The Red Hot Chili Peppers released an new album today. I'm not a huge fan, or a small one for that matter, but the way Unlimited Love is being released strikes me as a possible sign of the end times.
• Red Hot Chili Marketing – The vinyl record boom continues to become a more and more absurd playground for the wealthy and the speculators by the day. Album prices are spiking to heights that are making the hobby out of reach for most casual music fans. Single LP releases by major artists are consistently in the $25 to $30 range, while double albums land between $35 and $40. With so-called “audiophile” records, pressed onto heavier vinyl (which makes no difference in sound quality, btw), and carefully remastered (which can) the sky’s the limit - new releases regularly top the $100 mark, and often take a sniff at $200. Record labels have become keenly aware of the speculators and completists driving the LP market these days, and we’re witnessing some pushing of the boundaries with their 2022 releases to test exactly what the market will bear. The new 2LP Eric Clapton release, The Lady In The Balcony: Lockdown Sessions, essentially a studio version of Clapton Unplugged, comes with a $50 price tag, $10 more than typical non-audiophile 2LP releases, for no apparent reason other than to see if a Clapton-branded record can command a higher price and still move a sufficient number of units. If the answer’s yes, I’m thinking vinyl buyers can expect to see yet another across-the-board price spike before the year’s out.
But the most outrageous marketing strategy I’ve seen to date is being pulled off by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their brand new album Unlimited Love. It’s a 2LP release of all new songs, their first album with fan-favorite guitarist John Frusciante in about ten years, so interest is high. Anticipating their fan’s eagerness for the record, while keeping a keen eye on the possibility of sharks feeding in the primary and secondary record markets, Warner Brothers and the Peppers are throwing a serious amount of chum into the water.
The versions of Unlimited Love being offered to the public as of April 1st are like a laundry list of collectibles. There’s a standard 2LP version in a single jacket, the same two LPs packaged in a gatefold jacket with a poster for $5 more, an “L.A.” version with the 2LPs in a jacket with slightly different cover art, a CD, a cassette, and a box set with the CD and a t-shirt that can’t be purchased anywhere else (What? No 8-track?). If a serious RHCP completist or secondary market speculator, and there are lots of them out there, picks up one of every available format variation alone they’re looking at dropping about $180. But wait – there’s more.
While the “L.A. version” will only be available on black vinyl and for a limited time, Warner Brothers has announced twenty, count ‘em, TWENTY vinyl color variants for the other 2LP releases. So far there are photos of fifteen of them floating around the internet, including three different reds, three different blues, and a metallic or two. All four of the major big box vinyl sellers – Walmart, Target, Barnes and Noble, and Urban Outfitters (really) will have their own color to sell, as will independent record stores, online retailers, and selected other countries. 2020’s McCartney III release dipped the first big, fat toe in these waters by offering ten different colors of vinyl, which led to exactly the kind of feeding frenzy Warner is hoping for. It was impossible to predict which of the ten colors of Sir Paul’s LP would be the least popular (read: rarest and most expensive in the resale market) so collectors around the world hunted them down and made sure they picked up all ten. At $25 a pop, that put the price for a collector hedging his or her bets at $250, plus shipping, since some of them were also limited to other countries. I couldn’t help myself, I had to do the math for what the Chili Peppers are attempting. If a collector feels the need to be a completist with Unlimited Love, and there will be many more of them than you'd imagine since the after-market for resale is both highly competitive and highly lucrative, picking up one of everything is going to be a hit to the bank account of just over $1600. Will the market bear this level of speculation on a single release? My guess is it will, based on the collector fanaticism I’ve been observing with dropped jaw over the last couple of years. The Peppers may not sell forty times as many copies of Unlimited Love as they would have by releasing just one version, but I feel pretty confident they’ll come close enough to open the door to some pretty crazy shit in 2022.
Speaking of RCHP – Anthony Kiedis, the band’s lead singer, is from the same part of the country where I’ve lived for a good many years. His mother still lives in the area, a short drive outside the city. Anthony used to come to town most years around the Thanksgiving / Christmas holidays to visit his mother and, being a serious student of painting and drawing, would often stop into the art materials store I ran for many years to pick up a few supplies while he was in town. He was always soft-spoken, polite, thoughtful, and obviously serious about his art; that’s all we talked about.
I haven’t had many brushes with rock and roll fame in my life; Bono shook my hand from the stage at an early U2 concert in a local church, I promoted and attended a Jeff Daniels music CD-release party at a Michigan bookstore that sorta counts, and I had to keep an eye out in that same art supply store when a local college student name Maynard Keenan (Tool) came in, as we knew he had a penchant for shoplifting. I find it ironic, and a little amusing, to think now that my closest contact with a genuine rock star was from a band who, at least to date, has never made an album I enjoy even a little bit. It was pretty easy back then to keep the conversation limited to paints, brushes, and good wishes for the holidays.
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