Record Label Thrives Selling CDRs 215
n3hat writes "'The major music companies may fret over falling revenue, but one label saw its business jump 33 percent last year -- thanks in part to the recordable compact discs that the industry says are hurting its sales. The label, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is using recordable CD's, or CD-R's, to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog is always available'."
jumped 33% eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Woohoo, they are up to 9 customers!
Down to 8 now... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:jumped 33% eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Get your math right. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:jumped 33% eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:jumped 33% eh? (Score:4, Funny)
OK, now I know this article is a scam, as if Canadians have advanced to the point that they not only have music, but also learned to record it? C'mon people, this is Canada we're talking about.
DMCA bair (Score:5, Funny)
The way I read the title (Score:2)
Frickin' ridiculous... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Frickin' ridiculous... (Score:4, Insightful)
A more relevant problem is that RIAA labels hold up the copyrights on old material, keeping it inaccessible to small labels who could do a bustling business in one-off discs like this. Honestly, if the business opportunity isn't great enough for them, why don't they let go and let people get the music they want?
Oh, wait... Those Conch shell recordings compete for the same consumer dollars as the latest from Korn. Riiiigght...
Out of print is a fair use factor (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, if the business opportunity isn't great enough for them, why don't they let go and let people get the music they want?
There may be an argument that copying an out-of-print work may not constitute infringement. One of the things a U.S. federal judge looks at in a fair use defense under 17 USC 117 [cornell.edu] is the effect on the market value of the work. The defense could conceivably argue that by taking a work out of print, the author has admitted that the work has no significant value.
Nothing you read on any web site operated by OSDN is legal advice.
Re:Frickin' ridiculous... (Score:3, Insightful)
Indubitably. There are some out-of-print recordings I would love to have. And simply can't buy. I would pay top dollar for a CD of Paul Kantner's "The Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra" BUT RCA WON'T TAKE MY MONEY. It's sad. Especially when something like this could fix it. And they could have my money.
-- Rich
Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's how (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to purchase the Clash album _Return to Brixton_ and will gladly pay the copyright holder a reasonable fee for it. Unfortunately, it's out of print. The record company is unwilling to sell me this CD *at any price*
Yet if I download it they claim I've stolen something.
If they had half a brain, they'd burn it on a CD-R for me and sell it for around $9.
Re:Here's how (Score:5, Insightful)
My daughter was at the right age, but Disney had not re-released "The Little Mermaid" on VHS. I wanted to buy a copy (packaging, coupons, not to mention "doing the right thing"), but couldn't. So I got a copy made from a friends laserdisc (remember those?).
By the time they did put it back on the market, my kids were too old for me to consider buying it.
Re:Here's how (Score:2)
I bet my mom $100 that I would be able to find The Little Mermaid after it went out of print because hers was destroyed in a flood. Since I couldn't find that damn tape anywhere I paid her the $100 and gave her the DVD when it came out many years later. She took me out to dinner with her new money but that "I told you so" grin was too much for a son to have to endure...
I never understood Disney's action by taking that tape off the market for so long. It's not like there wasn't a demand and printing them was too costly. I understand that they want to create a false demand but the amount of time that elapsed is ridiculous.
Re:Here's how (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course in the modern age, this may come back to bite them. Back with VHS, it wasn't quite as bad, because you can't really dilute the market with copies of copies of copies. Now, once something is released on DVD, it's only a matter of time before a DivX version finds its way out there...ESPECIALLY for harder to find releases. As broadband kicks up and video compression algorithms get more streamlined/refined, it's only a matter of time before the entire DivX Disney library can be had with just a quick click of [insert your favorite p2p client here]. And of course each of these copies can have the same or near the same quality as the original.
That's the sad part. Most of the people I know who like Disney cartoons would happily buy a collection for themselves or for their kids, IF they were all available. But if you can't get your hands on Robin Hood, or Peter Pan, well, it doesn't leave much choice except to either pirate it or wait until your kid is a freshman in college, and Disney decides it's time to line its pockets again.
