perfidy

In a codicil to my recent posts about the slow death of the major music labels, Daniel Gross of Slate points out that the compact disc, though bruised and somewhat diminished, is alive and well. Classical and boutique sales, as well as nontraditional distribution schemes, continue to thrive as they always have.

About this, I ain't surprised at all. One of the labels I worked for back in the day had made its reputation - and its fortune - in catering to the long tail. They pioneered nonmusic retail partnerships (like what Starbucks is doing now), direct-to-consumer internet sales, and grassroots marketing, and for a long time did fabulously at it. And in a micro-parable of how the industry now goes, only got into serious trouble when they tried to get too big too fast and found themselves caught flatfooted, too small to compete at the level of the majors and too big to effectively cater to the grassroots fanbase that was a big part of their cachet and bottom line. At the end of the day, or at least the end of my career, the Big Giant Album from a Faded Popstar lost money hand over fist with as many returned lots flooding back in as had gone out the door in the first place, and the little record of birthing room music that had sold twenty to forty copies a week for fifteen years continued to sell twenty to forty copies a week, week in and week out.

Guess which one's still in print?

It's not the compact disc that's dead - it's the entire major label system that lives and dies by selling millions of them at a time.