Streaming Is Killed The CD - And It's OK

Earlier this year, US-based supermarket chain Best Buy announced it will no longer carry music on physical support - CDs, mostly - due to its dwindling record sales. According to sources speaking to Billboard Magazine, the chain was making a mere $40 million a year from record sales, a sum that’s apparently too small to carry on. Best Buy plans to completely eliminate CDs from its stores by July 1st, the sources say, but it will continue to sell vinyl for at least two more years (albeit it will likely move them next to the turntables it sells).

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4 Ways A Great Graphic Designer Can Help Musicians Market Their Music

A well-designed image can serve as a strong marketing tool. As a musician, your desire is to share your music with a certain audience. In addition to creating quality music, using a great graphic designer will help your music get to more people in a quicker amount of time. A graphic designer can also help shape your audience’s perspective, since the graphics serve as a visual representation of your brand. There are four ways a graphic designer can have a direct impact on your marketing efforts.

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Musical Inventions In The 21st Century

The 21st century is shaping up to be a very interesting decade for music. How we listen and create this ancient art has changed dramatically with the explosion of technological innovation. Ways of composing and creating that were common to past decades have swiftly become obsolete. In this short article, we will take a look at a few of the major innovations of the 21st century that have had a profound effect on music.

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7 Promotional Stunts You Can Do With Your Leftover CDs

With the rise of the streaming convenience, chances are not a lot of people are buying your CDs at your live shows.

They’d rather know if they can find you on Spotify so they can look you up on their phone.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not because they don’t want to buy your merchandise. They might even be asking you that question at the same time they’re buying a t-shirt you’re selling for five times the price of your EP.

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4 Old-School Promotional Methods That Still Work

Step right up! Step right up! You don’t need to hire a carnival barker, but you shouldn’t spend your entire life online. 

We live in an age where fans receive hundreds of Facebook event invites, and artists see dozens of people click “going” only to perform to crowds that include very few of those people. Artists tweet links to events and send out e-flyers on Instagram, and while everything I’ve just mentioned is a free way of promoting an event or album, is it as effective as some of the tried-and-true ways of the past?

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Research Says Young Listeners May Embrace CD Quality Audio. Habit Says It Won't Be on CD.

The music industry wishes young listeners would abandon low-bit-rate compressed digital music for harder-to-pirate and more profitable CDs. Contrary to the long-held belief that young listeners think lossy compressed music is “just fine,” Harman researcher Dr. Sean Olive has published results from the first peer-reviewed scientific test showing that young listeners will in fact choose CD-quality audio over lossy alternatives when given the choice. Has the dream of a new generation embracing CDs come true? Not so fast.

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How Vinyl and iPods Ganged Up to Kill the Audio CD

NPR reported that CD sales tanked in 2010, particularly among younger buyers. The trend suggests that vinyl and iPods are sinking the audio CD into the so-called “fidelity belly,” where mediocre products go to die.

In his book Trade-Off, journalist Kevin Maney wrote that a truly successful product provides either the richest user experience (fidelity) or the greatest convenience. Less successful products fall into what he labeled the fidelity belly, “the no-man’s-land of consumer experience,” characterized by commercial apathy, insufficient fidelity, and insufficient convenience.

Apple succeeds in the consumer computer market by providing the richest pre-sales experience in its retail stores. Dell and HP succeed by providing an ultra-convenient pre-sales experience online. Who is in the belly? Everyone else.

Sinking into the fidelity belly is essentially the fast track to obsolescence. Staying out of the belly is never assured, because customer expectations for fidelity and convenience constantly evolve.

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Turn Your CD into a Kick-Ass Marketing Tool

Many new bands today do not pay that much attention to how their album looks. They’re content with just having a nicely burned disc and a decent artwork- the cheaper, the better. Well, we cannot blame them. There are millions of bands sprouting everyday and everyone is doing all the hustle on the internet- viral videos, music downloads, compelling websites, you name it. Their competitors are using these tech for free! Why should they spend hundreds of dollars more for their CD artwork? Isn’t it enough that they have a CD?

What most bands do not know is that the CD packaging can be a good marketing tool. If you believe in the marketing power of the CD and you want to exhaust its marketing potential, here are the things you should include in your packaging to enhance its marketing power:

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The Individual Edition CD

This month I released my 8th full-length album, slated to be my last physical release. I might have gone the digital-only route this time if I hadn’t won free CD manufacturing from Disc Makers through the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. The fact that it was a physical release allowed me to take pre-orders, which provided the opportunity to test out my latest crazy idea - one that actually panned out for a change! Here is how I described The Individual Edition CD to my fans:

It will probably come as a surprise that I can’t create the exact same mix twice, even though the album was recorded entirely “in the box” on my studio computer. Arpeggiators randomly cycle through the notes of a chord. Panning effects start and end at different points. Some devices purposely insert glitches and other random anomalies. Beyond the occasional surprise, these differences are tough to pick out unless you know what to listen for. The qualitative listening experience is the same, but the fact that each mixdown is an “audio snowflake” gave me an idea:

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The End of the Music Album as The Organizing Principle

It doesn’t seem that long ago since Radiohead did what was once unimaginable - release an album without being signed to a major record company. On the long march to digital ubiquity as the means of music delivery Radiohead avoided the tar pit that seems to be major label thinking and came out clear winners. Yes, they resorted later to releasing the album as a good old CD into regular retail distribution but they were pioneers and were soon followed with great success by Nine Inch Nails and to lesser success by many others. Both these bands had an understanding of what their fans wanted [price level choice, quality and special packaging] and both bands understood the power of the internet for marketing purposes and direct reach. [NB: Although I believe that the digital music file will rule the day, vinyl still has a role to play and I’ll get to that later.]

The most interesting part of this experiment [which at the time, I would argue it was] was not only that it was wildly successful but it laid the groundwork for what I have coined the end of the organizing principle. In other words I suggest that we are now seeing the end of the album-length work as the permenant work, the everlasting body of work that represents the pinnacle of an artists’ creativity. I am fully expecting to hear the howls of derision over this but bear with me.

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