Beach Music Sales and Downloads – The Current Situation
Following the n-teenth e-mail asking for Internet sites offering a wide selection of Beach Music downloads, we decided it’s time to give you a “state of the union” report on where things stand and why they stand the way they do.
Firstly, to answer all those e-mails simultaneously, there are no such Internet sites. There are sites that offer a limited number of Beach Music selections. Those are generally limited to a few Band sites in which they offer their own tunes (that they own or license).
As for who to blame for this sad fact, hmmmm, perhaps we should attribute some of the initial disappointment to Napster. After all, they showed us what an “ideal” download site might be like. Not a possible site, but an ideal site, if there weren’t any limitations-- traditions, or laws--to prohibit such a site.
After all, who wouldn’t like to go to one location to select ANY song they desire? In the post-Napster era we can still ask a similar question, ‘Who wouldn’t like to go to one site to select any song they desire and pay $3.00 to get it?’
$3.00 ?!?!? You bet your sweet tootie. I come from the Record Collector Era. Like all serious collectors I know the difficulty of finding rare tunes and the prices they bring, e.g. in the early 1980s an enterprising Beach Jock started playing the Four Tops’ very first song, on Chess Records, from 1956, “Could It Be You.” A number of Deejays started seriously scanning all the auction lists every month trying to get a copy. I bid $100.00 many, many times and NEVER won a copy (despite the fact that the collector price guides put that record’s value at $6.00).
Would I have paid $3 to get a copy of “Could It Be You” that I could play? I would have paid $5, $10, $20, easily.
So today’s charges of 88 to 99 cents per song are minimal at the least.
Why, then, aren’t there such sites? (Get ready for the ride of your musical life. It’s called – Will They Ever Learn What We Want and Provide it In a Way that We’re Both Satisfied?)
Historically, record companies focus on their current releases as their big money makers. Although some of them developed back catalogues of ‘oldies’ that generated revenues for almost 4 decades, those catalogues weren’t their prime strategy for profitability. That became paramount when the new baby boomer generation reached its first peak in 1964 (any surprise the Beatles were so big in the year that 16 year olds became the largest demographic group in the U.S. for the first time in history)?
However, you may have noticed that Baby Boomers are no longer in the main spotlight, despite the fact that they comprise the single largest demographic group in the U.S. and have all the money. (Record companies are not the only folks who behave as if Baby Boomers are decrepit and senile. This belief is a throwback to the thinking of the 50s and earlier—when people over 40 were assumed to be counting the days while they tottered around waiting to fall into their graves).
From the time the Top 40 took hold in the mid to late 50s until the mid 90s, record companies could justify their attention to current releases (not from the listener and fan perspective, as most Beachdiggers experienced). The successful companies worked with a formula in which they balanced the costs on one side of the ledger (recording, manufacturing, promotion, and distribution) to anticipated profits on the other side.
The value of oldies catalogues came when the companies realized they had already invested all they needed in recording, they simply needed to repackage, promote, and distribute the product—songs—they already owned.
There was a downside, however.
Baby Boomers have Paid Dearly for the Music They Love
Through One Technological Advance After Another
Actually, our parents were the first to have to shell out extra money to enjoy their music. When the 45-rpm came along in 1949-50, it didn’t change the possibility of enjoying popular music—for a while. Record companies continued to issue new songs on both 78 and 45 rpm. At the same time, the new polyvinylchloride discs were found to be very good for the microgrooves which extended the length of time that could be put on each side of the disc. For the first time the term ‘album’ became a viable alternative. Until then, ‘albums’ were generally foldout books which generally held four 78s--eight different songs. The new microgroove 10” discs held 8-10, and the 12” discs expanded the possibilities to 14-16.
The need for new technology became important to music fans as the 50s unfolded. To play 45’s and 33 1/3 rpm LPs required new players. Especially when the record companies put so many songs on the LPs by fans’ favorite groups that were never released on 45. The new players with settings for 33 1/3 and 45 rpm were paramount (and they had to have 78 rpm to play the collections already in the home).
Simultaneously, the automobile was rapidly becoming a central feature in the new urban American life. Almost all autos had radios, but most radio stations in the mid 50s did not play Rock and Roll, and Rhythm and Blues stations were extremely scarce. The answer? New technology: the under-the-dash 45-rpm record player. They were expensive, but mandatory if fans wanted to hear their music while riding in the car. Beachdiggers were one of the groups who had to have those players if they wanted to hear ‘Beach Music, i.e. Black Music’ like the Clovers, Dominoes, Drifters, Chuck Willis, the Checkers, Bo Diddley and so forth.
At first glance, it might look like there weren’t any more challenges until 8-tracks made their appearance in the 70s. Not so.
Stereo arrived across the board in the 60s. (There were some earlier experiments in stereo—some good, some not—but stereo slowly became a standard through the 60s).
Stereo, to be really appreciated, required new players and sound systems. It required two speakers. More money to fully enjoy the music we loved.
The mid to late 60s: big, blockbuster, consumer Reel-to-Reel tape decks were out. Many of the best coming from overseas. Imagine! You could buy reel-to-reel tapes of your favorite artists, with what seemed to be much higher quality stereo. Tape decks evolved rapidly to 2-track and 4-track. (A reel-to-reel tape of your favorite songs from the 50s and 60s could be recorded in Mono on a 4-track, so that you could end up with up to 4 Hours On One Tape!!!) The reel-to-reel recorder/players evolved and so did the tape—it became higher quality and thinner to allow for much more music on every reel. These little toys cost a lot of money.
By the 70s, 4-track had become 8-track which launched a whole new series of musical platforms--8-track tapes and 8-track players. We had to have them. Three new expenses, the tapes, the home players and the car players. Meanwhile, fans had hundreds of 45s and albums they loved that were not on 8-track so they had to maintain their old players for those as well.
Ah, the 70s. Stereo systems took on new shapes, sizes, and tremendous expense. The quality of recording and playback exploded. By the late 70s, the disco era ushered in the 12” single—much more music, greater breadth and depth in order to enjoy a song even more than before! ($ $ $ $ $ $ $)
Emerging from the shadows was yet another technology—cassettes. Which brought with them new recorders and new players.
Cassettes were the beginning of loud protestations from the record industry. Fans, they proclaimed, were thieves (putting their music on cassettes and sharing them with friends, letting them copy them).
By then, a music devotee who’d been around since the 50s might have a player for 45s, 33 1/3s, 78s, Stereo, reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassette, auto and home players duplicated, with a huge stereo system, special tools to clean 45s, 33 1/3s, plus special cleaners for 8-tracks and cassettes. If you lived it, you know the costs and time involved.
Surely there couldn’t be anything else. Unless of course you liked to watch your favorite performers, in which case the new VHS and Beta players on the horizon were going to be a must. The first RCA VHS cost $1000.00. I thought it was a fantastic investment.
(Are some of you wondering when I’ll get to Quad and Surround Sound. Heck, just toss them in anywhere…they both cost lots more money).
(You know where this is going next…don’t you? CDs.)
When CDs arrived in the 90s, I was just about worn out as a music enthusiast and a DJ.
By then, I carried albums, 45s, and cassettes to every gig. My home looked like the show was about to start any minute.
At first CDs were easy to resist, but eventually the record companies really started digging into their archives to put more product on the street…and they began phasing 45 rpm records out in a hurry—albums followed them by the end of the decade.
Remember, when I mentioned that 4 Tops song, “Could It Be You,” earlier in this article? By the mid 90s, record companies were putting some extremely serious collector’s items on CD. Dozens of them. Then hundreds.
I have never caught up.
When I first saw a CD with “Fried Chicken” and “Good Old 99” by the Marylanders, I think I stopped breathing. That was a $500 record at the time. I certainly didn’t own it. I own the songs now, though.
CDs changed the face, and the body, of collecting forever. Within a decade the collector’s world has shrunken to a tiny microcosm of what it once was. I had a collection of jazz albums, every one was valued at $100 +, that was worth nothing almost overnight. The same happened for all the worlds of collectibles.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t collectible records out there that still aren’t on CD. But that world has changed so dramatically that almost all the collectors and dealers I once knew around the world are gone.
Given all these inventions it should now be a perfect world shouldn’t it? Especially when you factor in MP3s, Ipods, ringtones, and all the new, new technology.
Sorry. No.
In a way, it’s becoming worse.
Let’s step back a moment. Back to the 1980s, when enterprising companies like Ripete Records in South Carolina stepped to the fore to provide as much Beach Music as people could want. Ripete today is easily the Premier Beach Music provider to the region and the world. There were others who tried.
