News - Music labels secretly planning to phase-out CDs?

[aidanjt]

are you going to answer the question i asked? or am i right in that you don't know about the subject?

What subject? Try being specific instead of hurling vague insults as if to establish an appeal to authority.

one thing is fairly obviously missing

Like your point?

[Unique]

What subject? Try being specific instead of hurling vague insults as if to establish an appeal to authority.


Like your point?

What subject? - "Music labels secretly planning to phase-out CDs?"

what's missing? VAT, which comprises of 20% of the price of goods in the UK, including CDs. that should have been pretty aparent to anyone, whether they knew the music business or not

so do you have anything useful to offer the conversation, such as the cost of hosting an album online? it doesn't sound like it. i've worked in the music industry before, so have an idea of the costs involved in retailing cds at least. do you have any insight into the costs of online sales of music to compare against the costs of retailling a cd? or are you just trying to provoke an argument? if you are, it's not welcome

[aidanjt]

What subject? - "Music labels secretly planning to phase-out CDs?"

Had you bothered to read the thread you'd know I do know a few things about the subject.

what's missing? VAT, which comprises of 20% of the price of goods in the UK, including CDs. that should have been pretty aparent to anyone, whether they knew the music business or not

How is that at all relevant to FLAC/mp3 v.s. CD?

so do you have anything useful to offer the conversation, such as the cost of hosting an album online? it doesn't sound like it. i've worked in the music industry before, so have an idea of the costs involved in retailing cds at least. do you have any insight into the costs of online sales of music to compare against the costs of retailling a cd? or are you just trying to provoke an argument? if you are, it's not welcome

Yes, because trying to play the appeal to authority and appeal to ridicule cards isn't at all hostile/argumentative. As for your question (which you only have to ask once, coherently), fractions of a penny, and if you can't get it down to fractions of a penny, then you're incompetent. Hence:

Much much much much much less than the £0.51 printing + £2.29 shipping + £4.26 retailer markup.

[watercooled]

or are you just trying to provoke an argument? if you are, it's not welcome

I actually find that quite funny considering you're the one who decided to needlessly post a personal attack; I was just about to ask you the same thing.

[Unique]

Had you bothered to read the thread you'd know I do know a few things about the subject.


How is that at all relevant to FLAC/mp3 v.s. CD?


Yes, because trying to play the appeal to authority and appeal to ridicule cards isn't at all hostile/argumentative. As for your question (which you only have to ask once, coherently), fractions of a penny, and if you can't get it down to fractions of a penny, then you're incompetent. Hence:

the VAT is relevant to the overall costs which is what we are discussing

on the topic of costs, what are the costs of hosting the files online, or don't you know, as i suggested in my original post? you've posted a lot since, but not the costs. you've tried to rubbish my post, but have produced nothing to back what you say

the reality is that the manufacturing costs play only about 5% in the retail cost of a cd. thus removing the physical item, you aren't going to get a reduction of 30% or 40% in price. even if you include the shipping charges, which aren't transparent in the pie chart, again it's only going to be a tiny percentage due to the volumes involved

you can also see that both the record company and retailers are making relatively small profits from each item, so have to rely on volume sales, but these sales are being knocked by piracy. the artists can obtain revenue from other sources such as live performances, but the record companies don't directly profit from that

thus to survive, the record companies need to increase the per item profit margin to cover the fixed costs, thus they aren't going to make large deductions in price when small costs are removed from the equation

so whilst a cd may cost 5% to manufacture, how much does it cost to host? it surely must be somewhere in the low percentages, or is it actually higher?

do you know?

[aidanjt]

do you know?

I already answered that question, twice. Learn how to read.

[crossy]

Just because you listen to a track on a £40 MP3 player, does not mean you don't listen to that same track on a £5000 home setup. I can even enjoy FLAC on my iPod video.....thanks to Rockbox

All agreed - the point I was trying to make is that if the labels offer digital downloads then you can bet the house on that they'll target at the folks with the iPod Nano's rather than the cognoscenti with the Naim HDX etc.

I thought to myself.....30 years? Get out of here...and checked wiki.....damn, it really has been.....makes me feel old but I still have my first CD (Brothers in Arms) and can confirm it is ~26 years old!

Brother In Arms? Yes, that was my first CD too - remember buying it from the local John Menzies store to play on a Sharp ghettoblaster I'd just bought from the local Comet - wanting to try those new CD things I'd seen on Tomorrow's World.

Well, as you say, 26 years later the John Menzies, Comet and ghettoblaster have all gone, but I've still got that CD, and it still plays - although for some reason not in my Sony BluRay home theatre system. It's also interesting to compare the production of a "classic" album of that with a modern one - to my addled ears the modern one obviously sounds more "polished".

By the way, I just slapped in disk 2 of the remastered "The Wall" album (Pink Floyd) into the home theatre system (to double check that it still plays CDs seeing as it didn't like Brothers In Arms) and just discovered that one of the kittens in the house seems to like it.

One other point about losing CD's that someone else made - does this mean that we'll also see the demise of the album? That being the case, then I for one regard it as a retrograde step, since I've never been overly fond of the idea of cherry picking the "best" tracks from iTunes etc. Apart from the nebulous idea of "not getting the experience the artist(s) intended", I've oft come across the situation where a "secondary" track has "grown on me" and I've come to like it more than the "headline" track(s).