Re:Here's how (Score:2)
Re:Here's how (Score:4, Interesting)
I would certainly spend lots of $$$'s to get back my collection.
Re:Here's how (Score:3, Interesting)
I realize this might hinder the "business model" of some copyright holders that manufacture scarcity by letting popular items go out of print and stay out of print for a while so they get a bubble of sales when they re-release them.
I also realize this might hurt performers whose material has gone out of print because their sales fall below the million-a-day required to be considered businessworthy by large labels, but at least their material would be available.
Re:Here's how (Score:2)
Re:Here's how (Score:2)
Re:Here's how (Score:2)
Re:Yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
There's another big advantage to this sort of just-in-time manufacturing. There was a Supreme Court decision in 1979 that changed the publishing industry, known as Thor Power Tools [sfwa.org]. In brief, it makes it more expensive (taxwise) for publishers to keep books (or CDs) in a warehouse. So they are motivated to pulp them much sooner than was the case before Thor.
So print-on-demand schemes like this are probably the future of publishing, and it'll likely happen quicker with music than with books, because the traditional CD is a less-entrenched cultural artifact than the traditional book.
Also, other economies are possible. It would be much cheaper to send the files out to music stores and burn the CDs at the store. Much more efficient shipping model.
More efficient shipping model (Score:3, Insightful)
The shipping cost is insignificant (especially if liners are still requried).
Reg. Free link (Score:4, Informative)
This would work until the next release of Mozilla (Score:2)
I don't think they worry too much about leaking links. Since they give away the stuff anyway, serving a static text page doesn't cost more than returning a denied error. And the happy user might even click on an ad.
Correction (Score:4, Funny)
How to buy from Smithsonian Folkways (Score:4, Informative)
Good example (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good example (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlikely to ever happen. I imagine that there's some fiscal wrangling going on that makes those 10 million "unsold" copies worth some $ amount as a tax deduction.
I'm probably being cynical, but I wouldn't be surpised if the tax deductions were more valuable to the company than the money spent pressing and storing the extra CDs.
Re:Good example (Score:2, Informative)
Just a bit cynical
When it's all said and done, excess inventory means your costs were too high and you won't make as much money, so I don't think they would like it.
Re:Unfortunately, pressing en masse is more afford (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Unfortunately, pressing en masse is more afford (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunately, pressing en masse is more afford (Score:2)
I plan on working on something similar myself. Not music, but rather distro's for local (county-wide) customers.
---
Re:Unfortunately, pressing en masse is more afford (Score:2)
If you can figure out a way to accept orders via SMS (or some similar non-PC, universal interface), and have the disc ready in a half hour, it can work. You'll need a cage in a telco hotel, and the vending machines distributed throughout the area.
My guess is that you would need to have about 50 machines in an area, each selling about 500 CD's each/month at a $10 markup to stand a chance at a profit.
Cost effective for Folkway (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually you have to press lots of CD's so the cost would be minimal.
I am guessing that the demand for the music that Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is selling pretty low.
Thus CD-R would be economically feasible and more cost effective.
Why? (Score:2)
It is more cost effective to burn those music on CD-R's than pressing them on regular CD's.
Can someone please explain this a little more? I'm fairly unfamiliar with how pressing operations work. Why exactly is pressing a CD more costly than burning one? And what is the cost difference?
These were my questions upon reading the article and I was frustrated that the article didn't even try to answer it.
Thanks for any help,
GMD
Pressing CD & DVD Discs (Score:5, Informative)
Stampers are used to create replicas by moulding, but there is a lot more to making CDs and DVDs than just moulding.
