Posted on 11/25/2007 1:02:18 AM PST by gpapa
One of the most popular rock bands of all time has finally managed to offend--not for its songs, but for how it sells them. There's a lesson here in technology, new business models, and hidebound "progressives."
The first new album from the Eagles in over a decade, "Long Road Out of Eden," has already sold more than a million copies, hitting Billboard's #1 in its first week. It's the kind of blockbuster that used to pay Christmas bonuses at the big record companies, only this album wasn't produced by a big record company. The Eagles released it themselves and are selling it exclusively through Wal-Mart.
This isn't going down well in certain elite precincts. Music blogs accused the group of selling out, while a review in Rolling Stone opined that there is an "inevitable contradiction in buying a record that attacks corporate greed . . . from a superchain with a bleak record on employee rights and health care." A piece in the Boston Herald noted that "The deal will make the Eagles richer. But it could cost them cool points (if the aging rockers have any left)."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Good for them!
Ani DeFranco came up with the idea over a decade ago.
It’s getting a lot more common to cut out the “labels”.
I think Radiohead did something really cool very recently - - they offered their latest CD by on-line downloading ONLY. Essentially for FREE.
Yes ma’am...high fives and huge applause all around.
God love ‘em.
It’s good to “see” you. ;o)
I love my Eagles, but they’re gonna need a whole lot more than you can find at a WalMart to beat the Patriots tonight.
Translated: "They won't let unions completely destroy them from within"
LOL! I have them as my fantasy team DST. Man, Tom Brady is smokin' this season! Who knew? Everyone was saying it would be Peyton Manning...
I think “progressives” just have problems with anything that really works (unless it happens to be THEIR personal business). They’re hellbent on “breaking” everything.
Radiohead essentially put their album online for free but allowed downloaders to "set their own price." The result was that many downloaders paid at least a couple of dollars, which was more than what any record label would have paid them had they been selling copies for $15.98 at some shopping mall record store.
Some downloaders paid as much as $100 (obviously well-off fans who wanted to encourage the process).
As for those who paid nothing, the band has an opportunity to win more fans, especially since traditional radio isn't playing it (they are still too busy playing "flavor of the moment" acts like Timbaland, Britney Spears and Beyonce).
Performing artists offering their music directly to the fans is the wave of the future. That said, I'm dubious about the Eagles decision to market their music through Wal-Mart. No serious music fan goes to Wal-Mart to buy music.
“No serious music fan goes to Wal-Mart to buy music.”
Why not? It is the same CD if it comes from Wal-Mart as if it came from some pompous highbrow music store.
Music is a commodity to be bought at the best price. If you can buy a download you want from Wal-Mart for 88 cents, why buy from a more expensive site?
On the other hand, you have a point about the pompous music stores although since the rise of iTunes, they've been folding up faster than the corner video store when Blockbuster and DVDs came on the scene.
My favorite place to buy music (before I started buying it predominantly online) was Tower Records because of their massive selection. Their classical music section alone was bigger than most other record stores. Even though the clerk with the nose ring and tattoos was annoying as hell blasting that Blink 182 album. But they are gone now too.
Since 1962, there have been 150,000 albums released on major labels and several times that many released on minor labels. Thus it has become impossible for even the largest record stores to have anything close to a comprehensive collection. Thus browsing the CD racks at Wal-Mart (without wanting to sound pompous myself) is akin to a fine wine collector browsing the wine selection at the local 7-11.
Putting everything online for download is the way to go.
That’s interesting about Radiohead. Sounds a lot like “Shareware”; download the program for free but make a voluntary donation to the independent programmer if you like the product and what to him or her to develop more.
I agree that this is an option I’d be much more interested in than retailer exclusives.
It would have to be one heck of a great CD before I’d venture into a Walmart. I’m not anti-Walmart, I just hate going there.
“Thus browsing the CD racks at Wal-Mart (without wanting to sound pompous myself) is akin to a fine wine collector browsing the wine selection at the local 7-11.”
Well, of course, I do not go to WalMart looking for music, but if it is advertised that they have something I want then I have no problem.
It is moot with me as I am no longer in the US, and may never come back judging by the direction the US of Hildabeast seems to be going.
