There you are at the record store, faced with paying $15 and change for a full-length CD that has those two songs that you can’t get out of your head — the same two tracks you can get as a $2 computer download. The once-impervious music industry is coming to terms with the same reality, as well as the fact that it no longer controls its own destiny and needs to provide consumers with more. That industry realization is paying off in efforts that offer better choices, convenience, accessibility and value.
Until a few years ago, labels automatically took their shiny bread-and-butter format for granted and all the way to the bank. Customers had few other options and rarely balked when list prices were raised. But the unlimited possibilities of music downloads have transformed the playing field, turning the glamorous CD into a badly aging star that needs a major face-lift. For a music business desperate to steer people into stores and away from illegal download sites, that cosmetic surgery couldn’t come soon enough.
Infamous for infighting and contentious disagreements, all four major record labels are setting their differences aside and supporting DualDisc, a new format that they believe offers the best of the audio and visual worlds. A standard 5-inch disc that has two operational sides — one is aCD, the other a DVD that also contains the entire album plus video and potential treats such as surround sound, lyrics, photos, links and enhanced audio — DualDiscs are designed to work with CD and DVD players.
For labels, the linking records with DVD is a no-brainer. According to the Consumer Electronics Association there are 127 million DVD players in 70 million households, and by the end of 2005, it is estimated that more than 80 percent of U.S. homes will own at least one. And since revenue generated by packaged media outstrips that of the various digital options, DualDiscs are a logical priority for an industry seeking to boost sales of physical software.
Bruce Springsteen fans will likely be among the first to encounter the technology. The singer-songwriter’s new studio album, “Devils & Dust” (Columbia), is on DualDisc, with a DVD side that features footage of Springsteen talking about and performing five songs, in 5.1 surround sound. These flip-side discs are the latest entry in the race to sell music in the 21st Century, a challenge that has record labels experimenting with new products, copy protection, DVDs, online media, cell phone ringtones and unlikely collaborations.
Those thinking that they’ve only recently heard about the latest and greatest new format aren’t delusional. Over the last few years, music lovers have been inundated with an alphabet soup of acronym-laden audio media. Shortly before sales of CDs peaked in 2000, Sony trotted out its Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD), boasting superior sonics and surround-sound capability that claimed to provide listeners an entirely new and vastly better experience.
On the surface, Sony wasn’t bluffing about SACD’s advantages. But poor business decisions and the presence of a competing format prevented SACD from establishing a foothold. Sony’s original decision to make its SACDs single-layer rather than hybrid compatible (the latter indicating that the discs play as CDs on any player, but require an SACD-capable unit to transmit high-resolution and multichannel audio) meant that listeners had to purchase expensive SACD equipment. By the time Sony began issuing hybrids and lowering prices, the format was 4 years old and had barely made a dent in the marketplace.
DVD-A and its reincarnation
As Sony touted SACD, Warner Bros. threw its weight behind DVD-Audio (DVD-A), which boasts similar sonic benefits but plays back on any DVD player and can hold videos, images and text. Many early DVD-A’s lacked impressive visuals and had faulty onscreen menus. Moreover, the discs were packaged in bulky jewel cases that didn’t fit in conventional retailer racks or home-shelving units. As with SACD, a paucity of first-rate software and compatibility dilemmas relegated the format to the background. But DualDisc, launched by Warner and fellow DVD-A proponent 5.1 Entertainment, implements many of DVD-A’s fundamentals in a more mainstream-friendly package.
Prior to Simple Plan’s “Still Not Getting Any” (Lava) standing as the first DualDisc released last October, labels had been including bonus DVDs with anticipated CD releases as a way of giving fans something unobtainable via the Internet. For the industry, the trick was to produce a disc that could store both CD and DVD, and make it thin enough to play in all machines.
Thickness hasn’t been an issue, but DualDiscs don’t conform to the industry’s compact-disc standard and can’t be read by all players. Pioneer, Toshiba and Onkyo were among manufacturers to have initially issued warnings against playing DualDiscs, noting that doing so may damage the machine. But the problem isn’t widespread, and has been limited to select older players and multidisc changers.
