The value of music?
I can remember a time when we were proud to own a cassette tape of our favorite artists, especially if you got it a week or two before the actual release date. When EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, and Tribe Called Quest first came out, I remember being the envy of my classmates because I owned what they all wanted. Even as I grew older, it just felt good to have music blasting out my car that no one else owned. “Where’d you get that tape from?” Sometimes, you didn’t want to reveal your secret locations to everybody. I can also remember when record stores started selling cd’s. In the early 90’s, labels started sending “promo copies” to stores so they could play them for customers while they shopped.If you were lucky, the store would place the extra promo for sale at a reduced price. This meant you had a pre-released cd at a much lower price. I literally collected hundreds of pre-released cd’s throughout the years!
Fast forward to 1998. When Napster became popular, suddenly, buying music was a thing of the past. Who hasn’t listened to a song they wanted to own on MTV, and placed the artist name in the Napster search box? During this time, I downloaded thousands of songs…most were placed on un-labeled cd’s or zip-disks (remember those) that have never been played in years; downloading free music was fun and, well, inexpensive! The government ultimately had to step in, and shut Napster down. Suddenly, people were lost, and the bootleg man came to the rescue. $5.00 cd’s with artwork..some even had the cd’s printed! This was great! The introduction of the complete $300 E-Machine computers gave consumers the chance to download their own music; who needs to pay a bootlegger? The bootleggers had another plan, two cd’s for $5.00, or one for $3.00! Bootleggers win..the time it takes to download, burn, and print a cd is definitely worth $3.00..I’ll take that new R-Kelly cd..yea, the one where he’s coming out the closet! That one was classic! haha
So now, it’s to the point where folks proudly say,”Ohh, I have this album” and when you go to their home, it’s the bootleg version. If you really want to take it another step further, anyone under the age of 14 doesn’t know a life without the internet. Going to the store and actually buying their favorite artists album doesn’t even enter their mind. Visit your local record store, and can guarantee you will barely find a bustling clientele like it used to be 10 years ago. Artists during the last few years have been scrambling to get the consumers money; some even release more than one cd in a year. Lately Hip-Hop artists have been coming out with free mix-tapes to keep their names relevant. Beyonce has recently done free concerts all over the world. Labels are leaking free songs to promote artists cd’s.
With all this free stuff going on, will there ever be a time where people are actually proud to have physical album in their possession, or will an MP3 file be good enough? Do we all feel like were only getting two decent songs from an album? Is that a good enough reason to stop supporting music we enjoy?
Leave a Reply