Ted Gioia has an interesting idea.
I.
I have often made enthusiastic comments about the opportunity to revitalize the music business with Super Vinyl.
But what exactly is Super Vinyl? Am I just blowing smoke? And what kind of smoke, exactly?
I haven’t given a precise definition, because it’s more a dream than an actual product. But it’s a realistic dream. Millions of music fans have embraced old vinyl, creating the fastest-growing segment of the recording industry. So why can’t you make something like vinyl, only better?
Let me remind you that the vinyl long-playing album was invented in 1948. Surely we can do something better nowadays, with all our advanced technology. I share more details below, but the basic concept is a physical object that retains all of the advantages of the old albums we love and cherish, but with improvements and enhancements.
The upside is enormous. If music companies could shift the basis of competition back to a physical medium, the high tech streaming platforms are at a huge disadvantage, and power returns to musicians and record labels. They would have an edge that Silicon Valley technocrats couldn’t match.
Fans would benefit too. They deserve something better than a world in which songs are treated as ‘content’ for a phone app. It’s clear that Google, Apple and other tech titans have different priorities than enriching the listening experience of music lovers. We have already waited too long for them to meet our needs, and just look at how little they’ve done. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why old vinyl is a hot product again.
If a Super Vinyl product were compelling enough, large numbers of music fans might willingly pay $10 or $20 for a new album, perhaps much more. This would create revenue and profit growth that the music business hasn’t enjoyed since the compact disc boom of the 1980s.
Let’s do the math.
Assume that an exciting new music platform could attract 10% of US consumers, and each was willing to purchase one album per month at a price of $15. And let’s make a conservative guess that demand outside the US is t least equal to this.
How much revenue does this generate? Here’s my back-of-the-envelope calculation. . .
