What Does the Future Hold For Physical Music Releases?

In the last few months debate has been raging about the value of physical music, in an age where more and more of us are relying on internet downloads – whether legal or not – to satisfy our musical cravings.

In fact, there was recently a collective sigh at the news that Mercury Records - the label home to bands such as Arcade Fire, U2 and The Killers - announced it was to stop production of physical singles and vinyl records. Inevitable as this may be, what does it mean for the future of physical releases in the music industry? Well, not a lot really. Mercury has stated that they have only released physical singles when the demand has been there for the past two years anyway. When you take into account that physical formats now only account for just over 1% of the overall singles market and that Mercury made a loss on single releases in 2010, Mercury’s decision is simply straightforward business sense.


Furthermore, whilst purchasing albums in the physical format is understandable – whether it be for the car, HiFi system, or just for personal collection value - buying singles in CD format has always seemed rather pointless. Sure it’s nice to collect singles and vinyl records, but they are much more likely to end up gathering dust. The question is will other record labels follow in Mercury’s footsteps and halt production of physical singles completely? Less than 1% of weekly singles sales are now made up of people buying CDs and vinyl, and digital downloads make up the rest, as the world turns to the internet for its musical needs. The increasing ease of downloading makes buying music akin to pick-and-mix, roaming iTunes – or any of the other countless sites available – purchasing individual album tracks, the odd single, or B-Sides, the physical single format seems far too restricting to avoid the unavoidable. Why pay for three tracks when you only want one?

In some cases the physical single will still remain. For example, the year-on-year release of the X-Factor winner’s single still performs reasonably well in its physical format. Presumably as the thousands who are intent on voting for their favourite contestant week in, week out, would just as gladly buy the winner’s single. However, Mercury Records have insisted that barring “exceptional circumstances” they will rely entirely on downloads. On a recent visit to HMV, I found that the singles section was reduced to a couple of shelves, situated in a position where you’d only see them after visiting the till. Bit pointless, really. Add that to the fact that the singles available were mostly charity singles, X-Factor related, or the new Glasvegas single, and you get the feeling that the CD single has really had its day. So, the physical single appears to be heading on a steady path towards extinction; however, will the physical album face a similar fate to the single.

Unlikely. Whereas the individual physical single provides little incentive to prevent downloads taking over that area of the market, the physical album is relatively safe because of nostalgia, content such as artwork and lyrics, and sheer collectible value. It is for this reason that Radiohead’s most recent album, The King Of Limbs, was offered as the newspaper album, which included two 10-inch clear vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve, a CD, many large sheets of artwork, 625 small pieces of artwork, a full plastic cover, and the album download. Whether you like their music or not, Radiohead know how to market an album, and with such a dedicated fanbase, they can afford to compile such a package in order to prevent their album being downloaded illegally.



The band’s previous album, In Rainbows, was controversially offered through a pay-what-you-want scheme for two months before it was physically released. It has been argued that this was ‘cheapening’ music, when in fact, it actually proved to be another brilliant marketing scheme, with In Rainbows reaching number one in both the UK and US album charts. The album will certainly be safe for a while yet, even with illegal downloading an ever present threat. As long as the physical album adapts with the times and those who want to collect continue to collect, then the physical album will remain central to the music industry.