“Six months later, however, iTunes LP doesn’t prompt much consumer recognition, and none of the industry sources with whom I spoke said they viewed it as being anywhere close to game-changing from a format perspective. Rather, it’s considered more of a curiosity. Like an enhanced CD or a DVD packaged with a physical album, iTunes LP’s bonus materials may interest super-fans, but they aren’t generating much buzz among mainstream consumers, and don’t appear to be stimulating LP sales at all,” Bonanos reports. “‘It’s something most people will look at once,’ is how one person put it.”
Bonanos reports, “It’s somewhat ironic that the very company that atomized the album in order to sell individual tracks -– one of many causes for the music industry’s decade-long tailspin –- has encouraged the rebundling of songs with iTunes LP. But I’m told by an industry source who preferred to remain anonymous that iTunes LP wasn’t Apple’s idea in the first place. Rather, it’s the result of the same renegotiations between Apple and the major record labels that yielded DRM-free songs and flexible pricing early last year, a concession by Cupertino to make a gesture in favor of album sales as consumers increasingly show a preference for digital singles… Neither Apple nor anyone else I spoke with was able to break out sales figures, but sources in various parts of the music industry agreed that the financial impact of iTunes LP on record sales has been tiny, if it’s had any effect at all.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some things never change. Only when the dinosaurs finally die out will the dream finally die. You see, this isn’t the first time the music cartels have attempted to return to the “good old days” (for them) of bundling. We’ve always regarded iTunes LP in much the same way as iTunes Store’s “Complete My Album” about which we wrote on the occasion of its debut back on March 29, 2007:
The album is an artificial construct developed by the music cartels to get more of your money for less effort. The album is – plain and simple – a bundling technique. Take some marketable material, add a greater percentage of filler, call it an “album,” pretend it’s “art,” and charge more than you could charge for just the worthwhile bits. While some small percentage of artists throughout the history of the album construct have taken the concept to an art form and more than few music customers have bought so fully into the marketing construct as to defend it passionately today, that does not change the fact that the “album” is a product bundle designed to collect more money for the good stuff by bundling it with a greater percentage of filler.
Cavemen did not sit around the fire singing “albums,” they sang songs. When the music industry began, they sold single songs. The “album” is a marketing tool. Is it “art” that an “album” is between 30-60 minutes? No, that length is based on nothing more than how much the recording mediums could hold at the time the “album” began to be marketed.
It’s nice that Apple is offering to take into account money spent on singles for those that later wish to purchase the “album” in which they were bundled, but the basic fact remains: iTunes Store’s ‘Complete My Album’ “service” is advertising masquerading as a feature designed to placate the music cartel’s abject horror that their “album” construct is disintegrating before their eyes. Disintegrating back to music’s natural form: the song; as it has been for hundreds of thousands of years before the marketeers began pushing the “album” construct. The music cartel’s know that you already bought the songs you liked and now, with Apple’s help, they want you buy the whole “album,” whether you really like or want the other songs or not – as usual. (Oh, how the music cartel misses the efficacy with which $15 CDs containing one or two good songs bought them mansions, cars, and boats while keeping their noses powdered.)
Likewise, iTunes LP “is advertising masquerading as a feature designed to placate the music cartel’s abject horror that their ‘album’ construct is disintegrating has disintegrated before their eyes.”
Consumers have spoken. Given the ability (thanks, Apple!) they value choice over forced bundling and, now, over optional bundling, too. Music labels: Better songs will sell more music. Your free ride is long over.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]
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