CD and DVD discs are made by first moulding using stampers produced during mastering and then metallising and lacquering (CD) or bonding (DVD). The steps are:
* Injection moulding of the clear polycarbonate discs using a hydraulic moulding machine
* Metallising to create an aluminium reflective surface
* Lacquering to protect the reflective surface of CDs ready for printing
* Bonding of 2 substrates to produce a DVD disc
* Printing of the disc label on top of the lacquer.
for more info, try this Google Search [google.com]
Thanks (Score:2)
Stampers are used to create replicas by moulding, but there is a lot more to making CDs and DVDs than just moulding.
Thanks for the reply, "very". I guess my original question wasn't very clear. People kept telling me about the large start-up costs. I already knew that a (relatively) expensive mold had to be created but I was assuming that the startup cost had already been paid in the first pressing. What I was envisioning was that the record company would store the mold indefinitely (since it cost so damn much to create in the first place) and could then press new CDs from the existing mold anytime they wanted to. So my question really should have been phrased "Once the mold has been created, is burning a CD-R really cheaper than pressing one more CD?". So you're step-by-step expanation really helped me understand that it's not as simple as dusting off the old master mold and pressing a new CD.
GMD
Re:Thanks (Score:2)
Even if you already have the master (mold), it is still expensive to just press 1 or 10 at a time.
Remember that the master/mold is expensive, the pressing machine is also expensive. Evenmore, it is not cost effective to put the master, then turn on the machine to press only a few CD's
Yes, it is cheaper to press CD if you press them in a large quantity at once.
By the way, are you the same GuyMannDude, the metal guitarist?
(yeah, I know my music)
Re:Thanks (Score:2)
By the way, are you the same GuyMannDude, the metal guitarist? (yeah, I know my music)
Wow, you sure do know your music! I'm afraid that I'm not but I did swipe the name from that band. I thought their video for "Paint It Black" was hilarious (it featured the band "floating" down the street in a purposely cheesy amateur-filmmaker way). I've gone as "GuyMannDude" on the Internet for so long now that it's too late to change my name. Hopefully the real Guy Mann-Dude isn't getting pissed off about me using his name!
GMD
Re:Thanks (Score:2)
As long as you pay him the oyalty, of course!
Heck it's hard to find the CD's anymore!
Free "Souls At Zero" music!!!!1
(Brad Divens said it's ok to distibute his musics)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Expensive dies have to be made.
Look at it this way. If you want a model of a boat, just *one* model, it'll cost you several thousand dollars to have a professional modeler make it for you. That's an expensive model. Boat, boat models in plastic only cost pennies each to produce.
Yes, but the *mold* and injector equipment cost tens of millions.
For one boat this is doofey.
For one CD it's cheaper to spend $.25 on a blank and pay someone $5 to do the burning ( and if you're selling for $15 you turn a profit).
For a million CD's it's cheaper to make a mold, buy expensive machines to crank blanks through the in less than a second each with essentially no expensive human labor involved.
It's just like any other One Off vs. Mass Produced economy of scale problem.
KFG
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
My big concern with CD-R is how susceptible it is to scratching the label side and destroying data.
This is great fun, but not so good for archival purposes...
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Pressing a CD has an initial setup cost associated with making the master, getting the mold set up, etc. It's apparently not that expensive, but it is several hundred dollars just to start a run. the first duplicator I looked up [oasiscd.com] will make 300 disks for $720, 1000 for $885, and 5000 for $2785, so you can see that the cost of one extra disk is a lot less than the cost of getting the first disk made. That looks as though it's something like $0.45 per disk, but with a setup fee of close to $600 just to get the first disk off the press. So if you assume that it costs $0.50 for a blank CD-R and $3 in labor and overhead to burn one, it'll be cheaper to make lots up to about 200 using CD-R than pressing them.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
The main cost in CD production is setting up the machine to produce a given middle layer; after that, it's cheap to make each CD as long as you keep it the same. In CD-R production, you make tons of identical, blank middle layers; the burnable middle layer is more expensive, and the burner is slower than the CD press.
