Music album sales have a hit a new low. During the week of August 8-14, U.S. album sales totaled 4.95-million, the smallest weekly number since Nielsen SoundScan started keeping records in 1991. The week's best selling album (Eminem's Recovery) managed sales of 133,000 but the second and third highest sellers managed just 52,000 and 41,000 respectively.
John Mellencamp and Bob Dylan, who have seen many ups and downs in the music business, both seem to think the music business should look to the past for answers.
It is the Internet that has "destroyed the music business" and is "going to destroy the movie business" according to Mellencamp (whose latest album, No Better Than This was recorded on vintage analog equipment) in remarks at a recent Grammy Museum seminar. Even though his new album is available as an MP3 download, Mellencamp decries the digital compression of music because it results in such a poor copy of the original. And, he says, that will spell the end of rock music as we know it.
Dylan, meanwhile, has set his sights on rising concert ticket prices and declining sales. His answer to the issues of credit card fees, surcharges, and scalping: sell only general admission tickets at $60 each, one to to a customer, cash only (no credit cards or checks) available only at the box office (beginning at 5:30 PM for an 8:00 PM show.) That's how it will be for Dylan's August 25 show at the Warfield in San Francisco. The music industry will be watching closely to see how it works.
Coincidentally, Mellencamp and Dylan are doing some old-fashioned touring together out west over the next few weeks.
What do you think? Should we go back to "the way we were" or continue on in the digital world? Or something in between? Discuss.
John Mellencamp photo by Scott Gries / Getty Images; Bob Dylan photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images
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Comments
I have been reading a lot lately about how people want to go back to analog recording and vinyl records, because the sound is so full and rich compared to digital. Yet when digital forms of recording were introduced to the public, we were told that the sound was superior, without noise & distortion. Everyone was urged to get rid of their turntables & tape players, and replace them with CDs and MP3s. Were we being sold a bill of goods? Woo hoo, I still have a turntable in my attic (no needle, though), and I kept all my vinyl records!
I think the main selling point for me was no “rice krispies” (snap, crackle and pop). A friend got rid of all his vinyl and only bought CDs, while I kept much of my collection to this day. Though I remember for a while looking for “pure digitally” recorded CDs with the D – D – D marking on the back, thinking they were going to sound fabulous. What a bonehead I was.
I grew up listening to vinyl records and remember the rituals involved. Careful remove the record from it’s inner sleeve and place it on the turntable. Get out the D3 record cleaner and make sure that the record is clean. Carefully place the stylus onto the records and enjoy the music over the snap, crackle and pops inherent in the medium. But don’t get too comfortable because you have to flip the record over and start the cleaning ritual over again. There had to be a better way!
Then I started buying cassettes. These came with there own sound playback issues, including tape hiss, speed fluctuations, and flutter. But at least they were ready to pop into a car tape deck and hit the road.
When CDs came on the market I began replacing my record with the new medium. Some of the early digital recordings were terribly mastered and actually hard to listen to when compared to an analog pressing. But you could listen to an entire recording without having to flip it over half way through. And the amount of music (time-wise) that could be put on a single CD was more than would fit on 2 sides of a record.
Finally, the mp3 format began to emerge. I ripped all of my existing CDs onto this new format. In time, I have transferred all of my CDs onto this new format. My old CDs occupy space on shelves in my basement, while I can carry most of my entire with me on a 160M iPod. When I travel, I no longer have to wonder which CD I might want to listen to at a later date and make sure to take it along. I carry most of what I could possible ever want to hear in my shirt pocket.
I know that mp3 are blasphemy to some audiophiles. But all mediums, whether digital or analog, have their inherent limitations. If for no other reason but convenience, I would never want to go back to playing analog records again. Besides, after listening to rock music for so many years, my 55 year old ears are happy listening to an mp3 that was carefully encoded at a high enough bit rate.
when I do want to listen to the highest quality recordings, I enjoy listening to a blu-ray DVD recording of my favorite artists in concert on my Hi-Def widescreen TV.
The times have changed. We need to move on.
Re: Bob’s approach to concert ticket sales….
1. Concert going tends to be a “social” experience, with people attending much like they were boarding Noah’s Arc; two by two and side by side (at a minimum).
While I “get” his well intentioned desire to head off the dreaded scalpers @ the pass….2 tix should be the max.
2. Who in the hell carries cash?
ps….
as for General Admission, 3 words.
The Who; Cincinnati.