Knowledge for the Music Enthusiast
Written By:
Pamm Tucker
Owner, The Gigspot
A person can get really confused when it comes to music and the artists wares they are selling as merch. More times than I can remember, I have watched fans of every genre stumble as they are asking the often famed question,”How much is this CD?”, or is this an EP? To be perfectly honest, I have hit the wall with that same implication more than once. This is what the Gigspot has decided…
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EP: actually stands for extended play. This is where the journey of putting merch in a fans hands often begins. From artists that began to dig their heels into the soil and decide that music is the life for them, or those that have settled on their stage shows, almost every singer has an EP available. Some may be simple, and handmade from a DVD, while others are fully processed in a home or professional studio with graphics and photos. An EP is something between a single and a full CD. Usually an EP has 3- 5 tracks on it.
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NEW RELEASE: Of course we all know this is a simple phrase announcing the newest music that a selected artist is now promoting. But, something I didn’t know until I started researching was: there is a global release day! 45 major recorded music projects came together and declared the New Release Fridays project (effective July 10, 2015). About a month earlier, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) made the decision to make all NEW music available worldwide on the same day..FRIDAY! Music releases are now available around the world at the same time, 0:01 local time in all 45 signatory countries. This move ends where new music was unavailable in one country while in another you could purchase the same music legally. This move has modified earlier traditional days where charts were being published as the official country charts try to adapt to the new "global day" for releases such that they capture a full week's sales and streaming from Friday mornings to Thursday nights. The UK Top 100, for example, published by The Official Charts moved from being published on a Sunday to a Friday with the BBC moving its new Top 40 charts program from Sundays at 4 p.m. local time to Fridays at 4 p.m. local time. WHEW! That was a lot of information but knowledge well gained.
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CD: Compact disc (released in 1982 by Sony & Phillips), has a really lengthy name. Digital optical disc storage... The format was originally developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data. Several other formats were further derived from these, including write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Disc, Super Video Compact Disc , PictureCD, and Enhanced Music CD. The first commercially available audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan. Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimetres (4.7 in) and can hold up to about 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700 MIB of data. The mini cd has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 millimetres (2.4 to 3.1 in); they are sometimes used for CD singles, storing up to 24 minutes of audio, or delivering device drivers. At the time of the technology's introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard drive which would typically hold 10 MB. By 2010, hard drives commonly offered as much storage space as a thousand CDs, while their prices had plummeted to commodity level. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs. By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide. From the early 2000s CDs were increasingly being replaced by other forms of digital storage and distribution, with the result that by 2010 the number of audio CDs being sold in the U.S. had dropped about 50% from their peak; however, they remained one of the primary distribution methods for the industry of music.
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Vinyl: The albums of yesteryear are making a comeback! The prototype of the LP was the soundtrack disc used by the Vitaphone motion picture sound system, developed by Western Electric and introduced in 1926. For soundtrack purposes, the less than five minutes of playing time of each side of a conventional 12-inch 78 rpm disc was not acceptable. The sound had to play continuously for at least 11 minutes, long enough to accompany a full 1,000-foot (300 m) reel of 35 mm film projected at 24 frames per second. The disc diameter was increased to 16 inches (40 cm) and the speed was reduced to ​33 1⁄3 revolutions per minute. Unlike their smaller LP descendants, they were made with the same large "standard groove" used by 78s. Unlike conventional records, the groove started at the inside of the recorded area near the label and proceeded outward toward the edge. Like 78s, early soundtrack discs were pressed in an abrasive shellac compound and played with a single-use steel needle held in a massive electromagnetic pickup with a tracking force of five ounces. By mid-1931, all motion picture studios were recording on optical soundtracks, but sets of soundtrack discs, mastered by dubbing from the optical tracks and scaled down to 12 inches to cut costs, were made as late as 1936 for distribution to theaters still equipped with disc-only sound projectors.
Now, you have all the technical knowledge, let me assist you with what to do with this information. Next time, you are standing in front of a merch table at a gig, house concert, or club, remember to always purchase the goods there. Many musically talented people will play for pure exposure, but exposure doesn’t furnish strings, gas , instruments or other things needed. Those tip jars placed in front of the artists are there for a reason...Don’t be afraid to be the first one to leave a dollar or two...and for goodness sake.. BUY their merch! Vinyl, EP, and CD! This is what success is to the artist… and your tips & purchases helps keep LIVE music ALIVE!