Feb 13
Apple Guilty For Poor Album Sales
For an artist, releasing an album full of quality songs can be a really tough challenge, since those albums without a single "filler" track released so far could only fill a small bag, and nothing more. Before the portable music players entered the scene, the public had to buy full albums, thus spending about $20 (or more) for acquiring 10-15 tracks, of which only 5-10 were really worth it. Now, the digital music downloads made the competition really tough, and CD sales are going lower and lower with each year. Who's fault it this? Apple's, of course!
Hey, hey! Don't kill me, because I didn't started this, and this is not even my opinion. The fact is that, according to NBC, Apple and their popular iTunes service, together with the iPod music player, which was sold in over 120 million units since 2001, are guilty for the situation of the music industry. Well, they didn't say exactly that, but made it clear that a large part of the guilt belongs to Apple (the guild is directly proportional with the market share, as it seems...).
It is interesting to mention that NBC noted the fact that artists selling 10-15 million copies of their albums back in 2000, now barely pass the 1 million mark. An example is Alicia Keys' latest album, a top Billboard debut a few weeks ago, only sold 61,000 copies so far. Is that bad? Is it good?
For a music fan, it's good to have a complete freedom of choice. Just like you, I have bought poor albums too many times, simply because 2 or 3 popular tracks that were really good.
In my opinion, this is a natural move. From now on, the big recording companies may go down slowly, but us, the music consumers, will take advantage of better albums. After all, if I find a brilliant album of some artist, I won't buy those 10-15 tracks for $0.99 each, instead of spending $20-$30 for a nice digipack...
At last, it would be interesting to see if Apple has any answer to NBC's claims. If I were in their place, this time I would give them exactly what they deserve - silence.
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- Feb 13, 2008: Apple Guilty For Poor Album Sales-Music Download
February 13th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
When I was in high school, 45 rpm singles cost $1.00, and 12″ albums cost $3.00. Guess what! Singles still cost $1.00 - thanks to Apple.
When I was in high school, record companies had a hard enough time putting two good tracks on a 45 rpm single (some might argue they had a hard time putting one good track on a single). While the 45 was more popular than the album, FM stereo and “album rock” eventually helped produce a shift in popularity. iTunes and the iPod are doing the reverse today.
I’d say that the record companies have a right to blame Apple for the shift. I’d also say the shift is good.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
So in other words, you are suggesting that the consumer should have to pay full price for a CD or digital download, pay for a bunch of lousy music just to get two or three good songs and be happy with it? Just to make the record companies fat and happy? What a load of crap thinking. And then, “it’s Apple’s fault” on top of it? Maybe the original system was flawed. Maybe the concept of filler songs never should have happened. I blame the record companies for allowing substandard music to be produced in the first place and then forcing us to buy the whole enchilada. I also blame the artist for going along with that rotten idea and producing filler songs and degrading their art in the process. Why *should* I have to pay for garbage tunes? Apple is just giving us “choice.” You know, that politically correct word and concept (choice) that everyone bows down to and worships unless that is, it somehow doesn’t work in certain instances.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I think that piracy in the form of Napster and its descendents brought about the change. Apple brought in iTunes after piracy was clearly cutting into CD sales. iTunes had to compete with piracy to allow the record companies to make money on digital sales, so they had to compete with the single track model vs. the entire album. Portable music players existed before the iPod and, had Apple not packaged it up, would still exist now if they hadn’t introduced the iPod, you’d just be buying your music from someone else. What happened was a paradigm shift brought on by networked computer technology that passed by the CD sales industry. The record lables feared iTunes because that put digital songs on peoples computers, but they didn’t accept that the songs were getting there from CDs less than 5 minutes after the disc was brought home. The labels did lots of things, like requireing DRM, to stunt online sales rather than embracing them and competing with piracy directly. It turned out that the way to compete with “free” was to offer better services: music organization and management, search, preview, reliable downloads, etc. The labels could have made their own iTunes-type store and refused to license their songs to others and been in great shape; instead they are left out and complaining.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
It is because iTunes allows music appreciators a chance to discover for themselves exactly what music they would like to spend money on, versus the old days when, for most consumers, it came down to often enough who had the most shelf space and traditional marketing behind them at the places to buy records. And in particular, in the age of Walmart and Target, I believe this “driving who is number one” methodology on the part of ASCAP/BMI and RIAA was the reason “artists” like miss Keys sold such high volumes.
Nowadays, it really once again is coming down to the artistic value of the artists that is proving a major force in how music is shopped for and purchased.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
$20 for an entire album of which only a few songs you like is not always the case. I am a decent tom petty fan and wanted some of their songs. There were 11 I liked and I found them on their greatest hits CD on iTunes for 8 bucks! If theyre were more deals like that on iTunes I dont think many people will mind. That was a cd of 25 total songs, so in essence, I got 3 free good songs and 14 other free songs too.