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Top Artists Balking At A La Carte Downloads

Despite the major labels' success in clearing hundreds of thousands of tracks for purchase online through services like Apple's iTunes Music Store, some top artists continue to resist authorizing the dismantling of their albums for Internet consumption as a la carte singles.

Some acts are requiring that their music be sold exclusively in album bundles. For example, Linkin Park recently pulled its music as a singles offering from digital services. Sources say the band has expressed concerns about undercutting album sales. Other acts with similar stipulations about their work include Radiohead, Madonna, Jewel and Green Day, sources say.

Top acts and their representatives are expressing reservations about the creative and financial implications of shifting to a singles-based model. "The fear among artists is that the work of art they put together, the album, will become a thing of the past," says attorney Fred Goldring, whose firm represents Will Smith and Alanis Morissette.

Artist representatives say a singles-oriented model means a significant hit to the bottom line. Instead of divvying the spoils of a $12-$18 CD sale, labels, artists and songwriters are vying for nickels and dimes from 99 cent downloads. For artists who write their own material, the impact is even more substantial: Rather than collecting songwriting royalties on as many as 14 tracks, plus an artist royalty on the album sale, payment is being parsed on a per-track basis.

-- Brian Garrity, N.Y

http://www.billboard.com/...id=1919550


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HA!

Right! Apple claims it's helping out the artists, but in reality it's killing the concept and artistic expression of the "ALBUM".

There is growing concern that downloading single songs are hurting how an artist approaches music. Another technology over creativity crisis...

What I see needs to be done is to teach the babies about appreciating what an music artist communicates in a complete album.

It would be sad to see a new trend that destroys that concept in music.

I can name a bunch if not hundreds, thousands of albums that should be heard as albums rather than just that "one song".

I'm so glad to see artists and songwriters stand up against Apple and other online dismantled albums providers.

I mean why down load one or two or even three songs from The Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall, when it was meant to be heard in its completeness.

Or Sign O The Times dismantled into a few songs...or Lovesexy which Prince as the artist, much like The Rainbow Children want's you as the listener to hear in one shot without being tracked.

I've changed my tune, I really hope PRINCE doesn't give them his songs, at least the ones outside of the plantation known as WB.

Apple iTunes Music Store is like a mega bastardization of songs. Under the moral or ethical superiority of "don't steal music" or "support the artist"...right.

U are right saying some albums should b listened to as a whole. But u forget one of the reasons dowloading is so popular is that the majority of todays albums have 3 decent songs en 10 fillers. Apple does encourage downloading full albums by giving discounts (1$/song but only 10$/album or something), but if u want illegal downloading to stop, u'll have to give customers as much as u can, i.e. one song downloads. I don't think Apple - or anyone - has much of a choice there, Kazaa is just one click away.

FlyingCloudPassenger said:

I totally agree. So far I think it´s only the buyers/downloaders who have abandoned the album concept to compile their own soulless greatest hits-collections instead. But what if it goes so far as the artists starting to think differently? Then we will have more artists like Linkin Park (who are ironically mentioned to defend the album concept in the article) who produce collections of stand alone singles as opposed to dynamic albums. Listen to Meteora for example. You could change the order of the songs how much you want and it still wouldn´t change the listening experience. It´s still just a bunch of singles, all musically constructed in the exact same way to make the exact same kind of musical impact.

Some people complain that many tracks on an album are just "fillers". I agree with this. But if you take away these fillers the music loses its soul. Imagine a Prince album with Kiss, Purple Rain, Raspberry Beret, Alphabet St, When Doves Cry, Little Red Corvette, Sign Of The Times, and 1999. Sure, it´s a killer collection of tracks, but it would have a very uneven flow. No buildups, no "resting points", no personal gems to be discovered.

Feel free to disagree.

You know what would REALLY help? If the record companies signed artists that wrote their own songs. This way an album is not a marketing scheme, but a project that is close to someone's heart. That would eliminate filler, and I believe would also motivate people to buy music again.

Its such fad oriented thing now. People know, deep down inside, that they are paying for 3 good songs and a bunch of crappy fillers. Things that sound the same, songs that they will get bored with in 3 months when the new fad comes out. So they buy more and subconsiously they know they are being played. So they get sick of it and download music.

Decisions are not based on art anymore. For example: Christina's "Beautiful" is not the best song on that cd. But who wrote it? The producer. Hmmm. It's the only song soley credited to the producer, and I just have a gut feeling that that was part of the "deal". The lame filler songs on that album were written by the same people, probably favors. Just a theory. So anyway I burned the cd from a friend's copy.

