The CD is Dead?, and New Music….
Posted July 23, 2008 — in Music News
Rock Refugees: Rolling Stone mag has profiled 10 people who have left the music biz. Check it out here.
New Music: Emphatic, an unknown band from Omaha, is finding their way on Billboard Heatseekers Chart. Currently they are being produced by 116, a partnership between Matt Noveskey of Blue October and Chuck Alkazian. Listen to the track Goodbye Girl.
Who says the CD is Dead? Kid Rock sold 73k this week, Up 20% from last week. The kid has 0 digital sales as he doesn’t have his music on iTunes. This is incredible and proves that the right song trumps everything. Also, O.A.R. had their biggest debut to date with 33k copies sold.
more sales…
Disturbed ‘Indestructible’ 28,496
3 Doors Down ’self titled’ 19,916
Shinedown ‘Sound of Madness’ 13,134
Metro Station ’self titled’ 11,782
Saving Abel ‘Saving Abel’ 7,023
I would agree that its all about a great song to translate into sales, with that said think what Kid Rocks sales would be this week if his music was out on I tunes. Its hard to believe anyone would think 75k in sales is impressive when its really not. The CD is dead and digital is the only way along with great songs something the industry has forgotten about!!!
Comment by Digitalmind 11 — July 23, 2008 @ 9:10 am
If the cd weren’t dead, no one would bat an eye at Kid Rock’s 75k. He deserves credit… a lot of people who would’ve paid for 1 song on iTunes are buying the full album. But in the grand scheme of things, it means very little. It’s not going to turn the tide. He’s just working the system, just like Radiohead did. It only works if you’re the only one doing it.
What’s alive & kicking is digital downloading, not just iTunes. Torrents, p2p, & legal downloading have to be viewed as a whole if you want to see the fate of the cd. The amount of music consumed online is just plain impossible to ignore.
Comment by Jon Cole — July 23, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Wow… “Goodbye Girl”… soooooo original! Are you guys kidding featuring this?
Comment by not impressed — July 23, 2008 @ 2:37 pm
The sad reality is, for every 100,000 legal iTunes downloads of a song, there is 1,000,000+ illegal downloads of the same song.. The digital/single idea works great if people actually pay for stuff instead of just steal it…
Comment by RR — July 23, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
I agree with Digitalmind and Jon Cole - 75k in physical CDs by a top major label artist is a novelty. Digital is the future, and if you focus solely on iTunes as a way to drive awareness you are missing the boat.
The new Hot Seconds album is coming out via all of the “regular” physical and digital channels - cd baby, one-stop distribution, itunes, rhapsody, etc. as well as more innovative models like AmieStreet.com (where the album started off as a free download and goes up in price based on the popularity of each track). http://www.amiestreet.com/artist/hotseconds
HOWEVER…
We’ve given free tracks to music bloggers to post/share, Last.fm listners, posted the whole album to http://hotseconds.muxtape.com . Are you on bittorrent? Search for “hot seconds” on thepiratebay.com and download the whole album.
Go ahead - take it. Maybe you’ll like what you hear and pay see the band live. Or tell your friends abou the band. Or buy a t-shirt. Just don’t bootleg our t-shirt or we’ll kick your ass
Artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails can try to ‘buck the system’ because they already have a long-time core, hardcore fan base and it makes a good PR story - they surely aren’t the “first” to try this stuff, but they have the biggest profile. If they were still (relatively) unknown and tried the same stuff, it wouldn’t even make the news. Remember, back in the mid-90’s Radiohead used to perform “Creep” live at the MTV Summer Beach house.
Comment by Bob — July 24, 2008 @ 7:12 am
The CD is losing market share but it is not dead and may never die. There are still people buying vinyl and the CD was supposed to have killed vinyl over 20 years ago.
What about people that want to listen to music on a real sound system instead of an mp3 player with crappy headphones. I could see the CD dying if digital downloads were not compressed and people could burn high quality discs themselves. I think bands should add value to discs by adding extra tracks, recording music in high resolution surround and possibly adding videos and behind the scenes. If my only option to purchase music is highly compressed digital files that will be a sad day in my opinion.
Comment by John Riley — July 24, 2008 @ 11:04 pm
The difference between vinyl & the cd is that with vinyl you couldn’t separate the music from the physical object. CDs are merely the carrier of digital files. “CD audio” can come on a compact disc, a thumb drive, a hard drive… any digital storage device with enough free space. Compression is merely a manifestation of practicality.
In the Napster days, the common bitrate for encoding mp3s was 128kbps in constant bitrate. This was as much a product of bandwidth limitations as anything. But as hard drive capacities continue to double and triple, broadband internet becomes more & more common, & compression technologies continue to be refined, the emerging compressed files (variable bitrate encoded mp3s with a fidelity of about 320kbps, but that take up a fraction of the space that a 320kbps file traditionally would), what we have is an audio file that 9 folks out of 10 can’t distinguish from an untouched audio file. And if you have a really bitchin’ system, there’s always full-fidelity flac files.
So there are two problems with the current methods of selling music online. The first is that the online stores aren’t keeping up with technology. Why would I pay $.99 for a file that’s inferior to what I can find elsewhere for free? That sounds better, that plays on all of my devices, and comes with more contextual information. The other problem is why would I pay $.99 for a product that is inherently & significantly inferior to what I would get on a cd? Especially when all of the overhead built into this pricing model has been thrown out the window. I’m not stupid. I’m not going to give the labels more for less.
Legal downloads are, or at least have traditionally been, subpar quality and ridiculously overpriced, not reflective at all of consumer behavior. This is why legal downloads have been so slow to take off. The reality is that consumers drive the market, and so long as the labels try to force everyone into doing it there way, it’s going to be at their own detriment. And they’re just going to keep sinking. And the death of the cd will not come at the hands of iTunes or amazon or cdbaby or amiestreet (lololol amiestreet) but Oink & the Pirate Bay & Limewire & all of these other consumer behavior-driven services.
Vinyl is something you invest in, both time and money. It’s a unique experience that can’t be replicated. The CD was founded on the idea of convenience, some would say at the cost of fidelity, and can be replicated by any digital store device. You can’t expect a medium founded on convenience to endure. People aren’t that attached to the shape of it.
Comment by Jon Cole — July 25, 2008 @ 8:26 am