This means that it's expensive to start a run of CDs but cheap to press each one, and free to start a run of CD-Rs but more expensive to press each one. Therefore, CD-Rs are cheaper when there are few identical products and CDs are cheaper when there are many of the same. The record label in question is selling albums out of a huge catalog, where every customer wants a different album.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
This article makes clear what has been true for a while now: With digital copying, there is no need for any such beast as "out of print".
In the olden days, you'd have to pay to store copies, and you'd have to guess at future demand. Then, if you were way under, you would have to reassemble the master (or original galleys or what have you) and start up a new printing -- with all the associated costs of initial runs. Now, though, you can print/press on demand and there's no reason to keep a large inventory. Heck, for that matter, the company could offer MP3 downloads and not have to burn the CD-R, either.
What's keeping us from this utopia? Greed -- on the part of download-hounds who gleefully trade songs they haven't bought and on the part of the Content Cartel, who feel threatened by the new technology and don't want to get their heads around new possibilities.
Old titles not available... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old titles not available... (Score:2)
Re:Old titles not available... (Score:2)
Have you tried Kazaa?
:)
Wait... Trying to be funny aside, now that I think of it, if they can't (or won't) sell it to me, does that constitute theft, piracy, or lost sale numbers in Hilary's eyes?
Re:Old titles not available... (Score:2)
yes, yes it does you dirty little theif! now come turn yourself and your 57.2 (re-calculated from actual number based on speed) illegal cd burners in to the proper authorities!
How do you suppose the Smithsonian (Score:4, Interesting)
Moses Asche gave it to them. It was a donation.
This could stand as a good model for titles that have been removed from the catalog.
Plus, you could even turn a profit. The Smithsonian is a *non profit*, donations are tax deductable.
Art collectors take advantage of this fact all the time. Why shouldn't the music industry?
KFG
Re:How do you suppose the Smithsonian (Score:3, Informative)
The labels don't own the copyright in perpetuity. IIRC, the record labels usually get a deal where they have exclusive rights to a recording for some time, like 30 years, but the copyright on both the music and the specific recording still belong to the writer and performer, respectively. Thus the labels don't have the right to give the recording away, even though they have the power to ensure that it stays out of print until their original contract rights for it expire. There was actually a big stink on this topic a few years ago when the record companies tried to have albums legally declared to be "works for hire", which would have legally transfered all rights to the labels, rather than just giving them temporary exclusive rights to publish the work.
Re:How do you suppose the Smithsonian (Score:2)
In any case, even in those instances where the terms of the right to copy are restricted ( which generally only happens with the "big" names with enough power to demand such contracts, not folk musicians or garage bands) such rights are still transferable.
So, you could make your profit for 10 years, and then donate the 20 remaining under the contract. Basically a sublease.
KFG
Re:How do you suppose the Smithsonian (Score:2)
PS: Reading down the column, I previously saw that you said you have 75 year old fridge. Are you serious? Have you calculated your energy consumption? Unless you live in a utility provided apartment you might be better off with a new unit. In '93, I could have bought a particular close out fridge at a $200 US discount. It was the previous years model. The next year's model was so much better I could get the exact unit I wanted and the pay back was about 3.5 years. Remember, if you have an air conditioning season, you get to pay to pump out the energy the fridge consumes.
Re:Old titles not available... (Score:2, Interesting)
What this new business model means though is that they can quietly sell their back-catalogues to a less snobby label who can make money out of it by burning CDs to order. You might be in luck yet.
Rhino... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Old titles not available... (Score:3, Insightful)
Old news for frequently changing apps (Score:5, Interesting)
This is however the first time I have heard of this for audio distribution. Pretty good idea if ya ask me (which nobody has)
for anyone who is interested: :P on you.
www.mentor.com
www.synopsys.com
I don't feel like making them links, so
Re:Old news for frequently changing apps (Score:2)
Re:Old news for frequently changing apps (Score:2)
Mentor Graphics [mentor.com] and
Synopsis [synopsys.com] for the slightly HTML literate.
