How Many Times did I Buy That

An old friend recently made a comment to me about music CD’s. He stated “I used to view CDs as highly prized parts of a collection; now a CD is the digital equivalent of a grocery bag”, now when I read that it really got me to thinking and I’ve been turning this analogy over and over in my mind. Because I once was the same way about collecting, but I looked farther back, to the days of the Vinyl Album, I had close to a thousand and so many of them had but one or two songs on them that I ever wanted to listen to. I have all these albums, then the ‘8-track’ (OK, I’m old I remember 78’s and gas at quarter a gallon) comes out and you have to buy some of your vinyl on 8-track too, because you want to have the tunes when you’re driving around. So now I’m sitting 2 copies of the same Album, one vinyl and one 8-track when Audio Cassettes hit the market and replace the 8-track. Back to the store to buy those same core tunes in another technology format. But at least with the cassette, if you had the time and patience you could create your own. Another big plus is the introduction of the walkman now you can really take the music with you, the down side you can tune out the world around you.

The bottom line is you bought the same music for the third time. We’re not done yet, along comes the CD (by this time I’ve started to sell off the vinyl, enough is enough)and we see the price double, 5-7 dollars for vinyl to 11 – 20 dollars for a CD, and it’s the same music just a different delivery system. Now you’ve just bought the same music for the fourth time, or you don’t.

This hasn’t necessarily made the Artist rich but sure kept the music industry as a whole rolling in cash. And it’s all been done on the same old revenue channel.

“Here comes the Sun” no it’s the dawn of the digital age, and the music industry is caught asleep at the wheel. This is a can of worms that I don’t know if I want to open now. But this is an industry that needs to get focused on the future, and get a new plan. And I don’t think paying a $1 a song for a download is the answer, it’s a higher consumer cost per song compared to a CD and you don’t have the distribution cost of the CD.

Perhaps it’s time to put the thinking cap on!