I was watching the recent ad for Pearl Jam's new exclusive release with Target. I remember the many recent exclusives: AC/DC and Walmart, Elton John and Best Buy, The Rolling Stones - Best Buy, and The Eagles and Walmart. With such a positive track record, why then did we not see The Beatles-ReMastered show up as an exclusive somewhere. ( I would have suggested Apple Stores as the perfect irony.)
Obviously these acts and labels are being paid a lot of money for a short period of exclusivity. The people at Walmart are no idiots. They know that kids coming in to buy AC/DC will likely buy something else, at least a coke or two. So why not just give away the CDs. In 2007, Prince gave 3 million CDs in the Sunday's edition of the UK paper the Mail. This was to promote his highly successful set of concerts there.
A little while ago, I wrote in this blog about the value of music. While the pundits are generally of the opinion that music's value is solely marketing. Music is now the loss leader to help sell t-shirts, concert tickets or Coca-Cola.
What will happen to the revenue streams when music has no intrinsic retail value? Will the subsequent revenue be sufficient to keep the artists motivated to create more music? I don't think so. Yet, then again, I generally appear to be in the minority in this area. I think it will be hard to keep the music sales up when CDs are competing with dish towels for shelf space.
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