I too remember hearing that Mentor Graphics would cost upwards of $1M per seat. <SARCASM>The high price is clearly to compensate for the highly elegant user interface.</SARCASM>
Re:Old news for frequently changing apps (Score:3, Interesting)
The software company I work for has over 400 staff, and on the order of 10 customers. Each new release is generally used by only 1 or 2 of those customers. We sure ship on CDR.
I remember someone commenting once that we'd cost one of our customers $30,000 by sending the software on CD. Had we just done a file transfer, it would have been exempt from sales tax.
Clearly labeled? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope that it is clearly labeled on the CD that it is a CD-R. I wouldn't want people to buy the CD-R, bring it home, and then find that it doesn't work on all of their CD-players. Before you know it, some numbskull is going to try to sue someone because they can't get their folk music working on their 1989 CD-player.
Another thing, how long will these CD-R's last? It seems ironic that the Smithsonian Institution is selling media that will likely not last very long.
--sex [slashdot.org]
Re:Clearly labeled? (Score:3)
Re:Clearly labeled? (Score:3, Informative)
The quoted lifespan of a good quality CD-R is 100 years. I'm always suspicious of number like that, since they obviously haven't had a chance to leave one sitting around for that long, but they are supposed to be one of the best digital media in terms of lifespan. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the discs lasted long enough that they were still good long after it was no longer possible to buy a player that could understand them.
Re:Clearly labeled? (Score:2)
Bzzzzt... (Score:2)
RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always (Score:5, Insightful)
1) As always, the very technologies that RIAA/MPAA complain about are often the source of their next, great revenue stream (like VHS).
and
2) What is so wrong about people being able to purchase otherwise out of print recordings? The argument is always that it is too expensive for them to fire up the huge CD presses (that are designed to crank CDs out by the thousands) to simply sell a handful of CDs. Why not take 1 master and burn it to 1 CDR and then charge an extra dollar or so?
It is amazing how the RIAA in particular seems to have this "sacred cow" of wanting to horde older music and make it unavailable even to PAYING customers.
Re:RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always (Score:4, Interesting)
When you're dealing with onsey-twoseys, it's not a big deal, especially with these new high speed 52x replicators (of which I have one). But, imagine:
Hire a bunch of people, at $11/hour (and then add benefits, insurance, etc etc).
They have to process requests, and even at optimum efficiency probably only produce anywhere from 10-20 discs/hour (gotta verify contents, etc). Then pack those discs up and get them mailed out. That starts to become pricey and then they're charging $20/disc to make it "worth their time" (believe it or not, not everyone gives away their time or goods).
A second scenario is the whole kiosk idea, where you go to someplace like Tower and burn-on-demand. What kind of storage would a device need?? Could you imagine one store with every CD in existance on-hand to burn for your convenience. (Yeah, you could compress with MP3, but frankly, if I'm going to buy a CD I don't want a compressed format). And then the monthly or weekly "update" data for the hundreds of CD's released every week. Then you'd have to "secure" the data (don't need anyone walking off with the raw images.. it's one thing (copyright infringement) to distribute the CD images you ripped, but now imagine ripping the "authorized" image (really no difference, except in concept).
I think it actually needs to be done like Kinko's. YOu put in your request, the "print service" fills it (by requesting/downloading the appropriate image in a secure fashion from a central server somewhere, then presses/burns the CD), and then you pick it up a day or two later.
I'm not saying the idea is stupid or far-fetched, it just needs tweaking and some more thought put into it than "what's wrong with just burning a CDR of old stuff?".
And finally, my band will not be distributing music via website, but will instead create a "permanent" kazaa user and share that way. That way our bandwidth isn't killed (as if anyone would download it anyway), but it also helps ensure that our "official" stuff is out there to be had.
Maybe I'll report back if this ever does happen and let everyone know how it goes..
