CD Bye Bye?
December 07 2008

When was the last time you were in a CD store?

If you're over 35, I'n guessing the answer will be something like "Let me see... not too long ago."

If you're over 55, "Just last week".

30something, "Forever."

20ish, "They have CD stores?"

The hot topic in music nowadays- actually, like most things referred to as a "hot topic", it's no longer hot, or even tepid; it's old news -is the role recordings will play in the business, and whether physical media, like CDs have any relevance whatsoever. Downloads in, CDs out?

At a minimum, there will always be physical media recordings. We need them for merch, the thing people need to hold on to after a concert, as a keepsake of the event. And some people will always want a concrete object, instead of a file name on their hard drive.

But for decades, the industry model was that you made a recording, released it, placed it in retailers through a distribution network, then toured to support your recording. It is this model that has died.

With downloads, legal and illegal, not to mention ubiquitous radio, and huge increase in available recordings (new, in an increasingly fractionated market, and old re-releases) there's less reason to buy 10 or 12 of an artist's songs in a single package. You'll hear the music elsewhere, or something like it. At most, you only need to buy the 2 or 3 tracks you really love. You don't need to spend $20. $2 or $3 brings you the same happiness.

But what we as artists can sell, is our bodies... as in live performance. You can't download live. And that's what we want to do anyway- perform.

And so, we're back to the future. At the dawn of the recording era, wax cylinders and all that, you could only by an artist's music track by track. The recordings were used as advertising for performances. Music was performance.

The past 50 years or so will turn out to be an historical anomaly. companies figured out they could make millions selling records- 78's, then LPs, then CDs -and pushed that to the point where the equation flipped, and performance supported recordings.

The technology for recording improved as well. So recording became an art in itself. The great Glenn Gould (don't know him? Please go to glenngould.ca) gave up a world-level concert career in his 30's to devote himself to recordings only.

But now the pendulum has swung back. CDs, sure. Recording, of course, for promotion, and maybe for some financial return. But performance is where it's at.

And ultimately that's for the better. The essence of music is in the blood and flesh execution, as pleasing and beautiful as a studio artifact may be.

It's not that CD stores will vanish. Here in my home town Toronto, we have a fabulous one, Atelier Grigorian (grigorian.com). In Halifax there's The Madrigal (themadrigal.com). Stores like these, with thoughtful inventory, and educated owners will be around, just as there will always be those special book stores here and there.

It's just the big warehouses that will go. With any luck, some of the vanishing revenue will find its way back from the labels and distributors, to the musicians directly.

I'm all for that.

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