I'm guessing this early info about major labels stopping production of CDs is a test to see how consumers react to it. The labels will make their ultimate decision with their wallets, and I keep thinking this is an ahead-of-the-game move not unlike Netflix trying to "force" buyers into their preferred business model way too soon. It could easily backfire on an industry that is already in a downward spiral.
Do they forget that downloadable music has all but destroyed the music industry? They've thought of themselves and consumers but somehow forgot about the artists. (And the artist is the "product" they are selling.) Albums are all but a dead art form, because consumers want only the songs they like, and now they can have just them and only them. It's becoming cost prohibitive to conceive, record, and produce a full album of songs or even sign artists to longterm contracts, because everybody with a microphone in their dorm room can be a "one hit wonder."
It's the same in the publishing industry and the TV and film industries aren't far behind. The Hollywood studios, music labels, and book publishers are catering to themselves and the consumer and, at the same time, they're making themselves obsolete in the long run.
I can now publish my own book (and have done so) and can sell it internationally online, plus at events and bookstores on my own. Musicians can record their own music and get it on iTunes, filmmakers can distribute their own films online.
It's the YouTube generation. YouEntertainment.
The only thing publishers, labels, and studios can do for artists better than they can do for themselves now is promotion. Getting noticed. They can market better than any individual or small group I know (who isn't already established).
But that's how we all used to become familiar with artists. They were packaged and promoted and groomed and reviewed and interviewed by these "machines." Labels signed artists and produced and promoted albums. Those are the CDs they want to get rid of now. People are not buying albums online anymore, unless they want to. The "machine" is not in control of the product anymore, in other words. Consumers are. They are fickle, forgetful, and disloyal. The iTunes generation will create more flash-in-the-pan fame in five years than the rest of us (from previous generations) have seen in our entire lives. The creation, nurturing, and grooming of the "product" is quickly being destroyed by business ideas like this.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