Re:RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always (Score:2)
Right now they're making NOTHING off music they refuse to sell. Making it available would cost peanuts, make people like me happy, and they could make slightly greater than nothing from it. What's the problem?!!
And it'll get shared? I wish! I'd rather pay 10c and get one guaranteed good copy than go to kazaa, find almost nobody has it, download three mislabled and/or corrupted tracks, and finally settle for a copy that sounds like it was recorded at 64kbps and resampled to 160kbps to make it look bigger.
Re:RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always (Score:2)
Re:RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always (Score:2)
Yes yes, you can automate some of that process (but imagine the COST of building the infrastructure and maintainance.. they'll still charge you a premium and everyone will bitch that the CD only costs
Re:RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's called "automation", and you might want to look into it some time.
The order is processed by the computer that takes it, and any scanning through catalogues to get the right version is done by the customer placing the order through the web interface. The relevant information gets sent to the machine that burns the disk, labels it, prints, staples, and folds the liner notes and stuffs it all into whatever packaging they decide to use, prints the shipping label, and then spits it out into a bin, which is then loaded onto a USPS truck, where it is finally touched by human hands.
You've got an entry level employee that swings by a few times a day to make sure it has enough blank CDRs, paper, staples, etc, and he probably tends several other machines. You've got a couple IT guys making sure the database and servers run smoothly.
As for the cost of building the infrastructure, I used to work for a company that designed and built custom industrial automation. I'd estimate that such a machine could be built for under $50k (doesn't include database developement, just the machine that produces the physical CD). That's engineering, fab, build, and testing of one unit. Obviously, subsequent ones would be cheaper since the design would already be done. There are no significant design challenges here, as most of the functionality is already available in COTS products, it's just a matter of integration.
You have vastly overestimated the costs of putting such a system into production. There's the issue of where to store all these
....seriously folks.... (Score:2, Funny)
Is this a report to take seriously?
Slowly but surely (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Slowly but surely (Score:2)
I guess it's true (Score:2)
Smithsonian Folkways (Score:5, Interesting)
I imagine that every so often they see sales jump due to a fad (like when the soundtrack to "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" spurred a new interest in traditional Southern country music), so I am glad to see them adopt a just-in-time manufaturing method to deal with the ups and downs of their markets. I am not sure if this is their official mandate or not, but their goal is to see that all titles are always available.
One problem I forsee, what is the shelf life of the dyes used in CD-Rs? I think that the gold ones are projected to last 100 years before they break down. Am I right, or did I remember it wrong?
On another point, I do not believe the RIAA's argument that "more blank than prerecorded CDs were sold last year." At my job, we go through 100 CDs a week archiving data, and at another job we went through 3000 per quarter releasing software updates for our customers. I have also worked for a large university which licenses software from the big companies; the internal distributions are done via CD-R (thousands of employees).
As usual, the RIAA presents a number without any proof of what it means. This is like their whole "falling sales" argument; labels' sales fell less than the number of new titles they didn't release during the same years. But then again, the RIAA represents what must be the single largest population of cocaine, crack, and heroin users in the world (and I am not talking about musicians), so cogent argument is not what I'd expect from them.
Re:Smithsonian Folkways (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Smithsonian Folkways (Score:2)
On-Demand Publishing (Score:4, Interesting)
Careless reading (Score:2, Funny)
My Fuzzy Math (Score:2)
I would say if a band went the "homebrew"/online distribution route, they could produce the CD's and packaging for about $1.50. If they were able to move 15,000-20,000 to there "cult" followers then everyone is happy.
Let the labels handle the heavy hitters -- let the other bands swallow their pride and realize that even though they may never go gold or platinum that they can still make a pretty good living peddling their wares to their fans.
Offtopic but hopefully informative (Score:3, Informative)
For example:
http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.n ytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/media/17FOLK.html
becomes:
http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/med ia/17FOLK.html
Alternatively, click here [nytimes.com]
No need to register ... Full text here (Score:4, Informative)
February 17, 2003 Smithsonian Folkways Dusts Off Titles With New Technology By CHRIS NELSON
he major music companies may fret over falling revenue, but one label saw its business jump 33 percent last year -- thanks in part to the recordable compact discs that the industry says are hurting its sales.
