An insider's theory on falling CD sales
on
Napster Not To Blame
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I heard a new twist on the "because they put out crappy CDs" theory, a theory that, interestingly enough, came from a friend who is lawyer for one of the big five record labels. She said the reason CD sales are being hurt by file-sharing (a premise I dispute, but, anyway) is that the labels are putting out CDs with one or two "hit" tunes and eight fillers. Naturally, most listeners would rather just have the hits, and they don't want to pay for the schlock. So, they go to Kazaa/Napster/Gnutella etc., get the one or two songs and don't have any interest in hearing the other tunes. Just passing along the theory of someone in the biz.
See, the thing is, I'm not sure that the items you dismiss (stereo-link, Yamaha) should be dismissed. Stereo-Link, which I've decided to try myself since it's way cheap, is really just a DAC converter using the USB port for output. But if you look at their website, it looks like the sound quality is very, very high -- far better than the MP3-based units, because their digital-analog compression is obviously excellent and all the "stuff" is happening on the computer -- whether it be MP3 decompression or WAV playing. It allows you to treat your computer as a jukebox using your stereo, with the limitation being the physical connection to the computer, easily ameliorated by connecting the stereo-link to a cheap, fanless box (g3 iMac, anyone?) connected to an ethernet network.
My point is, no one has really dug in and looked at the combination of features and audio quality in terms of evaluating which of these units will serve one's needs most successfully. I'm willing to give up a lot of the cool geek gizmos in favor of better sound (I rip and archive mostly in lossless compression formats -- let's not even get the conversation about which one of those to use started!).
What would be really great would be if someone actually tested all the various computer to stereo devices that are now hitting the market and made some sense of their differences, both in terms of features and in terms of quality.
There's, by my count:
Rio Central & Rio Receiver (www.sonicblue.com) Audiotron(http://www.turtlebe ach.com/site/products/audiotron/) Lansonic Digital Audio Server (www.lansonic.com) Request Audio Requester (www.request.com) SliMP3 (www.slimdevices.com) Stereo-Link (www.stereo-link.com) Yamaha CAVIT (http://www.yamaha.com/yec/cavit/)
No one has mentioned Request, Lansonic or Yamaha products, to my knowledge. Nor has anyone compared the sound quality output to that of, say, the SoundBlaster Audigy.
This is clearly a burgeoning category, but I for one could use some help separating the winners from the losers.
So, I am an literary agent, and let me say that there is some serious misinformation here.
For one thing, though I love selling books to small presses, their contracts are always more restrictive, more draconian, more money-grabbing than the corporate publishers' versions. That's because running a small press is a far more financially difficult endeavor (it's a true labor of love), and small presses need to eke every dollar they can out of the books they publish. Do I like these contracts? Do I feel that they are "the best" I can do for my client? No, but the situation may make more sense overall than dealing with the big corporate publishers (what we call the "trade" houses) for a particular author.
Secondly, many of the concerns raised by the MediaCentral article are legitimate -- but as david.given wrote above, agents not only routinely change the boilerplate on many of these topics, but publishers essentially have different boilerplates they use for agented vs. unagented manuscripts (as well as different negotiated boilerplates for the various agencies).
Yes, the electronic book issue is a sore one for many of us in the agent's and author's community. And other technologies (print-on-demand, direct sales via publisher websites) offer opportunities for profit that under the current contracts authors will not share. It's a conflict that won't get resolved this year. But I'm betting that within the next few years, as these technologies become implemented to a greater extent, we'll see the authors and agents communities even the scales. I certainly will fight these issues fiercely once we see real revenue being generated from them. Part of the problem is that without revenue, it's hard to develop economic and fiscal models that make sense of how to divide the pie. When there ain't no pie, you can't cut it wisely. Once the pie starts to be real, and not a figment of hope and fantasy, you'll see these issues addressed far more aggressively by authors and their agents.
