Broken Windows: Why Music Release Strategies Must Change
“Windowing” in the music business is a major disadvantage for consumers
Twitter went nuts late Sunday night with the “early” release of the highly anticipated and legitimately excellent new Kendrick Lamar record. A few hours after it happened, the album briefly disappeared from iTunes while remaining live on Spotify; a few more hours after that it was back on sale. A source told me that Spotify was supposed to have the exclusive and launch a week early, and that iTunes jumped the gun (they didn’t specify whether this was an honest mistake on Apple’s part, or something more sinister).
This weird little kerfuffle shows us that windowing in the music industry — the act of releasing an album on different platforms at different times — is still alive and well, despite its obvious limitations and the fact it presents a major disadvantage for consumers. In an era when the guiding media philosophy of most people seems to be “consumption on demand and without apology,” making listeners jump through hoops is a terrible strategy. People love to bring up the straw-woman Taylor Swift argument here; first, she’s a massive superstar in the top 1% of artists and an exception, not a rule, and second, she probably did lose listeners by only releasing her album in certain formats. Whether she cares or not is another matter.
It has been argued that windowing will save the music business, because it seems to be working for film and TV. There are a couple big holes in that argument, and I’ll address them right after I finish watching this show on Popcorn Time.
First, there is enough different content on each platform that it makes sense to subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu (I’m leaving Amazon Prime aside because it’s part of a much larger program, and seems more like an add-on than a standalone product). The problem with applying this theory to streaming music sites is that the sites have the exact same content most of the time, and many hours of prestige TV or several seasons of a sitcom just aren’t the same as the small handful of albums that people care about enough to make windowing them worthwhile. The level of urgency involved in listening to music is different than TV, as well — there are no spoilers on albums. You might be excited to listen to something, but it’s not going to change your experience that much if a bunch of people on social media say a record is great, or awful, or somewhere in the middle. If I miss Mad Men on Sunday night, I avoid Twitter until I’ve seen the latest episode; I can’t imagine anyone staying offline until they’ve had a chance to hear an album.
The second argument people trot out pertains to movies, and the fact that people are still going to theaters to see films when they first come out — a hurdle much greater than simply signing up for another music service. There are a few holes in this argument — first, there is no way to see a first run movie unless it is in the theaters, unless you want to hunt down a bootleg DVD and have a far inferior viewing experience. A torrented album generally has pretty much the same sound quality as the same record on iTunes or Spotify; a weird shaky video shot from the back of a theater is almost always awful.
Going to the movies is still seen as a social experience, for reasons I honestly can’t fathom. I’ll veer off into my personal opinion here, which is that seeing a movie in a theater is a terrible user experience, and I’m still shocked no one — outside of The Interview’s messy rollout — has disrupted it. I wanted to go see Chappie over the weekend, but none of the three times it was being shown at my local cinema worked for me, so I wound up staying home. I would have happily given the filmmakers money to watch it on my own time, but the movie business has yet to figure out just how much money they are leaving on the table.
Back to music, and the fact that we need to end the exclusivity arms race before it kills us all. This seems to be a ghastly hangover of the big box era CD retailing era, when every store wanted a slightly different version of a release, so that people would buy it at Walmart and not Target, or what have you. I’ve never seen anyone argue that one different track made someone decide to purchase a CD along with detergent or whatever they happened to be buying, but somehow the notion that exclusivity was desirable has stuck around. There was also no upfront cost to the consumer if somehow the extra Britney Spears remix was worth waiting to buy it at another store — maybe a few bucks of gas money, but nothing like signing up for an app, starting a new membership, and paying a bill every month.
Here’s the real reason windowing needs to die: rationing content in the age of plenty makes no sense. I’ve argued for the death of the album format on many occasions and will continue to do so; the biggest celebs with the teen crowd are YouTube stars who release content daily, and expecting kids to wait an entire album cycle, then have to take even more action to hear an album, is just dumb. Put it on one streaming site and it’ll be on torrents in an hour. Put it everywhere and at least you’ll be able to monetize it.
If streaming services really want to continue with exclusives, they should go the full Netflix and start signing artists directly. That at least makes some financial sense, and they would have the option to license out the release to other outlets if they wanted to. I’m baffled that no streaming services have launched sub-labels, given the incredible success of original programming on sites like Netflix. I can only speculate they have non-compete clauses in their label deals, and when it comes time to renegotiate, they push back.
There are so many other things streaming services can do to set themselves apart from one another — price being the biggest, but great design, fantastic playlists and other features, and ease of use are all key. To coerce people into signing up because they’re holding an anticipated record hostage feels lazy at best and disingenuous at worst.
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Follow Cortney Harding on Twitter @cortneyharding
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