Dylan, Mellencamp say Music Business Should Return to the Past
Music album sales have a hit a new low. During the week of August 8-14, U.S. album sales totaled 4.95-million, the smallest weekly number since Nielsen SoundScan started keeping records in 1991. The week's best selling album (Eminem's Recovery) managed sales of 133,000 but the second and third highest sellers managed just 52,000 and 41,000 respectively. /
John Mellencamp and Bob Dylan, who have seen many ups and downs in the music business, both seem to think the music business should look to the past for answers.
It is the Internet that has "destroyed the music business" and is "going to destroy the movie business" according to Mellencamp (whose latest album, No Better Than This was recorded on vintage analog equipment) in remarks at a recent Grammy Museum seminar. Even though his new album is available as an MP3 download, Mellencamp decries the digital compression of music because it results in such a poor copy of the original. And, he says, that will spell the end of rock music as we know it.
Dylan, meanwhile, has set his sights on rising concert ticket prices and declining sales. His answer to the issues of credit card fees, surcharges, and scalping: sell only general admission tickets at $60 each, one to to a customer, cash only (no credit cards or checks) available only at the box office (beginning at 5:30 PM for an 8:00 PM show.) That's how it will be for Dylan's August 25 show at the Warfield in San Francisco. The music industry will be watching closely to see how it works.
Coincidentally, Mellencamp and Dylan are doing some old-fashioned touring together out west over the next few weeks.
What do you think? Should we go back to "the way we were" or continue on in the digital world? Or something in between? Discuss.
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