A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest. Then the Asteroid Hits.

An asteroid just hit my house.

I am, of course, speaking metaphorically. Nothing has crashed from space. My house is undergoing a long-planned renovation, the first step of which is to demolish the existing den.

Emptying the room of its contents, as well as emptying shelves in an adjacent room along a shared wall, revealed how much custom cabinet space was unnecessarily allocated to the bodies of physical media that have been at rest for years, surviving only because there was nothing to threaten them.

Now the cataclysm has come. Which physical media species will go extinct and which will emerge to re-populate the new living spaces?

• Extinct: Hardback Fiction. Read them all. Enjoyed them to varying degrees. Unlikely to read again. Now mere decoration, and I've held enough garage sales and visited enough estate sales to see how uninterested buyers are in fiction titles, even at deep discount. Resolution: donated to local library.
• Emerge: Physical Music. All the CDs have been ripped to 16-bit WAV and nearly all of the LPs have been dubbed to 24-bit WAV. (Still working on the fringe titles.) Despite the fact that our library listening is exclusively weightless digital, these backup copies need a home. Resolution: rack them out of sight in the electronics hub (or "wiring closet,") planned for the new basement, alongside the wireless router, multi-zone audio distribution system, etc.
• Extinct: Theater-Related Books. My interest in theater started at the University of Michigan and continued through my early career at Bell Laboratories, living adjacent to New York City. Now living in Detroit, my interest has waned and these books, having been shelved when I moved into this house, have rarely been disturbed beyond looking up character names for crossword puzzle answers. Resolution: donated to local high school drama department.
• Emerge: Shakespeare. No home should be without a good set.
• Extinct: Paperback Fiction. Most purchased as vacation and airplane reading, digestible in a few hours. Resolution: given to my sister to refresh the beach-reading collection at her cottage.
• Emerge: Art, Design and Humor Books. These are the books that I often return to, that inspire me, amuse me, that guests at parties and family gatherings might idly thumb through. Resolution: devote reclaimed shelf space to them.

Scientists say that occasional cataclysmic events are necessary to foster future growth. That didn't work out so well for the dinosaurs. My new living spaces, on the other hand, will thrive.

             Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #67             

Artist: Was (Not Was)
Title: Born to Laugh at Tornadoes
Genre: Dance
Year: 1983





Before he was a Grammy-winning producer and President of Blue Note Records, Don Was (with collaborator David Was) put out offbeat, eclectic dance records under the name Was (Not Was). Among the many pleasures of these productions were the guest stars the duo could lure into the studio. Born to Laugh at Tornadoes features Mel Torme, fellow Detroiter Doug Feiger (of The Knack), and Ozzy Osbourne. Mr. Torme is particularly pleasurable, playing it straight, crooning the ridiculous "Zaz Turned Blue" in his signature style. Give a listen.

© 2014 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

While cleaning/organizing her parents' basement over Thanksgiving weekend, my wife Ellen came across one of her childhood craft projects, a monogrammed sitting mat constructed from two pieces of naugahyde, blanket-stitched together and stuffed with newspaper.

Taking it apart, we discovered it wasn't just stuffed with "newspaper." It contained a particular newspaper — the complete Minneapolis Star-Tribune edition of Sunday, April 23, 1972 — an unexpected and surprising time capsule.

How do articles selected for publication in one physical newspaper on a non-historic day more than forty years ago speak to the world today? More than you would think.

Nation/World. The Vietnam War was still going on, the Star-Trib reporting on a bombing campaign being waged south of Hanoi.
Today. Unfortunately, war is a constant. But today, manned campaigns attacking large areas in hope of hitting targets of interest have been largely replaced with more focused strikes by unmanned drones.

Science. The Star-Trib reported that astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke, Jr. of Apollo 16 were exploring the Moon, having landed on April 20, 1972. [Note: Duke would famously leave a photo of his family on the lunar surface before departing on April 27th.]
Today. NASA can successfully drop unmanned space robots on Mars for exploration and data gathering. But no human being has stepped foot on another celestial body since 1972 (Apollo 17). Echoing President John F. Kennedy's promise of the early 1960's, NASA has pledged to return a man to the Moon before the end of the decade.

