This Week In Music Business Stupidity

Pick any random week on the calendar and you'll probably get at least one questionable business move from the dingbats who fancy themselves the movers and shakers in the music industry, be they artists or execs. But every now and then, as in the last couple of weeks, you get a dumb idea on top of a moronic notion on top of a lame-brained thought and wind up with a veritable perfect storm of stupidity. If you're a music retailer or work for a record company, you're probably tearing your hair out and thinking of going into a more profitable field -- like horse-and-buggy making. But if you're a connoisseur of bad business moves, you're living through a golden age.

Perhaps the biggest news of the week is that for the first time in the history of the human eardrum, the #1 album on the Billboard chart is not available in any store in New York City. Personally, I don't really care, because I hate the Eagles, purveyors of said album, and I hate Wal-Mart, which sells the new CD exclusively. But for fans of leaving the house to purchase music, the Eagles, along with fellow Wal-Mart exclusive Garth Brooks, have set a dangerous precedent by making their album available through only one retailer -- and a retailer whose primary product isn't music, at that.

The first-week sales total of over 700,000 for Long Road Out Of Eden is certainly healthy even by old, pre-Napster standards. And because the Eagles must all be pushing 90 by now, they could care less about the future of music retail, as long as they get the big payday today. But getting in bed with a retailer which doesn't have a real investment in the music business is going to come back to bite the biz on the ass. A music-based behemoth like Virgin or F.Y.E. has a real interest in keeping physical music sales as healthy as possible, and will work with labels and artists to ensure that. On the other hand, when CD sales fall below a certain level at a Wal-Mart, they'll just take the floor space currently devoted to music and put in more lawn mowers or hunting rifles. The Eagles, once again proving they're spawns of Satan, are killing music retail to sell their new CD. Thanks a lot, guys!

Of course, the compact disc and brick-and-mortar music retail were already on their last legs, if not using a motorized wheelchair, before The Eagles made their deal with the Wal-Devil. And New Yorkers can order the CD from the Eagles' website or download it, for a fee. And downloading is the future of the music business, right?

Wrong. Just ask Radiohead, whose noble "pay whatever you think it's worth" experiment with their new, (currently) download-only album, In Rainbows, seems to have backfired. Apparently, over 60 percent of those who downloaded the album paid nothing for it, with just 12 percent volunteering to pony up the traditional $8-12 cost of a CD or an album on iTunes. Which proves what Luddites and over-35s like me have been screaming for years -- music isn't just the sound coming out of your speakers, it's a tangible thing, with packaging and artwork and a booklet and pictures. If I'm paying money for music, I want a physical object, not just a file on my hard drive. And while I may sound old-fashioned, I'm obviously not alone -- people aren't listening to less music than before, but as the compact disc rides off into the sunset, they just aren't paying for it as much anymore.

From the Billboard article on the Radiohead situation:

"This shows pretty conclusively that the majority of music consumers felt that digital recorded music should be free and is not worth paying for," said Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures. "It's time to come up with new business models for the freeloader market."

And while the major labels figure that out, why not fight a rear-guard action at the same time by keeping older music fans who still buy CDs at stores as happy as possible? By, say, making long out-of-print albums by older artists available again? Sounds like a reasonable idea, right?

Wrong again! Major labels like Sony BMG and Universal are mining their catalogs for gold to reissue (everything from old Hank Thompson albums to Lou Reed's '70s records to Janet Jackson's chart-topping Control,), but they're ONLY making them available for download. Way to go! Take music that appeals to people who still like CDs and not make it available on CD, while filling the remaining stores' racks with truckloads of Britney Spears and Soulja Boy CDs for the teenagers and 20-somethings who don't buy CDs anymore!

And so it goes. Stay tuned to find out the latest in music business stupidity -- I can hardly wait to see what they think of next.