That hitch hasn’t stopped labels and merchants from embracing DualDiscand developing materials to promote and explain the software. Most DualDiscs retail for the price of a new CD ($18.99), though many are on sale for less. Currently, manufacturing costs are higher and production capacity is limited, but if music lovers respond at the cash register, expect labels to ramp up the volume.
Miyk Camacho, operations manager at Tower Records on Clark Street, cites label cooperation, consumer education and universal compatibility as reasons he believes DualDisc may finally be a format that sticks. “There’s really no reason not to buy the DualDisc over a CD. The price is right, the content is good and the education is easy. When DualDisc initially came out, there was a bit of confusion. But it’s really easy to explain that there’s a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. Part of the goal is to educate people with pamphlets and displays. As long as customers are aware of what it is, there are no compatibility issues. Whereas we made separate stock areas for SACD and DVD-A, the majors don’t want any division with DualDisc. In our stores, we file them right in with the CDs.”
Though fewer than 100 titles are presently available, momentum is building. In the last two months, Sony BMG issued more than 25 catalog albums — including Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” Lamb of God’s “Ashes of the Wake” and AC/DC’s “Back In Black” — as well as new releases such as Omarion’s “O” and Jennifer Lopez’s “Rebirth,” which have accounted for a third of each record’s overall sales.
Thomas Hesse (this name as published has been corrected here and in subsequent references in this text), President of Global Digital Business at Sony BMG, says the conglomerate has sensed huge demand and received very positive responses, despite having only released its first titles in February
“Since the launch, we have already sold over 600,000 copies,” Hesse says. “DualDisc is a great way to . . . give them more value. It’s meant as a parallel product to CD, and designed to give people more choice. In the future, there will be some day-in-date releases that only come out on DualDisc (like the Springsteen), and on some occasions, maybe a CD will come out later. But one format needn’t come at the expense of the other.”
Other parties at the dance
Though it has been the most aggressive, Sony BMG isn’t the only player. Atlantic just issued “Something To Be,” the first solo album from Matchbox Twenty vocalist Rob Thomas. Like the new Springsteen record, it’s only available on DualDisc and in the first week of release sold more than 250,000 copies to debut at the top of the Billboard charts. EMI is presently deciding what titles to offer, and 5.1 Entertainment is reissuing previous DVD-A’s as DualDiscs that have high-resolution DVD-Audio.
Recognizing consumers’ love affair with multimedia, Universal Music Group is also gearing up its efforts. Paul Bishow, the company’s vice president, marketing — new formats, thinks that such expansion is necessary. “For the last 20 years, the industry basically had one product to sell. We’re now in a world in which it’s imperative that labels provide music listeners a wide variety of products.”
Universal has issued DualDiscs from Snow Patrol and Diana Krall, but its biggest release to date comes this Tuesday, when Nine Inch Nails’ new “With Teeth” (Interscope) debuts. Trent Reznor, lead singer of the industrial-rock band, had a hand in authoring the group’s 1994 album “The Downward Spiral” for DualDisc. In that he concurrently mixed the record’s stereo and surround programs in the studio, Reznor was even more involved for “With Teeth.”
As they become aware of the format, Bishow thinks more artists such as Reznor will jump at the opportunity to expand their creativity, and that consumers will respond in kind. “Up to this point, DVD has primarily been viewed as video. DualDisc shows everyone that DVD is a music and video product. Many discs will have DVD-Audio, and given the proliferation of DVD-A players and inroads from car audio, we think that DVD-A may still have a place in the market.”
Whether or not the inclusion of audiophile-minded advantages lures the public remains to be seen. For most consumers, better-sounding CD is the answer to a question that nobody asked. But the home-theater approach seems to be working, and because surround sound, high-resolution audio and video content cannot be properly encrypted on the Web, DualDiscs offer a type of copy protection the industry desires, to thwart a thriving, inventive pirating underworld that invents new ways to defeat copy protection schemes.
No matter what DualDisc’s fate, consumers won’t be left holding the bag — the software will still play on standard equipment. Nonetheless, any early adopter of new technology can tell you there’s a chance that two years from now DualDiscs will have gone the way of the MiniDisc or exist on the fringes like SACD. But given the format’s universal compatibility and competitive pricing, such a scenario is doubtful.