Vibrator said:

I'm with u on this one,If artists took the time 2 make "concept"albums then people who really liked that artist would purchase it,i think. If most weren't so $$$ hungry & worried about popularity,they would take that time 2 make a decent album. P.S. if that collection comes out lemme know!!

Maybe artists are afraid that they only have one song that is worth a fuck and that they will only sell one song.

IceNine said:

THAT GOOD POINT

ALSO DOWNLOAD GET LOST EASILY

WHEN PEOPLE BUY CD IT AROUND FOREVER

AND STAY IN MARKET FOREVER

THERE BETTER CHANCE MORE PEOPLE HEAR IT!

PS FRANK NOT WRITE OWN SONG!

FlyingCloudPassenger said:

Who cares about the album? Fact is, for the majority of album sales, people buy the album for a handful of songs that they know and like. That's why stuff like Napster was so popular - it wasn't just because it allowed people to get music for free, it was because people might like a song or two not be able to justify buying the whole album just for the couple of decent songs on it.



If the songs aren't strong enough to sell on their individual merits anyway, the album is a bad deal for consumers in the first place.



There's room for both. Where's the conflict?



They aren't doing it as some righteous artist stance, they are doing it for financial reasons solely.



It is up the to artist in question whether or not they sell their songs individually. Certainly it wouldn't work for the albums you mentioned, but it may work fine for other albums.



What's the problem? Artists sell their songs, and get paid for it. Pretty fucking clear cut as far as I can see it. Apple are a business, they get their cut (as they rightly should). Fact is - a lot of consumers don't WANT a whole fucking album of some shitty band that has a couple of tunes they like. The option of providing a legal means of obtaining the SONGS YOU LIKE and not buying the songs you don't like, can only be beneficial to the consumer.

For artists that feel that "selling their art by the meter" isn't appropriate to their work, they can keep doing indulgent concept albums and 3-CD box sets like Prince does. There's room for both. Why you would attack something that is of great benefit to the consumers (who have been ripped off for long enough now) is beyond me.

Why must everyone produce "Albums?" Says who?!

Hey, does it look to you like the GD forum is merging with the Musician hang-out? or is it just me, and I clicked the wrong forum by mistake?

This whole thread smacks of arrogance and elitism.

Most ordinary, casual consumers of pop music do not want or need to "get the high concept". They don't need sprawling albums that contain only 2 songs they actually want to hear.

For example, I'm a huge fan of Marvin Gaye and I'd never consider buying any individual track from "What's Goin On" - of course I'd only ever want the album in its entirety. However my wife is much more casual a music listener, and she may only want one particular song that she's heard on the radio (e.g. "Mercy Mercy Me") and wants to own it legally without having to go to Kazaa. For her, buying the album would be a waste of money, and given the choice she just wouldn't bother spending the money just to hear one song. So giving her the option of buying the individual track she wants to hear CREATES business and benefits the consumer and the industry both.

There's plenty of room for egos, indulgence, and sprawling concept albums. The existence of services such as iTunes do nothing to alter that.

I only ever use filesharing programs for one off songs and tracks that didn't have albums (Not that I use it anymore. I got fed up with all the crap slowing my CPU down so I blasted the lot)

So apart from 7 or 8 songs as far a music went that's all ever downloaded. I mainly used it for downloading cartoons and Buffy and stuff.

It's true that very few albums these days have a full arangment of good songs. In the 60s - 70s - 80s - and early 90s most albums had songs of a good standard through out (any album worth listening to that is). But today espeacilly, albums in the UK chart are all crap. (this is just my opinion)

CAMILLE4U said:

True enough. In fact most popular music albums nowadays are little more than a collection of singles anyway. So selling those tracks on an individual basis would definitely be easier than trawling Kazaa etc.

The only time I have ever "stolen" music with a filesharing utility was when I just wanted one or two specific songs, but couldn't justify buying the entire album just to hear them. Apple iTunes is a fabulous idea, and I'm all for it.
Furthermore, for Crystal Ball 2 someday Prince should just let fans choose the songs they want individually. Something tells me that at least half of "NEWS" will bore me shitless.

ian said:

Considering how much great music he's made it's so strange that he's only made two albums of unreleased music. And WTF was 'The Vault' about? Those songs were, well let's just say not as good as Moonbeam levels, Rebirth or the flesh, Dance with the devil and It's a wonderful day.

One think I will give file sharing programs credit for is that they allow us to get music which is no longer avalible in the shops or online.

