Why Vinyl Can't Survive

You really think that $4 CD singles could compete with free downloads?

Definitely not. That's why I used 1997 as the point at which $4 CD singles might have been viable for the industry as a means of heading off file sharing, which was about a year away.

how would that have headed off file sharing???

By making singles available (which they weren't, which is why people started looking to file sharing).

yeah i just go to youtube if i wanna hear a single. i don't buy anything. but i would have kept buying physical singles.

my conspiracy theory was always: cd singles got long! like, album-length in some cases. and record companies couldn't have people put 2+2 together. why am i paying 20 bucks for this 45 minute album when i just bought a 35 minute single for 4 bucks?

Totally. I have some "singles" that are longer than some "albums."

scott when you say you bought singles did you mean 7"s or cd singles?
in the 90s I bought tons of both. Used to get them for 99p or £1.99. Even if i hadnt heard them Id buy them if they looked good or if i had read about them in the music press. OK so i ended up with some crap singles but for 99p it didnt matter. And sometimes I'd end up with some crackers like supergrass caught by the fuzz for 99p

a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

― keef qua keef (Jordan), Thursday, February 7, 2013 3:46 PM (30 minutes ago)

the ones who are running factory shops discourage it, but a quality engineer will be open to it, folks like jeff lipton @ peerless actually *want* you to be there:

If you are able to attend the mastering session, we highly recommend that you do. Your feedback will be invaluable in assisting our mastering engineers during the session. We do not penalize artists or stakeholders for attending sessions. However, we realize that attendance is not possible for all clients. We will do our best to make the experience as personal as possible for those who are unable to attend. Since we work with artists from all over the world, many of our sessions are unattended.

the 2 cd singles thing with different bsides was annoying though.

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring

in the 90's i would buy cd singles but i preferred 12 inch vinyl singles for new pop/rap/dance/etc. i didn't actually buy a lot of 7 inches back then. not new ones anyway.

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring

-― Welcome to my world of proses (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:44 PM (3 minutes ago)

at least you can get it over with in one shot says the guy who just spent a month and half on a remote mastering job

" my conspiracy theory was always: cd singles got long! like, album-length in some cases. and record companies couldn't have people put 2+2 together. why am i paying 20 bucks for this 45 minute album when i just bought a 35 minute single for 4 bucks?"

aha so so we can blame the orb/FSOL for the decline in the record industry !

something tells me that they would love to be a part of the problem ...

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

this may be true with some guys - I know John Golden was always happy to have company during his sessions when I mastered out there & we'd always get an incredible history-science lesson bundled in. Same's true with Brent Lambert, who I consider an absolute genius, like seriously one of the best people I've met in the biz ever, worth at least twice as much as his nearest rival. I

have

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring

been mastering w/the same guy since '05 and have never gotten bored in session after session, ymmv I guess

lol stray quote thing sorry

i've attended all my mastering sessions and honestly i kind of regret it because we didn't know wtf we were talking about and often got kind of "in love" with certain things and told him to keep doing it even when the mastering engineer expressed concerns about it, in one case we actually decided we hated the mastering that we participated in and he was nice enough to charge us a half-fee for him to go back and re-do it to correct the previous session without us being there

i also think there are WAY more than like THREE dudes in the U.S. that can do a good job mastering, i can think of more than that in Mpls alone

By making singles available (which they weren't, which is why people started looking to file sharing).

come on man, people did not turn to file sharing because they couldn't buy a CD single of their favorite Backstreet Boys song.

I mean, sure file sharing happened to provide a solution to that particular problem but it also allowed you to download any album you wanted for free.

i just think it was mean. something really kinda great and not nostalgic at all about saying OMG i love that song! must go buy that song! and go buy it at a store - cuz if you heard it on the radio they probably had it - and listen to song over and over. and when you could physically do this it was cool. computers are different.

i mean is that just uh middle age white male nostalgia on my part?

this may be true with some guys - I know John Golden was always happy to have company during his sessions when I mastered out there & we'd always get an incredible history-science lesson bundled in.

ha, the remote session I just did was w/ john golden, and yeah it would've nice to hear some wisdom straight from that ancient well

matt also otm about being yr own worst enemy, every mastering job should start with a one hour training session for the artists

"You know that Queen gatefold of them in the huge studio? I want my album to sound EXACTLY like it was recorded there."

"...sure."

i just think it was mean. something really kinda great and not nostalgic at all about saying OMG i love that song! must go buy that song! and go buy it at a store - cuz if you heard it on the radio they probably had it - and listen to song over and over. and when you could physically do this it was cool. computers are different.

yeah, I agree. I think it's really cool that there was a time in the '50s and '60s where somebody with a little independent label could go into a studio in a day, record one song and press it to a 45 with any old filler on the back, and then end up selling a million copies and being set for life.

It would be great if there were some kind of desirable physical object that you could buy for a couple of bucks with a couple good songs on it. It would be especially great for kids to be able to buy something physical with whatever little money they have. There's just something weird about buying mp3s. But I don't know if a $2 CD with two songs on it (let alone 35 minutes of extra stuff) is economically feasible. I would love to be able to press my own music to 45s and sell them for one or two bucks but you can barely even press them that cheaply let alone ship them, take out the distributor's cut or paypal fees, etc.

come on man, people did not turn to file sharing because they couldn't buy a CD single of their favorite Backstreet Boys song.

