Not to sound too bitchy, but no one's told me or my stores that there's no
"singles" market anymore. We sell lots of singles and rely on them to a
great extent to stay in business. The casualness with which people ask for
free music in the form of MP3s or copied CDRs really frightens me. Records
that are unavailable as in out of print is one thing, but records that are
just a little hard to find... That seems a bit much. I think MP3s and Real
Audio streams are INCREDIBLY useful tools to get people to sample and try
out music, but not to replace buying music. Give people a taste of the song
(or the record) not the whole damn thing. I think labels should put more 2-3
minute samples of tracks out there, but whole songs? I think not.
Rest assured the singles market is not dead, it's just underground and under
siege. Any one who loves underground music should encourage every one they
know to go out and BUY music. We all need people to buy music or the
musicians/labels making the music won't be able to keep making it. And the
small labels get hit the hardest as they have the smallest sales to begin
with.
Dirk van den Heuvel (dirkv@groovedis.com)
Groove Distribution
http://www.groovedis.com
Your Guide To The Underground
-----Original Message-----
From: Elson Trinidad [mailto:elson@westworld.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 9:23 PM
To: B. Allison; Jazz Acid
Subject: Re: Nappies
At 06:52 PM 4/25/00 -0700, B. Allison wrote:
> Personally, I just started using Napster about two
>weeks ago. But I still buy an incredible amount of
>music. I think Napster just lets me find stuff I could
>never get my hands on without it.
Same here. There is no real "singles" market anymore. 45s are no longer
made, CD singles are too expensive and cassette singles are (were?) a joke.
So I treat MP3s like singles. If I get a couple MP3s from a certain artist
and I happen to like them, I'll buy the album. If the labels were smart
they'd give away or sell MP3 "singles" of a song and the amount donwloaded
will gauge its success.
I'm all for distributing and collecting MP3s, and I love how some
import/rare stuff can be found via Napster (hey, if the labels can't sell
them here in the first place, they haven't lost a cent). But I draw the
line at ripping entire CDs. If you want to make a few songs available, go
on ahead, but I don't think ripping or downloading an entire CD is cool.
Elson
- 30 -
: . elson trinidad, los angeles, california, usa
: . elson@westworld.com : www.westworld.com/~elson
: . groove to the futurethnic beats of e:trinity at www.mp3.com.etrinity
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