There was a rather heated discussion yesterday between two individuals:
1. A brilliant marketing mind with years of experience in the music industry (me…)
2. A co-op student toiling partially under the whim and wisdom of the aforementioned brilliant marketing mind.
The discussion centered around the topic of products, value, and power. Specifically: is a digital item an actual product with an actual monetary value. If so, who determines its price? #1 and #2 disagreed pretty strongly. Here’s the basic breakdown:
#1: It’s a product – with an ascribed value determined by the person who chooses to sell/distribute it.
#2: Value is to be determined by whoever purchases it; if you know where to get it for free, then it’s value is zero.
Unfortunately, the conversation was cut short by the close of business. It’ll continue, and undoubtedtly get recapped here, but here’s where we stopped:
What about the artist’s intent?
Why does physical vs. digital even matter?
Feel free to chime in and prove #1 or #2 wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time (for #1 at least … ).
Artistic intent is individual to each artist. There are artists left whose intent is to make and sell a record regardless of the physical or digital form the recording takes. These people are dinosaurs. Intent in the modern era should most likely focus on promoting potential moneymaking activities such as concerts, licensing and merch. No one made any money from selling records anyway (no artists in the massive majority of the music biz). Give away digital, sell vinyl, forget about CDs altogether.
Digital vs physical is less of a battle than most industry execs and prominent blogging voices would have one think. It’s obvious at this point that relying on bulk physical sales (which were CDs for the last 20 years) just isn’t a viable profit scheme anymore. It may hurt the execs and the boards to admit this, but they’ve gotta downsize and cater to what people want, which is free digital music. Digital recordings are a promotional tool now, nothing more. Recognize that fact, redirect capital from CD production toward the only physical product that feels substantial enough to warrant a $15 price tag, and make sure your artists can handle life on the tour circuit. Bam, instant integrity boost and viable, sustainable business model, albeit on a much smaller scale.