An article in the Chronicle yesterday discussed a "new" trend: magazines that come with free CDs. This is something I've seen for years overseas, where newstand sales are key to a publication's survival and all kinds of goodies are thrown in as incentives. In fact, I once spent a very pleasant hour at Heathrow Airport rummaging through W.H. Smith and coming away with a beach tote, a makeup mirror, a small paperback book, and goodness knows what else, in addition to a pile of magazines I'd read within the first hour after takeoff.
Similarly, English music magazines often came with freebie soundtracks. Select was a magazine published during the 90s which reliably added to my tape collection every month. The cassettes are now mouldering on my shelf and waiting for me to convert them to mp3s, but they brought me many hours of joy at the time.
Having been spoiled elsewhere, I've been wondering for years why magazines here in the United States didn't follow suit. And now, they are starting to. Many computer magazines offer software compilations, either at the time you pay for your subscription or included with each issue, and magazines like Paste (inexplicably not mentioned in the Chronicle article) come with fabulous indie mixes and sometimes DVDs as well.
As the Chronicle points out, mixing music and issues leads to some, well, issues...
In some respects, it's a perfect marriage of mediums -- a way to open up music reviewing and the entire magazine reading experience. On the other hand, having free CDs stuck inside magazines further erodes the public perception of the compact disc as something worth the $15 that record companies ask at retail stores.
In Britain, BPI's Webster knows the problem well.
"People do not value what they get for free," he said. "The number of people who play cover-mount CDs, who have built entire CD collections with them, they're going to value less the CD we want them to pay 10 or 12 pounds for."
With all the DVDs and CDs already being stuffed inside magazines to advertise new television programs or hype new bands, if this keeps up, it's going to get difficult to tell the products from the commercials.
Newsflash: 10 or 12 pounds is way, way too much for an album. (It's
about $20.) As for the problem distinguishing whether the CD was
compiled with the influence of sound musical judgement or advertising
dollars... sounds a lot like radio, doesn't it? Only without the
obnoxious DJ yammering away over the songs.
