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Promo CDs are killing the Earth
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 2 November 2010
If the independent sector was to stop sending out any physical promo CDs to journalists, DJs and radio people tomorrow – providing digital promos instead – then 1525 tonnes less CO2 would be produced annually, according to research undertaken by the music industry’s eco-body Julie’s Bicycle on behalf of record label trade bodies AIM and the BPI. The UK indie sector’s promo CD output is, the report says, producing three times as much CO2 as the energy, water and waste emissions of a large arena.
The research was instigated following a proposal made at the ‘Ten Big Ideas’ session AIM staged as part of their tenth anniversary celebrations last year. The findings are interesting, though, and without wanting to diss the lovely people at AIM or the brilliant organisation that is Julie’s Bicycle, I’m not really sure they are that useful. Of course, it’s more eco-friendly to send journalists MP3s over the net than CDs in jiffy bags, I don’t think anyone would dispute that.
And even the 75% of music journalists surveyed by CMU earlier this year who said they preferred physical CDs to digital promos would admit there are sound environmental as well as perfectly understandable financial reasons as to why labels might want to go the digital route when it comes to the music they send the media. And while some of those 75% of journalists just don’t like change, while others possibly don’t like the idea of losing the option to supplement their meagre (or non-existent) income by selling on some promo CDs, many will accept that a digital promo future is inevitable.
The real problem at the moment is that nearly all the digital promo systems used by record companies – albeit mainly the majors – are shit, and have clearly been designed by IT firms and label execs who had no idea what happens to a CD once it lands on an editor’s desk, and didn’t think it might be useful to ask someone in the media about it before enforcing unusable systems on the journalists they are trying to impress.
True, some indies are developing some very good digital promo services, though realistically any system whereby every label uses a different digital promo platform – whether they be proprietary or bought in – is going to be resisted by the majority of journalists, who don’t have time to be getting their heads around a plethora of different websites and software packages, most of which are terribly designed.
A better system would be for all labels to make all their promo music available to all credible middle-men preview platforms on a pay-per-delivery arrangement, and then let the market decide. The platforms which actually work will get used by the journalists and make money, while the others (like the ones the majors currently use) will just eventually disappear.
With all that in mind, I can’t help thinking it would have been better if AIM’s research had focused on how to make digital promos work, rather than on how much less carbon will be pumped into the atmosphere if and when that is achieved. But still, perhaps now these scary carbon stats have been released, someone out there will do that work.
