As digital sales of songs continue to explode , labels are starting to pull artists from itunes to boost album sales. Good idea or no?


>>>TREND WATCHING - The iTunes Boycott
Azoff, Levitan Among Those Offering Their Opinions in WSJ Story

August 28, 2008

Have iTunes holdouts benefited from boycotting the #1 music retailer, and is the idea of not making potential hit singles available at iTunes becoming a trend? These are some of the questions asked—and answered—by the Wall Street Journal’s Ethan Smith and Nick Wingfield in an analysis published this morning and headlined “More Artists Steer Clear of iTunes.”

While the iTunes Store has sold north of 5 billion song downloads since it started five years ago, a growing number of labels say selling singles on iTunes in some cases is crimping overall music sales, Smith and Wingfield point out. The evidence for this hypothesis is persuasive.

Kid Rock's Rock 'n Roll Jesus, which was kept off iTunes' virtual shelves, has sold 1.7 million copies in the U.S. since its release last year, with sales increases in 19 of the past 22 weeks. That data inspired Atlantic Records to pull Estelle’s album from the store, four months after it went on sale there, just as one of the tracks entered the iTunes Top 10.

Certain label execs, managers and artists have long complained about Steve Jobs’ policy prevents them from selling an album only, on both fiscal and aesthetic grounds.

"In so many ways it's turned our business back into a singles business," Vector’s Ken Levitan, who manages Kid Rock, told the WSJ, calling iTunes "part of the death knell of the music business."

Levitan argued that if the album had been sold according to iTunes policy, many of its sales to date would instead have shown up as 99-cent downloads of the single "All Summer Long."

More supportive examples supplied in the piece: Katy Perry has sold 2.2 million downloads of "I Kissed a Girl" in the U.S., nearly 10 times the 282k units he album has sold. M.I.A. has sold 888k downloads of her surprise hit "Paper Planes," compared with 272k on the album Kala.

"Check some of these artists that have hit singles, versus their album sales," Levitan added. "Then compare it to what Kid Rock is doing."

Mega-manager Irving Azoff told the reporters that a few years ago he presented the Eagles with a financial analysis showing that their royalties to date from iTunes sales were far lower than anyone expected. Glenn Frey did some back-of-the-envelope math of his own. "His comment was that it amounted to 39 minutes onstage in Kansas City," Azoff joked.

Though he didn't disclose the royalty figure, Azoff’s implication was that the band had received less than $500k from its iTunes sales at that point. While band's iTunes income has increased since then, Azoff said, "I'm underwhelmed by the number of sales I see on iTunes for the classic bands."

AC/DC, one of the biggest-name holdouts, sold an estimated 2.7 million CDs world-wide last year, up from 2.55 million in 2003. The band has consistently sold more than 1 million CDs annually in the U.S. alone. Since the beginning of 2006, only fellow holdouts The Beatles have sold more catalog albums in the U.S. Among the six best-selling catalog artists during that period, the act that sold the most individual songs digitally—the Rolling Stones—sold the fewest albums, digital or physical.

Former Yahoo Music exec David Goldberg opined that a widespread shunning of iTunes is unlikely unless a number of acts on the level of Coldplay and U2 were to join the boycott. Even then, Goldberg believes many artists would be hurt by such a move.

"On certain albums, you can justify it, but you're also going to push people to the illegal stuff," he said.

-- HITS 8/28/08 <<<<<
[Edited 9/8/08 13:13pm]

Bad material, lame producers, and NO talent artist are killing music.

David

Goldberg said:

I can't believe the record industry has the gall to say iTunes is turning them back into a singles business. They did it themselves by allowing Clear Channel to buy up all the stations and virtually killing the CD single. The iTunes Store is allowing them to make money off of the popularity of Napster, which their greed and shortsightedness fueled.

I dont think they personally are killing it, though the 99 cent bullshit for every track is killing off good albums at this point. Older artists will always have the loyality while the younger are stuck with this format and will have to find a way to deal with it. The problem is that iTunes is run like a label too, so there best interest is their bank not what artists are being grown.

I would disagree that digital sales are "exploding" maybe of tracks but of albums they are slumping just like cd sales. And iTunes also knows that it is making its money from iPod sales, and 2% of the music on peoples iPods is actually bought from the iTunes store.

