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Apple to reel in digital music holdouts
Analysts say that the few remaining high-profile digital music holdouts—including the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Garth Brooks, Radiohead and Kid Rock—can’t avoid iTunes forever. With CD sales continuing to drop, it’s only a matter of time until the holdouts get on board, said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media. “Any artist that doesn’t is going to be left at the station,” he said. “It’s not a secret that growth in the CD market is as dead as General Custer.” Artists argue online sales give them too small a profit, and that iTunes hurts the artistic integrity of an album by allowing customers to buy songs individually for 99 cents. “We’ve always thought certain artists put out albums that aren’t meant to be compilations with 50 other artists,” said Ed “Punch” Andrews, manager for both Seger and Kid Rock. “We’re hoping at some point albums become important again like they were in the past 30 years.”
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21
Artistic integrity - right. If your issue is artistic integrity, do free shows full of your average and poor efforts and feel good about yourself. But it isn’t.
It’s about money. You want paid full price for half assed work. Join the rest of the modern world. Move right on out of your Al Bundyish yesteryear fanasy world and jopin us. You will get paid for exactly what people want to pay for, for exactly the price they want to pay. Don’t try to force me to support your idea of art by prejudging your “art” as worth somethiong to someone besides yourself.
Welcome to the digital democracy, where I get to decide what strikes my fancy without being told by you what else I need to buy to make my experience with your art whole. Honeslty, don’t you suppose that, if the artistry of an album was such that all of the compositions and performances were necesary to complete the experience, that I’d be back for the rest later?
I couldnt write a better answer than that bahamabruce!
Posted by Ed on August 22, 2006 at 4:57 PM (PDT)
22
pardon me. the more accurate statement is that led zeppelin, the band, disagreed with their record company’s decision to release immigrant song as a single. many singles were released without their consent, prompting them to form swan song.
Posted by mrmojorisingi on August 22, 2006 at 6:47 PM (PDT)
23
One really great things about albums were the cover art. I’m talking vinyl here, not CD. The loss of cover art is my only gripe with the digital age. As far as “artistic integrity”, today it’s a joke. Some great artists of the past really did put alot of time into creating an album that weaved a story line. Two great examples of albums that are better in their entirety than as pieces were Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage” and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”. Again this is just two examples - there are more, not many - but a few. I think that the companies like Sony, Universal and others will have to change thier marketing tactics. In the past, it’s been release a single to radio, the following Tuesday the single is released. Then release a second single to radio and a week or two later release the single. Music companies are going to have to market not just the artists and their projects, but the songs that make up the projects to continue artist development.
Posted by alfiala on August 23, 2006 at 2:13 PM (PDT)
24
The loss of cover art is my only gripe with the digital age.
I agree, but even with the pops and clicks, the warm tonal qualities of vinyl is another aspect of records I miss with digital. Great vinyl pressings sound incredible and natural on good gear; On great gear it blows my best CD player away which, for digital, is a tremendous-sounding unit (Naim CD5). Shame that great vinyl QC seldom happened enough with many of the major labels, though.
Posted by flatline response on August 23, 2006 at 8:12 PM (PDT)
25
I can’t really comment on artistic integrity, as that would be different for each artist. I know Wired magazine has articles about Beck and Barenaked Ladies embracing the single-downloadable-track format (http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/beck.html for beck and http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/nettwerk.html for BNL). So some artists, at least, are quite happy with what iTunes, downloading, and the internet in general can do for selling their artistic products.
After reading those two articles (I admit I know little about the music business), I get the impression that the reduced profit the artists see has less to do with the price of downloads and more to do with the large bureaucratic structure between the music-makers and the music-buyers.
They also need to consider the impact ITMS could have on getting new fans. WOuld someone who has heard about Zeppelin but not really heard much of their actual music be more likely to get a whole album to satisfy their curiosity about the music, or a few tracks first to see if the whole album is worthwhile?
Posted by Chibithulhu on August 25, 2006 at 3:13 AM (PDT)
26
All the bands listed (except Kid Rock) have all released greatest hits packages that cherry pick songs from their catalog. So much for artistic integrity.
If an artist is not selling their music online, then people will just go to the plenty of illegal sources and get it there. Its poetic and musical justice.
Posted by Merrill Guice on August 25, 2006 at 9:14 PM (PDT)
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