iTunes’s “flexible” pricing? DRM-free… at a cost? I think Steve’s lost it.
By Ze Pequeno on Jan 8 2009
The MacWorld keynote by Apple this year, on Tuesday, lacked a lot of the flair and zingers that usually comes with these keynotes. A sickened Steve Jobs meant that a dude named Phil would attempt to market new Apple products without a Reality Distortion Field to make them, well, viable. As a result, the only thing that piqued my interest the first hour of that keynote was Sting's sexy grizzly beard. Which was immediately lost when the screen switched to Patrick Stump.
Actually, the only thing that really piqued my interest at all was Phil's "One Last Thing." It was about iTunes... and it was QUITE interesting.
First, prices. Starting April 1 (bad day to do it), the fixed-pricing model of 99¢-a-song, a long-time pillar of the iTunes foundation, will fall. In a move clearly intended to please labels, a three-tier system of pricing will take its place. While the option of 99¢ will remain, labels will have the option of selling songs for 69¢ and $1.29 each. Album costs remain fixed at $9.99 at this point in time. How will the labels handle this? It's not hard to guess.
The other announcement? Quite a bit nicer: ~80% of the iTunes Music Store is without DRM restrictions, and at double the bitrate (i.e. HIGHER quality), bringing in the major labels as well. Perhaps, the labels did this in exchange, but we'll never know. The process is continuing as we speak, and by April 1, the entire store shall be in DRM-free "iTunes Plus" format.
But wait! You say you have a bunch of old, standard-fare iTunes songs and you want to make them all iTunes Plus? Well, you can do that, but that'll cost you 30¢ each to upgrade. Not bad for a few songs, but when you got a few hundred, it could be pretty costly. Not to mention you still have nasty "watermarks" in your music that hold your private data.
The way I see it, even when you win, you lose.
Swan Lake Return With Enemy Mine in March
By Scott Lauer on Jan 7 2009
Swan Lake, the group filled with overachieving indie musicians with roughly 685,321,431 albums between them, are reuniting to bring us Enemy Mine (name based on the ridiculously so-bad-its-great ’80s sci-fi flick) on March 24 (or March 23 in the UK) from Jagjaguwar. For those of you who have been living on Fyrine IV, the planet the protagonists of Enemy Mine were deserted on, Swan Lake consists of Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers) Spencer Krug (Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade), and Carey Mercer (Blackout Beach, Frog Eyes). These three fellows, with their indistinguishable gnarly voices, last brought us Beast Moans (TMT Review) in 2006. Think that album was a little overwhelming, too stylistically chaotic? Don't fret: this sophomore effort is being described as a more stripped-down, deliberate approach to collaboration. As Spencer Krug put it, “There's architecture here." Count this TMT writer in as excited!
Enemy Mine:
How 2008 May or May Not Have Contributed to the Slow Death of the Music Industry
By Petey V on Jan 7 2009
Figures on 2008's music sales show both predictable trends and some surprises, according to the stats posted on music industry blog Coolfer. While album sales declined overall, dropping 15% to 430 million units, certain formats saw spikes both expected — digital album sales up 32%, with track sales up 27% — and surprising — vinyl LP sales nearly doubling, with a 92% jump. Vinyl's resurgance in popularity was forecast by statistics released earlier this year (TMT News), but this increase in sales is even more substantial than would be expected from the spring and summer figures. Coupled with a 20% decline in CD sales and the aforementioned spike in digital album sales, it seems vinyl may be acting as a minuscule buffer in the decline of physical album sales.
Meanwhile, the increase in digital sales — with 1.07 billion tracks and 62.8 million albums shifted digitally in the last 12 months — may not be quite as impressive a statement about the shifting dynamics of the music industry as it initially seems to be. A study from the tail end of ’08 shows that, of the 13 million tracks available for sale online, 10 million went completely unsold in 2008. Even more shockingly, the study found that 80% of digital sales revenue came from repeated purchases of the same approximately 52,000 tracks. Presumably, this leaves many independent artists, or even major-label artists without hit singles, gasping for air in the digital music market.
How this bodes for 2009 is anyone's guess, but my advice would be to keep your eye on two trends: the surge in vinyl sales and the concentration of digital sales increases around a comparatively small cloud of artists and songs.
Recap (via Coolfer):
- Album sales: down 15% to 430 million units
- CD sales: down 20% to 362 units
- Digital album sales: up 32% to 62.8 units
- Track sales: up 27% to 1.07 billion units
- LP sales: up 92% to 1.9 million units
BMG Music Service’s “12 for the price of one” Club Says “No” (To New Members)
By Mango Starr on Jan 7 2009
Remember BMG Music Service's "12 CDs for the price of 1" deal (with "nothing more to buy ever!")? Sure you do. It was everywhere in the ’90s. I myself, Mango Starr, took advantage of this mail-order club at least a few times, even using my brother and sister's names to amass a decent collection of classic rock, jazz, and more classic rock. I think I got my first Nas CD there.
Well, late last year, it was announced that BMG Music Service has decided to stop taking new members. A spokesperson declined to comment on whether or not the service will be shut down entirely and said that BMG is "still very actively engaged with our existing member base and will be making more changes to serve them...more effectively later in 2009." Though, the company has already announced that its Music Points Program will cease to exist by February and there has been word that all BMG music clubs will be discontinued in 2010, according to Billboard. Not good signs.
Meanwhile, the official BMG Music Service website invites music lovers to join Yourmusic.com instead. Guess it's hard to beat "Unlimited for the price of nothing," you fucking pirates. When are you going to participate in capitalism??
