meta-roj

downhill battle and p2pnet have joined forces to put together movies for music.

with what seems to be a bit of a nod to bush in 30 seconds, movies for music is an effort to tell the story of the business of music and get it out to the public.

if anyone wants to do a film adaptation of the music business archive here, i’m game. let’s go 🙂

get the filming on… contest is only open until july 21.

if it worked once, maybe it’ll work again.

every generation has to disparage the music that the next generation creates, but c’mon kids… this is just silly.

barry asks the question….

Hypothetical question: If you were sitting on a VC committee in 1980, at the dawn of the CD, would you have voted for investing in a new chain of music retailer?

he’s got his own answer, of course (no), but these answers are all clouded by the perspective of hindsight….

so one thing i would like to throw into this discussion is that when the cd was born (which i guess is something that we really should talk about more, considering all the death-of-the-cd stuff around here…), it was the great hope of the music business – switching everyone up to a new, and more expensive format.

there’s some data out there. unfortunately, the easiest data to play with comes from our good friends over in japan – specifically the recording industry association of japan. so, excuse me for a moment while i jump into a wholly different market to extrapolate some data from two handy tables the riaj has provided – transition of audio recordings – unit basis and transition of audio recordings – value basis.

barry’s question, of course is only really relevant around the birth of the cd – so that’s the early- to mid-1980’s (us unit sales of cd’s exceeded unit sales of vinyl in 1988, if my foggy old memory serves me right).

so, to pick a random pre-cd point in the short evolution of the life of the recording industry, let’s look at 1980, then somewhere around that inflection point, 1988, and then 8 years later, 1996.

Transition of Audio Recordings – Unit Basis:

Transition of Audio Recordings – Value Basis:

glue these together and you can get a unit-value chart:

the first thing to notice is that the cd formats are always the best unit-value in a given year… and that’s important.

now, you do have to look at this a little cross-eyed for the next step in the story, but it goes something like this (units are yen, but it’s the relative measures that i’m looking at, i’m also going to ignore the singles-formats for now, but i wanted to include them for possible use later):

in 1980, the unit-value of an album on vinyl was 1.505. unit-value of an album on cassette was 1.582, so the average unit-value of an album was 1.55-ish.

the promise of the introduction of the cd was two-fold – first, you get a better unit-value (for all kinds of reasons – indestructable! no pops! no scratches! no hisses! digital! new! wow!), and second, all the fans of all the bands will eventually buy another copy of the old stuff that’s still in production in the new format. and you can see a little of that reflected in the 1988 unit-value chart:

by 1980, the unit-value of an album on vinyl rose to 1.723 (+14.5%), the unit-value of an album on cassette dropped to 1.325 (-19.4%), and the unit-value of an album on cd was 2.072, which is a 20% premium over vinyl and a 56% premium over cassette.

of course, the old formats were on the way out (some are still predicting the end of the cassette, but the source tables say about 13 billion cassettes in 2002…), and the value-gap widens.

by 1996, the unit-value of the album-on-cd had dropped to 1.621 (-22%), but it was still commanding a significant premium over vinyl (16.6%) and cassette (82.8%).

would i have invested in a record-store chain with a hot new technology on the horizon that commanded a premium? maybe. if i was convinced that the industry was really behind this new-fangled silver cd-thing – and the case is easy to make (indestructable! no pops! no scratches! no hisses! digital! new! longer playing! smaller than vinyl! flatter than cassettes! cheaper to manufactuer than cassettes! wow!), yeah, i might think there was a future in the retail business of recorded music. but i’ve been a sucker before.

just the industry-wide growth might be enough to convince me – even without the cd… just look at the totals: market value went from 292,844 to 583,862 in 16 years. that’s real close to doubling value, but not fast enough (less than 10%/year) to make it interesting as a venture investment…. but then again… if i was a an established retailer… and i thought i could scoop off the cream of this crop….

i didn’t quite finish my thoughts on this (i really wanted to bring in the whole musigeeks thing), but i’m late getting out the door. i’m sure i screwed up some of the math, so if you notice something funky with the numbers, let me know so i can fix it for posterity. have a good weekend!

i guess synthesis is what i do here, so here’s a quickie on the business of music…

with a nod to barry ritholtz, whom i’ve neglected for too many moons, and john buckman, whom i’ve pretty much neglected since i dropped some first impressions here… two statistics worth considering from very different sources, but mostly about that little thing we call the album.

