| AUDIO ARTIFACTS
OF A CURRENT ERA
This has been the year that I’ve found myself
buying my record collection for the third time. First I bought &
loved them on vinyl, then (often poor quality) CD s, because space
is at a premium & I’m lazy, & now the remastered versions
emerge, very often with bonus material that is like manna from heaven
for music lovers & addicts. Yep, they’ve finally done
the sort of thorough job that they should have done in the first
place! The Stooges, Can, Funkadelic, The Cure, DJ Shadow, Bob Dylan,
Cream, Sonic Youth, John Martyn, Richard & Linda Thompson &
a slew of others that provide an evergrowing black hole for me to
shovel my money into, all of which, with the occasional exception
are a sonic revelation, yes, even better than vinyl. You get feeling
that you’re listening to the closest thing that you’d
ever get to the original master tape, maybe even better.
Everything old is new again. And I bet that I’m
not the only one who’s happy, I’m sure that the record
companies who are currently excavating their own back catalogue
relics that have languished long forgotten & generating limited
sales, can now make extra income from renovating records that have
already paid for their recording costs over & over long ago.
They can now re-release them as a virtual new release, & make
a profit for very little risk or investment or artist development.
Speaking of profit, it was no surprise given their
carry-on about downloads & other Chicken Little issues, that
Australian record companies have posted a first half of the year
drop in over the counter sales of 8%. But what was initially puzzling
was that fact that they also apparently released a third less CDs
album & singles & music DVDs over the past 2 years. What
are they thinking? Well obviously they intend to make the stuff
that they’ve still got on their roster turn a real profit,
even if they lose some fringe sales to the internet or import record
shops. Not that there’s any short supply of recorded music,
afterall there is an overproduction of music, but more of that in
a future column.
But perhaps in the future/now, the record as an
artifact in itself is becoming merely a trojan horse for other potential
profit making avenues, that record sales in themselves are just
once slice of the corporate pie. Recently some sort of music/technology
landmark was reached when Gwen Stefani had the honour of having
the 4th single from her most recent album become the first track
to achieve a million downloads. No jewel case, no art work, no transport
/distribution costs & no retailer margins, just some computer
blips & easy profit at the touch of a button.
And speaking of buttons, Gwen’s disc also
has notched over a million ring tones sales. Who would have thought
that not only would people want a hit music song as their ringtone
but that they would also be prepared to pay for them month after
month? And there’s not just those 2 income generating streams
available, there’s also advertising, soundtracks & games
that provide other potential income generation.
Moby’s 1999 hit album Play was the first
album that had every track on it licenced for some commercial purpose,
while even Steve Earle, much to the chagrin of many of his more
political fans, has succumbed, licencing the title track from his
recent “The Revolution Starts Now “ record to General
Motors for a gas guzzling pick up truck commercial. I find that
more offensive than any song about John Walker Lind that he could
ever write!
But I digress, Not that the record companies have ever acted as
if CDs were ever going to or were supposed to last, the so called
jewel case that still snaps sometimes on the first opening, the
poor quality plastic combined with poor design, an easily scratched
surface that grows even more brittle with time that has not been
improved one iota & the best alternative that they can come
up with is the scuff friendly paper digipak. And if you can see
the artwork through the opaque reflective plastic, it’s often
a squint inducing ritual to see the detail or even read the track
listings & credits in the leaflet, let’s not dignify it
by calling it a booklet, that is often impossible to return to the
case.
Surely some design innovation or efficiency would
have led to some improvements, but the packaging & information
flaws have remained, while consumers have become so desensitized
to it that it’s just been grimly accepted. My child’s
much used & abused Fischer Price toy will last years longer.
So we shouldn’t be surprised if history comes to view our
CD age as a brief quaint period when consumers still collected stacks
of little boxes of music that fell apart.
Oops got to go, my phone is singing to me, I love
that song!
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