The label, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is using recordable CD's, or CD-R's, to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog is always available. And in doing so, the label best known for dusty recordings by Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly is taking initial steps toward creating a 21st-century "celestial jukebox," where nothing recorded ever goes out of print.
The Folkways inventory includes 2,168 titles dating to 1948. Some of those are collections by familiar troubadours like Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. But many more are obscurities like "Music From Western Samoa: From Conch Shell to Disco" (1984) and "Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods" (1955).
Most recording companies, if they would ever release titles like that to begin with, would let the master tapes languish once a first pressing was sold out and initial interest had waned.
The notion of any recording falling into history's dust bin was said to gall Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records. Dan Sheehy, director of Smithsonian Folkways, recalled that Mr. Asch used to ask if Q would be dropped from the alphabet just because it wasn't used as much as the rest of the letters.
When the Smithsonian Institution bought Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987, the museum agreed to keep every title in print. Initially, requests for rare, out-of-stock albums were fulfilled with dubbed cassettes.
Now, music fans hankering for "Burmese Folk and Traditional Music" from 1953 can pay $19.95 and receive a CD-R "burned" with the original album, along with a standard cardboard slipcase that includes a folded photocopy of the original liner notes.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the major music corporations, worries that CD-R technology aids music piracy. Rather than buy new CD's, the theory goes, people will burn downloaded music onto CD-R's or burn a copy of a friend's CD.
In 2002, 681 million CD's were sold, down from 763 million the year before, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has been using the CD-R technology since 1996 to sell its obscure titles, essentially creating a just-in-time delivery model for record companies. Every time an order comes in, a Folkways employee burns five copies, one for the customer, and four for future requests.
Last year, the company sold 13,467 CD-R's, accounting for 6 percent of its CD sales, said Richard Burgess, director of marketing. Over all, Smithsonian Folkways had net album sales of almost $2.9 million in 2002, up 33 percent from 2001, despite its cutting its advertising budget more than 50 percent.
Interest in Smithsonian Folkways has jumped since the bluegrass-flavored soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2001), from Universal, won a Grammy for Album of the Year and went platinum six times over.
But it is not just rustic American music that Smithsonian Folkways is selling.
A 2002 double-CD set of Middle Eastern and Asian songs called "The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan" has sold 7,800 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Though that is just a fraction of the sales for Eminem in a single week, it is a respectable figure for a museum label that makes no videos, places few ads and deals primarily in music recorded by artists long dead, or in foreign languages, or from locales most Americans will never visit.
"Getting rid of inventory, which is what this custom on-demand stuff is about, is a huge step in the right direction toward making even low-selling albums into a business," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research [slashdot.org].
Industry analysts say it is also a step toward making all music forever available, one the record business has yet to take successfully.
In 1999, Alliance Entertainment's [slashdot.org] RedDotNet subsidiary unveiled kiosks that would burn discs in retail outlets while customers waited. But that program failed, in part because the company was not able to secure licensing agreements with major labels, according to Eric Weisman, president and chief executive of Alliance.
Echo, a new consortium of retailers including Best Buy [slashdot.org], Tower and Wherehouse, is considering development of in-store stations that would allow customers to download music onto portable digital music players like Apple's iPod.
While the Smithsonian Folkways CD-R operation allows the company to fulfill its obligation to keep everything in print, it is a labor-intensive solution that would be inefficient for the higher-demand catalogs of the major labels.
But Smithsonian Folkways is also venturing into just-in-time delivery for more popular titles. Last fall, the company enlisted the print-on-demand company Americ Disc to manufacture CD's, which are expected to sell significantly more copies than typical CD-R's, but fewer than full-blown retail releases. These Collector's Series discs come with full-color booklets and are identical in quality to commercial releases, but are sold only through the Smithsonian Folkways Web site (www.si.edu/folkways [si.edu]).
