I was reading the paper and they referred to the CD as "near obsolete".

Nobody books their airline travel on the phone anymore.  Hell, the airlines charge you EXTRA to book a reservation with a person.  And the odds of a fuck-up are higher than they are if you book on the Internet.  Oh, the airlines are freaking a bit about the fact that you can comparison shop INSTANTLY and they’re lobbying in D.C. to allow advertising subterfuge, leaving the final price, including surcharges and taxes, until you COMMIT, but they saw the wisdom in eliminating employees.  Not only their salaries, but their benefits and the buildings within which they worked.  Yet record companies are still trying to prop up the CD.

I am not Chicken Little.  The switch to files is going to happen seemingly overnight.  In the not so distant future.  People believe since CD business didn’t tank in 2000, with Napster, that they’re safe.  But, that was before the iPod.  The reason people no longer want CDs is not because they can steal the music but because they no longer want the DISCS!  They’re superfluous.  Made to be almost instantly thrown away, like the CD longbox of yore.  They serve no purpose other than as a device from which songs are transferred from the record company to your computer.  Stereos are now iPod based, just look at the iPod Hi-Fi, never mind the Bose SoundDock and the zillions of other mini stereos that contain iPod docks.  The vast majority of automobiles sold in the U.S. in the coming year will be iPod ready.  Sure, you’ll have to pay extra for the cable, but the odds of someone throwing down are higher than they are for aftermarket satellite radio, after all, people have ALREADY been convinced, via ownership of the iPod.

In other words, it’s an iPod world, and we just live in it.  But stunningly, the major labels are doing nothing to accommodate this.  Oh, they’re selling shitty-sounding copy protected files at an equal aliquot price to the pristine versions on CD.  And, they want to RAISE the price even HIGHER!  If you call this acknowledging the new world, you must be living in the old.

The iPod is not like a conventional stereo.  It’s not purely a vehicle for playing music, the music resides RIGHT ON IT!  You don’t have to carry your CDs in a booklet, and, you can carry as many tracks as you can afford!  And, at the present price of FREE, that’s quite a lot.  Yes, you’re limited by your storage space, not your wallet.

Threaten people.  Sue them.  But there are more holes in the distribution system than there are in the Windows operating system.  You just can’t close the gap.  There are not only P2P apps, but IM.  And ripping from CD.  And hard drive transferring.  The key is not to eviscerate that which cannot be eradicated, but to come up with a solution that’s cheaper and easier.

People now carry a lot of music.  So, you’ve got to sell them a lot of music.

But the funny thing is, there’s another problem.  People don’t want the music the labels are SELLING!

The people no longer want albums.  If they did, they’d be buying them on the iTunes Music Store.  But, the public has been conditioned to believe that ONLY the single is any good, and therefore they only buy THAT!  To deal with this, labels are now not making the single available on iTunes, at least not before the album is available.  That’s like making people buy the DVD of the whole season without allowing them to watch the episodes one by one on TV.

You see the record companies are selling SPECIALS and the money is in SERIES!  But rather invest in a "Sopranos", something meaty, a bit different, that garners loyalty, the labels are just creating dreck exactly like what came before.

Bottom line.  You can’t prevent the public from acquiring just the single.  The game has changed.  This is not the nineties, where the CD single can be cut out forcing the public to buy the whole album to get what it wants.  If you don’t make it available on iTunes, people will just steal it.  Via whatever means.  How come the record companies can’t understand the game has changed?

We now need act loyalty.  Act belief.  It’s the only way to make your numbers.  By convincing the public that they want MORE than the track.

Wow, THAT’S scary.  That’s not how the labels have done it for DECADES!  Propped up by MTV and paid for radio.  It hasn’t been like this since the SEVENTIES!  When FM radio broke acts completely unlike those on AM.

Think about that.  A lot of the FM acts DID make singles.  But the public wanted the ALBUM!  Because people were convinced the album was GOOD!  They wanted to know more about the act, get INTO IT!

And, unlike today, it wasn’t the single that sold the act ANYWAY!

The tour sold the act.  And the accompanying word of mouth.

It wasn’t TOP DOWN marketing like today, getting the story all over TV and Top Forty radio, but infiltrating the UNDERGROUND!  Convincing the connectors.  It was the "Tipping Point" in action.

The "Tipping Point" has no relevance in today’s major label game.  There’s not time for the public to do the work.  Via scorched earth marketing EVERYBODY is instantly reached.  Not only the insiders, but the casual customers.  And therefore, there’s no core.  I ask you, are there really any Yellowcard fans out there?

The key is to get A LOT of music in the hands of the consumer.  But, they’ve got to PULL IT!  They’ve got to WANT IT!  They’ve got to BELIEVE IN IT!

It’s not viral marketing.  It’s no company game at all.  It’s purely about good music.  Creating something that people believe is valid.  And, chances are, it won’t sound ANYTHING like what’s already on Top Forty radio.  Because when it does, people don’t believe it has any worth, that it’s just another attempt at cashing in.