Do I think that publisher's contracts are generally not friendly to the author? Of course. But, within reason, there are things that a good agent can do to mitigate these problems. Not fully, but enough to make contracts more equitable. On the other hand, I can assure you that the agents I know would more than welcome some changes to the standard clauses we view as being draconian and unfair. For example, everyone I know is eager to see the results of the class action suit against HarperCollins regarding the royalty it pays for sales through its Canadian sibling -- many of us view the royalty currently being offered as being both inequitable and substandard in comparison to that offered by the other major publishers. The point is, there's stuff in there that isn't exactly author friendly, but with a good agent, you can sign a reasonable contract and make good on the investment of your time and your intellectual capital.
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I heard a new twist on the "because they put out crappy CDs" theory, a theory that, interestingly enough, came from a friend who is lawyer for one of the big five record labels. She said the reason CD sales are being hurt by file-sharing (a premise I dispute, but, anyway) is that the labels are putting out CDs with one or two "hit" tunes and eight fillers. Naturally, most listeners would rather just have the hits, and they don't want to pay for the schlock. So, they go to Kazaa/Napster/Gnutella etc., get the one or two songs and don't have any interest in hearing the other tunes. Just passing along the theory of someone in the biz.
My point is, no one has really dug in and looked at the combination of features and audio quality in terms of evaluating which of these units will serve one's needs most successfully. I'm willing to give up a lot of the cool geek gizmos in favor of better sound (I rip and archive mostly in lossless compression formats -- let's not even get the conversation about which one of those to use started!).
What would be really great would be if someone actually tested all the various computer to stereo devices that are now hitting the market and made some sense of their differences, both in terms of features and in terms of quality.
e ach.com/site/products /audiotron/)
There's, by my count:
Rio Central & Rio Receiver (www.sonicblue.com)
Audiotron(http://www.turtleb
Lansonic Digital Audio Server (www.lansonic.com)
Request Audio Requester (www.request.com)
SliMP3 (www.slimdevices.com)
Stereo-Link (www.stereo-link.com)
Yamaha CAVIT (http://www.yamaha.com/yec/cavit/)
No one has mentioned Request, Lansonic or Yamaha products, to my knowledge. Nor has anyone compared the sound quality output to that of, say, the SoundBlaster Audigy.
This is clearly a burgeoning category, but I for one could use some help separating the winners from the losers.
So, I am an literary agent, and let me say that there is some serious misinformation here.
For one thing, though I love selling books to small presses, their contracts are always more restrictive, more draconian, more money-grabbing than the corporate publishers' versions. That's because running a small press is a far more financially difficult endeavor (it's a true labor of love), and small presses need to eke every dollar they can out of the books they publish. Do I like these contracts? Do I feel that they are "the best" I can do for my client? No, but the situation may make more sense overall than dealing with the big corporate publishers (what we call the "trade" houses) for a particular author.
Secondly, many of the concerns raised by the MediaCentral article are legitimate -- but as david.given wrote above, agents not only routinely change the boilerplate on many of these topics, but publishers essentially have different boilerplates they use for agented vs. unagented manuscripts (as well as different negotiated boilerplates for the various agencies).
Yes, the electronic book issue is a sore one for many of us in the agent's and author's community. And other technologies (print-on-demand, direct sales via publisher websites) offer opportunities for profit that under the current contracts authors will not share. It's a conflict that won't get resolved this year. But I'm betting that within the next few years, as these technologies become implemented to a greater extent, we'll see the authors and agents communities even the scales. I certainly will fight these issues fiercely once we see real revenue being generated from them. Part of the problem is that without revenue, it's hard to develop economic and fiscal models that make sense of how to divide the pie. When there ain't no pie, you can't cut it wisely. Once the pie starts to be real, and not a figment of hope and fantasy, you'll see these issues addressed far more aggressively by authors and their agents.
Do I think that publisher's contracts are generally not friendly to the author? Of course. But, within reason, there are things that a good agent can do to mitigate these problems. Not fully, but enough to make contracts more equitable. On the other hand, I can assure you that the agents I know would more than welcome some changes to the standard clauses we view as being draconian and unfair. For example, everyone I know is eager to see the results of the class action suit against HarperCollins regarding the royalty it pays for sales through its Canadian sibling -- many of us view the royalty currently being offered as being both inequitable and substandard in comparison to that offered by the other major publishers. The point is, there's stuff in there that isn't exactly author friendly, but with a good agent, you can sign a reasonable contract and make good on the investment of your time and your intellectual capital.