Comments

[normathumb]

Most of the crap out there is just that. Nothing but marketing. Has little or nothing to do with music. There selling hard on generators to guys who need them and gals who want to be one. That is why Brit is over at twenty five. On to the next Lolita. No nutritional value whatsoever. I hope that whole industry collapses. The world would be a better place. Children would be safer. I suspect they would find another way to profit from perverting values. Just as fast food is, by definition, not fine cuisine, most of the dreck put out for sound consumption is not music. Their sound is only the soundtrack to an image and that is what they are selling. The music industry is only incidentally about music. It is only very occasionally a piece of music with real value rises to the radar screen. The only reason most of what passes for music today will be listened to in a few years will be nostalgia. Once that is gone, only a scattered sociologists working on dissertations will ever take a listen. Here is a musical test. How many songs reaching the Billboard top hundred will ever be recorded by any other artist? Once upon a time, the song was the thing. Today, the hit is the thing. The 'industry' has never given a shit about the artist or artistry if it didn't bring in cash. The producers who did were either consigned to small boutique labels where a recording selling 35 to 50,000 copies was a big deal or occasionally indulged at a larger label as long as they still brought in major product. The label looked at those indulgences as prestige artists and they would invariably purge their rolls to clear the deck for the next big thing. The Eagles have used the industry to their own advantage. Good for them. It is usually the other way around. The history of the industry is littered with a lot of ruined lives of who never figured this out. At least the Eagles are good businessmen.

[magicalreal]

Well, you're right and you're wrong.

You're right on Eagles and Wal-Mart, but just to clarify with the person posting about if they didn't sell CDs they wouldn't be kept on their label's roster. Well they are not on a major label's roster in the US. This is not major label greed. It is a direct deal with Wal-Mart. Eagles cut out the label. more money for them.

On CDs and downloads, I think you are talking from opinion rather than fact. At least in the UK we are seeing that the primary demographic for digital download stores is not the kids but men aged 24-35. And recent research out of UK schools shows that kids still value CDs for the package - but they only buy occasionally and of bands they like most.

[Brighto]

Has anyone noticed the irony here? From Don Henley's song _Month of Sundays_ "I pray for the independant little guy/I don't see next year's crop"

I like Henley's stuff and Joe Walsh is an all time favorite of mine, but I won't buy anything at Walmart, the antithisis of the little guy.

[JasonMiles]

The major labels are just incredible,What a great idea-Concentrate on selling music to customers who just want to steal it from you and ignore the demographic that wants to pay for it.At the same time make sure that top executives still make a boatload of money for coming up with such innovations
JM

[NoPCZone]

The 'artists' AND the record labels killed Rock & Roll a long time ago. Most acts tour very little, charge outrageous prices for tickets, concessions and merchandise, play pitifully short sets and wonder why fans don't show them some love. Eff that.

It was once said that a person could decide to be a musician or be in the music business- but not both. The RIAA members and a lot of spoiled 'artists' have managed to kill the goose that laid the golden egg and are now scratching their heads.

Some of them might actually go out and earn living. Doesn't it just break your heart?

[snaggster]

It takes a lot of nerve to tell somebody how they should market their own music. I do happen to like the Eagles, but nobody's going to tell me that I have to buy it at Wal-Mart. We are just about to that point anyway, but I still balked. Fortunately, the demon Eagles made other alternatives possible. I bought a copy online. I suspect that the Eagles know their audience isn't visiting record stores much anymore. I'm not 11 years old, so it was OK to wait a week.
BTW - It's "could NOT care less".

[curiousasheck]

Meanwhile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIH7LeokNvc

[foghornleghorny]

The Eagles went south when they quit being a country band.

[Alvin4NY]

It does reek of greed. As songwriters, they are still pulling in hefty royalty checks each year, and their "Greatest Hits" album (the first one, with the blue cover) has sold more copies worldwide than "Thriller" - I can imagine the chunk of change they make from that release, alone, each year. From ten songs.
However, if you are an artist over the age of 50-you've got to have some kind of trick up your sleeve, to get your product out there, and to have it heard, and purchased. Didn't Paul McCartney do the same thing with the Starbucks label? Barry Manilow had to essentially make a K-Tel record (two of them in fact...complete with TV commercials.) It worked. Totally revived his career. Same with Rod Stewart and all those damned "Songbook" releases. It's not so much creative expression as it is finding a marketplace.

