The usual canned introduction:

The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use
peer-to-peer technology.  But the Napster paradigm, in which computers
and networks give ordinary people unprecedented control over content,
continues.

This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and
discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other
copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property,
freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and
evolving technology," as polygon once phrased it.

Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3
conferences, covering discussions all the way back to the initial
popularity of the MP3 format.   These items are linked between
the current Agora conference and the Music conference.

87 responses total.

Tower Records, once the most prestigious national retailer of 
recorded music, went to a bankruptcy auction sale yesterday.
Apparently the dickering is still ongoing, and is unclear whether
Tower will be sold to Trans World Entertainment Corporation, 
which runs several chains of music retail stores which are 
generally scoffed at by serious music fans, or if the Tower
chain will be completely liquidated.
 
Tower owed $210 million in its current bankruptcy, the second 
bankruptcy filing in about three years, and the initial 
round of bidding set a floor price of $90 million.  So the 
Tower owners -- who were the creditors in that last bankruptcy
round, and who took ownership in lieu of their debts -- are going
to be wiped out.
 
One culturally significant effect of the Tower bankruptcy is that
it likely marks the end of broad-scale classical music retailing, 
in physical stores, in the US.  Borders is the only other national 
retailer stocking more than a shoebox-full of classical music, 
and Borders has been cutting and cutting again on the classical 
CD stocks.  

Tower was sold to a liquidator.  The web site tower.com was sold 
separately and will presumably continue to exist in some form.
But as for the physical stores, the going-out-of-business sales
are being arranged.

The article I read said that Great American, the liquidator, won the 
auction with a bid of $134 million, outbidding Transworld (owners of 
FYE, Coconuts, Sam Goodys) by just $500,000.  I find this to be 
incredibly sad, because Transworld would have at least kept the 
largest, most profitable stores operating and presumably under the 
Tower name.

I will always fondly remember Tower Records for their huge record 
stores in big cities, D.C., NYC, Philadelphia in the northeast, 
particularly for the days when they sold nothing but vinyl.  Nothing 
but several floors of records (except for a small section of cassettes 
and 8-tracks back in the day)  I still remember when they started 
selling compact discs, they were this novelty limited to a tiny display 
in the classical section.  Yet I knew back in the early 80's when cd's 
first hit the market, that they were going to change everything.  Which 
they did.  The digitalization of music, and move away from vinyl, is 
part of the reason Tower Records will soon be no more.

Tower Records was a family owned operation until it went into 
bankruptcy, one of the last big family owned chains, and was also one 
of the last places committed to maintaining well stocked classical and 
world music inventories.  When the Towers close, it will truly be the 
end of an era.

Going out of business signs are going up today.  Tower RIP.

This is going to have a negative impact on the recording industry.  
Tower Records was for years the predominant music retailer in the 
country.  The article in the washington post today points out that 
Tower was the main place selling a lot of smaller labels cd's, as most 
smaller record stores don't have room, and that Tower might have 
accounted for 40%-50% of some niche-genre labels' business.  There are 
some music labels that may go under no longer having those huge Tower 
Record Stores available to display their merchandise.

I'm hoping that blogging, playlist sharing, and song sharing (a la Zune) will
help expose the smaller labels to their audience, since it's probably not
likely they'll be getting a lot of shelf space at Sam Goody, FYE, etc.

I don't think I know anyone who shops at storefronts anymore.  Most 
people I know either mail-order their CDs from an online retailer, or 
buy tracks from a download service like iTunes.  I find this to be a 
better way to browse for new music than in a store, because I can 
listen to short samples of what the album sounds like before I buy it.

A lot of stores were offering booths where you could listen to the CD before
buying it. I know Virgin MegaRecords did. I'm ambivalent about whether a store
or website's better. Let's just say I've bought nearly all my CDs from stores,
and many times bought something from a store I hadn't planned on buying. When
buying from a web-site, I've always stuck to what I needed exactly.

Sure would be nice if you could return CDs because you were not satisfied.

Tower has listening stations.  The problem is younger people don't want 
to buy whole albums anymore, nor do they want to pay for the 
packaging.  They want to pay by the song.  Call it the McMusic effect, 
minimalizing the music experience down to its bare minimum.  It started 
when cd's replaced vinyl, and suddenly album cover art-- once a major 
part of pop culture-- ceased to mean as much.  There used to be a time 
when half the fun of getting an album was great cover art and great 
liner notes.  But CD's changed all that.  CD boxes are too small to 
waste much time on elaborate cover art, and many people don't keep 
their discs in the boxes anyway, and the print on the liner notes has 
to be too small.

