What happened to all the merch???

The old saying goes that those who forget the past are bound to repeat it. While I don't really consider myself a history buff, I certainly make an effort to stay ahead of the curve by knowing from whence we came and thereby knowing where we're going. It seems, though, that I've begun to slack in this area. I recently experienced something somewhat surprising and fairly terrible as a result of not doing my due diligence in this area.

I recently downloaded a mixtape from a relatively unknown artist (no this isn't the terrible part, just stay with me). I was fairly impressed by the material this artist had put forth, and due to his regular promotion of his up and coming album throughout the mixtape, I decided to look it up and purchase it. Now I was once told by legendary mastering engineer Herb Powers to get my ears accustomed to hearing high quality audio, so at every given opportunity I will purchase traditional CD's just to get the music in a lossless format. This allows you to hear the audio the form closest to what the engineers had in mind while producing it. Here is where the problem comes in. After some quick web-searching, I found out that the album was available on iTunes. Upon making my way over to the world's favorite source of music, I had the sickening recollection that iTunes does not support downloads of lossless audio. I can't describe how much of a let-down this was.



At this point I was faced with the decision of what to do next. Instead of getting all flustered, or writing a stern letter to someone at the Apple corporation who has little if any effect on this issue, I decided to go right to the source. I did a bit more googling, and found the artists social networking information. I figured that since the artist is a relative unknown, he probably keeps tabs on his social networking accounts. Well, this wasn't the case. It is months later and I still haven't heard anything back. What's worse is that there doesn't appear to be any available avenues for purchasing the album in the good old fashioned drink-coaster form. What happened to all the tangible merchandise?

While this may be an over-dramatized (and over-convoluted) explanation of one man's struggle to find a niche item, it symbolizes to me, an issue with much more far reaching implications. It seems like we are becoming a society that has all but lost it's appreciation for physical media. There was a time when the physical media was an artist's bread and butter. Whenever you heard an album you really liked, the first comment was, "Man, I'm going down to Sam Goody (yes, I'm old enough to remember Sam Goody) and pick that up."Nowadays, it's not quite so easy. It's almost impossible for an unknown artist to get an album on the shelves of their local retail establishment, because those channels are all but closed to them (but that's another blog post). Given this climate, it makes sense that most media would begin making the transition to a digital landscape. The sheer overhead of running a duplication operation, or even outsourcing the task to someone else can be quite a factor to contend with, and can drastically affect any operating entertainment entity's profit ratio. Despite this fact, it seems like there's an inherent danger in moving all media to a digital environment. Not only does it make it more difficult for audiophiles like myself to acquire high quality audio (yet again, another blog post), but it increases the possibility of losing our history.

Imagine for a moment, what would happen if we were to have a digital day-of-black-sun. The theory has been repeatedly confirmed by some of the most intelligent individuals academia has to offer. I experienced a small simulation of just what this would be like fairly recently. While researching a class project, I realized that searching for older information on Google is near to impossible. Imagine losing all of the information that is currently stored "in the cloud." Not only would we lose access to countless accounts of who said what to who on what lame reality show, but much of our cultural and musical history would be inaccessible. Ok, so maybe I'm being slightly dramatic. I'm sure that most recording studios and record labels have the masters of all that stuff locked away in some bomb-proof safe, but think about it. The world is getting smaller as the population gets larger, and that's only making space more expensive. How long will it be before we fully intertwine the fate of historic records with that of the digital world we so fervently adore? I guess then that crazy guy you know who hordes cd's, cassettes, vinyl records, and 8-track tapes won't seem so crazy anymore. Ok, maybe he'll still seem crazy, but at least he'll be going crazy to a sound track.