But when there, I was in WalMart most every week.
All the big book chains seem to be capturing the music market for hard CDs.
Memphis had a number of music only stores, but if not gone by now, I am sure they soon will be defunct.
Good one. NFL week 12 and I've got NE in the Suicide Pool. Go Pats.
Bwahaha. The history of the record companies screwing artists is legendary. For them to cry about WalMart is laughable.
You are not alone in your sentiments. I'm a frugal person so I'll always shop there. Why pay double the price for hiking shoes at the trendy sporting store when you can get the same pair at Wal-Mart and have money left over for socks, a garden hose and a couple of extension cords!
But when I go to Wal-Mart, I park in the farthest reaches of the parking lot where my car door won't get dinged by thoughtless welfare moms in their old clunkers and I don't have to jockey for position with the same who actually sit in their idling cars waiting for a parking space close to the door because they don't want to exercise their fat butts any more than they have to in order to stock up on more sweatpants. Which leads me to a personal observation: People who wear sweat pants in public apparently exercise the least.
“it could cost them cool points”
What in the hell is a cool point?
I’ll sacrifice “cool points” for high sales volume any time.
hmmmm...let’s see... A dynamic company, a shining example of American entrepreneurship and ingenuity, brings hundreds of entry-level and growth-potential jobs to a community while raising its tax base, provides multiple goods and services at affordable prices, involves itself in programs and local charities that affect the common good and heads the list for many national charities and health care issues and often is, at least, a second responder in disaster (those greedy bums!). NOW, an iconic band, the Eagles, wants to team up with this simply HORRID, EEEEEVIL, corporation.
Well! I am incensed, I tell you! Alert the pop media and the idiots on the leftie blogs! THIS canNOT stand! Don’t they know that the unwashed masses must buy from organic farm stands and the indigenous native americans?!
I wish someone would tell these left wing morons, idiots and loud mouthed A#$H)*&$s to just SHUT UP.
I’m all about being frugal too, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
The last time I bought anything at Walmart was last summer. I bought a pair of Capri style jeans and a cute matching cotton top. I really liked the outfit until after the first time I put them in the washing machine – they literally fell apart at the seams (and I did following the laundry instructions).
I thought the outfit was so cute and quite a bargain when I bought it, but considering I only got to wear it twice, it turned out to be relatively expensive.
So am I, but I have no problem shopping at WalMart.
They are bad in city centers, but what store is not?
Rural super centers are as nice as any store other then the snobby Saks 5th Ave types :P
Their offending the ivory tower crowd with the "creative capitalism" and "politically incorrect" thing is just one more reason I believe I'll have to buy this CD. ;-)
It seems that Don Henley loses his concern for the so called down ridden employees of Wal-mart when the bottom line comes into focus. Typical liberal.
“No serious music fan goes to Wal-Mart to buy music.”
Why, do you have to dress down?
Blue Light Blues Special on Aisle 4!
149,500 of which have been crap.
Thanksa lot, gpapa! I never should have looked. Now I’ll have that stupid “Desperado” song in my head the rest of the day, LOL!
Everybody else get off the gravy train.
..... The worst of them, though appears on Disc two. Three songs almost in a row, “Long Road Out of Eden.” “Somebody,” and “Frail Grasp on the Big Picture” all go for scolding America, Americans, and just about everything that we are. Calling us an “empire” and basically calling every American stupid, the Eagles paint a grim picture of the very people who they are asking to spend $12 bucks at WallMart for the privilege of being called idiots by these aging rockers.
Liberals LOVE capitalism as long as they are ones benefiting from it!
It resolves nothing and I'm impervious to it and disdainful of it.
Not exactly correct.
Those who sing, and for that matter listen to, these songs believe that promoting such ideas by definition sets them apart from those they are denigrating. Such songs are not self-criticism at all. If they were they wouldn't be so egregiously self-congratulatory.
They are not, "Aren't WE awful," they are, "Aren't THEY awful," with the singer and his audience by definition excluding themselves from the group being decried.
