Appetite For Disruption

Apathy in the U.S. Redux

Apparently even the suggestion of developing some kind of CD giveaway program to LA Times readers has caused a big uproar out in the City of Angels.

Unlike Q Prime's Cliff Burnstein I disagree somewhat as to the nature of the U.S. music audience.  As I've written about many times before the U.S. consumer is faced with a dizzying array of choices on how to spend their time and money at almost every waking hour of the day.  We are an extremely busy, overscheduled society.  The sacrosanct record stores we grew up with - and even those placed strategically in major malls with heavy foot traffic - are no longer destination points per se, and even if they are we have far less time to browse around looking for the next great musical artist.  We want to get in and out of stores and onto the next thing before we have to pick up our kids from whatever party or camp or play date they are at, or before we have to prepare that presentation or get ready for a meeting.

Music needs to be curated to us, even if it's music by well-known artists like Prince.  If I was 13 years old now, the age I discovered Prince for the first time on MTV (with "1999" and "Little Red Corvette") I would not even be able to discover the artist via the same media I did back in 1983.  You don't have to listen to radio to get new music.  MTV barely plays new music (unless you're counting all the music they license in for their reality programming, a lot of which is from indie artists who will probably never get a video played on any MTV Networks channel).

So why shouldn't newspapers get into this game?  Why shouldn't they help expose music to their readers?  And why shouldn't they look upon this as a way to develop an advertiser-supported model when their ad dollars are drying up?  I say they should.

Anyone at the LA Times (or any other major daily or newspaper conglomerate) want to answer that question?

Anarchy in the UK / Apathy in the U.S.

The newspaper business in the U.S. is constantly being reported on as near death.  Sometimes the predictions seem almost as dire as those directed towards the music industry. ;)

One of the solutions UK newspapers have used as a promotional tool is covermount CDs, especially to drive Sunday circulation.

Well, Prince has put a new twist on this promotional strategy.  He sold the Daily Mail his entire new album, which was given away last Sunday to massive sales (free - registration required).  Prince owns his masters.  He can do what he likes with his music to get himself paid and his music into people's hands.  He is one of the elite artists who can have the luxury of employing such a tactic.

But, here in the U.S. - where circulation is lagging and newspaper jobs are drying up - there hasn't even been an attempt to do anything with music CDs - no single-artist efforts, no various artists compilations - by any of the major dailies in U.S. cities.  I know, because when I worked for Universal I was trying to work with one of these papers on a series of CDs for their Sunday paper to be released over the course of a particular month.  They didn't like the economics of it, but they had also not attempted to secure any advertisers to come on as co-funding partners.

What do these papers have to lose?  They should tie in such an effort with an advertiser(s) and make a big splash of the promotion.  Newspapers just need to be clear on who their audience is - adults.  The CDs should be targeted to them, not to them in their role as parent, but music they can discover and enjoy.  Adults have too little free time to go discover and buy new music, even less so as they get more and more entrenched in professional careers.  Being presented with new music to listen to is just one more incentive for those adults to pick up the Sunday paper on the newsstand, or to subscribe to it.