I think it diminishes the experience and is part of why newly recorded 
music is generally less relevant, or important, than in the past.  How 
can music be as relevant in the fast food era, when people want 
everything fast, and as minimalized and devoid of content and substance 
as possible.  

I think young people are going to go their way, not ours.  As it should 
be.  That is true not just for the notes, words and artists, but for the 
technology, packaging, sales and delivery.  Those in the business of 
selling music have been in denial over this reality for some time.  But 
the kids will teach 'em.  I'm lovin the lesson, actually.

Listening stations aren't really a solution because they're usually 
only loaded with a handful of albums the store is currently promoting 
-- usually new releases.  You can't sample anything in the store the 
way you can online.  Also, I look at those headphones and all I can 
think about is how many people's greasy heads they've been on.

 #9 pretty much completely ignores the fact that through much of the history
 of 20th century popular music the best selling format for music was the
 45 rpm single.  The rise of album-oriented rock in the 70s and the decline
 in the 45 single format were cemented by the introduction of the CD format
 in the early 80s despite a brief industry experimentation with 3" and 5"
 CD singles.

 In short, for most of the time they've been major music consumers, young
 people seem to have preferred to purchase single tracks.  It has nothing
 to do with being in an age of "McMusic", unless Richard wants to argue
 that the early- and mid-60s, one of the most fertile periods of musical
 experimentation in recent memory, were also part of his "McMusic" era.

Re 9: I'd have to agree with mcnally here. Many of the groups and producers
of the "golden age" of radio were mainly interested in releasing singles. To
quote legendary producer Phil Spector, LP's were "two hits and ten pieces of
junk". I don't think there's anything wrong with buying single songs at a
time. If an album is consistently good, people don't have any problem buying
the whole thing. The online retailers tend to sell the whole album cheaper
than the total of the songs, too, so there's still incentive to buy a whole
album. I do agree the album art has suffered though. It's not that impressive
in little CD cases.

I disagree. Tool has some nice album art. :)

Oh, nharmon reminded me nowadays we have music videos instead of album art.
Tool has really cool music videos. 

Good point.

McMusic? Give me a break.

The art on the Wolfmother cd I thought was cool.  Their videos?  Eh...

The record companies could easily revitalize interest in the album cover if
they wanted to. Put a code on each CD, let the consumer enter it online
somewhere along with a small PauPal payment and voila, those who want a nice
album poster can still have one. Having said all that, I agree with what
McNally said and the comments about videos being something of a substitute.

videos are not a substitute for album cover art, that is absurd.  
Album cover art enhances the experience of listening to the album 
WHILE you are listening to it.  Like listening to Sgt. Pepper while 
staring at that famous album cover is part of the experience.  Also 
album cover art are like posters.  You can display them in your room.  
Can you display a music video?  

I realize 45's came before albums, but that doesn't mean that era was 
better.  The music scene took off, exploded in the sixties, as a 
result of the music album.  It became much bigger, and totally 
different, than it was before.  Musicians started to take themselves 
much more seriously as artists, write their own songs and cover notes, 
and album cover art .etc  What is happening now is that we are 
regressing culturally, we are going back to earlier days, days when 
artists HAD to put out singles because nobody did albums, and there 
weren't places for greater expression of their art.

But see that goes multiple ways, as I can point to a bunch of videos 
that made the song, if not the band:

A-Ha - "Take On Me"
Peter Gabriel - "Sledgehammer" (Yes, Peter Gabriel is a great musician 
in his own right, but that is a great video.)
Michael Jackson - "Billie Jean"

More recently, I can point to:

Ok Go - "Here It Goes Again"
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Dani California"

Videos are also a relic, how many videos do you see on MTV now?  
Videos were an eighties thing.  You mentioned the videos of a bunch of 
eighties artists, which is when videos were hot.+

Things are better today because independents and amateurs are able to
distribute their music digitally with very little cost. The flipside of the
album art coin is the fact that people may have bought or not bought an album
based on the album art, which is silly, IMHO.

