Re: Make Your Own Compilation CD Site - CDUCTIVE.COM
Elson Trinidad
Mon, 22 Dec 1997 16:27:59 -0800
At 10:22 AM 12/22/97 -0500, k kiernan wrote:
>This is good and bad.
>
>1) Good: obvious. all the tracks you want, none you don't. save money.
>keep record labels from charging outrageous money for lots of useless
>tracks.
>
>2) Bad: not so obvious. if this catches on, and it will, it will mean
>the death of complete albums, and the beginning of a new world, where only
>singles get made. if there is no revenue at all associated with "album
>cuts," they will cease to exist. also, because of reduced revenue, less
>successful artists will not be able to survive on their proportionately
>reduced income, and only successful singles artists will squeeze them out.
This "Make your own comp" concept isn't *entirely* new; in the late
'80s-early '90s
some record store chains in the U.S. embarked on this venture with a
company that did something called the Personics System. Basically, you
pored through a catalog of songs, listed down the song's ID number on a
card, and you would pay something like 75 cents per song (I forgot the real
amount). Then the clerk at the record store would enter your song info into
a computer and it would make a cassette copy of the songs, even including
printed labels on the cassette with your song.
As far as I know this service didn't last very long; it was either a total
flop or perhaps the major labels and/or publishers caused a fuss, or maybe
a combination of both.
IMHO, I do see a demand for the "Make your own CD comp" concept, but I
don't see it totally 'killing the album.' Albums - meaning a released
collection of recorded material by an artist, regardless of format (i.e.
CD, LP, cassette, etc) are sort of benchmarks in time, which are part of
the musical culture in the time it was released and was popular, and
sometimes, even part of general culture through its timelessness. And the
fact that you own an album by some artist draws people who own the same to
a common musical ground - whether it's the millions of people who own The
Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" or Michael Jackson's "Thriller" or a new release
by Roni Size or Incognito or DJ Shadow: "You have that album, too? Cool!"
Elson
Elson Trinidad :: Los Angeles, CA, USA
elson@westworld.com :: http://www.westworld.com/~elson
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