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Six Ways to Keep The CD Spinning, Forever!

Breaking news from the “No Shit” Department: Album sales are down, again, 17 percent worse than last year’s sorry numbers over the same quarter. How bad has it gotten? Record label guys are high-fiving one another about this week’s Avril Lavigne vs. Nine Inch Nails sales race, and that both artists might shift 200,000 units this week. 200,000? That’s what N*Sync and Hootie & The Blowfish called a slow Thursday. More duh: Digital sales are on the rise. It’s this shift in technology that has record companies execs shaking in their black leather shoes. Like the mediums before it (vinyl, cassette, 8-track, mini-disc), the fall of the compact disc is inevitable. Don’t blame it on the lack of big name releases: Fall Out Boy, for all the bombastic fanfare that accompanied their new album Infinity On High, have sold only 760,000 copies. It’s a sad fact that ring tones, which play for about 10 seconds before the phone is answered, are selling at a similar pace to that of entire albums. The logic is simple: Why waste shelf space on a CD case when a computer will store it for you? Why put a 12-song CD in your car stereo when you can just as simply plug in your 40 gig iPod? The CD is dying, but it doesn’t have to die without a fight. Some musicians are staving off the record sale decline in creative ways. Leading the charge is the aforementioned Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, who created an entire alternative internet-based universe around his concept album Year Zero two months before the album was released. Adding to allure of owning a physical copy, Reznor employs a Thermochrome compact disc, which means it changes colors when warm. Let’s see your mp3s change color. Beck similarly packaged (and then repackaged) The Information with a DIY sticker set, only to be penalized by the British Music charts for an unfair marketing advantage. Prince went all Willy Wonka with 3121, stashing golden tickets in the pack

Published: 2007-04-24
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: General