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Music News
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| Radiohead | Brendan Kelly
October 2009
Movie Entertainment
Is the CD about to be tossed on the scrap heap of history?
Well, the shiny little disc that was not so long ago considered to be quite the hot, newfangled item isn’t dead yet, but it is in the intensive-care unit.
If video killed the radio star, then iTunes is murdering the compact disc star. Last year, physical album sales dropped 20 percent to 362.6 million units, down from 450.5 million units a year earlier. At the same time, digital album sales surged 32 percent last year, to hit a record tally of 65.8 million units.
When it comes to sales of single tunes, where fans can select just a favourite song or the biggest hits from any album, the numbers are even more telling – in 2008, more than one billion singles were purchased as digital downloads. And though iTunes has spurred a boom in legit digital business, the vast majority of downloading remains of the illegal, free variety, where the statistics are anybody’s guess.
CD sales have been on the downswing for several years and clearly that trend – extremely troubling for the major labels – isn’t about to change anytime soon. “I don’t think the CD has any future,” says Chip Sutherland, who manages Feist and Sloan. “It will be all-digital.”
Yet Sutherland isn’t shedding any tears. “It makes people less lazy, that’s why
I’m not so uptight about it. You have to try harder (to market your artist).”
CDs are in decline because they cost more than digital downloads (it’s tough to beat iTunes’ price of $9.99 per album), folks are fed up with the inefficient (environmentally unfriendly) jewel boxes, and most of us are now fairly unimpressed by the sound quality. But the real reason for the digital revolution is convenience – you can bring your slim, sleek iPod wherever you go, effortlessly keeping your entire music collection with you at the gym or school. And with a swipe of your thumb, you can instantly find any track on the pod – a real revolution for those who used to spend hours hunting through the basement for that obscure Smiths album we just had to play for our dinner guests. At first, it was a youth-driven thing. But now music fans of every age are embracing the new technology.
When CDs first came along, stomping the life out of vinyl and cassettes, the big record labels made a killing by repack aging all our old faves in this new format which delivered the musical goods with (supposedly) better sonic quality than ever before. But after years cashing in on reselling Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon on compact disc, the same majors are facing the same fate as the CD. If they disappear, it’s because they simply refused to face up to the digital revolution.
But the majors ain’t dead yet, nor is the CD, argues Steve Kane, president of Warner Music Canada. In fact, he’s happy to report that even vinyl isn’t a goner, noting that vinyl LP sales for his company surged 500 percent last year. Vinyl is back, as a niche format, because most anyone who’s been paying attention now knows that vinyl is IT for real audiophiles.
CD sales still make up the biggest part of Warner’s sales and revenue, but Kane knows that won’t be the case a few years down the line.
“Will a major record label look the same in 2015?” asks Kane. “The answer is a resounding ‘no’. We’re transforming our company into a full-service artist-support company.” Like other majors, Warner has been signing what are called “360 deals” – where the record companies have a hand in creating and promoting not just the CDs but also tours and merchandising (T-shirts, etc.) and then take a share of the revenue in these areas as well.
But not everyone thinks record labels are the best folks to manage artists’ careers. Polyphonic, a venture set up by Radiohead manager Brian Message and Canadian music mogul Terry McBride, is designed to help bands bypass the majors altogether and market their music online. Radiohead released its last album, In Rainbows, via the Web only (at first), letting fans pay whatever they wanted for it.
Kane believes there’s still place for the majors, even when the CD becomes a marginal item.
“One of the functions we perform is that we’re a filter,”
Kane says. “There’s a lot of music out there and the vast majority of the population likes having a filter. You need someone to point you to the next U2.”
Whatever happens to the record companies, it’s hard to envision a future with physical albums – and that’s kind of a sad thing.
In an all-digital world, Nick Hornby wouldn’t be able to write a novel like High Fidelity about the joys of hanging out in record stores. Heck, record stores are already almost a thing of the past. Wander into your local HMV superstore and you’ll be hard-pressed to find the few CDs hidden behind the DVDs, iPods and computer games.
Makes me nostalgic for my misspent youth, trolling specialty record emporiums every Saturday.
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