FLAGSTAFF, Arizona, January 5 -- I recently obtained a CD by classical guitarist Eliot Fisk, one of the shining lights of his chosen instrument. Among other selections, it contains a heartbreakingly beautiful three-minute piece called "Für Eliot," written by one of my old college professors, the late Relly Raffman.
I was impressed with Fisk's musicianship, so I decided to sample some of his other recordings. I logged into my ISP, fired up a Web browser, and started looking around. I found that Fisk has his own Web site (not surprisingly, it's called www.eliotfisk.com). Among other things, it contains a list of his recorded output.
Unfortunately, most of his CDs are out of print -- the Web site has links to Barnes & Noble's classical record store, but when you go there, you get a message saying that the CDs are not currently available.
That started me thinking. These days, CD recording machines are cheap and readily available. With the rise of the Internet, digital recording, CD-R, DVD, MP3, and what-have-you, is there any reason why a CD -- or, more to the point, a digital recording in any form -- should become unavailable anymore?
The recordable CD makes it possible to keep records available even if they don't sell a million (or even a hundred) copies a year.
Back in the old days, it used to be that record companies kept big vaults or storehouses full of analog magnetic tapes made at recording sessions, and when they perceived that demand had reached a certain level, they'd fire up the LP record pressing equipment, make a run of LP platters, print up the same number of jackets, pack them up, and sell them. It cost a lot of money to do this -- so when they weren't selling enough copies of an album, they'd stop making them. (I've never worked in the record business, so I'm sure I'm getting this slightly wrong, but that's the basic idea, anyway.)
One from drive A, one from drive B
These days, things are different -- technologically, at least. A digital recording can be stored in any of several different forms -- magnetic tape, magnetic disk (like the C: drive on a PC), large optical disk, or compact disc (CD -- I'm still not sure why "compact disc" is spelled with a "c," but it's always been that way).
What's more, since a digital recording is just a bunch of ones and zeroes on a disk or tape, you can make a perfect copy of it, with none of the loss of sound quality that happens when you copy from one analog source to another. (Before the analog enthusiasts jump all over me, I'm well aware that with good equipment, there's not much loss of sound quality -- I've made plenty of tape-to-tape copies using two good cassette decks, and it's usually hard to tell the copy from the original. But that's not my point.)
So here's the point: It's time to update the way record companies make and distribute records (CDs). Instead of (or in addition to) running off a mass quantity of CDs, shipping them through the distribution system, and selling them to consumers in record stores, why not go to a production-on-demand model? Simply make the digital data available in some form, and have the physical CD made in the record store, when a customer wants one.
The record companies already do this with cassette tapes -- I'm sure you've seen the carrels in record stores, where you can buy songs a la carte and have the machine make a tape with all of your favorite songs on it, and none of your un-favorites. The recording industry should take the concept one step further, and make all of its recorded content available on a pay-as-you-go basis -- or at least in addition to the existing (pre-made) CDs we've always had.
Let's return to my original problem -- that the CDs I wanted were out of print. I'd like to be able to walk into a record store and say, "I'm looking for a CD called The Best of Eliot Fisk, which came out several years ago on the Music Masters label but is now out of print." The record dealer would take out a blank recordable CD, put it into a CD-R recording machine, run off a copy (including the liner notes, from a laser printer), and sell it to me for the same price as I'd have paid if he'd had it in stock, or perhaps slightly more.
Technologically, there are no significant obstacles to this distribution model. The main one would be deciding where to store the actual data -- it could be stored at some central location and distributed over a network (public or private), or the record store could have a server containing some huge amount of optical disk storage, which would contain the digital recordings, for transfer onto individual CDs when ordered by customers.
Taking it in-house
Another option -- perhaps one the record companies might prefer, because they'd maintain more control -- would be to have an automated CD mail-order system hooked into a Web site. If I wanted a copy of The Best of Eliot Fisk, I could go to the record company's site, place my order, and pay for it with a credit card. The Web server would tell the CD-production machine to make a copy of the disc, print the liner notes, put them in a box, and ship them to me. This distribution model would also be great for the favorite-songs-a-la-carte idea.
Under either of these distribution models, there would be no reason whatsoever for any record to go out of print, ever (unless the record company decided it wanted to take it off the market, the way Disney does with videos). Even if the company had sold only a few copies of The Best of Eliot Fisk in the past year, it would still be cost-effective for them to keep the recording available, because the cost of data storage is so low nowadays. There would be no need to keep a lot of money tied up in inventory in order to keep a CD in print, because the company wouldn't make a CD until someone ordered one!
Most likely, the make-to-order distribution model would be something companies would do in addition to, rather than instead of, the regular mass-production way they've always done business. I'm sure it's cheaper to make 1,000,000 copies of the latest Backstreet Boys CD and ship them all at once than it is to make them one at a time. The cost of a one-off, made-to-order CD would undoubtedly be a bit higher than that of a mass-produced one.
But the recordable CD makes possible a new avenue for music distribution -- and one that would appeal to those of us whose tastes tend toward less popular music (like classical guitar). More important, it would make it possible to keep records available forever, even if they didn't sell a million (or even a hundred) copies a year. How about it, record-industry moguls?
Copyright © 2000 John J. Kafalas