Franz for a penny?

 I just started to post on FB about my experience of selling/dumping my cd collection while moving house this week. It got a bit long/ranty so I’m moving it here where fewer/less sensitive people and family members are likely to see it! 

[warning - this post might not be to all tastes] Has any commodity ever, outside of possibly Venezuela or Weimar Germany, ever been so remarkably devalued as the compact disc? Oil’s recent troubles barely move the needle by comparison. Before I get much further with this, I must stress I’m not looking for sympathy or an explanation - I do understand the concept of a market. But I moved house this week and in the course of doing so was forced to reflect on the value of creativity. 

I’ve been a music fan; a sort-of professional musician (I earned about £15 one year from PRS); and also kind of ‘industry’ thro running a bedroom label. I never wanted to get rid of any of the recorded music I bought, because I believed that it had a value in itself, as well as in terms of what it used to signify about me as a music owner of taste, displayed tastefully on my shelves; but also in terms of what it represented to the artists whose creative efforts it reflected. Now, I’m late to this party - and I’m also aware that a good subset of my musical friends are significantly younger than me and are probably raising their eyebrows/yawning at this. But I had a token stab at getting rid of a few cds today and yesterday and it was a dispiriting, salutary experience. 

I didn’t expect to make any money from them - I am fully aware that this is inverse-peak-cd (nadir-cd?). But it was still thoroughly depressing to see how little value is now vested in what is still amazing music - not really just because the cds are now worthless but really because we know that sales of physical product (vinyl and expensive boxed reissues of dad rockers aside) have been supplanted by a streaming model that earns the artist £0.000412 per play instead. Approximately. A situation that earns millions for Spotify and YouTube and means that the vast majority of artists (non-major label) will find it harder and harder even to be able to afford to create in the immediate future. Esp with little prospect of live shows in the current climate. 

I thought I’d chance my arm with Music Magpie, which I’m sure many others have used. Out of about 1000 cds (representing c. £10k in original retail payments, give or take, I suppose) I’ve managed to fill a small box of about 70 that they would even accept. That will yield about £35 for me. I didn’t go through the whole 1000 - I left the jazz & classical, and most of the folk. I also didn’t include anything for which MM offered me single figures, on the grounds that it wasn’t worth the carbon footprint to post it. (It goes without saying that I didn’t include anything by the Fall, or the Blue Aeroplanes. Nor did I try to divest any music by friends!!) 

I started by trying to shift the things that I didn’t want myself, though there weren’t many of those. I quickly found that Music Magpie didn’t want those either. Nor do they, perhaps unsurprisingly, want 90s indie dance crossover and big beat (Aim, Propellerheads, etc - even Underworld only yields a few pence a time). So my box ended up filled with the few things that pass the tragic £0.20 threshold. EG: John Martyn Solid Air; Roxy Music For Your Pleasure; Sonic Youth Daydream Nation; Sparks #1 in Heaven; Efterklang Parades; Kraftwerk Minimum-Maximum; Bob Dylan Another Self Portrait (the only rubbish bootleg series imho; Mark Lanegan Bubblegum). The rest are in the box in the pic ☹️. 

Franz Ferdinand’s inclusion here is no way meant to be any comment on what is still a great debut album, but because it best defined the exercise: MM’s buying price for this one was a princely £0.01. At the other end of the spectrum, Beefheart’s consistently baffling Trout Mask Replica can be yours for an equally baffling £1.82. I took out Franz, so if anyone wishes to bid for that please shout. Julian Christopher - at least the execrable Frank Turner is out of my house, and for a marvellous £0.47. 

I know I can still always listen to this great music. But its devaluation saddens me. Now for the books...