Scene from a hospital room.
≡ 9:05 am ≡ anthropomorphism business music p2p ringles satire
(With apologies to the Fireball.)
SCENE: A hospital room.
THE CD SINGLE, quinquagenarian and pale, sits on a bed, attached to a bewildering array of chattering and beeping monitors: pulse, temperature, accounts receivable. The old boy may be barely breathing. He appears to be watching VH1.
A MUSIC EXECUTIVE knocks tentatively at the not-quite-closed door, and enters, followed closely by a rambunctious CHILD, who is thumbing madly away at a small cellphone.
EXECUTIVE: Heyyyy. How ya doin’, pal. They feedin’ you OK?
SINGLE: [Switching off “I Love the 80s” as he rolls slowly to face the newcomers.] Hi. No, not really. Actually, they—
EXECUTIVE: Great, great, glad to hear it. Listen, I brought someone who I really think can cheer you up.
SINGLE: Oh? [Coughing slightly, he sits up.] Is it…is it the pee-to-pee people? [Indicating the flowers across the room.] It’s so nice when they come by, they make me feel—
EXECUTIVE: [Explosively.] What? NO! You KNOW how I feel—uh, ahem. What I mean to say is, I’ve brought someone who can cheer both of us up.
SINGLE: Uh, OK…
EXECUTIVE: It’s my friend here, Ringtone!
The EXECUTIVE grabs the CHILD a little too roughly by the shoulder and thrusts him toward the bed. RINGTONE nearly looks up.
RINGTONE: ’Sup.
SINGLE: [Eyeing RINGTONE quizzically, then softening.] Hi there, little guy. What’s your name?
RINGTONE: Ring.
EXECUTIVE: [Eagerly.] Eh, Single, whaddya think? He looks just like you!
SINGLE: Except shorter.
EXECUTIVE: Yeah, great! You guys are gonna get along perfectly. From now on, you’ll be hanging out together, everywhere you go: malls, big-box stores, Starb—
RINGTONE: [Screwing up his face, eyes still locked on his text message.] Lame.
SINGLE: I don’t really see the point.
EXECUTIVE: [Darkening.] What? Why not? What’s not to get? He’s hot right now. He’ll prop you right up. You can be cool again.
SINGLE: He’s not hot, he’s convenient. People can just, you know, tap-tap-tap with their thumbs or whatever, and they’ve got him. You put him in a box with me, now people have to, what, download us to their phones or something?
EXECUTIVE: Sure. It’s easy. You hook up your data cable to the blue teeth on your dongle and it’s all, click, click, sync. Presto. It’s so easy even iTunes can do it. [He shudders slightly at the mention.]
SINGLE: I don’t think it’s quite that sim—
EXECUTIVE: Look. I honestly don’t care what you think. Nobody cares what you think. You are dying. DY–ING. Nobody wants you, nobody cares.
SINGLE: But the pee-to—
EXECUTIVE: Those—those “people”—are morons. Morons and thieves. And we tried to cut their thieving hands off, but then everybody got all upset, “boo hoo rootkits,” blah blah BLAH. I still don’t really understand what happened there. But we’ve got to try something else, and I’m thinking, if they won’t pay money for you, they’ll pay money for him, and I can start moving some friggin’ product again.
SINGLE: Won’t they just be able to get him for free too?
RINGTONE: [Looking up suddenly.] Free?
EXECUTIVE: Oh, hell.
SINGLE: That’s right, kid. They’re out there, people who really love you, not just because you’re easy, but because they like your sound. And they’ll share you with their friends.
EXECUTIVE: I AM NOT HEARING THIS!
RINGTONE: Sweet.
Turning on the spot, RINGTONE exits briskly. Several beats, filled only with the silent sneer of the EXECUTIVE, pass.
EXECUTIVE: You are a damned fool.
SINGLE: Yeah, OK. [He turns the TV back on.]
September 11th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Well done. I think the term “ringle” — its cleverness, its pleasing sound — adequately conveys all you need to know about this concept.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
What will it take before The Music Industry finally wakes up and smells the 21st-century coffee before they’re left with the soggy used grounds? Are the big labels going to collapse before they realize that they’re wrong? Sigh….
September 11th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
And Lala is the Grey Panthers, smuggling aged CDs out of their nursing home beds to frolic promiscuously, often naked, until they collapse from bitrot, scratched but happy.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:46 am
The stupid, it burns!
I can pay $1.00 for one song via the iTunes Music Store, or I can pay $6.00 for that one song plus a couple of bad remixes or a mediocre B-side on a CD single. Why do music publishers not understand how one-sided this decision is? And I say this as someone who owns more than one CD single!
One of these articles referred to “the mostly defunct single format.” They really needed to be more specific: it’s the CD single format that is moribund. Singles are once again taking over as the primary delivery format of music — it’s just that they’re being delivered electronically rather than on round bits of plastic.
It still seems to me that iTMS pricing is stacked towards encouraging singles purchases, not albums. For example, Linkin Park’s breakout album is $12, the sum of the individual 99-cent track prices. With the album you get two extra tracks that are not purchasable individually, plus a live take of one regular album track. Is that enough of an incentive to steer people to the full album? Apparently not: the popularity graph shows that most people have bought just the one big single release from the album, and almost nobody has bought more than the four official singles from it. $4, not $12.
From where I sit, it looks like electronic delivery of singles has killed the album dead, even more effectively than MTV. If the publishers really want people to buy albums, they need to provide actual incentive, y’know?
September 13th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Did I say $6? I see that CD singles by The Killers seem to list between $8 and $13. That’s insane!
September 13th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
True, though this was in progress long, long before the iTMS came around. The music industry spent decades shaping radio into a medium that pushed singles, operating under the assumption that there would never be a way for a customer to pay a fair price for just the desired track. They’d have to buy the whole CD for $18, or pay slightly less for an EP or other similar packaging of “single plus crap.”
When Napster hit and people started being able to get just the one track, well, it was like putting a bare wire in parallel with a big fat resistor. I’m sure that the substantial price differential ($0 vs $8 or whatever for the CD single) didn’t hurt, but I bet we’d have seen a similar effect if Napster had been charging, oh, I dunno, $0.99 per track.
And here we are at the iTMS.
[Note that this discussion dovetails nicely with the NBC/Universal fiasco; given a good thing (episodes of “The Office” at $2 apiece) NBC decided they wanted to get into the “plus crap” marketing game (viz., bundling), and took their toys and left. Those that do not learn from the past…]