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2012, oh bugger.

Happy New Year – austerity, unrelenting misery, and the Olympic Games vs. Big Bag Of Cash. Only you, dear reader, can decide.

Major labels – at least those in the USA – plan to abandon the CD format by the end of this year and replace it with download/stream-only releases via iTunes and related music services. The only CD formats left will be largely limited/special editions, which will of course not be available for every artist. The distribution of the remaining CD releases will be primarily Amazon (oh, fantastic), and I expect Wal-Mart and one or two others, to continue selling greatest hits and other types of compilations.

And the UK? That leaves Asda and Tesco I suppose – who already carry precisely the kind of range that will remain after CDs get the chop.

Does this mean every artist will end up a one hit wonder? Sure, it makes short term financial sense for the majors to marshal all their resources into the “hit”. But – and it’s a big but; if CDs are extinct, the album is likely to die with it, or at the very least lose its conceptual value – it already has to a large extent.  Will download buyers be forced to buy a bundle of 10 tracks if they want more than just the hit single? I’m guessing not – at least for “emerging” artists. The labels will want every penny they can get, as fast as they can…and it’s easy to imagine most fans either opting for a download of the 3 strongest songs, or resenting the price of a bundle deal and leaving it alone altogether – thus marginalising revenue into a downward spiral and making it even harder for a substantial new artist to break through.

One-hit-wonders-only rosters are not sustainable; the overheads are simply too high; which leaves really no significant place for the majors if current policies continue. It’s been a magnificent display of shooting themselves in the foot time and time again since the emergence of internet music, and it looks like Dinosaur Time for them from where I’m standing.

As for indies – they’re already getting it whittled down to download or vinyl. If there’s a durable future at all for new music, it undoubtedly lies with the artists themselves and the cottage industry labels and networks who support them – and as a producer, that’s where I’ve been headed for some time.

Formats may come and go, but some things never change; you still need great songs, and artists with enough drive, ambition and commitment to make them happen.

And by the way, you can forget about that Big Bag Of Cash…