Sports. Ted Harris, Captain of the Minnesota North Stars NHL hockey team, was threatening to defect to the Winnepeg Jets of the newly-formed World Hockey Association (WHA) because the Stars would not add a no-trade clause to his two-year contract.
Today. The median salary for an NHL player in 1972 was $25,000 (highest was $200K). The WHA broke the reserve clause, bringing free agency to hockey, later merging with the NHL in 1979. The median NHL salary is now $1.4M (highest is $8.7M). It is now common for star athletes in all team sports to have no-trade clauses, identifying to which deep-pocketed teams in glamorous media markets they would accept a trade. Still, ESPN reported that Derek Stepan of the New York Rangers refused to report to 2013 training camp in a contract dispute. [Footnote: Harris stayed with Minnesota, but was traded to the Detroit Red Wings during the 1973 season. He later coached the North Stars for three seasons 1975-1978.]

Real Estate/Inflation. A 4-bedroom colonial in the South Harriet Park neighborhood of Edina MN, listed in the classifieds, was on the market for $69,900.
Today. South Harriet Park is located close to the now-popular 50th & France area for "shopping, dining and entertainment." 4-bedroom houses in this neighborhood command more than $1M. [Source: Edina Realty.] Houses from the 70's are likely to have been torn down to make way for new construction.

Weather. 4 inches of snow was threatening to cancel the 1972 home opener for the Minnesota Twins baseball team the following day.
Today. Some things never change. Snow threatens Opening Day in northern cities almost every season. But we are more likely to get weather information off our smartphones at any time of day than from a morning or evening newspaper.

I like physical newspapers. (I get three on Fridays.) Breakfast isn't the same without one. But I am no luddite clinging to old media. The online edition of The New York Times is an essential tool; a wealth of industry news reaches me via LinkedIn and Twitter. And, of course I researched the salient details of the above topics on the web.

With news on a constant digital feed and the internet archiving all human activity for perpetuity, can the events reported on any routine day in any particular city again be significant, if only in hindsight?

            Physical-to-Digital Restoration #62            



Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Thick as a Brick
Genre: Rock
Year: 1972





Thick as a Brick is the fifth studio album by the UK band Jethro Tull. It reached number 1 on the Billboard 200 in the United States upon release in 1972. The original LP packaging opens up as a 12-page newspaper (parody), The St. Cleve Chronicle. Later LP editions would condense this to the standard four-side gatefold (draining it of much charm and humor). For the 2012 release of the sequel Thick as a Brick 2, a mock online newspaper StCleve was set up.

© 2013 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

The Cassette Store Called ...

Riding the coat tails of Record Store Day (20-April-2013), it was just announced that 7-September-2013 will be the first International Cassette Store Day. I swore this had to be a parody when I first got the Tweet, but the organizers seem sincere and committed (if misguided).

 

International Cassette Store Day makes no sense. Need convincing? Let me count the ways.

 

First, there is the name. We all know what a record store is. Record Store Day was created to celebrate them — the neighborhood bricks-and-mortar independent music retailer — not any particular music delivery format. The Cassette Store Day promotion aspires to be equally cool, but fails for the same reason the "Jerk Store" rejoinder failed in The Comeback episode of Seinfeld: no one knows what a Cassette Store is, or if any exist.

 

Consider raison d'etre. Why did tapes thrive for a time? The advantage of the cassette over any other competing physical format was portability. That advantage was obliterated by the audio CD, and then they were both rendered obsolete by weightless digital. The original tape-playing Sony Walkman is long gone, and tape decks and CD players have been displaced in new automobiles by iPod/USB ports. What is the market for new cassette titles?

