Marketing the CD – certainly no cigar!
So Universal Music in Europe has had a sudden surge in brain wave activity. Those clever little devils have have sat down, taken their core product (the music CD) and figured on how they might improve sales. It was only four years in the making but better now then never. I guess the fun of suing high schoolers parents and college students finally wore thin and they figured on being a little more proactive in their approach towards marketing (rather then simply selling) their products. The answer? A deluxe version of the CD (wow wee I hear you cry in amazement). Three tiers – ranging from the poor mans CD (made from cardboard no doubt recycled from Kellogg's Corn Flakes boxes) to compete with the digital alternative (yeah right – I can see that working, especially because people buying music online do so for the immediacy of the delivery), the middle tier (a stronger jewel case – wow wee I hear you cry once again, no more broken hinges) and finally – wait for it – the Deluxe version of the CD!! Their 'experts' have market research that tells them that a group of high spending consumers actually want to collect the CD's complete with art work, dvd extras and longer (and hopefully more exciting) inserts. Some one please pass me the eye patch before I do some harm to myself with my fork. I cannot believe it has taken them this long to figure out potential means for marketing the CD. I cant believe that these efforts are so piece meal. Where are the interviews of the artists? where are the serial numbers for accessing secure content of these groups online (such as studio recordings)? where are their reviews of other artists that they're currently listening to? Where are the remixed versions of older albums that proliferate the internet these days? Where my friends – is the added value in purchasing the humble compact disk!? The deluxe version apparently.
This is 2006, not 1999. Someone please wake up the music industry. Students in my Principles of Marketing class have more ideas in their first week then this industry has seen in 7 years.
Dr Hair is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the E Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT.
© 2006, Dr Neil Hair. All rights reserved.
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people need to wake up and understand that the recording industry mechanisms have changed. people prefer downloading music. Simple as that.
Why would i go to a store and buy it when i could download it at .99 cents?
why limit myself to a cd in a disc man when i can have hundreds of songs on my Ipod?
its over really. Once the mp3 producers figure out a way of using your ipod as an option for home listening (plugging into speakers etc) why would anyone buy CDs?
You can get a stereo connection kit at Target for $80. I got cheesy little speakers for $18.
Why buy CDs? Most of us don’t notice it, but many people are not satisfied with the quality rendered with MP3/MP4 compression, which is lossy. CDs (or some other media with high sound quality) will likely be around for a long time, but I expect price trends will reverse and climb as the manufactured CD becomes more of a niche item for serious music lovers.
As for mass distribution, I honestly don’t know why the recording industry is still clinging to CDs…regardless of what they put on the disc, they could distribute the same content via internet, collect full retail pricing, and dramatically cut production and distribution costs. Yes…channel conflict…but retail outlets could benefit from on-demand production of hard media as well, replacing racks of pre-paid CDs that may or may not sell with CD-burning and liner-printing kiosks; they could reduce costs associated with sales and storage floor space, shelf restocking and organizing, inventory overstocks, and shrinkage, resulting in higher margins and profit-per-square-foot, which makes shareholders oh-so-happy. Throw in the upsell opportunities for bonus tracks, video footage, and direct-to-device downloads, and the easy point-of-contact for collecting opt-in email addresses…why have I never seen this?
On-demand photo printing, book printing, and rental DVD vending kiosks are all catching on…what gives with music?
Rhythm House in India do that. you select the tracks you want on their catalogue and they will put it on a CD for you. they started this years before Itunes or any other medium was widely accepted.
As for lossy CD’s you can sample at a much much higher rate giving you better sound quality. Point is with CD’s you get limited to how many songs you can hold on a device. that is the additional selling point of Mp3 players, more music in a small package, downloadable.
Beat that.
As a proud owner of over 1000 cd’s I for one wont be ditching my collection for it’s digital counterpart – thats not to say that I dont appreciate the ability to sit on an aircraft with my entire collection and remind myself of prior stupidity (Flood – Birdhouse in your sould as a case in point). For me it is the artwork, it is also social aspect of it all, the now ancient tradition of looking through someone elses collection. These are all points relevant to me, they wont be to everyone – but the point is that music companies are failing to recognize one of the largest segments of our society – those middle aged medium to high income who dont especially want to own something that isnt tangible in any real physical way. Stop pandering to the digerati and offer me insentives to buy the real physical thing for crying out loud. Its not rocket science!
Haha…Touché.