RSSWhy Audiophile Music Doesn't Sell To The Masses
- By: Jerry Del Colliano,
One of the blessings I have been given in my career was being taught how to do a truly great audiophile demo. It started in the early days of my retail career when I was a teenager working at Bryn Mawr Stereo and Sassafras Audio in the Philadelphia area. Every day that I came to work after high school, I was armed with the best classic rock, classical and jazz Compact Discs (mostly coated with green paint on the edges purportedly to reduce laser refraction) ready to play everything from And Justice For All in the car audio room to A Love Supreme or The Firebird Suite in the audiophile room. I was prepared.
Most audio stores use audiophile records to demo the potential of an AV system. These discs and today's downloads are recorded fantastically and they clearly highlight what a system is capable of doing. From the days of Jazz at the Pawnshop to Fourplay to Reference Recordings to any number of surround sound recordings from DTS Entertainment to Chesky Records - they all sound great, complete with airy highs, taut powerful bass and punchy midrange. Speakers never sounded better. Surround sound has never been explained to consumers more clearly. And ... regular people never buy these records.
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Traditionally, Audiophile records, be they on vinyl, Compact Disc, SACD, Blu-ray or by download, do well if they sell between 3,000 and 4,000 albums total - not per media. More mainstream surround sound remixes like Queen's A Night at The Opera have sold in the neighborhood of 30,000 records total on DVD-Audio complete with a stereo and 5.1 mix. The fact is audiophile music doesn't really sell that well to mainstream consumers.
Five Reasons Why Audiophile Music Doesn't Sell
1. Songwriting: Audiophile music sounds fantastic. Nobody argues with that; however the songwriting can be either too personal, too noodly (self indulgent) or just out of date with the current musical trends. Mainstream consumers need music that they can sink their teeth into. Cover songs were good enough for Jimi Hendrix and Van Halen as they were coming up in the world of popular music so they should be good enough for audiophile-based artists too.
2. Technology: Audiophile music is often sold using the most cutting edge recording techniques on the most high resolution audio format of the day, ranging from gold CDs (from the old days) to SACD to DVD-Audio to Blu-ray and even 24/192 downloadable files. The problem is: how do large audiences of people buy into many of these formats and get their full potential? Everyone today knows how to download a song from iTunes but they tend to sound no better than a 25 year old Compact Disc at best. Getting 24/192 audio into your system is a much trickier maneuver and most consumers will take convenience over performance.
3. Little To No Star Power: Audiophile recordings rarely include star performers, like when Sting appears on "Money For Nothing." Simply put - the budget isn't there for such showmanship, but it sure helps sales. While Hip Hop isn't an audiophile genre, the rap and R&B world is all about the all-star drop by. I wonder out loud if John Mayer or Lenny Kravitz or Winton Marsalis were hired to sit in on a track, whether new audiences would get hip to cutting edge audiophile music in volumes of people larger than the readership of The Absolute Sound, Stereophile or even our own HomeTheaterReview.com.
See the other reasons and more on Page 2.
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Comment on this article
It dosent sell because...we "Regular Joes" are not going to spend $25,000 on a Stereo System! Not when on any given weekend you can here the following in your home: The neighbors mowing their lawn, a *Boom-Box Car* driving by, the phone always ringing for the teenage daughter, the son playing his electric guitar etc. You get the idea. Unless you have a "Sound Proof Room" its just not worth it. And besides...it has been proven, in a sound proof room bty. that only 2 out of 10 people and tell the diffrence between a CD and a SACD of the exact same recording played on the same system at the same seating area at the same volume...in other words..."scientifically controled testing conditions". So you might as well sprinkle Fairy Dust on the CD because it us "Regular Joes" it dosent matter!
It's simple, audiophile music does not sell, because most of it is boring. At every trade show I attend, it's always the same thing playing. Diana Krall, Patricia Barber, Jennifer Warnes. Maybe Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon or Brothers in Arms by the Dire Straits.
I'm so happy that Music Matters is around to publish great hardbop jazz titles. Something fresh apart from the singing of lazy jazz standards by the Krall, Barber & Jacintha types.
Also, I'm 29 years old. It never fails at tradeshows, expos & events - I notice I'm usually the youngest person around. 90% of the people there are old and are pretty much set in their ways. They will lament about how music is dying or that young people don't care about music, yet do nothing to attract young people to the hobby. They can begin by turning off their Diana Krall & Jennifer Warnes.
Luckily, people in my generation are at the forefront of mixing computers & being an audiophile. So on the digital side with servers, lossless etc, things are looking up.
While I agree with Atane, I would also like to point out that the industry, both Music production and CE playback side need to stop with the stupid format choices it has made in the past.
Simply put we now have a very good system with Blu-ray discs (for high resolution audio), lets use it people, no more DVD-A or SACD that most "regular joes" have never heard of and if they did know, they avoided the format war. Also how about actually using Apple Lossless or preferably FLAC for higher bit rates / depth. Stop making it 'hard' to use / play and the consumers might actually buy it!
Again like Atane, I would also love to get 'current mainstream' music in Audiophile resolution
I cannot agree more. No, I don't have a $25 000.00 stereo system, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy high resolution music. Give me some regular joe tunes in at 24/192 bitrates, and I will buy them, because these days I DON'T NEED an expensive setup to appreciate the difference!
dotvibe is right you don't need to spend a lot of money to enjoy great sound, I recently discovered AIX when I bought an Oppo bluray player it included an AIX demo DVD which blew my mind I have since made online purchases at AIX and will make more in the future. I tend to go with video+audio but the Oppo plays SACD+DVD-A and I do own a few SACDs which are easily distinguished from a normal CD!!!
I agree - you should have to spend a ton of money to get great sound.
At the same time AIX and other audiophile labels spend a good amount on equipment however very little on marketing thus their audience stays relatively small.
SACD is basically dead at this stage. DVD-Audio is a relic however if I am going to do a demo of my music system for someone - its those formats (and a DualDisc of Audioslave) that i use. I need HD audio for these demos yet the majors wont sell it to me. Its a joke.
With CD sales domestically down from $33,000,000,000 when I started music school in 1993 to a mere $12,000,000,000 today including 3 bill for ringtones and 4 bill for downloads - the idea of selling CDs should be getting old.
I'd like one of those pony tailed jerk offs from the majors to tell me what scares them about 30% marketshare with Blu-ray players? Players that cost $150 in every store in America. Players that connect using a prohibitively restrictive HDMI format that the movie studios and Intel forced down our collective throats. WHY doesn't music get released in 24 bit 192 stereo on Blu-ray? The master tapes are 24-192 in the archives now. Toss on some supplemental material and sell the back catalog all over again. I know I would be FIRST to re-buy my collection. ALL OF IT and at TENS of THOUSANDS of DOLLARS in cost.
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