Topic: Bands 'urged to cut album tracks'

[digi]

 Bands 'urged to cut album tracks'

This just shows the record industry still has no clue. They now plan to make music ablums worse value for money.  

 

Quote:
 

 Record labels are urging artists to put fewer tracks on albums because fans are put off by too many average songs, the Los Angeles Times has reported.

"There's been a tendency to overload CDs because the technology permits it," Sony US president Don Ienner said. CD sales are competing with websites that give fans songs cheaply or free. On Monday, Microsoft unveiled its online music service plans while free site Kazaa launched a campaign to fight the music industry's anti-piracy drive.

Record labels are urging the clampdown on album tracks as a way of reversing a three-year-long slump in album sales. "The final choice will always be the artist's, but I feel - and consumer research bears it out - that the public thinks albums have too much filler," Mr Ienner told the paper.

"We all should be concerned about giving music buyers good value, whether they're getting eight, 10 or 20 songs." Digital technology mean CDs can fit twice as much music - 80 minutes - as vinyl albums.. The LA Times said changes would mean a "shake-up" in the music industry, which was structured around albums of up to 16 tracks selling for $12 (£7.50).

The article compared Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run - which had only eight tracks - against the recent chart-topping album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which had 34 songs.

 Online rival

Some record company executives are now saying albums should have 10 or fewer songs, the paper reported. Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled plans to launch a downloadable music service to rival legal online music sources such as Apple's iTunes and Napster, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Analysts said the company's Windows operating system - installed on millions of PCs - could give it an advantage.

The service could also be adapted to run through Microsoft's Windows Media player, which allows people to play music and video files, which is loaded on many computers.

 'Call to action'

The service will be run through Microsoft's MSN website, but further details were not provided. And free file-sharing network Kazaa launched a campaign urging its 60 million users to help it "fight back" against efforts to stop "piracy" on popular networks. Kazaa, which allows people to swap songs through their computers, has been one of the services accused of letting fans make unauthorised copies of songs.

Nikki Hemming, chief executive of Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said: "It's a call to action. We want to pump up the volume." The $1m (£640,000) campaign, which features on the internet and in magazines, includes an ad that argues music executives are "missing the opportunity to capture an enormous market".

"The world of entertainment is changing," it said.

 

[TB613]

Knock knock, is anybody home? Maybe they should think of putting more quality songs on albums. Cutting the number of tracks on albums without increasing the quality of the product will just give the downloaders more reasons to not buy albums.  

[digi]

They seem to be missing out on good marketing theory, as well as common sense.

 

Quote:
 
There are four key drivers of brand success and you will have to understand how well each of your brands is doing in these areas.  So is your brand available in all the places that consumers might want to buy it?  Is it priced in a way that both allows you to compete effectively in the market but still make money? Of course that will depend upon your cost of production.  Is it efficient, have you got an efficient supply chain?  Are you available in the right kind of pack sizes?  Do you have the right service offering?  You?ve got to have all this nailed down to be successful.   Then you?ve got to have a good product, preferably a great product, a product that has some kind of cutting edge against the competition.  But if you are behind the competition it?s going to be very tough to compete out there.

You can never forget that people choose between brands and they have to have a reason for doing that and fundamentally people are largely buying brands for a functional purpose, they buy them to clean their teeth or make their savings grow.  

So no brand should forget why it is that people buy a category.  
 

 
Undoubtedly the record industry is changing.  The launch of Apples online music store shows that consumers prefer to have the power of choice.  If a consumer can choose their own songs to put on an album over those choosen by a record company executive they will more than likely go with their own choice.  This probably has more to do with the fact that music is an emotive experience, and emotion plays heavily in the purchase choice of any brand or product.  That's why most companies try to release whitty memorable adverts that will play upon a consumers emotive purchases in a good way.

We all know that adverts for albums are usually deadly boring, consisting mainly of 1 track from an album, the video to the best selling song - which you probably already own from a singles release - and the tag line of "Out Now" or "Buy Now".  They'd probably be better off sending fans of an artist a text message.

So music buying is changing.  If the record industry wants to keep the traditional method of sale, then they are going to have to offer something extra to consumers.  In a global market, quality and price are both issues.  A consumer is hardly going to go out and buy an average car that has an exceptional car price.  Likewise that consumer is even less likely to buy that average car if the manufacter decides to take some extra options off the model, even if those options are average.

In a global market where music is easily transferrable (See peer-to-peer), pricing to individual markets is silly.  Froim a UK prespective I see the same albums on sale in the US for half the price I pay for them in the UK.  Previously getting that album shipped from the US to the UK, incurring extra costs like tax, didn't make that much difference.  Now, I have the choice to buy that music online, where the music is shipped to me over the internet.  That makes a big difference to my purchasing decision.

 

[Dogmatix!]

