The Legacy Of The CD: Innovation That Ate Itself
The CD was invented by hardware manufacturers Sony and Philips. At first, executives at the major record labels didn't like the new format. But they started to come around — thanks in large part to Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records who will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next week. Holzman was a big advocate for the CD when he was at Warner Music Group.
excerpt from article:
"The CD was sexy. And it would bring higher prices — from about 8 dollars for cassettes or LPs at the end of the '70s, to about $15 in the early '80s," Holzman says. "You could resell your best catalogue again. CDs were lighter and cheaper to ship, which is a big consideration."
All of that meant giant profits for the music industry in the 1980s and '90s. "The CD sold so well. And it created this gigantic boom in the industry," says Steve Knopper, the author of Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. "And everybody got rich. And people just got incredibly accustomed to this. To the point where in the late '90s, the only way that you could get the one song that you liked was to buy the 15 to 18 dollar CD at the Tower Records."
At first, Knopper says, people didn't mind paying a lot for the new format. "You didn't hear the outcry at the time of, 'Hey, we're getting price-gouged.' Instead the public was going, 'this is much better sound.'"
The record labels promised that the price of CDs would come down eventually. And the discs did get cheaper — to make. But the labels kept retail prices - and profits - high. Jac Holzman says that was a mistake.
"It's fine to keep that up for two or three years. But the labels kept it up far too long. And I think it was a fraud on the public, and on the artists."
Sales peaked in 2000. Back when the disc was designed, no one in the music industry thought much about ripping or burning on a personal computer. But CDs were the first widely available format that allowed consumers to free digital copies of songs from a physical object. Which led to the rise of the mp3, and Napster, and other peer-to-peer networks.
full @ http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/03/09/134391895/the-legacy-of-the-cd-innovation-that-ate-itself
excerpt from article:
"The CD was sexy. And it would bring higher prices — from about 8 dollars for cassettes or LPs at the end of the '70s, to about $15 in the early '80s," Holzman says. "You could resell your best catalogue again. CDs were lighter and cheaper to ship, which is a big consideration."
All of that meant giant profits for the music industry in the 1980s and '90s. "The CD sold so well. And it created this gigantic boom in the industry," says Steve Knopper, the author of Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. "And everybody got rich. And people just got incredibly accustomed to this. To the point where in the late '90s, the only way that you could get the one song that you liked was to buy the 15 to 18 dollar CD at the Tower Records."
At first, Knopper says, people didn't mind paying a lot for the new format. "You didn't hear the outcry at the time of, 'Hey, we're getting price-gouged.' Instead the public was going, 'this is much better sound.'"
The record labels promised that the price of CDs would come down eventually. And the discs did get cheaper — to make. But the labels kept retail prices - and profits - high. Jac Holzman says that was a mistake.
"It's fine to keep that up for two or three years. But the labels kept it up far too long. And I think it was a fraud on the public, and on the artists."
Sales peaked in 2000. Back when the disc was designed, no one in the music industry thought much about ripping or burning on a personal computer. But CDs were the first widely available format that allowed consumers to free digital copies of songs from a physical object. Which led to the rise of the mp3, and Napster, and other peer-to-peer networks.
full @ http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/03/09/134391895/the-legacy-of-the-cd-innovation-that-ate-itself
posted by Silent 3 @ Tuesday, March 22, 2011
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