SpcMs said:

An Avril Lavigne album might have "filler" but not a Radiohead album. It really depends on the artist.

ian said:

A lot of people do. In fact, the vast majority of people that I´ve talked to about this do.

I don´t mind the downloading of single songs as long as it doesn´t mean the death of the album. The perfect situation would be if these two "forms" could co-exist without wiping each other out. But I´m worried that that might not be the case.

You don´t care about albums. Fine. Don´t buy them. Make your own mix cd´s and dump SOTT, Purple Rain etc in the garbage. But please understand that we who do like albums are concerned about recent developments in the music industry.

Vibrator said:

I do care about albums. The point is though - most ordinary radio-listening casual music listeners don't. Either way - why not give them the CHOICE? If they want the album, buy the album. If they only want one specific song and it is available on a service such as iTunes, what is the problem?

I repeat - there is room for both types of listeners and both types of distribution.

There is absolutely no reason to "worry" that albums might disappear or die out. That is just a ludicrous knee-jerk reaction to a new distribution model. Albums as a product has been proven to be worth creating, because they sell. They aren't going anywhere. However, for those people that currently steal individual songs on Kazaa because they cannot justify buying an entire album just for one decent song that want, services such as iTunes are great for all concerned.

Ian said:
"Apple are a business, they get their cut (as they rightly should). Fact is - a lot of consumers don't WANT a whole fucking album of some shitty band that has a couple of tunes they like. The option of providing a legal means of obtaining the SONGS YOU LIKE and not buying the songs you don't like, can only be beneficial to the consumer.

For artists that feel that "selling their art by the meter" isn't appropriate to their work, they can keep doing indulgent concept albums and 3-CD box sets like Prince does. There's room for both. Why you would attack something that is of great benefit to the consumers (who have been ripped off for long enough now) is beyond me."

Apple should rightly just give consumers better computers, transparent ease of the OS and peripherals, smaller manuals.

Okay so a lot of consumers WANT a couple of tunes from a shitty band...hmm, so then...they really do like the shitty band...or shitty artist...for that one or two songs...okay, whatever.

That one song should be a hint at what the rest of the songs might be, I've read that over and over again, "just want that one song of the album, why should I pay for the whole thing?", over and over again. I don't think that's the case in alot of songs. The fun of music listening is finding that one song and being curious about the rest then DISCOVERing more music by that artist, that people and critiques said sucked, but YOU found out what other gems they have!

Arrogance and elitism I've found and observed in those that say "I haaave downloaded a leeegAL song, not like criiiminaaals who steeeal muuuthic."

SOme albums that are three lp's or 2 Cd sets or 5 casssettes, are not always indulgent. I don't nessasarily see it that way. I see it as an aritstic statement. Ego? So what. If Prince has a big ego and wants to give us a 4 CD set of stuff, fabulous! Give me more EGO!

Now would I buy it from the Apple iTunes store...NO. I rather go straight to Prince and his company, musicians, his workers. With a booklets and photos I can hold in my hand. No O's and 1's.

I am criticizing, not attacking. Why? Because, it should work at balancing what it right for the consumer and the artist.

Things get twisted to seem like the consumer is the victim or being ripped off and that the artist is an indulgent egomaniac only interested IN money...I think that the RIAA has certainly created a reversal of who is what and used big proganda via companies and the zoo media. And the sheep usually follow.

When Napster arose, we, the "consumers", we're actually music lovers, wer enthusiastic about it, excited that we can get songs we never heard from again, songs from albums we just couldn't afford, no one was beingg accused of "stealing"! Then people went crazy, it grew and people started sharing! They wanted to create they're own radio stations, the DREAM radio station that would play ALL your favorite songs ever! With no commercials! You were enpowered! Yeepeee! But then the police broke up the RAVE (act) party! And we, the consumers were called criminals and stupid and slapped on the wrists. Narrow minded.

FlyingCloudPassenger said:

i bet you can. and i bet 95% of those albums were released before 1990. every CD today is a few singles with the remainder of the disc filler...

Bullshit! If you want your work to be taken as a whole, write a symphony, not pop songs. As long as you are writing individual songs, people are going to take them and listen to them as just that.

If artists try to force people to buy whole albums when all they want is singles, they will continue to steal them rather than paying for them though an EXCELLENT service such as the Apple Music Store.

The only people who are going to really object to this are spoiled rich artists who don't actually need to make a living from their work anymore and/or have one decent single on an album full of crap and are scared to death that people won't buy the rest of it.