EMI music boss: “The CD is dead”
Written by Smaran on October 29, 2006The CEO & chairman of EMI Music, Alain Levy told an audience at the London Business School on Friday that the CD as we know it is dead.
According to Levy, record companies won’t be able to market CDs any longer without including ‘value added material’ and will have to make CDs a more attractive purchase [...]
The CEO & chairman of EMI Music, Alain Levy told an audience at the London Business School on Friday that the CD as we know it is dead.
According to Levy, record companies won’t be able to market CDs any longer without including ‘value added material’ and will have to make CDs a more attractive purchase to the consumer. “We have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content,” he said.
Levy noted that physical media still has a place, but it isn’t going to have it for very long. “You’re not going to offer your mother-in-law iTunes downloads for Christmas,” he said.
Should we take this with a pinch of salt? Sales figures provided by the IFPI (PDF) don’t quite support his claim. CD sales accounted for more than 70% of total international music sales in the first half of 2006, while digital music sales were still at about 11%.
He also talked about why EMI was the only one of the ‘Big Four’ record companies that hadn’t jumped on the YouTube bandwagon and signed the contract. “The terms they were offering weren’t acceptable,” Levy was quoted saying. EMI isn’t out of the race yet. They are “continuing to hold talks with Google Inc on an advertising-revenue sharing partnership with the community video Web site YouTube.”
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19 Responses
Places like TrackSpin.com and the many other DRM free music stores are not helping either
We do like to own solid things. Heck, we invent solid things to represent achievments, such as trophies, certificates and suchlike. There is definitly a psychological component to be able to hold what you own.
EMI CD’s surely are dead since they’re not even CD’s anymore. They have copy protection so they don’t conform to the CD standard and can’t contain the CD logo. This is especially dumb since no DRM scheme has ever stopped anything from appearing on file sharing networks but it does prevent me from using their CD’s in my Linux computer. No wonder they think CD’s are dead. I just hope they follow the same fate.
Yeah, I stopped buying them when they stopped playing too. At one point, I bougth 14 cd’s at HMV, and had to return 9 of them. They’re also overpriced. They should be under $10 for anything. Not just top-40 JUNK. Level the playing field, make every cd the same price. Why is soemthing that just came out $12 when Nancy Sinatra’s Boots is $30+ ?
I disagree, CD is not dead. I really like buying a CD, the object is pleasant. But spending 20€ on a cd hurts. So I download. That’s as simple as that, but I’d more cds if they were better, like if there were all the lyrics, nice pictures of the band…
and CD TEXT so you know which track is which… or did they add that by now? I wouldn’t know…
To limit the expression of an artist.
So now,We don’t get artwork with our music,we get a bloody jpeg.
And the majors WANT this badly.It’s practically 0$ in overhead for them,
And nothing but profit.
Like I care about them anyway..
If we must start buying music online, can they drop MP3 or give me the option of lossless formats like APE? I wish.
I like to buy CDs even though I have all the technology. A £10 CD is way better than an £8 download from i-Tunes. When my computer crashes, my files are all over the place or someone steals my laptop, I can kick back in the knowledge that I have the original real deal lying there looking spendid on my bookcase. Lots of the CDs I buy are for a fiver too.
I think physical media will always have a place in our world of exchanging music for money. CDs will of course eventually become old and impractical, and perhaps it already has. Still, people buy them and they flourish, just like LPs still do. So I think that announcing the death of CDs is a little self-pretentious if not even slightly stupid. After all: Who would ever want a computer in their home?
Bring back cassettes. They could fit in my pocket.
Or scour the used bins. I found Gin Blossoms for $1.99!!!
i say bring back minidiscs, they can hold the same amount of lossless audio as a cd, they can be rewritten or dubbed with portable players; and fit in your pockets like cassettes, they’re cheap and easy to replace…
but in terms of wanting to hold my media like a trophy… i have my ext. hdd to keep on a shelf
Viva vinyl!
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