I tend to only watch MTV, MTV2 and VH-1 in the morning, when they have 
videos on, so that's when I see them.

And the video for OK Go is from this year, as is the RHCP song I 
cited.  

Are videos as big as they were?  No.  But some are still great to 
watch.

An album used to be a set of 78's that came bound together, and predated both
33s and 45s.  5 min per side for the 78s, and you needed the album format to
play longer pieces such as symphonies (you also needed record changers).

Sit there and do nothing but stare at the cover art while listening to 
an album?  You'd have to be stoned or something to want to do that. ;)

Do not take the brown acid, I repeat, do not take the brown acid.

No brown spinach..i repeat...

Richard is either a closet conservative or a DEVO fan.

Not that there's anything wrong with it...

Actually the proper thing to be eating while staring at an album cover 
and listening to the record is brownies  :)  

Truth is, if you study the history of popular music, the advent of the 
album heralded a glory time for the genre.  For decades, the artists 
didn't write the songs, the songs were written down on TinPan Alley 
(where all the music offices used to be located, here in NYC near 
Chelsea)  The songs were released one at a time, they had to be a 
certain length and no longer and they were kept simple.  Elvis sang 
three minute songs and he didn't write any of them.  He performed what 
he was told to perform. It wasn't until the advent of the album that 
artists started to really break out and expand the genre.  A great 
album is like a book, you listen to it from beginning to end and it 
tells a story.  A collection of singles from the Rolling Stones doesn't 
have the same impact as a great, cohesive album like Exile On Main 
Street-- which is as a whole greater than the individual songs on it.  
Bob Dylan did "Like A Rolling Stone" as a six minute plus song.  In the 
singles era, he'd never have gotten away with that.  You didn't do six 
minute singles.  A song that long only gets recorded when its going on 
an album.  You'd never have seen The Who do "Tommy" in the singles era, 
what, you're going to do a rock opera on a stack of 45's?

I mourn the closing of Tower because it was one of the last big places 
that showcased albums.  It went down because people of younger 
generations don't have the patience for albums anymore.  They don't 
want the entire Mona Lisa painting, they just want the smile in the 
middle of it.  Listening to a song outside the context of the album is 
like reading the reader's digest version of a novel.  Music as art 
suffers when you do this.

I don't agree that the younger generation doesn't want albums anymore. I think
they'd gladly pay for an album of good quality music. But have you listened
to the albums out there. They'll have one good song that's made it on all the
radio stations and about 9 or 10 songs that are total crap. No one wants to
pay close to $20 for one good song.

Artists also aren't releasing most of their songs in the albums. Used to be
that an artist would release at least 5 or 6 songs in an album, so you knew
what you were getting. Now it seems that every album has one, maybe two
signature songs that will be released, and people are expected to judge a
whole album based on that.

People caught on. No one likes being ripped off.

I agree that the decline in the quality of albums in the last ten years 
played a significant role in what has happened. Some studios started 
realizing that if many people bought albums just for one or two songs, 
that as long as those songs are recorded, why should they pay for the 
artist to take months or years to come up with the rest of the songs 
that would make an album.  Artists are under pressure to get the 
product out now, studios won't give them the time to do their best work 
anymore.  As a result you see songs placed on albums to fill them out 
that were recorded out of context and have nothing to do with each 
other.  Its as if a publisher didn't want to wait for an author to 
write a whole book, so he takes the two great chapters he has done, and 
takes this chapter and that chapter from other books the author's been 
working on, lumps them all together and calls it a "novel", when its 
actually just a mismash of odds and ends that don't fit together into 
an overrall arc.  In the neverending quest to make money, these studios 
sell out the artists. 

Right - so blame the studios then, don't blame the patrons.

Not every album is a concept album.

Also, make sure you distinguish between types of consumers. There are plenty
of people who appreciate the value of an album over the value of a single,
but they're not as high-profile as your average teeny bopper making a mixtape
of their favorite Justin Timberlake and Beyonce songs. Maybe you're looking
at one group of consumers and stereotyping the rest?

What's wrong with Justin Timberlake? His music is so much better than the
boyband's he was in

I know it sounds snobbish but Justin's not exactly an "artist" in my book.
But he is a fantastic singer!

Viseo killed the radio star, then went on to kill the video star and the album
(video, that is) as well.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss