Telling Lies: Bowie and Online Music Distribution in 1996

Post by bazoom42 » Wed, May 07, 2025, 7:43 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #26

burningChrome wrote: post #6

Still remember working for a wireless company fixing phones as a repair tech. One of our steady clients was Prince's studio Flyte Time. Terry Lewis would often come in and I'd loved talking to him about music. One evening before I was closing up, he dropped in with Prince's phone that needed a fast repair. I finally asked him what the deal with Prince and his music was. The Warner Brothers kerfuffle, and all the dram…

Taylor Swift has demonstrated her genius as a businesswoman within the industry by simply re-recording her back catalogue as "Taylor's Versions" which the record company had no rights to -- also a badass example of a woman taking back control of her creative output from an industry dedicated to exploiting the likes of her. (Talk to a female musician if you know one. Women have few options but to let themselves be exp…

Post by mmooss » Wed, May 07, 2025, 7:55 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #26

burningChrome wrote: post #6

Still remember working for a wireless company fixing phones as a repair tech. One of our steady clients was Prince's studio Flyte Time. Terry Lewis would often come in and I'd loved talking to him about music. One evening before I was closing up, he dropped in with Prince's phone that needed a fast repair. I finally asked him what the deal with Prince and his music was. The Warner Brothers kerfuffle, and all the dram…

Taylor Swift has demonstrated her genius as a businesswoman within the industry by simply re-recording her back catalogue as "Taylor's Versions" which the record company had no rights to -- also a badass example of a woman taking back control of her creative output from an industry dedicated to exploiting the likes of her. (Talk to a female musician if you know one. Women have few options but to let themselves be exp…

Post by quesera » Wed, May 07, 2025, 8:01 PM UTC

onlypassingthru wrote: post #24

kmeisthax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music industry in the 90s was so dead-set on albums because albums were their cash cow. You see, when CDs came out, the industry realized it was the perfect gimmick to sell you your whole music collection all over again, now in crystal-clear digital audio. So much so that new industry labeling standards had to be made just to distinguish between re-releases and new all-digital recordings[0]. Problem is, you can o…

> the original plan for CD singles was to package them on smaller discs It wasn't just a plan. CD (Maxi) Singles were released in European markets in the 80s.[0] [0] https://www.discogs.com/release/126156-Madonna-Like-A-Prayer...

Post by weinzierl » Wed, May 07, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

onlypassingthru wrote: post #24

kmeisthax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music industry in the 90s was so dead-set on albums because albums were their cash cow. You see, when CDs came out, the industry realized it was the perfect gimmick to sell you your whole music collection all over again, now in crystal-clear digital audio. So much so that new industry labeling standards had to be made just to distinguish between re-releases and new all-digital recordings[0]. Problem is, you can o…

> the original plan for CD singles was to package them on smaller discs It wasn't just a plan. CD (Maxi) Singles were released in European markets in the 80s.[0] [0] https://www.discogs.com/release/126156-Madonna-Like-A-Prayer...

Post by pimlottc » Wed, May 07, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #19

buildsjets wrote: post #13

Sounds like Bowie was really a late-comer to online music distribution, by a few years at least.. I think the first mover award goes to Aerosmith for releasing and distributing "Head First" online-only in 1994. No one was using MP3 yet, so it was WAV encoded using a proprietary compression codec that was a separate download. The WWW had only just barely been invented and only a few physics nerds in Switzerland were u…

1994, so late :-)! Frank Zappa proposed something akin to the iTunes store and streaming in 1983: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappa-invented-... We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patcha…