From Blabbermouth:
TODAY IS THE DAY's STEVE AUSTIN Announces SUPERNOVA RECORDS' New Direction - Sep. 5, 2008 TODAY IS THE DAY frontman Steve Austin has issued the following statement about the future of SuperNova Records, the label he launched in 2006:
"As of September 15, 2008, SuperNova Records is changing its retail format. SuperNova Records will be releasing its artists' music via digital downloads and vinyl records. We have put a lot of thought and time into this very important and cutting-edge change. After being in the record business for 20 years, we have decided to take a bold new step into the future of selling records.
"For a long time we have seen the music climate changing. People are changing the ways that they buy, listen and discover new music. The record companies have tried to stop it and they cannot. They have not adapted to the current market and thus are dying off by trying to stop something that is impossible to stop rather than profit from this new way of buying and selling music. So, we choose to move forward into the future with digital downloads. At the same time, vinyl is the best listening format of any audio medium. We respect the vinyl album and are going to offer all SuperNova releases in limited edition vinyl formats.
"Our final reason for this change is the environment. Between the plastic, paper, and fuel that go into manufacturing and shipping CDs, we will be making our contribution at saving the environment as we help lead the music industry into the 21st century."
________________________________________________________
my reply:
environment my eye
posted by : James Murphy
9/6/2008 12:03:26 PM
i'm all for saving the environment, but what about jobs? unemployment is an important issue as well.... hard copy CD's are kept for years, and usually not thrown out, but re-sold....supporting even more jobs and keeping environmental impact lower. discarded, dead hard drives are more of an environmental issue in my view.
putting myself out on a limb here... but seriously, the day i can no longer buy a hard copy media is the day i have bought my last music. i refuse to pay for a computer file of music, so the day CD's (or a viable replacement for them that i can put on my shelf, with artwork, etc) are no longer available for purchase is the day that i will become an illegal downloader.
i do buy vinyl, but only used... i have nearly 1400 of them... but nothing pressed after 1994 or so... and most prior to 1985.
hey Steve, if this path makes sense for your business, then more power to you... but let's just not pretend that it's the greatest thing anyone ever did, ok? due to lost jobs it could be quite damaging to the economy should it become a widely adopted practice, and frankly it will turn an entire demographic from loyal CD buying fans and audiophiles into criminals, because many of them, like me, wont pay for an mp3.
yeah, and nevermind that if i get bored with a CD i can trade or sell it... legal digital downloads cost nearly as much as the real deal, but have you ever tried to sell a used mp3?
... and what happens when your hard drive dies, eh? you gonna sit there and download that terrabyte sized library again? face it, less than 10% of music fans even remotely try to back-up their digital libraries. it's human nature.
mp3's sound terrible and FLAC and other lossless formats suck hard-drive space. sure, as technology progresses, drive size will be less and less of an issue, but they are still just files on a drive... vapor.
there's most definitely a place and purpose for digital media libraries in my way of seeing things, but i do not see that place as being the total replacement of hard copy media... i do realize this is just my way, and not necessarily working for everyone else, so don't bother pointing that out to me... just stating my view here, but i know that it's shared by many. I think it's a no-brainer to state that vinyl is not going to become mainstream again, it's great and i love it... old vinyl anyway... but even with new titles it's a niche market for collectors only.
also, being privy to soundscan figures i can point out that CD sales, in metal anyway, are actually going up currently, not down, as a general trend.
finally, does anyone think that labels with a digital-only business model are giving out any kind of reasonable recording budgets to the bands they sign? what's the motivation to sign to such a label? no real budget, and your music is put up for online sale only?.... well ANYONE can do that!.... bands that care about making good sounding albums want.... NEED... a decent recording budget. it does cost money to make a great record (and don't give me the "bands can just record themselves now" spiel... 95% of bands that do that turn out sub-par recordings at best, and the remaining 5% are usually just passable to decent.... never great unless they've personally invested some real money on a good producer and/or mixer, though i'm sure there are plenty of bands that delude themselves otherwise). Without budgets or physical manufacture and distribution of media, what is the label good for? bands sign to labels in order to get decent recording budgets, and to get their CD's in stores and mail-order outlets, and to then have them publicized and marketed properly, or at least better than they could do on their own. Anyone can put a sno-cap store on their myspace for f**k's sake... you don't need a label for that.
i'm willing to be proven wrong, my stance is based in practicality, not a snobby attiude... and i readily admit that digital media has it's place in the market. I also strongly advocate CD prices needing to go down, across the board. having said that, i've bought 12 new releases in the last 6 weeks, and didn't have much trouble finding most all of them on sale for very decent prices, $9.99 to $11.99, and that includes the special edition digi-pak versions... about the same that downloading these same albums would have cost... but instead of just a computer file, i get the best of both worlds for the same price, just had to shop around and look for sales. i can rip the cd's to my digital library and store the CD's safely on my shelves... why, oh why, would anyone... EVER... pay $10 to download an album, when they can go the route i just described?? convenience (not so convenient after all if that hard drives dies or the files get corrupted)?
generation gap maybe, i'm not a high school kid.... but eventually, the ethereal nature of the "download-only" business model will have to strike even the youngest members of the short-attention-span generation as money pissed into the wind.
flame away.... not going to change my mind.
