The Decline of Drum Corps Media
Drum corps in the home has been an offering dating back to the early 1900s when performances were recorded for and pressed onto vinyl records. Attempting to stay up-to-date on how the activity could be disseminated, efforts were made to maintain the most modern form of media. Vinyl turned into cassette tapes, cassette tapes turned into CDs, VHS, DVDs & Blu-rays, which turned into digital downloads and streaming. We are far removed from the 1975 – 2004 broadcasts hosted by PBS, and the three years on ESPN2 feel like a fever dream. Imagine the glee a drum corps fan must have felt when, during the 1979 holiday season, they opened their six-volume set of VHS tapes containing the Drum Corps International Championships—a gift setting their parents back $280.The first few years I was exposed to the drum corps activity, I didn’t go to any live shows. I relied on two-minute clips on YouTube, and words could not describe how excited I was when my high school band director lent me his set of The Cavaliers: Planets to Planets and All Stops Between (1985 – 1995) CDs. While some of my friends could splurge on the Blu-rays, the $25 CDs were all I needed to open each Christmas morning. If I was lucky, I received a tour DVD, serving as a documentary for an individual corps during their season.
In 2012, I signed up to be a Drum Corps International ambassador, its best perk being access to the DCI Fan Network, an on-demand platform with every drum corps show ever recorded; it was better than Netflix. But by 2014, the DCI Fan Network was no longer available due to copyright issues with music artists. When I marched in 2014, I remember my disappointment of not being able to watch my own show in-full because the music played during our ballad—”I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” by Norah Jones—was not cleared for production. Copyright issues have continued to plague the activity, even today. FloMarching, which broadcasts most of the shows during the summer tour, is unable to include music in any recordings of the events, including re-broadcasts, for this reason.
Now, a new bookmark in the decline of drum corps media. Before the first of the year, 2025, Drum Corps International is expected to cease all online sales of its remaining stock of Blu-ray, DVD and CD products.
Digital media will continue for drum corps. FloMarching will continue producing live streams to the best of their abilities, and individual corps will continue to produce content to share on YouTube for inside looks and developments of their seasons. But as someone who advocates strongly for owning your own media, it’s frustrating to see we may experience even further decline in drum corps media access.