Should I Make a CD?

(This article originally appeared in Saxophone Today, January/February 2016)

            I recently upgraded my work computer to a new laptop.  It is small, relatively light, and super fast.  It has no hard drive, as the storage is solid-state, internal flash.  It is also lacking an optical drive . . . so there is no way to rip, or even play a cd.  This has turned out to be more frustrating that I initially expected, but progress marches on.  This “progress” reared its head when I recently encouraged a student to listen to recording of somewhat obscure version of a classical piece that he is working on; I offered to loan him the cd, but he politely declined because, “I’d have no way of listening to it.”  This gave me pause, and not for the reasons that might first pop into your head.  This young person is a perfect representative of a major target audience for what I would call “saxophone art music,” that is, music that is going to be most interesting to serious students and academic musicians.  If the target consumer of the product doesn’t even have the technology to listen to a cd, should I even consider making a traditional recording?  How can I justify the expense of producing a piece of media that is clearly of no interest to young people?  Is it worth all that money to what amounts to a fancy business card?

Sidetrack:  I’ve been a big fan of David Bowie since I was a teenager.  I wore out my cassette copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.  I moved on to cds, and now I have a healthy collection of Bowie on vintage, and newly produced, vinyl records.  His last album really caught my attention when he made the incredible decision to record a track with the Maria Schneider Orchestra, “Sue (Or In A Season of Crime).”  His newest album comes out in January, and I jumped when I saw that Donny McCaslin returns as the tenor soloist with a small band that includes Ben Monder on guitar.  The title single, ★(pronounced “Blackstar), was released ahead of the album on YouTube.  It is a ten-minute piece of theater, and from a saxophonist’s perspective, Donny McCaslin sounds like a million dollars.

It should be no surprise that you can preorder the album as a download for $8.99.  If you want to buy a physical copy of the cd, that will cost you an additional $2.99.  I wonder how many cds they will sell, as compared to straight downloads.  Here is where it gets interesting.  For between $20 and $50, you can get a cd with a limited edition lithograph (you get to choose one of three different artworks), a clear vinyl LP, the vinyl with your choice of lithograph, or the deluxe package of the vinyl with all three artworks.  You can only get all three lithographs with the deluxe edition.  These are also specified as the preorder prices, so it is unclear what happens after the official release in January.

For artists, this is a business model worth examining.  First of all, the initial track is essentially free, if you can stomach watching an ad.  Vevo racked up over two million hits in the first couple of days!  Now that Bowie has your attention, you are offered a menu of purchasing options to suit your budget and your level of interest.  Neither David Bowie nor Columbia Records invented this approach.  I first saw it happening with independent artists, releasing a download-only for a small amount of money, but a more expensive piece of physical media for the real fans.  Many of these endeavors were crowd-sourced, which is only one step removed from a structure of pre-ordering.  Some of my former students have also been releasing boutique vinyl pressings as an alternative to cds.  The vinyl has the appeal of being “special.”  You can’t copy vinyl (at least not in a practical way), and it requires a certain investment in equipment for playback.  It involves dedication, pride of ownership, and the ritual of relatively complicated playback.  Artists and record labels are figuring out that cds aren’t terribly “special,” but vinyl can be offered in a variety of colors, with elaborate packaging and artwork.  You can even print artwork directly on the vinyl record!  This is a new concept for anyone born after the end of the first age of the LP.  Everything old is new again, sooner or later.

There are plenty of middle-aged, tweed jacket wearing intellectuals that have fancy stereos and turntables for their precious collections of 180-gram deluxe pressings, but guess what?  I have students that have no way to play a cd, but they own a phonograph and have a stash of used records.  They won’t bother to buy a cd because they couldn’t be bothered to buy a cd player, but they like the feeling of owning something special.  One student told me that he even likes a little surface noise, because it makes it sound “real.”  Young people are abandoning an old technology and, at least in certain cases, they are returning to an even more archaic media.  We could write them off as hipsters, but I would be careful.  I still have my father’s wool overcoat because even some fifty years old, it is better than anything that I could buy in the store today.  Call me a hipster, but there is no denying quality.

We can argue about what any of this means, and whether analogue sounds better than digital, but one thing is clear: the market is rapidly changing and nobody can predict precisely where we are headed.  There is definitely still a certain prestige involved in making a cd.  I’m just not certain that it is a smart investment to actually produce a physical cd, and definitely not if it is only for the purpose of qualifying oneself as a legitimate artist.  The advantage to selling downloads is obvious, in that there is no costly artwork, packaging, or shipping involved.  On the other end of the spectrum, vinyl is expensive and is a hassle to produce, but the potential markup is going to be higher, and a small run for the “real fans” might be worth the effort.  I would carefully do the math before embarking on such a venture.

A good decision should be steered by understanding the purpose of your recording.  Are you trying to make money by selling the recording itself, or are you trying to promote your live shows?  Perhaps you are making a cd to grow your reputation in the field.  A composer could be interested in getting his/her music more known, in order to sell the sheet music to other performers.  There are lots of reasons to make a recording, and the motivations can range from a desire for profit to pure vanity.  A reasonable determination of the best business plan would require a grasp of the intended audience, and an understanding of how that audience consumes music, not to mention the expected scale.  Selling one hundred copies is a lot different from selling a thousand, or ten thousand!

People expect to get a lot for free these days, but I honestly believe that fans still have an interest in connecting with the artists that they love.  (I was recently on a gig and the artist ran out of cds, and two people just gave him the money anyway!!!)  We have an opportunity in this moment to find new ways of distributing our music, and to create new ways of generating income.  Whether that means a menu of options and upgrades, special artwork, autographs, meet-and-greet release parties – you can control your own business, but one thing seems pretty clear to me:  the clock is ticking on the shiny silver disc.  §