The first CD in the series, "Bells & Winter Festivals of Greek Macedonia" proved so popular through mail order that the company quickly made it a regular retail release.
It is hard for some to ignore the irony that as Smithsonian Folkways uses CD-R's to further its business, much of the industry hopes to limit the technology's use.
"It's almost like a little bootlegger's operation going on," said Dean Blackwood, owner of Revenant Records, an esoteric Americana label.
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$20 a pop (Score:2, Insightful)
I imagine that is to cover the costs of a human being touching every copy they sell, going down the hall to photocopy the liner notes and such. But how about freeing this stuff to Project Gutenberg or sticking it on ibiblio? Much wider access, no human touch required (you could pdf the liner notes) and Moses Asch's mission would be that much closer to home.
And with that much listenable music out on the web, I'd probably never buy another CD again!
Re:$20 a pop (Score:3, Insightful)
This is precisely what scares the RIAA so much.
Thanks to presumption of guilt... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the label in this story owns the copyrights to the music in their catalogue, so they can burn to CD-R themselves without repercussions; it is their right to copy that they're exercising, be it to pressed disks, burned disks, cassette tapes, or even etched onto drums designed to be played on old wire recorders.
CDRs won't help... (Score:3, Insightful)
The archival value of a random track of Brittany Spears's is zero.
In general, her discography's value goes to zero as her age approaches 50. See also Tiffany.
Generalizations of this Law Of Bulging Middles to other pop stars is left as an exercise to the
(hint: analysis of Madonna or Michael Jackson requires taking into account of relativistic effects.)
It doesn't have to be labor intensive. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can imagine easily setting up a system that takes web orders, burns a CD-R with printed label-side, concurrently prints liner notes (rather than photocopy), sleeve graphics, and a mailing label. The labor consists of assembling the liner notes, sleeve, disc and packaging for shipment.
This model faces many of the same hurdles and benefits that the on-demand print model does for book publishing. No book need be out of print and revisions would be [relatively] painless. Unfortunately, most of the on-demand print companies have gone bust in the last couple of years before the consumer even had a chance to sample the product.
On-demand reproduction technologies tend to shift the costs and responsibility for replication away from the publisher and closer to the consumer. The article gives the example of reproduction at retail-outlets (failed). The extreme case puts reproduction completely in the hands of the consumer. The publishers are lured be the desire to sell something without actually having to manufacture material goods, but horrified with the thought that the consumer may then reproduce the material in whatever manner/media the consumer sees fit: computer, CD player, portable music player, digital home music library, car audio, home video soundtrack, Braille, eBook,
Re:It doesn't have to be labor intensive. (Score:2)
who? (Score:2)
Maybe we need a new tack on protesting (Score:2)
Of course like all other protests, for this to actually turn any heads, about 10000 people or so would have to show up. When the news shows up, people tell them that the RIAA gets all these laws passed to protect their right to silence music, and the protest is because the musicians have the right to have their music heard for a fair price, however the RIAA companies are refusing to take our money.
scale (Score:2)
Some small underground labels are using exclusivly (Score:3, Insightful)
I [syncromesh.net] have, and there are a number of other small underground labels that are doing it too. It works best for those obscure genres, or smaller audiences for genres such as Power Noise, Dark Ambient, etc etc.
I have even begun considering doing a sort of Custom Compilation type business based off this idea, where someone can select the tracks they want, and I burn it for them. the artist gets paid per song burned, and the customer gets exactly what they want. Heh heh, now all I gotta do is find the time to write the code for the web interface, and billing system. one of these days.
But the CDr format has been a real boon to my genre of music, Industrial electronic style of music. It hasn't hurt us at all, just the big guys who are unwilling to change.
badger
Syncromesh Audio
Re:Why don't record companies... (Score:2)