I don’t think books will ever completely disappear. E-texts and the like will help expand the market, but there’s nothing like the feeling of curling up next to the fireplace with a good, solid BOOK in your hands. And besides, who takes their laptop into the bathroom??
Same can be said for CD’s. I don’t see the physical format ever going away. People like to have something hard & solid in their hands (heh) and mp3s just don’t provide that. That’s why I’ve never stopped buying CD’s, after all.
People thought that the VHS (and now DVD) market would kill movie theaters. Exactly the opposite turned out to be true. There are more movie theaters than ever before, with more people going out to movies than ever before, and nobody’s complaining. Well, maybe about the ticket prices. But even so, VHS has turned out to be one of the biggest boons to the film industry.
If they don’t want to see the album format decline, why don’t they bundle an album’s songs together, offer some exclusive web content or other extras (like a shot at getting good seats at a show, or a t-shirt), and release that all at once for a special price?
A lot of people were sad to see vinyl LPs go too. Many even described that as the “death of the album format” in the 1980’s. No more elaborate album covers. No more warm tones from the needle before the first song. No more discussion of how “side A” is conceptually distinctive from “side B”. No more playing it backwards or at “Chipmunk” speed. No more stacks of 45’s flipping one after another. We just got a shiny little disk in a shrink wrapped plastic box instead. One that would never hiss, pop, melt, warp, or scratch and skip…well that was sort of a lie.
Now that will be things of the past as well, and I think bands need to realise that.
I’m going to the Sleepy Jackson’s concert on Saturday. I got my ticket free when I bought the album. Also, vinyl has experience a resurgence since DJing has become mainstream.
Vinyl never left the underground scene. Bands still release 7" all the time. One of my favorite bands, in a statement that was nice enough, gave you a free CD version with the vinyl release to emphasize how friggin’ cheap they are.
Yeah, or remove all the so called “warm feelings” of surface hiss, pops, etc. so it’s actually listenable.
Wish I had space and money for a good turntable to hook up to my computer. I’ve got some nice songs on vinyl that will likely never find their way to CD. For instance I just discovered that on Santana’s Zebop!, where the LP had the full-length 4:11 version of “Winning”, the CD version uses the 3:28 edited single version!! GAH!!! No wonder I couldn’t find it on Napster…
You see?? This is what iTunes was made for. Oh, that and for the original LP mix of Duran Duran’s “Hold Back the Rain”. Fuck $1/song…for those songs in a legitimate format, I’d pay twenty bucks. Each.
But even so, VHS has turned out to be one of the biggest boons to the film industry.