OMG..how freaking silly.  what are you going to do when many of today's wholly average groups can only come up with one or two decent tunes?  Star putting out 3" CD singles again and leave it at that?  heheh...


You know...none of the bands I listen to have all that hard a time packing a CD with quality tunes.  Frankly, when a CD comes in at less than 60 minutes or so of running time, I feel it's too short.  A couple of years ago, I paid full price ($14.99?) for an Enya CD that had a running time of right around 30 minutes.  I haven't bought another album of hers since....heheh.


Back in the days of vinyl, I think the average running time was about 45 minutes.  Definitely anything less this is would be completely sucky.



Anyway...the problem here is that frankly, there's too many bands with not enough talent churning out crap albums too frequently.



Now that I have an MP3 player in my car, I can at least burn multiple albums on one CD, so I don;t have to as concerned about the length of a single disc.  I recently got 14 of Skinny Puppy's albums on one CD!  


 

[Sirgod]

 

Quote:
  I recently got 14 of Skinny Puppy's albums on one CD!
 

hmm. Skinny Puppy's and Dogmatix. Is It a conspiracy or Worms ?  

Stephen

[Gambler]

Talk about the wrong answer to the problem.  It's not the quantity of tracks, it's the quality of tracks.  What I find amazing is how the music industry has changed in regards to album releases.  Back in the '60's and '70's, you would have bands cranking out several albums a year.  Classic Albums.  Albums that had multiple hits on them.  Now we're lucky to get a new album every three or four years from an artist.

I found an interesting link this morning.   Album Vote .  They've got many many discographies of old and new bands, it's quite sad to pull up the artists and see how things have changed.  

[digi]

 Bands 'urged to cut album tracks'

This just shows the record industry still has no clue. They now plan to make music ablums worse value for money.  

 

Quote:
 

 Record labels are urging artists to put fewer tracks on albums because fans are put off by too many average songs, the Los Angeles Times has reported.

"There's been a tendency to overload CDs because the technology permits it," Sony US president Don Ienner said. CD sales are competing with websites that give fans songs cheaply or free. On Monday, Microsoft unveiled its online music service plans while free site Kazaa launched a campaign to fight the music industry's anti-piracy drive.

Record labels are urging the clampdown on album tracks as a way of reversing a three-year-long slump in album sales. "The final choice will always be the artist's, but I feel - and consumer research bears it out - that the public thinks albums have too much filler," Mr Ienner told the paper.

"We all should be concerned about giving music buyers good value, whether they're getting eight, 10 or 20 songs." Digital technology mean CDs can fit twice as much music - 80 minutes - as vinyl albums.. The LA Times said changes would mean a "shake-up" in the music industry, which was structured around albums of up to 16 tracks selling for $12 (£7.50).

The article compared Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run - which had only eight tracks - against the recent chart-topping album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which had 34 songs.

 Online rival

Some record company executives are now saying albums should have 10 or fewer songs, the paper reported. Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled plans to launch a downloadable music service to rival legal online music sources such as Apple's iTunes and Napster, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Analysts said the company's Windows operating system - installed on millions of PCs - could give it an advantage.

The service could also be adapted to run through Microsoft's Windows Media player, which allows people to play music and video files, which is loaded on many computers.

 'Call to action'

The service will be run through Microsoft's MSN website, but further details were not provided. And free file-sharing network Kazaa launched a campaign urging its 60 million users to help it "fight back" against efforts to stop "piracy" on popular networks. Kazaa, which allows people to swap songs through their computers, has been one of the services accused of letting fans make unauthorised copies of songs.

Nikki Hemming, chief executive of Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said: "It's a call to action. We want to pump up the volume." The $1m (£640,000) campaign, which features on the internet and in magazines, includes an ad that argues music executives are "missing the opportunity to capture an enormous market".

"The world of entertainment is changing," it said.

 

[TB613]

Knock knock, is anybody home? Maybe they should think of putting more quality songs on albums. Cutting the number of tracks on albums without increasing the quality of the product will just give the downloaders more reasons to not buy albums.  

[digi]

They seem to be missing out on good marketing theory, as well as common sense.

 

Quote:
 
There are four key drivers of brand success and you will have to understand how well each of your brands is doing in these areas.  So is your brand available in all the places that consumers might want to buy it?  Is it priced in a way that both allows you to compete effectively in the market but still make money? Of course that will depend upon your cost of production.  Is it efficient, have you got an efficient supply chain?  Are you available in the right kind of pack sizes?  Do you have the right service offering?  You?ve got to have all this nailed down to be successful.   Then you?ve got to have a good product, preferably a great product, a product that has some kind of cutting edge against the competition.  But if you are behind the competition it?s going to be very tough to compete out there.

You can never forget that people choose between brands and they have to have a reason for doing that and fundamentally people are largely buying brands for a functional purpose, they buy them to clean their teeth or make their savings grow.  

