Music Marketing Fail - Classical vol. 1

Rock and roll kind of took the music industry by surprise.

Why? Who knows? Perhaps they thought that all those baby boomer kids

were going to just step into their mom and dad's shoes and start buying

Martin Denny records or Mitch Miller one day.

But eventually it became clear even to music executives

that this rock'n'roll thing was not a passing fad. One of the things

that may have brought it to their attention was the kids'

lack of attention to classical music.

So began the great struggle to catch up...

What were all those crazy kids into anyway?

Rock and roll, obviously, but also sex (duh)

and as it would turn out, drugs.

Both would have an influence on the marketing of classical music,

including the design of album covers.

Chicken feet? Who ordered the chicken feet?

a tribute to Divine maybe?

a little of the old Ludwig van, my droogies?

Mozart make me so horny.

Holst - the Barbarella cheapo remix.

Ummmm...OK, sure... whatever.

Ravel de Orale.

Wagner's bad karma?

Thank-you Thing...

Opus as orgasm?

Did you recognize Catwoman?

Liar...

much more of this sort of thing at...

Cover Browser

LP Cover Lover

Worst Album Covers

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Music - Something is always killing it!

Music lovers of a certain age will remember this cute little graphic
from back in the 80s.

There were no computers then, and no internet, but nonetheless
the music industry was keen to hip quadrillions of young music
lovers to the fact that the mix tapes they were making for themselves
and their friends were "killing music"...

...and if we didn't stop, one day there would be no more music.

It was all bullshit, of course. People kept taping and music
kept getting made and the beat, as they say, went on.

Fast forward a couple of decades, during which the music
industry made sick profits selling people the same music
many of them already owned on vinyl in the form of fabulously
over-priced CDs and holy doodle- music was getting killed again!

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!







Blah, blah, blah... and the beat goes on.

For a zone of human creativity and commerce that likes
to represent as "hip" and "cool" and "cutting edge", popular
music on an industrial scale is curiously resistant to any sort
of cultural and/or technological change.

Once upon a time, record players were going to kill music
by making it available to people in their homes. Next, radio
stations that were going to kill music by playing records
on the air... but somehow, the beat went on.

Along the way, there was another music killer waiting in
the wings - the use of "canned music" in theatres as opposed
to "Real Music" made by AF of M members. The text in these
ads is very familiar in both tone and topics to that which came
along with home taping and file sharing, don't you think?

Sadly though, they were right. Music died and now there isn't
any more and it's really, really sad. If only we'd listened to them...

Oh, the humanity...

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Celebrity Vinyl Platter Party

Is it only nostalgia, a little too much of the romantic in my blood
that makes these images of people with their records seem so
intimate... so human... like this simple thing we once shared
in our relationship with music?

Albert Einstein

Audrey Hepburn

Lester Bangs

Catherine Deneuve

Jimi Hendrix

Oh you know... what's her name...

John Lennon

Lauren Bacall

Natalie Wood

Brigitte Bardot





























Roger Daltry






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The Mystery in the Middle of the 7 Inch Single

For 50 years, these wee pieces of plastic were at
the very centre of popular music. There were millions
of them in homes and radio stations and all the other
places music lovers kept their collections.

Even when the record companies decided to eliminate
the 45rpm single and then vinyl itself, this shape refused
to leave the stage and in a digital age, has become for many
a symbol of music itself...

 
... and most people don't even know what they're called!


And the Answer Is...

Truth be told, it's something of a trick question,
because they were know by a number of different
names, including:

• 45 rpm adapter
• 45 rpm record insert
• 45 rpm spindle adapter
• a "middle"
• an "ad" (short for adapter)

and my personal favourite...

• a spider

Technically, a spider is a small plastic or metal insert
that goes in the middle of a 45-rpm record so it will
play on a turntable.

It was RCA president David Sarnoff who commissioned
inventor Thomas Hutchison to find a way to make RCA's
preferred music format - the 45 rpm record - compatible
with the smaller spindle size of the 33⅓ rpm LP record
player that most music lovers already owned.

"The spider" was Hutchinson's solution, and by the 1960s,
tens of millions of them were being sold every year.

Mr. Hutchison was once asked about the story behind it all:

" (Sarnoff) asked our company to design a better adapter
than was on the market at that time. So my plastic molder
worked on it, and we came up with this plastic adapter
with interlocking drive pins.

I sold my adapters so cheap, I had an advantage over them.
My molder also sold to Mattel Toys, so Mattel would supply
him with the plastic in silos. We purchased their surplus plastic,
5,000 pounds a week, so we kept the costs very low - almost
1/10th of a cent per adapter in the 1950's.

I paid $1.50 per thousand to have them made, and I sold
them for $2.50 per thousand, in lots of one million."

When one considers that Elvis alone sold over two million copies
of his "Heartbreak Hotel" single and more than four million copies
of the "Hound Dog" seven-inch, selling spiders was a very good
business to be in...







































Sometimes, they were even made of metal!



















If there was a drawback to the 7 inch single, it was the fact
that no matter which adapter you were using, you could only
play one song at a time.

While the disc itself could be impressed with seven or even
ten minutes of audio, radio stations at that time had a policy
of not playing songs longer than three minutes.

The solution?



Automatic Spindle Adapters






With one of these, you could stack up to ten
of your favourite songs on your player, press "start"
and really get into the groove.








Of course, given the nature of the free enterprise system,
these too would ultimately come in a wide variety of shapes,
sizes and capacities:












The Modern Adapter...

All of the old adapters are still available, either used
or new but as the vinyl revival has spread beyond DJs
and early adopters, the adapter itself has been adapted
to suit contemporary record playing needs and it continues
to morph into new and exciting forms...

This next one not only lets you play your singles,
it also helps you ensure that your turntable is perfectly
level to facilitate the highest possible quality of reproduction...










... and is anyone really surprised to learn that fans in Japan
      have taken the humble spider to new heights of cool?










Awesomely useful & curiously
compelling links about 45 adapters:

if you want to know all - and i do mean ALL - about these elegant,
iconic wee thingies, click here now to go to the best article in the world
about the rise and role of The Spider!

Fidelitone Aluminum 45 rpm Record Spindle Adapter

Adapters, strobe discs and so much more for the vinyl aficionado!


Mukatsuku Limited Edition Luxury Bespoke Hand Crafted
Olive Wood 45 RPM Adapter + Badge + Sticker


Quality contemporary 45 adapters for DJs & other serious geeks

45 Record Adapter and Turntable Level

get your own Custom imprinted spiders!

ooooh... shiny ones!

Incredibly Cool Record Players

There was a time you would see these things
absolutely everywhere... especially in the
boudoirs of young men and women still
living at home.

These days, that space is most likely occupied
by a computer, or a TV, or maybe both. It says
something, i think, about the role that music
played in lives back when, and the role it plays
... or doesn't play in those demographics today.

Is it easier to feel nostalgic about these
colourful musical sculptures than it will
be about iPhones in a decade or two?


Maybe there won't even be a need
for nostalgia then...

Maybe there won't be anything 
to be nostalgic about.

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