One 80s company ferreted out some great tunes by an artist who, although not new to the Beach music scene, had recorded a number of songs that were unknown in the Southeast, not to mention the rest of the world.
Said company called the Record corporation which owned the rights to that artists’ songs, asking to license and issue them on an album, maybe cassette and some 45s too. (CDs were far into the future). The record company declined, said it was too much trouble.
Those songs have never been released on other than the original 45s. Never on albums, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, or reissue 45s. Never.
Why would a record company refuse to license something that an Artist poured his/her creativity into, along with the creativity of composers, arrangers, producers, recording engineers, manufacturing costs, etc?
The short answer is this: there was a more lucrative way to profit from those ‘stiffs’ (i.e. songs that were commercial failures).
Imagine you are a record company executive and you get a call from another record company’s executive,
“Hey, how’s it going today?”
[Good]
“Super. Let’s talk a little business. We’re looking for some new product to work with and wondered if you guys over there had anything for sale?”
[Absolutely. I’ve got a block of 500 songs we were just getting ready to put on the market]
“Wow. This is fantastic. I’m glad I called today. What are you asking for that block of 500 songs?”
[Oh, shoot. For you, eight million dollars.]
“Man, I can’t believe my luck. Sure glad I called.”
[I’m glad you called, too. We’re also looking for some new product.]
“I don’t believe this! We have a block of 500 songs we’re going to market with.”
[Great! How much are you asking?]
“Eight million dollars. A bargain when you consider what’s included.”
[Hey, I’m sure we’ll take it, but send me the title list.]
As you can imagine, they swapped the blocks of songs and swapped checks for eight million dollars. These were, by the way, blocks of old songs with which they were never able to generate any profits. So why buy them?
The laws at the time mandated that the companies had to generate at least two albums from those blocks in order to enjoy other ‘benefits.’ Each company would find a pick-up band or a group of singers they’d bring in to record 12 songs for each album, along with the minimum number of musicians, manufacturing, promotion, etc.
They’d put out the albums and they’d fail.
Then, they could begin the depreciation process on the Eight Million Dollars. Tax write-off. (read that ten times).
So, if someone came along who wanted to license two or three songs out of that 500-song block, it was just an irritation, not a valued possibility.
Leaping back to the present moment. We could make a list of 1,000 songs that we’d like to put up on a download site that we know for certain the owners will never make one single dollar on. (We don’t know whether that tax loophole mentioned above still exists. It lived in a gray area 30 years ago and was already under scrutiny by tax officials). However, with a minimal amount of promotion, there could be profitable distribution on those 1,000 songs. We bet a lot of other collectors / dealers / music entrepreneurs could do the same.
Those 1,000 songs will never be heard on XM, Sirius, CD, or MP3. They could be heard on some of the many superb, entrepreneurial webcast stations.
On a collector’s download site they could be sold for more than 88 cents.
Would that prevent piracy? Well, now. How are the legitimate download sites protecting the songs they provide? And do their strategies prevent all piracy?
1—we don’t think they stop piracy.
2—they generate millions of dollars in downloads each year. Thus, we have to conclude that piracy hasn’t stopped all commerce.
There is another conclusion that is obvious. In 50 years there will be no possibility to make any money on the songs in their archives that could be making them some money now!
However, today’s record conglomerates make unbelievable (and unprofitable) demands. They want guarantees of 2,500, 5,000 or 10,000 ‘pieces’ (or downloads), which includes the 9.1 cents per unit for mechanicals, plus an additional license for downloads. And then, the fees have to be paid UPFRONT!
Those 1,000 songs I mentioned a few moments ago?! I’m talking about 1,000 songs for which many record companies no longer have the masters. So we’d have to find the best quality version we could, or use one of the many software programs around that clean and enhance old records. The record companies often don’t have anything to do with that side of the ‘manufacturing’ and ‘distribution.’
Currently, there are no sites that offer even 1% of the Beach music of the past 60 years. They don’t even have a Beach Music category. There are, as we mentioned, many fine sites where there are a few contemporary cuts offered by groups of the day—especially at their own sites.
But if you love Beach music, in all its many forms, there’s no such site.
Who knows what’s next?
Fessa’ John Hook, copyright 2007.
