New albums released in the UK should be sold for as little as £1 in a bid to help dissuade fans from downloading music for free online, according to a former leading music industry figure.
Rob Dickins, who was the head of Warner Music’s UK division from 1983-1998, has suggested radical ideas are needed to help reverse the steady trend of decline in profits for record labels over the past few years, and claims prices of LPs should be slashed provided labels are given a larger slice of revenue from other avenues such as ticket sales and merchandise.
“What we need is a revolution,” he said. “What we’ve got is an erosion. When I was running Warners, a chart CD could be £12.99. A chart CD now can be £6.99, maybe even £5.99. If you’re a fan of R.E.M and you’ve got 10 albums and there’s a new album coming out, you’ve got to make that decision about whether you want it or not. If we lived in a micro-economy, that wouldn’t be a decision. You’d just say ‘I like R.E.M’ and you’d buy it.”
However, it seems the new idea is being only met by criticism from others within the industry, with Paul Quirk, chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, accusing Dickins of hypocrisy following his former role. “Rob Dickins is part of the generation of executives who benefited from the age of £14 CDs and gave the music business a bad name,” Quirk remarked. “So it is ironic to hear him espouse the cause of the £1 album. Basic arithmetic indicates that this is a non-starter.”
Chris Cooke, editor of music industry newsletter CMU, also questioned the plan, and predicted strong resistance from record companies. “It is a gamble,” he said. “Once you’ve slashed the price of an album you can’t really go back. It’s a big risk and the record companies will resist it. But he’s not alone, outside the record companies, in saying perhaps that is the future.”
There was more reticence from manager Jonathan Shalit, who believes cheap prices will only devalue the creative viability of the product. “Right now if you buy a bottle of water it’s £1,” he said. “A piece of music is a valuable form of art. If you want the person to respect it and value it, it’s got to cost them not a huge sum of money but a significant sum of money.”
Despite the backlash, Rob Dickins has said he believes a major new album could comfortably sell £200m worth of copies under his proposals.