I'd like to tell you that Christina Aguilera's "Back To Basics" heralds a turnaround in the recorded music sphere, but I'd be lying.
What we've got here, with the sale of 341,988 CDs in its debut week, is an incredible job of SET-UP! Executed flawlessly, Irving and RCA deserve a pat on the back. For getting the word out, creating the buzz, and selling through this number of discs. But this is a positively old wave story. How do I know? By looking at the digital statistics.
You'd think, with that many albums sold in the physical sphere, "Back To Basics" would be burning up the online chart. But you would be wrong. Christina Aguilera sold a grand total of 18,169 online albums. Egads! What happened here?
It's about the price. A double album, "Back To Basics" was sold at $11.88 at Wal-Mart. And also under twelve bucks at Best Buy. And even under TEN DOLLARS in some locations. In other words, there was a nexus between hype, availability and VALUE (i.e. two discs for the price of one)! Yes, "Back To Basics" was an impulse item. No different from the tabloids and candy adjacent to the grocery store checkout stand.
How did it come to this? How did music go from being a religious experience, acquired at the temple, the standalone store with EVERYTHING, to becoming an afterthought, something you could just as easily live without.
Somehow, via the endless hyping and whoring, mainstream music has become devalued. It's not seen as a Mercedes-Benz, but more akin to a Hyundai. It'll get you there, but it's not meant to last.
Why weren't sales commensurate online?
Well, maybe because the album cost four dollars more. Why buy the files?
I wouldn't blame Irving here. He's not the record company, he just represents the act. He wants to maximize revenue today. But what makes the label think that when discs are dead, everybody will go pay MORE online? God, shouldn't there be incentives placed in online stores, to get people used to buying there? Shouldn't customers be made to think they're savvy and forward-thinking, doing the right thing? Instead of literally paying more for less?
If the online version of "Back To Basics" had been $6.99, how many copies do you think would have been sold? In other words, if it was SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to buy the album online, would sales have BALLOONED? On one hand I think yes, on another... You just don't have the same buying impulse as you do in physical retail.
But it's not like all the rest of the new product is flying out of physical retail... The highly hyped Trace Adkins disc? 114,706 over the counter. These are not superstar numbers. Seems that in contradistinction to the long tail Internet world, in brick and mortar, it's only about the hits. Everyone's fighting for shelf space, a deal with the big boxes, to get their discounted product in the face of enough people to sell...oftentimes, not enough.
Wow, this train is driving so fast for the cliff it's staggering.
Indie retail will survive. That's where the hard core musos go to buy physical discs. There's a market for vinyl, there will be customers for these stores. But the mainstream??
With the death of Tower, and you know it's gonna close down, there's no real way to make it work, the idea of a standalone record chain with deep catalog will die. It will leave the public CONSCIOUSNESS! Furthermore, it's an axiom of business that the fewer places there are to buy your product, the less you will sell. Oh, it would be one thing if the Tower experience was replicated in the big box, but ain't that a laugh, with so few titles available there.
As for the big boxes themselves? They care about as much about music as you do about your landline long distance plan. They're ITCHING to see them go. There's no loyalty at all. Hell, just ask Verizon, whose landline business has dropped dramatically. Sprint saw the death of the long distance business and went wireless. MCI? Merged with WorldCom and tanked.
We're approaching a wrenching transition. One within which physical sales plummet and digital sales don't make up the difference. And no one is planning for this inevitability. They're just trying to milk the last dollars and cents from the old world.
Music is going to have to drop in price dramatically online. So there's no incentive to steal. Or else people will continue to do so, and the majors will become licensing houses and the new music landscape will be invaded by indies, fighting turf wars, to build their touring acts.
I'd say change is coming, but it's HERE!
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