So no brand should forget why it is that people buy a category.  
 

 
Undoubtedly the record industry is changing.  The launch of Apples online music store shows that consumers prefer to have the power of choice.  If a consumer can choose their own songs to put on an album over those choosen by a record company executive they will more than likely go with their own choice.  This probably has more to do with the fact that music is an emotive experience, and emotion plays heavily in the purchase choice of any brand or product.  That's why most companies try to release whitty memorable adverts that will play upon a consumers emotive purchases in a good way.

We all know that adverts for albums are usually deadly boring, consisting mainly of 1 track from an album, the video to the best selling song - which you probably already own from a singles release - and the tag line of "Out Now" or "Buy Now".  They'd probably be better off sending fans of an artist a text message.

So music buying is changing.  If the record industry wants to keep the traditional method of sale, then they are going to have to offer something extra to consumers.  In a global market, quality and price are both issues.  A consumer is hardly going to go out and buy an average car that has an exceptional car price.  Likewise that consumer is even less likely to buy that average car if the manufacter decides to take some extra options off the model, even if those options are average.

In a global market where music is easily transferrable (See peer-to-peer), pricing to individual markets is silly.  Froim a UK prespective I see the same albums on sale in the US for half the price I pay for them in the UK.  Previously getting that album shipped from the US to the UK, incurring extra costs like tax, didn't make that much difference.  Now, I have the choice to buy that music online, where the music is shipped to me over the internet.  That makes a big difference to my purchasing decision.

 

[Dogmatix!]

OMG..how freaking silly.  what are you going to do when many of today's wholly average groups can only come up with one or two decent tunes?  Star putting out 3" CD singles again and leave it at that?  heheh...


You know...none of the bands I listen to have all that hard a time packing a CD with quality tunes.  Frankly, when a CD comes in at less than 60 minutes or so of running time, I feel it's too short.  A couple of years ago, I paid full price ($14.99?) for an Enya CD that had a running time of right around 30 minutes.  I haven't bought another album of hers since....heheh.


Back in the days of vinyl, I think the average running time was about 45 minutes.  Definitely anything less this is would be completely sucky.



Anyway...the problem here is that frankly, there's too many bands with not enough talent churning out crap albums too frequently.



Now that I have an MP3 player in my car, I can at least burn multiple albums on one CD, so I don;t have to as concerned about the length of a single disc.  I recently got 14 of Skinny Puppy's albums on one CD!  


 

[Sirgod]

 

Quote:
  I recently got 14 of Skinny Puppy's albums on one CD!
 

hmm. Skinny Puppy's and Dogmatix. Is It a conspiracy or Worms ?  

Stephen

[Gambler]

Talk about the wrong answer to the problem.  It's not the quantity of tracks, it's the quality of tracks.  What I find amazing is how the music industry has changed in regards to album releases.  Back in the '60's and '70's, you would have bands cranking out several albums a year.  Classic Albums.  Albums that had multiple hits on them.  Now we're lucky to get a new album every three or four years from an artist.

I found an interesting link this morning.   Album Vote .  They've got many many discographies of old and new bands, it's quite sad to pull up the artists and see how things have changed.  

[digi]

 Bands 'urged to cut album tracks'

This just shows the record industry still has no clue. They now plan to make music ablums worse value for money.  

 

Quote:
 

 Record labels are urging artists to put fewer tracks on albums because fans are put off by too many average songs, the Los Angeles Times has reported.

"There's been a tendency to overload CDs because the technology permits it," Sony US president Don Ienner said. CD sales are competing with websites that give fans songs cheaply or free. On Monday, Microsoft unveiled its online music service plans while free site Kazaa launched a campaign to fight the music industry's anti-piracy drive.

Record labels are urging the clampdown on album tracks as a way of reversing a three-year-long slump in album sales. "The final choice will always be the artist's, but I feel - and consumer research bears it out - that the public thinks albums have too much filler," Mr Ienner told the paper.

"We all should be concerned about giving music buyers good value, whether they're getting eight, 10 or 20 songs." Digital technology mean CDs can fit twice as much music - 80 minutes - as vinyl albums.. The LA Times said changes would mean a "shake-up" in the music industry, which was structured around albums of up to 16 tracks selling for $12 (£7.50).

The article compared Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run - which had only eight tracks - against the recent chart-topping album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which had 34 songs.

 Online rival

Some record company executives are now saying albums should have 10 or fewer songs, the paper reported. Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled plans to launch a downloadable music service to rival legal online music sources such as Apple's iTunes and Napster, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Analysts said the company's Windows operating system - installed on millions of PCs - could give it an advantage.

The service could also be adapted to run through Microsoft's Windows Media player, which allows people to play music and video files, which is loaded on many computers.

