So here’s a punchline not even Nostradamus predicted: AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica have had three of the year’s best-selling and most significant rock releases.
When did it become 1988 again? What am I going to do without my acid-washed jeans and denim jacket? Maybe tastes haven’t changed much since then, but distribution sure has.
In fact, it’s a tangled mess when the labels do anything they can think of to survive. The latest platters arrived in a myriad of means: digital downloads, multiple packages, vinyl pressings, streaming Internet debuts, nontraditional release days, songs included in music video games, and the dirtiest deed (done not-so dirt cheap) of them all, exclusive release deals.
As far as the labels see it, there’s no such thing as a sure thing anymore, not following quarter after quarter of sales declines. People aren’t buying records when they can’t pay the mortgage.
This creates a risk-taking industry culture. Labels don’t want to find themselves as useless as a stack of 8-track tapes, so they try to reinvent.
When the sky is falling, labels opt for desperate measures. Enter these fiendish exclusivity deals AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses inked. Their new records, Black Ice and GNR’s long-awaited Chinese Democracy, are stocked only at shelves at Walmart and Best Buy, respectively.
They’re fiendish because the upside for the artist and the music industry in general isn’t clear.
It seems contradictory. If record labels are struggling, limiting the release of the product feels counterproductive.
In the case of Democracy, a record which took 17 years and at least $14 million, this is especially curious. Jimmy Lovine, the chairman of GNR’s Interscope-Geffen-A&M label, told Billboard earlier this week the arrangement was about marketing.
Early sales figures won’t be available until next week, but Democracy did debut atop the iTunes best-selling albums table and millions flocked to MySpace.com to hear it for free. For Democracy, the exclusivity deal is a befuddling choice after so much money and time spent.
While Democracy rode into reality with digital splendor, AC/DC doesn’t play that game. It barred Black Ice from online media sellers such as iTunes or Rhapsody. Walmart alone sold the first disc in eight years from the Australian rockers, making for eyebrow-raising bedfellows.
I mean, it’s Walmart, a retailer so polished and pure it demands edited copies of albums. Apparently, however, the retail giant had no objection to AC/DC, a group which rarely met a sexually suggestive double entendre it didn’t love. (“Stick this in your fuse box,” for example).
The deal didn’t seem to wound sales: Black Ice had some of the best first-week numbers of any album this year, but I suspect that has more to do with the artist in question than the means of dispatch.
I want to see the likes of AC/DC and GNR succeed if they don’t, the industry is in serious trouble but they were going to sell records anyway.
That means the ones hurt most by exclusive release deals are the independent record stores such as California indie chains Rasputin Records and Amoeba Records as well as Sacramento’s The Beat.
Threatening those enterprises doesn’t do music any good. It lashes out at places celebrating music. Best Buy or Walmart stocking a record is the same as Starbucks selling albums it’s an incentive to get people in the door to buy something else, not the purpose of the visit.
Rasputin, Amoeba, The Beat and their ilk offer wider, deeper and better selections than the national chain alternatives. Plus, their employees generally know their Lords of Acid from a hole in the ground.
It’s inconceivable that labels wouldn’t want to give an album especially one like Democracy every chance to succeed and bring in more money.
So this isn’t about class or corporate warfare. Everyone has a right to succeed. That’s what I’m arguing across the board I want to see the artists sell as many copies as possible and for the little guy to get a piece of the action, too. A record stands the greatest chance of success the more visibility it gets.
AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica ruling the sales charts may feel like 1988, but the sad but true reality is frantically trying all of these varied strategies especially the exclusive release deal feels like no one knows where things are headed.
Exclusivity deals only benefit the chain involved, not the consumer. And it’s important to just try to keep the customer satisfied.