[Unique]

I already answered that question, twice. Learn how to read.

ok, you don't know. fair enough

now moving on...

let's just say that manufacturing costs are 5%, and let's say that shipping costs are 5%. it shouldn't be so high for the volumes being moved. so overall you could potentially save 10% by not providing a physical product. obviously you can't offer a reduced retail price of 30% to 40% saving and maintain your profit margin

then you have the next things to consider...

with no physical product for sale, you have no products in stores. right now you can walk into places like hmv, asda, tesco, etc and meet a wall of product, being presented pretty much in your face of the new and popular releases, offering the chance of impulse buys to the customer. and in the case of the music fan in a music store, you lose the browsing facilities that lead to sales. thus sales will instantly be lost, and product awareness will reduce

and with no physical product for sale in stores, you will lose your print ad's from hmv, asda, tesco, etc that promote your products existance in the first place, and availability in the stores

so coupled with the loss of product availability in stores and the loss of print advertising by stores, plus a potential loss of even internet related advertising as the likes of cdwow won't be emailing you about cds anymore, product awareness is going to take a notable hit

thus to compensate for the reduced product awareness and advertising alone, increased promotion and advertising will be required from the record companies just to retain the current levels of awareness

then coupled with the loss of a physical product that is no longer available in traditional retail outlets for customers to by whilst out shopping or doing groceries, again increased marketing will be required to recoup those lost sales, not to mention an advertising campaign to drive customers from the brick and morter and online stores that sell cds, to buying the products digitally online

thus whilst you may have a saving of 5% for the physical product, and say 5% for shipping, you will have increased promotion and advertising costs, which could potentially surpass the costs of providing a physical product, at least in the short term whilst customers get used to the transition away from physical media

thus with the costs involved, it's not going to be possible for record companies to discount digital media across the board by 30-40% and maintain profit margins, or even make any profit at all

there are a lot of things involved to persuade people to make the move from physical products to digital, from simply training people to be able to download music and transfer them to devices, to getting over emotional issues such as not being able to resell the products you purchase, as you have been able to do with records, tapes, cds, videos, dvds and blurays over the past few decades. if you buy an album you don't like digitally, you can't cut your losses by selling it on ebay or trading at a second hand record store or selling at a car boot sale. you can't even give the download away to a friend, collegue or family member. this would require a marketing campaign costing a considerable sum over an extended period

[aidanjt]

ok, you don't know.

I do know, I've answered that same question on 3 separate occasions. I suggest you take the time to learn how to read the English language. Or pull your head out of your ass.

The market demand for digital music has already been extremely strong for the last decade (hence all the 'piracy', popularity of iTunes, Amazon MP3s, etc..) Retail is increasingly becoming a dying breed. The figures speak for themselves.

Also, there's nothing which prevents digital content license transference beyond artificial restrictions put on consumers by big content. Something which is easily fix by government growing a backbone and standing up for the people.

[oolon]

The great thing about CDs is you can sell them at Gigs which is key to many Alternative bands (well that and having a good T-Shirt Design). From the labels I see at work, they do not wish to phase out CDs any time soon, however vertically integrated Label/Distributors like Sony pumping out "manufactured" music and bands probably do.

[Unique]

I do know, I've answered that same question on 3 separate occasions. I suggest you take the time to learn how to read the English language. Or pull your head out of your ass.

The market demand for digital music has already been extremely strong for the last decade (hence all the 'piracy', popularity of iTunes, Amazon MP3s, etc..) Retail is increasingly becoming a dying breed. The figures speak for themselves.

Also, there's nothing which prevents digital content license transference beyond artificial restrictions put on consumers by big content. Something which is easily fix by government growing a backbone and standing up for the people.

for a start i've reported your post for being abusive - i'm not going to respond in kind as it's not worth it

secondly if you know the actual answer, post the figures. you've posted no figures, either percentages or monetary values. posting the same thing over and over is not providing a useful answer

now we've ascertained that you don't know the actual amounts, can we move on and leave the bickering, thanks

[Unique]

The great thing about CDs is you can sell them at Gigs which is key to many Alternative bands (well that and having a good T-Shirt Design). From the labels I see at work, they do not wish to phase out CDs any time soon, however vertically integrated Label/Distributors like Sony pumping out "manufactured" music and bands probably do.

one of the problems with the big companies pulling out of cds is they are behind a large amount of the smaller "indie" labels. there are few genuine independent labels left these days

and if the big companies stop producing cds, record stores will close down and record departments in places like tesco and asda will close down too, so the current outlets that sell a majority of major product and small amount of genuine indie products will disappear and the outlets for real indie labels will vanish, leaving the real indie labels struggling to find outlets for the products. many of those companies rely on product being available instores, and potentially have a large marketshare from big stores like HMV, so if they are forced to stop selling cds it could affect the indie market

in saying that, the music business as we know it has only really been on the go for about 100 years, and it's only really the past 50-60 years that it's been a mass consumer market in anything like the way it is now, so the digital shift might just be the start of a new chapter in music

[aidanjt]

for a start i've reported your post for being abusive - i'm not going to respond in kind as it's not worth it

secondly if you know the actual answer, post the figures. you've posted no figures, either percentages or monetary values. posting the same thing over and over is not providing a useful answer

now we've ascertained that you don't know the actual amounts, can we move on and leave the bickering, thanks

You've reported me for 'being abusive'? That's rich. You must be a troll. Which would explain why you simply ignored my answer. Good day, sir.

[Saracen]

Knock it off, guys.

I've got to go out right now, so I['ll look into this later, but a quick review suggests that the figures aidanjt quoted came from a pie chart Unique posted.

As for "abusive" comments, again, only a quick look but I can see at least two or three occasions where Unique has suggested aidanjt doesn't know what he's talking about. If there's abuse, that appears to be where it started. And if you take that attitude with people, it's not surprising people eventually react.

So this is a provisional view and I will take a closer look at this, but can't right now.
Meantime, thread temporarily closed.