 'Call to action'

The service will be run through Microsoft's MSN website, but further details were not provided. And free file-sharing network Kazaa launched a campaign urging its 60 million users to help it "fight back" against efforts to stop "piracy" on popular networks. Kazaa, which allows people to swap songs through their computers, has been one of the services accused of letting fans make unauthorised copies of songs.

Nikki Hemming, chief executive of Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said: "It's a call to action. We want to pump up the volume." The $1m (£640,000) campaign, which features on the internet and in magazines, includes an ad that argues music executives are "missing the opportunity to capture an enormous market".

"The world of entertainment is changing," it said.

 

[TB613]

Knock knock, is anybody home? Maybe they should think of putting more quality songs on albums. Cutting the number of tracks on albums without increasing the quality of the product will just give the downloaders more reasons to not buy albums.  

[digi]

They seem to be missing out on good marketing theory, as well as common sense.

 

Quote:
 
There are four key drivers of brand success and you will have to understand how well each of your brands is doing in these areas.  So is your brand available in all the places that consumers might want to buy it?  Is it priced in a way that both allows you to compete effectively in the market but still make money? Of course that will depend upon your cost of production.  Is it efficient, have you got an efficient supply chain?  Are you available in the right kind of pack sizes?  Do you have the right service offering?  You?ve got to have all this nailed down to be successful.   Then you?ve got to have a good product, preferably a great product, a product that has some kind of cutting edge against the competition.  But if you are behind the competition it?s going to be very tough to compete out there.

You can never forget that people choose between brands and they have to have a reason for doing that and fundamentally people are largely buying brands for a functional purpose, they buy them to clean their teeth or make their savings grow.  

So no brand should forget why it is that people buy a category.  
 

 
Undoubtedly the record industry is changing.  The launch of Apples online music store shows that consumers prefer to have the power of choice.  If a consumer can choose their own songs to put on an album over those choosen by a record company executive they will more than likely go with their own choice.  This probably has more to do with the fact that music is an emotive experience, and emotion plays heavily in the purchase choice of any brand or product.  That's why most companies try to release whitty memorable adverts that will play upon a consumers emotive purchases in a good way.

We all know that adverts for albums are usually deadly boring, consisting mainly of 1 track from an album, the video to the best selling song - which you probably already own from a singles release - and the tag line of "Out Now" or "Buy Now".  They'd probably be better off sending fans of an artist a text message.

So music buying is changing.  If the record industry wants to keep the traditional method of sale, then they are going to have to offer something extra to consumers.  In a global market, quality and price are both issues.  A consumer is hardly going to go out and buy an average car that has an exceptional car price.  Likewise that consumer is even less likely to buy that average car if the manufacter decides to take some extra options off the model, even if those options are average.

In a global market where music is easily transferrable (See peer-to-peer), pricing to individual markets is silly.  Froim a UK prespective I see the same albums on sale in the US for half the price I pay for them in the UK.  Previously getting that album shipped from the US to the UK, incurring extra costs like tax, didn't make that much difference.  Now, I have the choice to buy that music online, where the music is shipped to me over the internet.  That makes a big difference to my purchasing decision.

 

[Dogmatix!]

OMG..how freaking silly.  what are you going to do when many of today's wholly average groups can only come up with one or two decent tunes?  Star putting out 3" CD singles again and leave it at that?  heheh...


You know...none of the bands I listen to have all that hard a time packing a CD with quality tunes.  Frankly, when a CD comes in at less than 60 minutes or so of running time, I feel it's too short.  A couple of years ago, I paid full price ($14.99?) for an Enya CD that had a running time of right around 30 minutes.  I haven't bought another album of hers since....heheh.


Back in the days of vinyl, I think the average running time was about 45 minutes.  Definitely anything less this is would be completely sucky.



Anyway...the problem here is that frankly, there's too many bands with not enough talent churning out crap albums too frequently.



Now that I have an MP3 player in my car, I can at least burn multiple albums on one CD, so I don;t have to as concerned about the length of a single disc.  I recently got 14 of Skinny Puppy's albums on one CD!  


 

[Sirgod]

 

Quote:
  I recently got 14 of Skinny Puppy's albums on one CD!
 

hmm. Skinny Puppy's and Dogmatix. Is It a conspiracy or Worms ?  

Stephen

[Gambler]

Talk about the wrong answer to the problem.  It's not the quantity of tracks, it's the quality of tracks.  What I find amazing is how the music industry has changed in regards to album releases.  Back in the '60's and '70's, you would have bands cranking out several albums a year.  Classic Albums.  Albums that had multiple hits on them.  Now we're lucky to get a new album every three or four years from an artist.

I found an interesting link this morning.   Album Vote .  They've got many many discographies of old and new bands, it's quite sad to pull up the artists and see how things have changed.