Will DualDisc save the music industry?
April 25, 2005I was wandering the aisles of the nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter one night last week, looking to buy a large padded envelope so I could mail the local Sunday paper to somebody. As I wandered the aisles I of course had to stop in the electronics section at the back of the store. That’s where I found the new Rob Thomas album at a great price, $9.95.
So I picked up a copy, and when I got home I found out the disc was a DualDisc. That means there’s the regular CD version of the album on one side, and the flip side is a DVD that has a 5.1 version of the album plus a bunch of video extras. The best DVD extra was the recording session with John Mayer, who surprisingly was playing electric guitar. I just always thought he was an acoustic guitar guy but he’s really good on the electric.
The interesting thing to me is that they’re seeling the DualDisc for the same price you would expect to pay on just a regular old CD album. Bruce Springsteen’s new album due out tomorrow is apparently also a DualDisc, and will also be sold for the same price as a regular CD.
I wonder if this DualDisc thing is going to help save the music industry? Internet piracy has been at least partly responsible for the decline in CD sales, but of course that’s only the music side of a DualDisc. I think the idea is you would want to buy the DualDisc because you can get the DVD extras that aren’t part of a pirated CD download.
Now I would never have pirated a CD to begin with, but the one thing the DualDisc did was prevent me from buying on iTunes. Because on iTunes your ten bucks only buys you the audio CD, not the full DualDisc that you can get at the stores for the exact same price. So I’m thinking while it may not stave off declining audio CD sales, it could eat into iTunes a bit.
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