Also im not sure what azoff is even talking about with the Eagles, they made millions of the walmart deal, who the fuck needs digital when they got paid what they did.

But the issue of breaking albums up is the problem, but it doesnt affect, for the most part, artists with loyal followings, it effects people like Katy Perry and Rihanna and others immensely, who are only singles artists, they can sell 2 million in single song downloads but 100,000 of an album, and at the end of the day they are getting about 5 cents each if they are lucky. So as i have said before Steve Jobs is nothing more than another ego maniac wanting to do things his way, and he is taking advantage of the fact that music is quite meaningless to most at this point and cashing in on these "impluse" singles sales.

I dont' care if they are getting it from itunes or from the record store. Regardless, I'm just glad as hell that they have they capability to copy it onto CD afterwards and give it to all their friends. And by all means, please make as many copies as you can for all your friends. Hell, even make copies for your enemies too. That is what will kill the sales and hopefully will eventually put the shit hoppers' labels out of business.

I don't really agree with the 99 cent thing. I think if the album is available, you should buy the whole album, the way it's meant to be, unless it's a single

Graycap23 said:

pretty much ..

bboy87 said:

Same here.

bboy87 said:

Yeah im not against that, i feel it should be done that way across the board just like it always was, you have a single, release it for a time, then if have another release that and pull the other back. I dont buy into the idea that singles hurt album sales, there were albums that 5-6 singles that sold (and then singles were 2 bucks at best) and the albums still sold well. to me this breaking up someones work is just stupid and i can understand why certain artists wont allow the digital release under those circumstances, but like the article said you need people that pull in big money with digital ALBUM sales to boycott, then you will see changes.

Cinnie said:

But why?

Anyway, I still say the record companies are just reaping what they sowed. They killed singles to try to force people to buy overpriced albums replete with filler crap. Of course, that allowed Napster to really blossom, training people to cherry-pick albums, only taking what they want. The original iTunes Music Store was only giving the customers what they wanted -- the ultimate choice that they were used to in an easy to use package. If the music industry had tried to leverage the promotional power of Napster instead of trying to kill it outright to protect their ridiculous margins, they wouldn't be in this mess. Their stupidity has led to this; this latest move is just more of the same. People are too used to getting whatever tracks they want -- that isn't going to change.

As an aside, aren't more than half of sales on the iTunes Store full albums? It's also worth noting that you can buy the rest of the album at a reduced price if you want.
[Edited 9/8/08 17:39pm]

it doesn't matter if it's helping or not.. The music business will either adapt or fail to such changes

AlexdeParis said:

You can see when you view the artists what songs are most popular: iTunes customers are "cherry picking" at the songs released as "singles"... not to be confused with an actual single that might have alternate versions, mixes, or a non-album track.

I think the choice should be... album at $10, or "the single" meaning more than one song and perhaps more than 99 cents wouldn't be a bad experiment.

Cinnie said:

Well, the store does sell singles with extras like mixes and b-sides. Furthermore, they also offer a number of non-album tracks as bonuses to encourage people to buy the albums. I've bought and/or pre-ordered a number of albums on iTunes just to get these tracks (and it was definitely worth it in cases like Duran Duran's Red Carpet Massacre, where the bonus track ended up being my absolute favorite).

As far as not allowing cherry-picking, I just can't see how it'll work at all. People have been doing it for the last decade; eliminate it now and they'll just find other ways to do it.

To bring up another point, I think it was Ben Folds who said that the iTunes Store could allow artists to release handfuls of songs (like an EP) instead of having to wait to compile enough material for a full album (including loading it with filler). I respect the album as an art form to an extent, but I think many (most?) artists would benefit from being freed from the normal constraints of a full-length album.

AlexdeParis said:

In the end i feel it needs to be the artists choice if they have that choice to make. I think they should be able to dictate HOW their record is sold. A brilliant move this past month was Rick Springfield's "Venus in Overdrive", it was released 3 different ways and in fact was the cause of getting him a Top 30 debut and to date 50,000 in sales, his biggest total in 20 years. His move was to give his CD to amazon, the "hard copy" of the cd, gets you access to a website where you can get a 40 minute interview, a free download of an exclusive track plus downloadable artwork and lyrics and videos. If you by the cd in Best Buy you get that but also 2 more tracks actually on the cd. If you buy the cd in iTunes you dont get those 2 tracks or the access, but you get a song not on the other versions. But you cant buy the bonus on its own, and the bonus is only available if you buy the full album, so there are ways to dictate if you can, and the artist in the end should be the dictator.