TODAY IS THE DAY's STEVE AUSTIN Announces SUPERNOVA RECORDS' New Direction - Sep. 5, 2008 TODAY IS THE DAY frontman Steve Austin has issued the following statement about the future of SuperNova Records, the label he launched in 2006:
"As of September 15, 2008, SuperNova Records is changing its retail format. SuperNova Records will be releasing its artists' music via digital downloads and vinyl records. We have put a lot of thought and time into this very important and cutting-edge change. After being in the record business for 20 years, we have decided to take a bold new step into the future of selling records.
"For a long time we have seen the music climate changing. People are changing the ways that they buy, listen and discover new music. The record companies have tried to stop it and they cannot. They have not adapted to the current market and thus are dying off by trying to stop something that is impossible to stop rather than profit from this new way of buying and selling music. So, we choose to move forward into the future with digital downloads. At the same time, vinyl is the best listening format of any audio medium. We respect the vinyl album and are going to offer all SuperNova releases in limited edition vinyl formats.
"Our final reason for this change is the environment. Between the plastic, paper, and fuel that go into manufacturing and shipping CDs, we will be making our contribution at saving the environment as we help lead the music industry into the 21st century."
________________________________________________________
my reply:
environment my eye
posted by : James Murphy
9/6/2008 12:03:26 PM
i'm all for saving the environment, but what about jobs? unemployment is an important issue as well.... hard copy CD's are kept for years, and usually not thrown out, but re-sold....supporting even more jobs and keeping environmental impact lower. discarded, dead hard drives are more of an environmental issue in my view.
putting myself out on a limb here... but seriously, the day i can no longer buy a hard copy media is the day i have bought my last music. i refuse to pay for a computer file of music, so the day CD's (or a viable replacement for them that i can put on my shelf, with artwork, etc) are no longer available for purchase is the day that i will become an illegal downloader.
i do buy vinyl, but only used... i have nearly 1400 of them... but nothing pressed after 1994 or so... and most prior to 1985.
hey Steve, if this path makes sense for your business, then more power to you... but let's just not pretend that it's the greatest thing anyone ever did, ok? due to lost jobs it could be quite damaging to the economy should it become a widely adopted practice, and frankly it will turn an entire demographic from loyal CD buying fans and audiophiles into criminals, because many of them, like me, wont pay for an mp3.
yeah, and nevermind that if i get bored with a CD i can trade or sell it... legal digital downloads cost nearly as much as the real deal, but have you ever tried to sell a used mp3?
... and what happens when your hard drive dies, eh? you gonna sit there and download that terrabyte sized library again? face it, less than 10% of music fans even remotely try to back-up their digital libraries. it's human nature.
mp3's sound terrible and FLAC and other lossless formats suck hard-drive space. sure, as technology progresses, drive size will be less and less of an issue, but they are still just files on a drive... vapor.
there's most definitely a place and purpose for digital media libraries in my way of seeing things, but i do not see that place as being the total replacement of hard copy media... i do realize this is just my way, and not necessarily working for everyone else, so don't bother pointing that out to me... just stating my view here, but i know that it's shared by many. I think it's a no-brainer to state that vinyl is not going to become mainstream again, it's great and i love it... old vinyl anyway... but even with new titles it's a niche market for collectors only.
also, being privy to soundscan figures i can point out that CD sales, in metal anyway, are actually going up currently, not down, as a general trend.
finally, does anyone think that labels with a digital-only business model are giving out any kind of reasonable recording budgets to the bands they sign? what's the motivation to sign to such a label? no real budget, and your music is put up for online sale only?.... well ANYONE can do that!.... bands that care about making good sounding albums want.... NEED... a decent recording budget. it does cost money to make a great record (and don't give me the "bands can just record themselves now" spiel... 95% of bands that do that turn out sub-par recordings at best, and the remaining 5% are usually just passable to decent.... never great unless they've personally invested some real money on a good producer and/or mixer, though i'm sure there are plenty of bands that delude themselves otherwise). Without budgets or physical manufacture and distribution of media, what is the label good for? bands sign to labels in order to get decent recording budgets, and to get their CD's in stores and mail-order outlets, and to then have them publicized and marketed properly, or at least better than they could do on their own. Anyone can put a sno-cap store on their myspace for f**k's sake... you don't need a label for that.
i'm willing to be proven wrong, my stance is based in practicality, not a snobby attiude... and i readily admit that digital media has it's place in the market. I also strongly advocate CD prices needing to go down, across the board. having said that, i've bought 12 new releases in the last 6 weeks, and didn't have much trouble finding most all of them on sale for very decent prices, $9.99 to $11.99, and that includes the special edition digi-pak versions... about the same that downloading these same albums would have cost... but instead of just a computer file, i get the best of both worlds for the same price, just had to shop around and look for sales. i can rip the cd's to my digital library and store the CD's safely on my shelves... why, oh why, would anyone... EVER... pay $10 to download an album, when they can go the route i just described?? convenience (not so convenient after all if that hard drives dies or the files get corrupted)?
generation gap maybe, i'm not a high school kid.... but eventually, the ethereal nature of the "download-only" business model will have to strike even the youngest members of the short-attention-span generation as money pissed into the wind.
flame away.... not going to change my mind.
