The Physical Product Blues
These days, listening to music is so little work. With your iPad or phone you can stream any album from any era to any modern music system. I use Roon to stream my own digital library and Qobuz (which is delivered in high definition). Although streaming is a source of revenue for the music industry, the profit margins on physical products – digital or analogue are obviously far higher. To get people, like me, off the couch and flipping over records or sliding in CDs or Blu-Rays – there must be some advantage over streaming. This means premium product – the sound must be excellent, the pressing perfect, the packaging alluring – and there must be a sense of value. Unfortunately, the music industry doesn’t seem to get the message.
Over the weekend I sat down to listen to two albums that had been sitting in plastic wrap on the shelf- Tim Garland’s Return to the Fire and David Crosby’s Sky Trails. The Garland album wasn’t much to look at, but only cost me £16. The Crosby album (all of his recent work has been really good) was a bit more expensive in a sumptuous gatefold (sandpaper inner sleeve, mind). Both records were riddled with fuzz – that scuzzy static-y sound that you occasionally get burned with when you buy older “near mint” records – but the previous owner used a knitting needle rather than a stylus. No amount of cleaning can remove the sound of bad pressing. Unfortunately, the Garland album was beyond it’s return date: low and behold – I could stream it at 24/88 on Qobuz without having to listen to that scratchy fuzzy sound on every rotation. So I’m stuck with a record by a favourite artist that I will never listen to again. This is one of the drawbacks of the “vinyl” revolution – the relentless deterioration in pressing quality consequent of mass production of “Eagles – Their Greatest Hits” and “The Dark Side of the Moon,” Record Store Day and the crappy vinyl records you get in “superdeluxe” sets. If you buy vinyl records – take them out of the shrink wrap and play them the day they arrive: return if the sound is bad or they are warped.
I bought Mercury Rev’s 5 CD deluxe edition of The Secret Migration: two of the CDs refused to play. Back it went for replacement. Richard and Lind Thompson’s box set has the same problem.
CDs have been around for nearly 40 years – and suddenly they are having problems pressing them as well! FFS.
October. Neil Young announces ARCHIVES II. At last. But no – this won’t be a multi media Blu Ray collection (Archive I was) – it will be a cheap ass 10 CD set in the same gargantuan box (so big and empty that Ryanair would force you to check it in) that accompanied Archives I (and I tossed mine into a dumpster years ago keeping the inner wallet) – all for a few dollars shy of $300. They pressed a mere 3000 (everybody knows that Neil Young would expect to sell 100,000 copies of this box set) and sold them on his website (not the mom and pop record shops that have been hawking his products for the past 53 years). Instant sell out – and straight up on eBay. Now he has announced a few thousand more – in the same stupid box with different lettering for a modest price decrease. Inevitably you will be able, eventually, to buy the product for about $60 on Amazon; next year or the one after. Just to put this into perspective – for €300 I could buy 10 CDs of Neil Young music – that I can probably stream any day now at high res- or I could, and did, spend €250 (including delivery) on Pink Floyd – The Later Years – which is a truly amazing product (from Amazon Italy) – full of Blu Rays, tour programs, tour tickets, documentaries, remixed albums etc. (although for the life of me I don’t understand why they bother with the 7 or 8 DVDs – surely anyone who would buy such a product would already have a Blu Ray player (they cost about €25 these days). It is just gorgeous – and, dare I say, almost worth the price.
I really don’t understand the Neil Young pricing model – with the two versions of ARCHIVES II – the most money he could make is about $1.5 million. For a reasonable price and worldwide distribution – taking into account retailer fees etc – I figure he would make about $5 million profit – and that is just the Christmas market. It is bizarre. Moreover, it is bringing out the worst Record Store Day behavior from people. And remember, the premium pricing is to buy a big empty box that is the size of a desktop PC – that absolutely nobody would display on their shelve because 1: it is the shape of a Jenga tower and 2. it is fuck**g ugly. The Pink Floyd box, designed by Hipgnosis, could be displayed in a gallery.
I would, however, happily, shell out €60 for the high resolution download.
audioexchange 
Neil and Co. really blew it with Archives II. All these years waiting for it, and it turned into a cluster of a release. I also don’t understand why Neil would allow those stand-alone archival releases to come out in the year/months before the box set in which they also appear. That really seems like something he would vehemently oppose. I held off purchasing all of them except the Live Roxy release, anticipating they’d be included in the eventual box, and sure enough… I also have to think he’s got enough material that he could do those individual releases as appetizers, but then release completely different material in the box. I’m winding down on my purchases, but I still prefer physical product. Plus, artists don’t make much money from their work on streaming services. Crosby shouts about it from his mountaintop on Twitter daily.
Completely agree. In fairness to David Crosby, his last four albums have been really excellent. Probably the most consistent of the 1960s artists active today.
I do think that, for physical releases, record companies need to be cognisant of the size of the boxes: I have 30 odd years of CD box sets in a storage locker. Vinyl sets need to be stored more carefully and when they used odd shaped containers – it can be problematic (“Scremadelica” deluxe came out in a 4 inch deep plastic cylinder thing – it cannot be stored vertically with other record as it rolls!). Most record collectors live in modest homes and apartments – NY seems to think that we all have huge basements to house his Archives boxes.
[…] sources on vinyl – and why we are all suckers buying these records. I have also posted on quality control issues with new release vinyl. I also whined about the price of vinyl and the poor quality […]