Desperate Liberals! Why don't you come to your senses
You been out staging "protests," for so long now
Oh now you're brainwashed
but i know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasing you
can hurt you somehow
Don't you draw the king of liberals boy
he'll beat you if he's able
You know the king of Kings is always you're best bet
Now it seems to me some fine things have been provided for you by so-called war-mongers
But you only want to piss and moan and abort 3000 kids a day
Desperate Liberals
You sure as hell ain't lookin no younger
Your wrinkles and gray hairs
they're drivin you completely nutso
Freedom? Oh freedom
That used to be hippies (but now only neocons) talking
Your prison is "clinging to these delusional communist dreams of yours, dude...let it go..."
Don't your feet get hot/cold/whatever in the winter time
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's so damn hard to tell your platform from day to day
Your losin' all your marbles now, ain't it funny how the common sense really goes away (when you don't go to church much)
Desperate Liberals It's Bush's Fault this time, we're pretty sure...
and Cheney, Condi, Karl Rove, Scooter and Rumsfield - their all scum of the earth
It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you (if you'd care to notice once in a great while)
You better let some neo-cons save you
Let some neo-cons save you
You better let some neo-cons save you
before it's too-oo-oo-ooo..........laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate...
“Their offending the ivory tower crowd with the “creative capitalism” and “politically incorrect” thing is just one more reason I believe I’ll have to buy this CD.”
I went to Amazon.com to read reviews on the Eagle’s new album. From some of the lower ratings, it sounds as though the Eagle’s make some political statements in some of the songs that are anything BUT politically incorrect. A couple comments I read said that they have some songs on the CD that are anti-American, anti-Bush. I have no problem with their decision to sell exclusively through Wal-Mart. However, if these reviews are true, I do have a problem with a band, no matter how big, that feels the need to bash our country and president, and in general spew the liberal line.
Beat me to it. ;-)
...”from a superchain with a bleak record on employee rights and health care.”
....I could care less about “The Rolling Stone’s” opinion of WalMart...that liberal POS has no idea how ordinary working class Americans live...WalMart has been great for the poor NC county I live in....the place was mobbed Friday and those shoppers didn’t look like they felt guilty about worker’s rights or health care.
True...the record companies have screwed more people than Wal Mart ever has.
The record companies rip off millionaires to make themselves money (sounds like big government)
The Eagles should be commended for not using the record companies. These dinosaur rip-offs are deserving of death, these record labels.
A common misconception. For the most part WalMart transfers jobs, it doesn't create them.
Let's assume a region of the country has 10,000 jobs in retail pre-entry by WalMart, which moves in, opens a bunch of new stores and hires 5,000 people. Does anybody seriously think that five years later 15,000 people will be employed in retail sales in the region? Are the inhabitants really going to be buying that much more toilet paper and jeans just because WalMart is available? What happens is that for the most part retail sales employment remains steady, with the number employed at WalMart increasing and those employed elsewhere decreasing.
AAMOF, since WalMart is renowned for selling more per full-time employee equivalent than its competitors (a major reason for its profitability), I would suspect that if other factors are isolated WalMart reduces retail sales employment in a region.
This isn't an attack on WalMart, simply a recognition that 500 new jobs "created" at the new WalMart doesn't mean 500 new jobs total for the community, not once things shake out.
Of course the 500 "new" WalMart jobs are created in one swell foop and are thus newsworthy, while the equivalent loss of jobs elsewhere are in ones and twos, mostly in the form of competitors not hiring new employees to replace those who quit. It is thus the exact opposite of the traditional employment "news" story, where factory closings with their hundreds of employees laid off gets big news play whereas increasing employment elsewhere does't, as it is spread out over hundreds of other businesses which hire only a few at a time.
No more time for you. I only deal with people who have decent manners.
You clearly have issues. Sucks to be you, I suppose. ;-)
Walmart is certainly a viable option for those who need to stretch their budget. Millions would attest to that fact.
Stop being a lib elitist!
I was applauding the Eagles' screwing the record companies with their capatistic methods and commented that I was quite a fan of theirs in my younger days.
Seems like people are looking to get all bent out of shape about things today and started screeching as if that were a criminal statement.
I'm not of that mindset. I have enough going on to where I don't feel the need to try to trash people in order to feel better about myself.
Then again, I've never needed to do that.
The album is pretty anti-American from what I have heard second hand.
I’m out of the loop on pop culture. Have been for a few years now.
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