Are They Trying To Phase Out Physical Music??

[Alex]

So recently I bought the album Beloved by I Killed The Prom Queen on CD and really enjoyed it (still do) However a few weeks later found out there were some tracks that were only on the Deluxe edition. No biggie, obviously deluxe editions get more stuff, but what it was was I looked up the deluxe edition to see how much it cost (to see if I could trade in mine and get it) however it seems that the deluxe version is only available as an MP3 download. That I thought was kind of annoying because I wanted to hear it on CD when I was doing stuff round the house. It's not a deal breaker, it's probably cheaper in the long run because I'd only have to buy three tracks instead of an entire album but still.

This isn't the first time I've noticed this either. The band While She Sleeps also only has the deluxe version of their debut as an MP3 download. Admittedly it's only through iTunes but again the point still stands.

Is this a sort of trying to phase out the physical music format or is it merely a marketing thing. I mean neither of these bands are what you'd call massively known so I'd probably get the reasoning that it's probably better overall for them to focus on a digital outlet. I mean I haven't seen a major name do this yet.

So is this the beginnings of phasing out physical music or is it merely a way for slightly smaller bands to get the best deal?

 

[Dave]

Yes, quite simply.

By phasing out physical copies of albums and singles, it reduces the overheads for any music production. It is far cheaper to distribute digitally as opposed to physically. And for some, that is just a hard pill to swallow. Some people, a little like yourself in some regards, like to have a physical copy of their music for security or other reasons.

But this is the way that music is moving in now. In 10-15 years, CD's will be a complete thing of the past and CD players wont even be manufactured anymore. If you prefer a physical copy, I would start coming to terms with the fact that money is everything in the entertainment industry and with piracy so big of a "problem" these days, costs have to be cut at every opportunity. This is just one such way that the music industry is doing this.

 

[Stone Cold Tea]

As Dave alluded to it is much much cheaper to not have to produce C.Ds for music labels, but on the plus side this benefits us as consumers as this now means that the music itself is cheaper.
If you would still like a physical copy i guess you could purchase the album online and then burn it onto a disc. You could even download album covers and buy some cases to put them in.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

Yes, they seem to be heading that way, which is unfortunate in my eyes as I have a vast range of CDs (over 350) and always prefer having the physical copy of the album rather than just downloading it. I've always got the worry of perhaps losing my music library due to a laptop failure etc, so by having the actual CDs in the majority of cases I can at least get alot of them back.

But, like other posters have said it is so much easier for a record label to simply make tracks available for download from a website rather than having to produce thousands of CDs, pack them, get them delivered to stores etc. It's just the way it's going unfortunately

 

[Alex]

But, like other posters have said it is so much easier for a record label to simply make tracks available for download from a website rather than having to produce thousands of CDs, pack them, get them delivered to stores etc. It's just the way it's going unfortunately

It is unfortunately. However I thought of the fact that it gives them to power to dictate (however slightly) what you listen to.

I was putting my iTunes on my mum's laptop to take abroad and I went about getting the artwork for the albums when I noticed that some of them weren't coming up. Anyway I looked into it and they'd taken some of the albums off iTunes. One of the albums was my two disc Motley Crue compilation Red, White & Crue which is no longer on there. It's been replaced with a single greatest hits album. Now it made me think, would this have affected me being able to re-download them if I had bought them from iTunes or would they have given me the single album greatest hits instead??

 

[smizzy]

On the contrary, vinyl sales have been at the highest rate they've ever been since in the early 90s. Also, several stores are now rearranging their layout to accomadate record collectors. For example, Hastings and Barnes and Noble have both began stocking records.

Of course, records may just be viewed as a commodity at this point, more of a specific audience, and extremely low CD sales can't be ignored. Nonetheless, physical music is not going to be completely phased out anytime time soon in my best opinion.

 

[Dagger Dias]

I really hope physical music does not get phased out. I've been fearing that for a while now. The music aisles at stores here in town are getting smaller and smaller each year whether it be Walmart or the local entertainment shop that used to specialize in CD's, those aisles may very well be disappearing completely in the next several years. This makes me unhappy because I flat out refuse to go 100% digital. Granted most of my music IS digital, but it's imported to my iPhone from my hard copies of my CD's. I prefer to have the hard copy in case something ever happens to the digital file. If I pay for a downloaded song and I lose the file, then I essentially paid for nothing. If I can't have the hard copy, then the song/album to me is not worth purchasing. I have a massive collection of CD's, so at least I'll always have my hard copies of the old stuff until we reach the point where computers cannot read music CD's anymore. That's when we physical music fans are really in trouble.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

It is unfortunately. However I thought of the fact that it gives them to power to dictate (however slightly) what you listen to.

I was putting my iTunes on my mum's laptop to take abroad and I went about getting the artwork for the albums when I noticed that some of them weren't coming up. Anyway I looked into it and they'd taken some of the albums off iTunes. One of the albums was my two disc Motley Crue compilation Red, White & Crue which is no longer on there. It's been replaced with a single greatest hits album. Now it made me think, would this have affected me being able to re-download them if I had bought them from iTunes or would they have given me the single album greatest hits instead??

Ahhhh, so that is why some of my albums don't come up with the artwork when I search for it. Cheeky bastards! I'm quite OCD when it comes to making sure as much of my music as possible has the right genre, titles spelt correctly with capital letters in the right places, the correct album title etc and the album image whenever possible. Pisses me off big time when I can't do it!

Another reason I like buying my albums on CD is that alot of the music I listen to is from the 1990s and early 2000s. So, when I go on Amazon, I can get a used copy of the album for as little as 1p, plus the £1.27 packaging and postage. I'll play the CD a couple of times in my car, and then upload the tracks to my ipod. I much prefer doing this than paying full iTunes price for albums. I think I have only ever bought 1 album off iTunes in the 10 years of owning an iPod! Just today I picked up a Shed Seven (UK 90s britpop band) album for the price of 1 pence haha.

 

[Alex]

Another reason I like buying my albums on CD is that alot of the music I listen to is from the 1990s and early 2000s. So, when I go on Amazon, I can get a used copy of the album for as little as 1p, plus the £1.27 packaging and postage. I'll play the CD a couple of times in my car, and then upload the tracks to my ipod. I much prefer doing this than paying full iTunes price for albums. I think I have only ever bought 1 album off iTunes in the 10 years of owning an iPod! Just today I picked up a Shed Seven (UK 90s britpop band) album for the price of 1 pence haha.

It's always good getting some albums on the cheap. I've bought a couple of albums on the cheap online as well. You just can't do that with digital. They seem adamant that the price of something when uploaded will stay that way for years. I know that iTunes will occasionally do sales but I've never seen anything in these sales that interests me.

Also I've come to the conclusion the label Epitaph is only doing deluxe editions digitally. I say this because they were the label that released the I Killed The Prom Queen album and they released the new Falling In Reverse album which the deluxe version is only available digitally.