Quote:
Originally Posted by oaristos
The only reason some artists are profitable for their recording companies and are still releasing music is because of their digital sales. Also, casual listeners who enjoy one or two songs by an artist are not going to pay $20-30 for the whole album when they can easily get those tracks individually for less than $2 each.
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Projects like Napster's premium service are responsible for this. Honestly, the buy-individual-songs model is what's destroying music. In the early 00s, digital music offerings bowed to the idea of replicating Napster's single-track download into a pay-per-song concept. The whole point was to maximize profit by squeezing even a dollar out of a consumer who normally wouldn't buy the whole album just because they heard and liked one song.
Ultimately, companies need to stop offering individual album tracks for sale. It's destroying the overall value of an
album, and thereby destroying the artist's work. The current model makes it easy for consumers and retailers to weigh the value of a dollar over the artistic or personal value of owning music.
The reason why Utada and Ayu sold so well at the beginning of their careers--and when overall sales were up--is because record labels and retailers pushed the benefit of owning the
whole collection of songs, even the not-so-good ones. Music wasn't about spending $.99 for a 3-6 minute song you heard on the radio. Consumers bought an experience, inclusion in a community or club, and shelled out $15 because they loved their artist.
Part of why Adele and Taylor Swift sell so well is that they use similar tactics. Taylor Swift's singles aren't all that special if you don't have the album; the album has a whole story with it, each song was its own experience in Taylor's life. If you just buy Taylor's song, you know you're deliberately cutting yourself out of the Taylor Swift experience. Adele is much the same. Not offering 25 for pay-per-song sale was a smart move, and I hope she never allows it to be bought in pieces.
Record labels participating in and letting retailers get away with this revenue grab is what's destroying music sales globally, not just digitally but physically as well. It's only helping Apple's bottom line whenever you buy a song on iTunes. And as far as the label is concerned, they made something from the consumer that they might have made nothing from. However, the artist makes mere pennies off your pay-per-song purchase. In fact, a recent editorial from an indie musician showed they made only $17 from more than 1,000,000 streams of their songs. And we wonder why artists aren't investing much anymore... It's clear that the majority of consumers are only going to do what's cheapest (because record labels and retailers give them that option), and as a result, every artist is going to try to hop on the gravy train. It used to be that an indie musician could reasonably make it off 1,000 people buying their $10 CD and going to their shows. Today, with the ease that someone can pick apart an album, buy the one or two tracks that sound interesting then forget the rest of the record even exists, most indie artists aren't able to break into the industry. In Western Washington, I've seen some well-known artists playing free shows just to share their social media pages.
If you buy the record, you're buying the fan experience, the story and the hard work that went into every song, and you're buying the privilege to share that experience with others. Today's music industry has just twisted itself inside out to try to suck any amount of money out of consumers who wouldn't normally buy the whole album having heard one or two songs. It's their own fault.
I do wish that Ayu would step it up though. She's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and can certainly afford to take risks like refusing to sell her albums digitally or even refusing to sell them on a pay-per-song basis. Instead, sadly, she's fallen into the same trappings and gone along with this bullshit. The only way it's ever going to end is if artists like Ayumi, who have some clout with their labels, force their labels to make business decisions based on selling music as part of an overall fandom or experience. The industry simply isn't sustainable under this bits-and-pieces type of retailing.