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure they did. The only other option was buying the $18 CD (or having a friend burn said CD for them, I suppose). It began with songs, and very soon after the obvious leap to sharing albums was made.

i agree. millions of people just want the hit.

early days of napster was dial up for most people so unsurprisingly it was songs at first then it developed from there. Napster was amazing for me as I could finally hear long oop albums I hunted years for.

the oop thing has always been a bigger deal re: filesharing than the "must find top 40 single for free!" angle

er, to me that is

people really have no conception of how much music was not released on CD/digitally

"You know that Queen gatefold of them in the huge studio? I want my album to sound EXACTLY like it was recorded there."

"...sure."

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We want this to sound "really pro", can you do that?

I think it's really cool that there was a time in the '50s and '60s where somebody with a little independent label could go into a studio in a day, record one song and press it to a 45 with any old filler on the back, and then end up selling a million copies and being set for life.

I think there are way, way fewer examples of this than you seem to believe, in fact I doubt you can cite a single one that ended up with the artist being "set for life". Goes back to earlier points made itt about the music industry in general.

Sure they did. The only other option was buying the $18 CD (or having a friend burn said CD for them, I suppose). It began with songs, and very soon after the obvious leap to sharing albums was made.

So why didn't they just buy the track they wanted for $1 from iTunes? The scenario you're talking about really only happened for a year or two.

tbf wk didn't say the artist, he said somebody with a little independent label. altho yeah I agree that even those cases are much rarer. much more common was for people to get screwed out of money then to be "set for life"

xp

I think there are way, way fewer examples of this than you seem to believe, in fact I doubt you can cite a single one that ended up with the artist being "set for life". Goes back to earlier points made itt about the music industry in general.

Sure, it wasn't common but I'm pretty sure I've read multiple examples. I'll dig out the books and do my research later tonight. Let's say somebody sold a million records in the late '50s, early '60s and ended up making $250k from that, which is about 1.8 million now. They could have bought a nice house for say $15k. Sounds pretty set for life to me.

I'm pretty sure Phil Spector's first record is one such example but I think I can find others.

Spector was not "set for life" on the basis of "To Know Him is to Love Him". He became a millionaire very young by being totally ruthless, fucking over his partners, recording a ton of hits, owning his own label/publishing, etc. he is the exception (in SO many ways!) not the rule.

I bet Fowley was pretty comfortable after Alley Oop and Nut Rocker. xp

but ignore "set for life" if that bugs you. The fact is that it was a lot easier to make a living off of singles in an era when they cost the equivalent of $4 today and an independent label could get their song on the radio without spending $1 million to promote it.

well okay yeah that's true. because there was more money flowing into the music industry then, is the main reason.

So why didn't they just buy the track they wanted for $1 from iTunes? The scenario you're talking about really only happened for a year or two.

Because iTunes didn't start until 2001. And you're right, my scenario would have only been effective from 1997-2000 or so (or later, as AG pointed out re: bandwidth -- DSL/cable didn't become widespread until 2004-2005 at the earliest). And in those three years, file sharing completely exploded. It caughton quick, and the industry was simultaneously caught unawares and WE HAVE TO TRY TO STAMP OUT FILE SHARING IN THE MOST INEFFICIENT WAY IMAGINABLE INSTEAD OF TRYING TO COME UP WITH A WORKABLE ALTERNATIVE! (cf. the Sony and Universal attempts at iTunes-like services that were beyond unwieldy for users. Neither service lasted more than a couple of years).

Itunes in the row was much later i think

when the big labels did away with selling singles in stores they got people out of the habit of buying music! a lot of people. people who just wanted the newest/biggest tracks. which is a huge portion of the buying public. so if they are out of the habit or they came of age right as singles were disappearing, ripping them for free was no big deal. they were already used to not paying for stuff.

man this idea that it was the lack of available singles that drove filesharing is just so not even...it's just not the case. people had moved away from the single in the post-vinyl age, period. You couldn't sell CD singles or cassette singles, not even if the CD singles had extra tracks. The single lost viability when album sales experienced their dizzying CD-boom era rise. People didn't want 'em any more, they didn't buy them in the formats they were otherwise consuming in large numbers (CD and cassette).

there was a weird cd single market back in the 90s to be fair, but it was feeding the obsessive fan base more than a mainstream one to be fair. one little indian sold a crapton of those bagazillion bjork singles, for instance.

jesus man i dont think ive ever used to be fair twice in a sentence. busy day at work, my head hurts etc

the other prime mover i remember was tori amos

if you say so. i bought them. and then i couldn't and i hardly ever bought CDs again. and i didn't fileshare or download music. i've never napstered in my life. in the 90's it was not uncommon for bigger stores in philly to still carry new 12 inches too. and then they didn't. and then they all went out of business.

x-post

people didn't by cd singles but those now what I call music comps sold well through the 2000s, no?

Aerosmith I bought one of your cd singles once...but I'm no hero, just a regular guy doing his bit