CD prices drop slightly [barry ritholtz – big picture]

The average retail price of full-length CDs fell to $13.29 in the first quarter of 2004

Magnatune summary for April 2004 [john buckman – magnatune]

The average purchase price for Magnatune albums in April was $8.59

anyone want to guess which statistic is closer to “real market value”?

update 8:30am: barry responded to this in the ungodly hours of the morning, so i was inspired to go after another metric i knew i could put my fingers on quickly:

cd baby current numbers:
1,007,312 CDs sold online to customers.
$7,953,216.85 paid to artists.

that works out to $7.895 per cd, plus the $4-per-cd terms that cd baby works under, makes the average retail price of cds that move through cd baby $11.895. i do have to note that this is the average of all cd’s ever sold through cd baby, which is not a good comparison for the spot-prices of the other metrics in this post, so take it for what it’s worth…. maybe we can encourage cd baby and magnatune to publish monthly data (that seems like a reasonable sampling window) and see what’s hiding in there.

linda ronstadt [ap]

I never go back. I never listen to them. Music is a work in progress. On a record, it gets frozen in time, and it’s oddly unnatural.

i suppose i should get back to my business-of-music rants a little more, now that some things in this world have resolved…. and to kick that off, i’d like to pick up on one of those painful success stories that doesn’t get enough attention. after all, here at the meta-roj blog, we’re very often about sharing things that don’t get enough attention.

the dead will be appearing in virginia in a couple months – and if this is any indication, ticket sales are not too shabby. front-row center stage tickets to this show are $600, and everything listed on the page is $100 or more.

but how can this be? the internet archive has a pretty sizable chunk of the whole dead history available for free (1300+ shows), so who would spend $600 for a seat?

file sharing in the extreme, that. you don’t even have to worry about the riaa knocking down your door.

apparently, neither death nor giving it away can kill the dead. i guess that makes the title of this post a bit ironic.

dolly parton

I will never retire. I hope to fall dead in the middle of some great event or some great song I’m singing. Then they’ll say, ‘Oh well, she went happy and doing what she loves.’

reuters

Four years ago, ABBA was offered $1 billion to reunite. The answer was ‘No.’ But what if that figure doubled?

“No, not even if you did that,” Ulvaeus told Reuters.

“It is never going to happen again. I think it is a bit too long now. We split up in 1981. People haven’t seen us as a group since then and it would come as such a disappointment to them.”

so dolly will die on stage, and abba will never return to the stage.

i guess it’s important to note that abba’s probably still making a decent wage with the $750+ million grossing “mama mia” musical…

with the recent media attention, i thought it would be an interesting exercise to see just how much light had been shed on the 97 radio story from this little blog.

as you might recall, this all started with a friend of mine asking for an opinion. a few minutes of critical analysis and hard thinking later, i had an opinion. given the powers of amazing modern technology, i realized that someone else out there might also benefit from that opinion… and a blog post was born. there isn’t a lot of traffic on the meta-roj blog, but there is some amazing googlejuice.

well, all that was back in january. since then, the thread here has developed more than 50 comments, despite my no-doubt-scaring-people-away anti-comment-spam policy. for this tiny little corner of the web, that’s a big deal. more importantly is the kind of people that have found their way here – particularly john foxworthy. he was on this case long before i caught wind of it – he had the backstory, and came forward here to share it.

if it’s not painfully obvious, i have zero tolerance for parasites – particularly if they prey on me or people i care about. those that prey on the arts hurt everyone, those that prey on the net hurt everyone, and those that flaunt the judicial system that should protect us hurt everyone – these are measures of society. unfortunately, the world is full of such people. this space will always be available to shed some light on them.

the most i could offer was an opinion – hopefully useful, but still just an opinion. since then the post has served as a nexus of sorts, and the facts of the situation have percolated up.

conveniently, i do keep the logs. there are a number of principals involved in the story, so there are a lot of ways people might wander into the story. since then, we’ve had more than 1200 “direct hits” on the 97 radio post. so, just for fun… here’s some breakdown of search-engine queries that got people here…

deftone records: 163
97radio: 139
97 radio: 105
97 radio scam: 96
talent2k: 26
97 radio spring break tour: 17
john foxworthy 97 radio
john foxworthy: 9
carlo oddo: 9
97 radio phoenix: 8
97 radio promotion: 7
carlo k oddo: 7
97 radio promotions phoenix az: 5
97 radio spring break: 5
97 radio john foxworthy: 5
talent 2k: 5
97 radio sun city az: 5
jeff foxworthy 97 radio: 5 [heh. sorry john…]

… and some others. anyway, that’s how some of you found your way here. not all of these searches came through google, but for the sake of providing a link, google got the nod.

odd, however, that google’s found nobody but me linking to the post. that’s a lot of traffic for an isolated little blog.

anyway, i thought some of you might find that interesting. now i need to get back to breaking apart poker chips (don’t ask). thanks to everyone that’s come in; i hope it’s saved some of you some heartache and dollars.