Yet it’s clear that labels still have a long way to go before they sell the DualDisc concept to the masses, especially Web-savvy individuals such as Vita Martinelli, who buys about 15 records a year. Martinelli’s view on DualDisc, after auditioning one, is that the medium is redundant.
A regular guy
“It’s not something that applies to me,” Martinelli says. “Other CDs have similar multimedia material and you don’t have to have a DVD drive to see it. And you can get music videos on iTunes or go to the musician’s Web site. But I can see how DualDisc would be useful to someone who doesn’t use the Internet that much.”
Given the choice between a DualDisc and a normal CD version of an album, which would Martinelli pick?
“I’d buy the regular one. I wouldn’t care about the other stuff.”
That kind of stance is one reason labels are taking no chances and keep branching out into several other fields, including the booming download market. While often viewed as the biggest threat to packaged media, reports often fail to cite that downloads account for just 2 percent of the industry’s total revenue. More than 140 million songs were purchased online in 2004. By comparison, nearly 770 million full-length albums were shipped to retailers. Doomsayers who have been predicting CD’s imminent demise since as early as 2002 fail to take into account that many Americans don’t own a computer, let alone an MP3 device.
Yet it’s impossible to deny Apple’s iTunes’ ubiquitous presence, simple interface, fun appeal and addictive options. Other online sources such as Napster, Rhapsody, Real Networks, Microsoft Music Store and even Wal-Mart are also vying for Web surfers to visit their sites, click the mouse and assemble a digital library.
Also on the horizon is the impending arrival of HD DVD and Blu-ray, two video-based discs in line to replace DVD and scheduled to launch by late 2005. Both can include high-resolution audio and could be developed as substitutes for CD, though a looming format war could send them to cut-out bins, a la Laserdisc.
3G broadband phones, constantly connected to networks that allow users to access music whenever they want, are also coming. According to Hesse, Sony BMG’s mobile music market is already as big as its download market. As the ringtone fad continues to sweep the country, the next wave of cell phones will be music-enabled and could theoretically double as portable music devices. In anticipation of what it’s forecasting as the next trend, Sony BMG has aligned itself with mobile network operators with the hope of selling music to anyone, anytime and anywhere in the world. Still, the probability of phones replacing stereos and portable MP3 players is very slim.
Those who refused to part with their vinyl records may see the music industry’s marketing chess game as highly ironic, another way in which the past becomes the future. Left for dead in the early ’90s, new LPs are still pressed by hundreds of labels and sold everywhere from neighborhood shops to local concerts.
To many ears, vinyl still sounds more lifelike than any digital format that has ever been invented.
– – –
Music DVDs making dent in marketplace
Once afterthoughts and filled with videos seen on MTV, music DVDs have since diversified and helped shore up labels’ bottom lines. Part of the explosive home-theater trend, sales of music videos in 2004 grew by 26.3 percent and accounted for $2.7 billion in revenue.
According to Tower Records manager Miyk Camacho, music DVD sales at the Clark Street Tower Records doubled from 2003 to ’04. In February, Best Buy announced it was reducing CD inventory and giving more space to DVDs, including the growing list of music titles.
Such releases are no longer restricted to household artists, though multidisc sets from perennial favorites such as Elton John, Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin are among the all-time top sellers. High-profile titles have come from indie stalwarts White Stripes, Drive-By Truckers and Morrissey. Concert films, ranging from Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps” to David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,” along with movies and documentaries, such as The Ramones’ “End of the Century,” are drawing tremendous interest. Publicity pushes often consist of screening events at theaters. Mature, cutting-edge artists such as Sonic Youth and Weezer have reaped nostalgia by offering their entire music-video anthology on a single disc loaded with hours of extras.
And labels have only begun to open the archives. Two examples riding high on Billboard charts that champion deceased legends are AC/DC’s “Family Jewels” (Epic), which features rare footage of the band’s original lead singer, Bon Scott, and Johnny Cash’s “Live At Montreux 1994” (Eagle Vision). As large concerts are increasingly filmed on location, DVD releases that commemorate major tours will become commonplace. Those headed to U2’s Vertigo Tour or Paul McCartney’s upcoming trek will likely get to relive the experiences in the comfort of their homes in the not-too-distant future.
— Bob Gendron
