Rhino Intros New Digital 45 Music Format
But Does It Make Sense To Have A B-Side In A Digital Format? 15-Jul-09



Rhino Records has introduced a new digital music format, the Digital 45, designed to translate the 60-year old 45 single format into the iTunes age. Rhino plans to release a series of digital "singles" through Apple's iTunes store and other retailers.

These Digital 45's are made up of:

The original single
The B-side song
Original artwork
Rhino is releasing 60 Digital 45's on iTunes, with plans to release 25 bundles per month to participating digital retailers. Digital 45's sold on iTunes will include a PDF file with the original sleeve or label art.

Rhino's David Dor explains their reasoning behind the new digital format:

You have a single track people are interested in and a greatest hits people are interested in. But there are going to be customers maybe interested in something in the middle. We look at this as the evolution of satisfying all the different consumers in the world. It's my goal to eventually address all of those different holes that exist out there where you could put a product. You have a single track. Now you have a 45 equivalent. You've got a single album, double album, boxset. We want to find ways to address all those different consumers.

For those old enough to have grown up with vinyl, 45's may have some nostalgiac appeal. 45's let you buy the singles that you wanted, and often had a nice surprise on the "B-side".

When you can preview any song you want before you buy it, though, does the idea of a "B-side" offer anything but nostalgia value?

Rhino has a new gimmick to get middle-aged music fans to buy some more oldies: a download format on iTunes called the Digital 45. Ostensibly tied to what the company tells BillboardBiz is the 60th anniversary of the 45 RPM record, the company has started selling 60 individual “hit songs” that also feature second track (of course, there are no “A-sides” online). The downloads will include a PDF with the singles’ original sleeve artwork. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is giving Rhino a special section on the iTunes store’s front page.

The Digital 45 packages range from $1.49 to $1.99. But as with the vinyl 45s—which are still a staple of indie record labels—it’s questionable whether users will want to pay a little more simply for an extra song and old album art. After all, users still have the option of paying $1.29 for Prince’s 1986 hit Kiss by itself—will they really pay another 70 cents for the previously unreleased “Love or Money”? (The latter is also available for 99 cents alone.) Rhino is owned by Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG), which doesn’t break out results for the unit. Download sales has been one of the few bright spots for Warner Music over the last year. In the second quarter, digital income was up 7.1 percent to $166 million.

David Dorn, Rhino’s SVP for e-commerce and international catalog strategy, tells BillboardBiz that creating an event—like the 45’s 60th birthday, as if anyone was celebrating it—is a good way to get oldies some attention. “If you put a whole lot of them in the store in one shot, then they all sit there. They’ll have their promotion period, and some of them will get featured, but then they just sit in the store. To me it’s more interesting to market them each month and create a program around them and have something new to talk about every month.”

will they really pay another 70 cents for the previously unreleased “Love or Money”?

Hmmm, I did think it was released digitally when they did those 12" releases a while back? I guess not.

http://prince.org/msg/7/313769