if people can't get the 1 song they want to have for $.99 they're going to dl it for free, rather than paying $10-$20 for an entire album when the labels will not distribute relatively cheap physical singles and retail outlets will not stock them.


isn't that how they got in this position in the first place?


what they're doing may work in the short term, but in the long term people are just going to go back to illegal downloading, the same way they did early in the decade.
[Edited 9/9/08 1:56am]

Sdldawn said:

Correct. Time's are a-changing. The biz better move along with it or burst.

lastdecember said:

Yeah, that's where we disagree. In a perfect world, that would be nice. However, they've never really been allowed to dictate that before and I don't think they'll be able to do it now. It's like peeing in a swimming pool -- once they put it out there, it's out there.

Scenario 1: Say I have an album on vinyl. It's mostly crap, but there's one song on it (not released as a single) that I absolutely love. I'll gladly pay the $0.99 to download it. If it's not available... well, I'll get it either way.

Scenario 2: I have an album on CD, but there's a scratch that prevents one of the songs from playing. The iTunes Store to the rescue! Oh, wait, it wasn't a single so I can't buy it separately? WTF? I'm not buying the whole album again.

I've bought tracks from the iTunes Store for both of those scenarios.

errant said:

AlexdeParis said:

I'm just saying that if it is "one song" they want, it is "the single", and not just another album track (usually).

It seems as though the author has never bought music from itunes because the fact is they make certain songs "album only". Meaning you can't just download the single without the whole album.

its more directly benefiting the industry (but compare to now, its relevancy is minor). it took a technology company to deal with the digitalisation of music, not the music industry. in 2008, there are a million platforms online which came from this one idea.
[Edited 9/9/08 7:38am]

I think this whole "the industry needs to adapt to digital" is the biggest crap statement ever. Lets be honest, people want free shit, and digital gives you the way to steal shit with ease. If you got a super hyped computer you can get about 100 albums a day for nothing. The only adaption would be as an artist suggested, encoding something into the the actual release so there is no way to break it, kind of like back in the day when the copyguards were on vhs tapes and everyone had to buy new machines to try and break it. Lets face it people want shit for free, case closed.

lastdecember said:

I could probably disagree more, but only if I really tried. The success of the iTunes Store proves that people are willing to pay for music. That's indisputable.

Cinnie said:

Usually, but not always. Besides, with the sad state of radio and music videos, singles don't matter to a lot of people. For example, look at the latest Coldplay album. The first single was "Violet Hill," but an iTunes Store ad featuring "Viva la Vida" helped make it the album's most successful track (debuting 20 spots higher IIRC). A commercial (admittedly one in heavy rotation) trumped all of the promotion put into the first single.
[Edited 9/9/08 17:11pm]

bboy87 said:

So you want me to buy a whole shitty album?

AlexdeParis said:

Actually it is disputable and even steve jobs himself said it. They have sold billions of iPods and yet 2% of what is on peoples iPods is purchased from the itunes store. Digital sales are slowing big time, and the industry said that last year and that was the big concern, they were losing something in the transition. The fact that its so easy to steal a record, more people are doing it than ever. Loyal fans of artists arent, but lets be real, tons and tons are getting stolen and the % of being downloaded for free as opposed to what is being bought is greatly in favor of free. I mean look at RadioHead, almost 70% paid nothing for it, thats pretty much where i would say its at it whether digital buyers.

The more you see the breakdown in labels and artists going on their own, the less you will see iTunes being able to dictate how albums are sold.

It hurts the chances of huge album sales.
If an artist/band believes they have an incredible album that could become one of the biggest sellers of all time they definitely shouldn't distribute it online.

lastdecember said:

That's not even relevant to the point I was making. Apple has sold over 5 billion songs. The vast majority of those are available for free, which proves that people are willing to pay for music. Period.

lastdecember said:

or it could be the fact that, unlike the transition from cassette to CD, nobody with a CD needs to replace their old music collection. it can be quickly and easily converted for free. so there is no huge revenue coming in from the crowd that's replacing their old catalog with a new format.

errant said:

Totally. As if anyone would ever buy on iTunes what they already have on CD to have an mp3.