By Cortney Harding
NEW YORK (Billboard) -
With their digital download sites, a
growing number of indie rock labels have begun to answer the
prayers of fans who would love to hear long-out-of-print
singles on their iPods or other mobile devices.
Merge Records became the latest to join the field with the
recent launch of its online emporium, which, according to label
president Mac McCaughan, features "high-quality MP3s and full
FLAC (free lossless audio codec) files of recent, older and
out-of-print titles, including all the early Merge singles, as
well as the Superchunk 'Clambakes' series." The store will also
eventually host exclusive tracks, remixes and video content, in
addition to the label's catalog.
Given the wealth of options available to indies that want
to peddle their merchandise online, why would a label want to
sink the time and money into developing its own store? Merge
wouldn't divulge how much it cost to build its online store,
but it did say that most of the expenses were upfront. And
whatever profits it makes will go directly to the label and
bands, Merge publicist Christina Rentz said. "There is no
middleman taking fees, so we are the only ones who benefit."
Such sites can also help foster a new ethic of digital-song
ownership. After a song is purchased at Seattle label Sub Pop's
download store, launched in fall 2007, "you can log on to your
account page and download it as many times as you want,"
director of technology and digital development Dean Hudson
said. "We are also able to do things like automatically upgrade
songs without any cost to the buyer once the song becomes
available at a higher bit rate. And of course, all the songs
are (digital-rights-management)-free."
CHANGING BUYERS' HABITS
Perks like those aside, driving buyers to a single-label
online store can be a challenge, especially if they are used to
purchasing all their music from one, multilabel outlet, such as
eMusic or iTunes. Def Jux, one of the first indie labels to
start a download site, circumvents the problem by making its
Web site and Web store one and the same.
Many other labels' digital stores are directly connected to
their online physical stores as well, so that users can
purchase T-shirts, CDs and MP3s all at once. "We are counting
on our mail-order customers being our early adopters," Rentz
said. "Our goal is to make it a real one-stop shop."
Most of those one-stop-shop customers aren't trying to
replace long-lost discs from their high school years, however.
In fact, label representatives say that new releases account
for the bulk of their online sales.
"Our highest growth months have always been those with new
releases," Def Jux general manager Jesse Ferguson said. "They
tend to bring the most new people to the site."
Hudson noted a similar phenomenon: "People do dip into the
catalog from time to time," he said. "But in general, the newer
stuff sells."
And when the newer stuff does sell, it sells for pretty
much the same price it would on iTunes. Merge will sell its
tracks for 99 cents each; Def Jux's albums are $9.95 each, and
Sub Pop's are $9.90. McCaughan said he chose the price
structure for philosophical reasons: "Driving down the price of
downloads will devalue the music."
Reuters/Billboard
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