As a result, let's look at market impact. Physical album sales declined 13% between 2011 and 2012. (Source: Neilsen Soundscan). While estimated cassette sales quadrupled in the same time period, they still accounted for 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) of the market share for album sales in 2012. Cassette sales peaked in 1988 (25 years ago!) and bottomed out in 2005. A Cassette Day sales bump would produce an insignificant change in a dying sector.

 

 Finally, there is sleeping with the enemy. Record Store Day was created at least in part as a protest against online music retailers threatening the livelihood of bricks-and-mortar record stores. The organizers of Cassette Store Day have elected to include online retailers in the promotion. If there are bricks-and-mortar cassette stores, aren't they afraid online cassette stores will kill their already-unsustainable business?

 

Let's celebrate September 7th as the anniversary of the first Miss America pageant (1921) or the opening of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (1963). No need to lionize obsolete physical media.

 

Related: Unsustainable business models, convenience v. fidelity, technology arcs.

 

            Physical-to-Digital Restoration #58            



Artist: Kate Bush
Title: The Whole Story
Genre: Alternative
Year: 1986






The Whole Story is a compilation album that reached no. 1 in the UK album chart and was certified 4x Platinum in the UK by the British Phonographic Industry. It is one of the 0.06% (zero point six percent) of the roughly one thousand titles in my lossless, weightless digital library originally sourced on cassette.


© 2013 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.



What Can You Do When Your Dreams Come True,and It's Not Quite Like You Planned

The music industry wishes young listeners would abandon low-bit-rate compressed digital music for harder-to-pirate and more profitable CDs. There is new evidence their dream of abandonment may come true, but not necessarily with the desired outcome.

Physical media is in widespread decline. Billboard reported that CD sales sank 6% in 2011 while digital album downloads rose 20%. (Relatively miniscule, if growing, numbers for vinyl aren't really a factor.)And who is still buying CDs in the USA? Eliminating a statistical outlier, the pan-category juggernaut that is Adele's 21, the top-selling CD in each of the past two years has been a Christmas album (Susan Boyle's The Gift in 2010 and Michael Buble's Christmas in 2011). That buying demographic skews older, and when aging listeners stop buying new music (as they inevitably will), CD sales will stop merely declining and fall off the cliff. Unless, of course, a new generation of buyers replaces them.

Why are CD sales more attractive to labels than digital downloads? Legal precedent is establishing that a digital download transfers a license to the music rather than constituting a sale. Licensing is more lucrative than sales to the artist, often a 50/50 revenue split with the label for a license instead of a 10-20% royalty paid to the artist for a sale. With digital downloads hitting 1.27 billion units in 2011 and rising, that's real money. Ask recent licensing-income lawsuit winner Eminem.

Contrary to the long-held belief that young listeners think lossy compressed music is "just fine," my Harman colleague Dr. Sean Olive has published results from the first peer-reviewed scientific test showing that young listeners will in fact choose CD-quality audio over lossy alternatives when given the choice. Has the dream of a new generation embracing CDs come true? Not so fast.

NPR intern Emily White, self-appointed spokesperson for her generation, wrote that she will never embrace physical media and prefers music access to ownership, triggering an immediate rebuttal from writer/musician David Lowery and a firestorm of debate. Ever the skeptic, I asked around. My unscientific survey of high school and college-age music consumers among my extended family and their friends confirms a strong preference for streaming services where available and a reluctant fallback to acquire digital downloads for situations where streaming services may not be available, e.g. when exercising or navigating the New York City subway system.

So while young listeners may eventually embrace CD quality digital audio, they don't want the platter. As Dr. Olive concludes, "the challenge is to sell sound quality to kids at affordable prices and form factors they desire to own." The new dream.

            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #36            

Artist: Eagles

Title: One of These Nights
Genre: Rock
Year: 1975



Sometime in the future, Adele may claim the top spot, but (arguably) the #1 best-selling album of all time is Eagles - Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), including three tracks off One of These Nights, the #1 album of 1975. In what may be the Daily Double of obsolete physical media, back in the day you could have purchased this title on Quadraphonic 8-track tape.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.