Mar 15th, 2008
Economy of Technology: Music
Music has totally been turned on its head in the last few years. Remember when we went from vinyl and cassettes (and if you’re really old, like me, 8 tracks) to compact discs? Those compact discs were also a lot more expensive than vinyl was (vinyl LPs were going for about $7.99 back then; CDs went for about $15), but lots of us went ahead and paid money to rebuy music we already had in the new format, sold on the optical discs.
It’s about a quarter century since the CD revolution. In the last few years, we’ve had two other music revolutions: the burnable CD revolution and the MP3 (and AAC) revolution. The bands that get together in someone’s garage have been able to put together CDs that play as well as those from the big music labels. But CDs are also threatened by the fact that today, music is downloadable and playable on computers and portable music players (iPods). While singles largely went away with vinyl records, Amazon and the iTunes Store have made getting just one track for 99 cents or less. The success of the iTunes model is clearly evident–it’s second only to WalMart in record sales. The opposite of success is also clear–remember Tower Records?
Something else that’s very clear about the music industry is that the people who make money on record sales are almost never the artists–it’s the record industry. Honestly, the garage band musician who performs in a local community and sells CDs that are burnt on their home computer makes more per CD sold than the musician who is signed to a label. Now, the artist signed to a label is going to likely have better distribution, but that is changing as well–see Jonathan Coulton for details.
The truth is, it’s much easier, cheaper, and convenient for to buy music online than it is to go to a store–and considering there’s now very few actual music stores, there aren’t that many places to go to–and buy a CD. For those artists who promote themselves independently, they can also find ways to increase their bottom line–directly selling to the public, both on CD and online. It’s a way for the consumer to spend less and get what they want (instead of buying a CD where you like three songs and don’t like 13 others, you can get the three you want for less money) and an opportunity for the artist to get more money per sale, which is what we all want–well, unless we’re the recording labels!