[with a nod to john foxworthy, who’s been leading the charge on 97 radio]

from wwlp tv, a story [windows media, internet explorer only] on the 97 radio scam with a positive twist. since they’re leaving out anyone who won’t play with windows media or microsoft browsers, a transcript follows:

anchor

a local alternative rock and roll band has found themselves on the pages of rolling stone magazine. this pubilicty has the group from franklin county reaching new heights, but as 22 news reporter jeff sealy tells us, it all started when the group fell victim to a publicity scam

jeff sealy

an opportunity for rock and roll bands: for a one thousand dollar fee, tour the gulf coast during spring break playing in front of the college crowds. flight, accomodations and a shot at stardom included.

leslie pasco, lead singer, promize

in exchange for $200 a band member, you’d also get six months of representation in terms of sending your cd out to labels, radio stations, etcetera. i mean, it was just… it looked like a really great opportunity.

jeff sealy

the organizers, the arizona-based 97 radio, checked out with the better business bureau, so the band promize signed on and paid their $1000. but when it was time to fly south, 97 radio hadn’t been heard from and they couldn’t be reached. then the band realized

leslie pasco, lead singer, promize

there’s something really wrong with this

jeff sealy

with a simple search of 97 radio on the internet, promize found out that hundreds of other bands had been scammed by the same ad.

david manning, drummer, promize

so we got all these bands together, and it turned out that it was probably in the millions. some people were taken for 30… 40 thousand dollars at a shot. now the fbi has assigned two guys to the case.

jeff sealy

since, the culprits have been identified by the fbi, promize and all the other bands are still waiting for their refunds, but in th emeantime, rolling stone magazine has taken an interest in the story, and a recent article featuring promize’s efforts to uncover the scam has brought them some positive attention.

david manning, drummer, promize

we have radio stations calling us, record labels… rolling stone is doing another article next month. it’s probably the best thousand dollars we ever spent in our lives.

jeff sealy

jeff sealy, 22 news.

anchor

but the band does still want their thousand dollars back. they’ve got cd out and are currently playing in venues around the state.

the video does feature a screenshot of the original post – a split-second of mostly my [in]famous open-ended tongue-in-cheek record-deal offer. word to the wise – check the meta-roj blog even if they do check out with the better business bureau 🙂

i haven’t heard or seen promize, so i can’t comment on the band. when their music finds me, i’ll share some thoughts on that too (this really is about music, y’know…)

since this is a mass-media moment for meta-roj, i thought i’d put it in a new entry, but if you’re here to comment on 97 radio, i strongly suggest you find the original thread. go there. do something.

(i think not)

the sydney morning herald leads me to some music industry numbers from the flipside of the planet.

the aria (that’s australian record industry association) has released their industry statistics for 2003. their headline: “Music DVD continues its rise whilst CD singles slide further.”

sure, there’s still room for indsutry spin, but the aussies managed 6% revenue growth in 2003, and managed to break sales records with total unit sales 1% higher than the previous record volume. all this despite the gobal internet and the vast number of pirates and thieves that the riaa hasn’t managed to prosecute yet.

how can this be? well, there’s a hint in the release – unit prices for cd’s are down, unit volume is up (this is a difficult concept, maybe you can ask an economist to explain it to you), dvd formats are up (this is an “adding value” approach), and there’s a mysterious “other” category which increased 6666.20% (units) or 5951.76% (dollars) over 2002. the footnote on the table says that this category “includes sales of Mini Disks & SACD” – but i’m guessing it also includes online sales. there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of play for a 6000-percent increase in a category.

peter martin has his own analysis, and while i disagree on some points (death of the album and it’s about the singles and suchlike…), it’s good to have perspectives.

strangely, this isn’t too far from some things we touched on here and there a couple months ago. so maybe it’s not so different.

then again, who is delta goodrem? 14-times platinum? and not a peep here.

update: slashdot has more.