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Music as a commodity (a prologue)

  • September 30, 2012
Jean-Frederic VachonBy Jean-Frederic Vachon 12 years ago
6 1 minute read

This is just a quick post for tonight. I’ll eventually have much more to say about the devaluation of recorded music, but I wanted to share something I encountered this week.

I bought the deluxe version of The Avengers on blu-ray. It comes with a blu-ray, a 3D blu-ray, a DVD and a Digital Copy. What grabbed my attention was that in addition to the digital copy of the movie, it came with the movie soundtrack too! Not the orchestral score by Alan Silvestri, but the “Avengers Assemble” album of rock tracks “inspired” by the movie.

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Now granted these type of soundtracks are mostly cash grabs capitalizing on a movie’s success. And even when it was released, the lead single “Live to Rise” by newly reunited Soundgarden was free on iTunes. But I thought it was an interesting idea. It’s at least an original idea for music distribution, and gives added value to the product.

But in the end, I’m undecided as to what it means. Is it a sign that music is getting devalued? That it can be thrown it as a meaningless extra? Or is it an attempt to find new distribution channels for recorded music? What do you guys think? And do you know of any other disc that comes with its soundtrack?

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6 Comments

  • Yan , October 1, 2012 @ 3:53 pm

    I know GTA 4 special edition had the Soundtrack in the bundle.

  • jfvachon , October 1, 2012 @ 3:58 pm

    Yan: a lot of games add the soundtrack as an extra in the deluxe edition. Considering the market for game soundtracks is tiny, it makes more sense to me. But in the case of The Avengers, which features artists being pushed hard by their label, I found it surprising. Maybe it was a total flop and they’re trying to make the most out of it?

  • Ghislain , October 1, 2012 @ 8:34 pm

    I find it amazing that ey sell those bundle of all formats in one box nowadays for blockbusters -soon it will come with a laserdisc and a betamax for REAL collectors – but maybe they do this to prevent piracy. If you add enough goodies, people will buy it because it will take too much energy for people to pirate the whole experience, with soudtrack included, miniature cardboard cutouts and mobile ringtones…. Ok, i dont believe any of this. Recorded music IS devaluated these days, you can get it legally or not whenever and wherever you want and the channels to get to it are limitless. It’s really acase of information losing all meaning because there’sso many of it, plus, unimedia (text, sound, picture) is taken for granted and not hyped as everything aims at transmedia.Unimedia is sadly taken too often as only a part of a whole. I.e. it’s not a new soudngarden single, it’s a song from the Avengers soundtrack.

    • jfvachon , October 2, 2012 @ 10:58 am

      Thanks for the comments Ghislain! I think the bundles are just opportunistic: it costs the studio not a lot to add all these version, and they can charge a higher premium. But I do believe it helps prevent piracy, _to a certain degree_.

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