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Warner to Sell Music on DVD
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Warner Music is planning an aggressive attempt to replace the CD by pushing consumers to buy their music on specially outfitted DVDs, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's music to the ears of some struggling retailers who seek a new physical product to re-capture some of the online (and file-sharing) market. 'As a retailer I'm going to be holding on desperately for any compelling physical product,' said Eric Levin, who owns two independent stores called Criminal Records in the Atlanta area. 'So the introduction of a new format...is cause for excitement.' More from the article: 'But there are some stumbling blocks that may discourage consumers from embracing DVD albums. The new discs would not play on normal CD players, meaning consumers could not simply pop their new discs into their car stereos or other players. And users would not be able to copy the main audio mix onto their computers. On the proposed DVD album, the main audio mix is to be protected by the same software that already protects the content on normal DVDs.'"
The only way to make DVD's viable as a music platform IMHO would be to increase the amount of real content (i.e. music) which was on the thing.
As someone mentioned, you can cram up to 40 albums on a DVD without even getting to the higher capacity setups.
Of course studios would never do this because then you could buy , for instance, every Beatles album on one dvd. PERIOD. Either they would have to charge both arms and a leg for it (how much is the Beatles CD collection complete again?) which people wouldn't normally pay in one drop. Or they'd have to admit that larger collections of media aren't proportionally worth more than single new albums.
Not to mention several artists would struggle to put together a DVD worth of real solid content without videos.
Now, on the other hand a DVDA car stereo which could play DVD's I cram full of music? I'm on that. But easier to just get a 30g ipod with a car hookup. So no reason to push that technology either.
End result, music companies are struggling because they don't want to accept that the consumer is deciding the path of the industry and they aren't.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I wish $5 CDs would happen. If the price of an album of music was 5 dollars, I would buy music again... as it is, I probably have about $20 to spend on "fun" per week (I'm a poor college student) -- current CD prices steer me clear of buying music (except from local bands) because I could only buy 1 per week and that would be my only source of fun. I can easily get the music from those CDs by clicking a button online that says "download torrent"... and that still leaves me with my $20 to spend on other sources of fun.
I justify all my purchases on how much happiness it will bring me and for how long versus its cost: with CDs being almost 20 bucks after tax, I cannot justify this -- I make $10 an hour (University Helpdesk, crappy pay) and most CDs have less than an hour of music -- so two hours of work to get less than an hour of pleasure... pleasure that is only so-so... it's hard to justify that. I already have a lot of music, does that new CD from "Stabby McStabStab" really mean that much to me?
If CDs were $5, I would easily be able to justify spending my money on them: "it's a half hour of work for 45 minutes of rockin' good tunes!" plus I wouldn't shy away from buying CDs due to "duds" -- so what if I bought one $5 CD that royally sucked; I also bought three really amazing ones.
Oh well, it's not as if the recording industry dinosaurs are smart. Hopefully they'll be extinct soon.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
I ran into a DVD that wouldn't rip. Sony, naturally. I had to install a few apps and it wound up taking about an hour. Very labor-intensive and flaky process. It reminded me of old days, copying protected disks on my commodore 64. It's the same method, too. Bad sectors on the disc.
It was Capote and I'll never buy a Sony DVD again.
Man, you really need that seminar!