Tuesday, October 30, 2007

"Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin"

Pretty smart article in Wired: "Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin"

If/when I start a band I'm not sure what I'll do about releasing material. I've thought about it a bit, and arrived at the conclusion that there's not much satisfaction in making CDs anymore.

I think I'll use a graphical flowchart based color-coded web page that meets Edward Tufte specs to create a visual tree representing song generation and song cycles, the passage of time, and how songs fit together.

I like the idea of then, almost in near-time retrospect, making an LP that's almost like a best of or a thematic collection, and benefiting from perspective.

~Arum
Listening to Bonnie Prince Billy 'God's Small Song'

4 comments:

The Swan said...

Good piece. When it comes to little folks like me and mine (and you and yours) releasing our recordings, we're in a liminal place, betwixt and between.

On the one hand, Radiohead notwithstanding, online only releases don't really yet have the cache of a physical product. When people come to a show, they want to leave with something more than a web address where they can download the music.

But those same people aren't necessisarily audiophiles with turntables and fond memories of rolling joints on your LP cover while Side A blows your mind.

So, in the market I'm in, CDs still hold an important place.

But I suppose it's only a matter of time. Certianly I won't complain. The only time I break out my CDs these days is to rip MP3s.

Titanarum said...

[So, in the market I'm in, CDs still hold an important place. ]

Yeah, I can see that. My solution would be to do 'Art Vs Craft' or DepARTment paper/book/media craft CDR releases for each show and price them at $3 or $5 each.

At our level, that's totally doable, and people are less afraid of the CDR thing than they once were, methinks.

I've seen up here in bay view at the Paper Boat, that you can buy cool packaging with the explicit purpose of making a mix CD. It's really neat. Comes with a blank CD-R. I think it'd be neat to make a cottage industry out of that, free press styleeeeee.

The Swan said...

Yup...that's what we've tried to do with our CD releases...steer clear of the standard jewel case and try to do something that's a little more homemade and (hopefully) special.

Would be interesting to do a release that includes only album art and blank CD so you can go get the record on iTunes or eMusic and burn your own CD. Or something like that....

Titanarum said...

I'm thinking something even more extreme than the Palliard stuff. Like make 8 of them for a show at Schuba's and copy them on your computer kind of thing, and never involve a pressing plant.