my problem with music & streaming
"Nobodies tell me, 'That's all luck,' I tell 'em, 'No, it's not luck' / My sweat is not lying, lying" - Kim Chaewon in "Smart" - LE SSERAFIM
i have a tiny problem. physical media is deteriorating. duh. cds are losing their worth and streams on spotify are more important. with things like spotify, soundcloud, youtube music, apple music, and so on taking the world by storm, it's insane how quickly a once loved piece of media can go out of fashion. things like k-pop albums and (maybe) j-pop albums have material to it purely from the goodies inside.
i recently bought newjeans' drawstring bag with their new supernatural double single in a collab with a japanese artist. 100% worth it. the cd design is amazing and i love the cover. a lot of fans, though, will only get it for the photo cards, postcards, all the goodies basically. not many people have cd players, walkmans are tacky, and just using spotify is easier. but the quality isn't the same. the cds are useless to them.
companies behind these k-pop groups (just hybe) have made a solution to people tossing their cds out: sell the album without the cd. it costs less money to produce and there isn't any money wasted in landfills! hybe has made just this with their "weverse" versions, which i feel like is a scam. you're selling an art without the art, just the goodies with the art.
the goodies are what makes me think k-pop and j-pop albums actually hold value. looking at new albums, they don't come with anything and you won't hear a thing about their album sales or anyone unboxing the album online. what is there to unbox? a cd? i looked at charli xcx's new album, "brat," and it seems amazon is only selling the cd and what i assume to be a lyric book? i own adele's 21 album and it's literally just a bunch of photos of her, so, really, charli could have put anything there. now, neither of those albums are bad! i actually really like 365 (i have not listened to any of the other songs) and adele is probably one of my favorite artists.
now, what i am not saying is that artists need to put more goodies in their cds. i almost paid 30 dollars for the supernatural album, but found it for 20 at target. aespa, from sm entertainment, had a version of their album that came with a whole cd player, costing about 179 euros (almost 200 dollars). these goodies are making the albums more expensive... but also charli xcx's brat costs 14 dollars. thats a tiny bit less than a compact k-pop album (le sserafim's antifragile compact ver went for 19 dollars when released). antifragile came with a booklet of concept photos, a random photocard of a member out of 20, a random postcard, and a random photocard of the whole group while still having its own box that has something holding the cd inside. brat simply comes with that booklet, cd, and cd enclosure.
luckily physical media has been coming back lately in terms of vinyls... kind of. people buy a vinyl without owning a record player because they like the aesthetic. there is a vinyl version of brat what goes for about 40 dollars -- they're in high demand but can be difficult to make, so the pricing makes sense. vinyls also come with... you guessed it, goodies!!! obviously there aren't any photocards or postcards, but there are still goodies. you have the obvious vinyl enclosure. brat has it's classic green outside and a picture of charli inside, with a little cutout of the actual record. i believe there is also 2 booklets (amazon your photos are so confusing) one with credits and lyrics, and another with pictures. or are they all holding the vinyl. i dont know. amazon's photos are confusing. you'd also think another factor is, once more, the old record aesthetic. you'd be right, but it relies on the goodie factor to keep afloat. i saw a cassette of brat on amazon with nothing else with it and absolutely no one seemed to have bought it.
spotify, while, yes, paying their artists literal half pennies, is a good platform for indie artists to start out. people who actually want to make this their job get on spotify in hopes they can. paying for distrokid is cheaper than mass-producing your own cds. everything comes with it's pros and cons. in the end, unfortunately, these indie artists might not make it too far.
honestly, i have no real solution to this issue. adding goodies to albums feels unnecessary and shouldn't have to be done to garner more sales, but getting rid of spotify is unethical in the sense of what about people who can't buy albums or what about the indie artists.
music is an art. we should remember that. we should treat it as such. people like laufey or tyler, the creator create art. if a blue square is deemed "modern art" and "worth the nation's debt," then music should be seen as the same. if physical media goes extinct, it should be common courtesy to provide the artist with the correct compensation and users should be given access to cd like audio (in which is possible, but only for wired headphones, due to technological limitations, and paid services, like tidal premium (idk what its called) or apple music). if we want music to be free to stream, then it should be streamed the way it was meant to be heard for free. other features can be locked behind a paywall, or we can continue to have paid-only services like apple music. companies still have to give artists their paycheck after all.
how to correctly compensate an artist, i don't know. but it's more than half a penny.
who knows, i might be a bit too overboard on that solution, but i hope the point of this post resonates with you. cds should make a comeback, and, if they don't, streaming services should let us pretend we have them with no extra cost.