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cassettes and CDs were dirt-cheap to produce but the average consumer hadn't caught on to the fact and on each sale of either the profit margin was tremendous.
by goatinaboat 7y ago
cassettes and CDs were dirt-cheap to produce but the average consumer hadn't caught on to the fact and on each sale of either the profit margin was tremendous.
The fundamental collapse in profits is because once you could sell an album with 3-4 good tracks and the rest filler, but that’s much harder to do now. People will prefer to buy just the songs they like, so you might get 3x0.99 whereas previously you could have sold the album of 10 tracks for 10.99. The cost of producing the filler tracks was negligible anyway.
- wutbrodo 7y agoIt's worth noting that this was the case even before streaming services arrived. I distinctly remember reading an article about how Kelis and Norah Jones were the top-pirated artists of a given time period, but their album sales widely differed, since Norah Jones had multiple popular tracks while Kelis just had her one hit single.
- goatinaboat 7y agoNorah Jones had multiple popular tracks while Kelis just had her one hit single. I made the mistake of buying Gwen Stefani’s solo album, which is literally one decent track, which was the single, and all the rest filler. That was the turning point for me and I expect many others have had similar experiences.
- scarface74 7y agoThe music industry saw revenue increases when iTunes was at its height.
- goatinaboat 7y agoI wonder how much of that was people re-buying rather than ripping existing tapes and CDs though. The music industry also successfully persuaded people to buy again on new media remember.
- scarface74 7y agoWell Jobs said in his “Thoughts on Music” essay they only 4% of music on iPods was bought on iTunes.