05.23.07
Howdy y'all,
First of all, kudos to Wilco and everyone in their camp including Nonesuch and WEA. These guys did a great job of setting up their record with indie retail. They also released this on beautiful vinyl WITH A CD OF THE MUSIC INCLUDED! For many customers, this was too good of a package to pass up. You get the vinyl with the nice packaging that you can hug plus a portable version for your car or to rip into your iTunes. This is a huge win for the customer. They should not have to buy the content twice and Nonesuch made the right call. Good show.
What a wild time people. The deals that are going down out there are growing more frustrating by the day. The "paid for" digital channel is obviously a growing force and I think that people have to do their thing with these new companies. However, some of the things folks are doing seems very misplaced.
For example, the new They Might Be Giants, a staple of the indie record store, is only available at iTunes. The physical good will come out in July. Believe me, I understand the need to do exclusives with people but the WHOLE ALBUM? Even worse, according to Billboard today, XL/Beggars has determined that it would be simply unprofitable to put out any physical goods in the US for Dizzee Rascal. Yep, digital only for our country and physical elsewhere. So if US indie retail wants to provide this for their customers, they have to pay DOUBLE price because of the pound? There was not a better way?
I am not here to take shots specifically at the companies doing these deals but to challenge the wisdom of the deals themselves. I look at digital as another retail channel. For something to get exclusively released in this channel or released early to this channel marginalizes the other channel which is were we live. Indie Retail.
I am not worried about competing with iTunes or any other digital provider. Customers can decide unless they don't get a choice. To get it digital or not at all? That, I am worried about. Is music not art any longer?
To understand our brains, listen to this radio interview with AIMS president Eric Levin. He speaks for the way most of us feel out here:
http://www.criminal.com/criminal.mp3
