and here I thought hard drives grew on special trees in silicone valley….
the site I’ve heard the most “I heard your music on” is pandora. and various blogs, of course.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:26 am
and Pandora drives me nuts too…but you’re right about low quality MP3s soundy squishy. I rip everything at 320kbs but for the Moose here I stick to 128 to allow for quick delivery and space etc
July 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
i would agree that slumping cd sales is likely caused more by purchasing singles online than P2P networks. I know my music consumption habits have changed considerably in the last five years… i now rely on blogs and previewing on iTunes to discover new music, rather than magazines, store listens, and am/fm radio. (however… HD radio - esp. Z100’s HD2 stream “Undie100″ – here in Portland is pretty good.) in this regard, net-based digital distribution allows me to be blissfully selective. I don’t have to waste my money on lousy full-lengths anymore - when i purchase a physical CD now, it’s to have a “permanent” uncompressed copy of something I really like, rather than making a compulsive purchase.
as far as the mp3 format, for better or worse, it the dominant audio media container. it would be wonderful to have a digital container that could hold art/lyrics/info within the track, and it seems formats like mp4 could be robust enough to do that. but, i’m not sure that there is a large enough consumer demand for that, nor a industry drive to experiment in that regard (mp4 is pretty much an apple-only kinda thing) - investing in a new container that would risk incompatibility with established digital media players/software may not be an attractive option to computer/electronics manufacturers.
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Erik, you have a HD radio? You are so technologically-fashion-forward! And everything else you wrote about I agree with…..and protected MP4’s suck eggs too
July 2nd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Yow. Erik is right. Bliss is right. With better options for selection I am so much more happy with my music than ever before. And when I buy a CD - I buy it all and enjoy it all. Recent purchases of the Love remix of the Beatles, of Cat Power and Wilco and Sufjan Stevens and Quasi and Deerhoof all actively “preheard” online.
What we’ve really lost in the P2P business is artwork, lyric sheets, and acknowledgments.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
HA! :). fashion-forward, but cheap…. no subscription services for me. no sat/cable tv and radio for me. gimme free HD radio and terrestrial over-the-air HDTV, please!
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Don’t you have to buuy the HD radio though…..?