[jhNY]

Not much of an Eagles fan, but it looks like they've decided to make as much money as they can for their product. By deciding to go with Walmart, they're probably able to get more per cd sold than they would have selling in the brick and mortar music stores, especially if the distribution of their merchandise had been done by a record company. And why not? Perhaps it would have been far nobler for them to sell their product through traditional venues via traditional distribution, but why should they make such a sacrifice? Had the Eagles no power to sell cd's, do you really think their record company would have kept them on the roster out of some kind of nostalgic loyalty?

The Eagles are beneficiaries of the traditional marketing and distribution methods employed by record companies, and as such, made a fantastic pile of money for themselves. But they made more for their labels. Lots more. There were probably years in their career when they single-handedly sold enough cd's to keep their label profitable, a company that might otherwise have posted a loss.

It would have been nice of the fellows if they wanted to do their bit and prop up the moribund fortunes of a major label, but the back catalogue sales plan of the majors shows why they shouldn't bother: The most valuable aspect of label activities for artists concerned with their own legacy, and that of their peers and predecessors, is back catalogue sales. And if you want that old crap, feel free to download it off the internets, for a fee of course, sans documentation, artwork or the feeling that the label with the license gives a damn.

The music business for more than a quarter century has mostly been in the hands of vicious half-smart business school mediocrities whose short-sighted chicanery and price-gouging has turned the public and their own rosters against them. I believe illegal downloading is a crime; but I also believe that, apart from the artists themselves, those being robbed very often deserve no better.

[SoularEnergy]

Oh, grow up. Having Walmart distribute your cd is no more "selling your soul for money" than having a record company take a hugh profit for arranging for Walmart and other retail stores to distribute your album.

[RickO]

While it is certainly not scalable to the mass-market distribution need of huge acts like the Eagles and Radiohead, there is still art in the music business. And, that art is becoming more like "art" in that it is more exclusive. For example, if you could download a Savlador Dali painting with the intent that it was equal in quality to the original, and thus equal in value, it would become worthless. Electrons are worthless in the same way that money would be worthless if it were based on the lawn cutting standard rather than the gold standard (bear with me here).

There is music out there that is created by air-breathing humans playing real instruments, doing it live and selling their recorded materials at their concerts. Some of these recordings are packaged in unique, handmade and highly collectible packaging; often hand-signed and numbered little piece of art to go along with the audio content. The music tends to be of a much higher quality than the mass-market crap as well so as a collector, I pay the same (or even less) as I would for a mass-market product but I also have something of artistic value that I can touch, read, display, trade, and even resell.

A fusion of digital content and tangible materials would be a mass-market compromise. For example, when you buy a complete album from a download site, perhaps for a couple bucks more, they send you a booklet with liner notes, art and the kinds of things that have always made the physical product desirable, while allowing the digital world to develop and creating new revenue streams all at the same time.

[Davis Sweet - Huffpost Blogger]

See Davis Sweet's Profile

Radiohead has refuted the figures cited here. betanews.com - http://tinyurl.com/3bpbu9

And I'm not sure one could generalize from the figures (if they were accurate) anyway. How can we know how many people would have bought the Radiohead album through mainstream outlets and how that number compares to the number that paid for it in their volunteer model?

I'm not sure I totally buy this argument, being in the copyrightable arts business myself, but people are saying if you're going to sell 1000 albums in stores and download sites but instead you sell 1000 privately while 9000 people freeload it, what did you lose? There's some evidence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baen_Free_Library) that such models increase sales.

As for music industry stupidity, I think you're going to have to make this a daily feature if you hope to do it justice.

[Libsrule]

SAY IT BROTHER!!!

I was pissed as hell for the Eagles doing that too. Talk about selling your soul for money. And what is even worse is they don't need the money or at least I don't think they are standing in the bread line at this time.

I've never been a fan of the Eagles at all and could care less whether they went down in flames or not but what they have done is dispicable.

But Americans don't care about principle anymore. Just what they can get for themselves and if that means buying the same damned track of songs by a band that hasn't produced anything worth a damn in twenty plus years...they could care less.