Music Blogs

As we reported yesterday, Kid Rock has been talking up his dislike of all thing iTunes, and in particular how not selling his most recent album or single through the US branch of the Apple download store (it is available on iTunes UK) has not harmed him any.

With the news that Estelle is also withholding her new album from the Apple store, the Wall Street Journal has been investigating the possibly perverse trend that artists can benefit from not selling their music via the market leader digital music store. They start by noting that the two biggest selling back catalogues last year in the US were those of The Beatles and AC/DC, neither of whom allow their music to be sold on iTunes. By comparison, while those two bands respectively sold 3.9 million and 3.6 million full albums in the US between August 2006 and August 2008, one of their closest rivals, The Rolling Stones, managed just 1.8 million full albums. And while the Stones did enjoy 6 million single track downloads, the margins are never as good with single sales.

There are, of course, two main arguments against the iTunes model.

The first, and the one that artists like Kid Rock and AC/DC normally refer to, is that Apple force artists to sell their albums as individual tracks, rather than one single product. Some artists see their albums as a complete piece of work, and don't want them to be pulled apart in this way. They'll have artistic reasons for this of course, though a cynic would say the album approach is good for artists and labels because it forces consumers to buy the weaker album tracks to get the gems.

Whether Kid Rock has artistic or commercial objections we don't know - possibly both - but his manager, Ken Levitan, dwelled on the latter when he spoke to the Journal. He remarked: "In so many ways it [iTunes] has turned our business back into a singles business. [It's] part of the death knell of the music business. Check some of these artists that have hit singles, versus their album sales. Then compare it to what Kid Rock is doing". To prove his point Levitan might cite Katy Perry who has racked up 2.2 million sales of her single, 'I Kissed A Girl', in the US, while just 282,000 copies of her album, 'One Of The Boys', have been sold.

The second complaint is over iTunes' fixed price unit for single track downloads, and the cut of that price that Apple themselves take, which is around 30%. The computer firm argue the fixed price is popular with consumers, and add that the 30% cut barely covers the cost of running the Music Store let alone offering a profit.

So, does all this mean a mass artist and label exodus from iTunes is upcoming? Probably not. Only the biggest artists can really afford to ignore iTunes. David Goldberg, former head of Yahoo's digital music initiatives, told the Journal many artists risked losing custom to illegal file-sharing services if they boycott the market leader legit download store: "On certain albums, you can justify it [not selling via iTunes], but you're also going to push people to the illegal stuff".

Goldberg et al may point to the impact of Kid Rock label mate Estelle withdrawing from iTunes to back up their argument. Her label boasted that her album 'Shine', despite being five months old, enjoyed a 35% sales boost after being taken off iTunes. However, this week has seen her single, 'American Boy', drop from 11 to 37 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the album has fallen more than 100 places in the album chart to 159.

Asked about their strategy re Kid Rock, Estelle and iTunes, Warner Music US said their digital plans were "uniquely tailored to each artist and their fanbase in an effort to optimise revenues and promote long-term artist development". So, now we know.

-- from today's CMU Daily, www.cmudaily.co.uk