“Apple/iTunes do not care about independent labels or, for that matter, the record industry. Without the music industry, their site and their iPods are useless,” Victory Records’ Tony Brummel writes for HITS Daily Double. “Why did the major labels bend over and super serve Steve Jobs free content without negotiating a percentage of each iPod sale, variable pricing of singles (if the labels CHOOSE to make one available from an album) and other say in how the content is sold? If the major record companies wanted to take a stand they would PULL their content. But, if they all pulled their content in unison, Apple would claim collusion… I say, pull it anyway. The defective hard drives are making people deaf as it is… I absolutely believe that allowing people to cherry-pick the tracks they want from each album cannibalizes full-length album sales and is ultimately detrimental to the artists who created the music… People are using iTunes because they like the iPod. When Dell or Samsung makes a better device, iTunes will lose relevancy… iTunes makes music disposable. It makes it a faceless impulse item. It steals its soul.”
Brummel is unwilling to make any of his obscure label’s music available in the iTunes Music Store.
Full article (free registration required) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “JadisOne” for the link.]
Since when do labels give Steve Jobs’ Apple iTunes Music Store “free” content? Did Sony give music labels a percentage of each cassette walkman sold in the ’80’s and 90’s? Should Samsung give a percentage of each TV set they sell to TV show producers? Defective iPod hard drives are making people deaf? iPods steal music’s soul? Hello, reality, are you there? Is Tony Brummel serious? The only victory he’ll retain in his ridiculous, misinformed fight against Apple’s iTunes Music Store will be the one in his obscure label’s name.
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Related article:
Warner’s Middlebronfman: ‘We sell our songs through iPods, but we don’t have share of iPod revenue’ – October 05, 2005
The site is terrible. I HATE sites with silly sound effects, they make me deaf.
Anyway, this guy’s an idiot.
For years the record industry has been sticking it to the consumer by releasing some awful albums. One or two good songs and the rest throw away material. That’s what I love about iTunes. It gives me to opportuniry “cherry-pick the tracks” I like best. Go Apple!!
what is this? stupid people day? OSX virus now this.
Okay, so they want us to pay licence fees on our devices as well as when we purchase the music? How much do the artists get?
Record companies need to define a better model, ’cause the old one just doesn’t fair well. Boy, I remember them fraking out in the ’70s when cassettes were spelling there doom by enabling people to record there albums. Geez, they should just go back to sellin’ cigarettes (oh, yeah – that’s on it’s way out too). Ah, but there’s drugs!! Yeah, yeah, they could start sellin’ drugs, people just can’t get enough of that…
IMHO
Jb
hmmm, somebody knows if you say apple, ipod or itunes you get publicity, im sure his artists love him for not allowing pay downloads and insiting album ripping instead
Stealing the soul of music/musicians is not done through iTunes. It’s done by record companys. So this guy wants me to have to buy a whole CD full of shit so that I can listen to the one tune that the artist made that is worth a buck? So I pay the $18 or so for this CD, his company gets about $17.95 for it, and the artist gets a nickle. There goes his soul.
What I can hear you , my hard drive is making me def?
Hey, I’m a musician, let ask something of the other musicians out there. Who wants to be on a record label that doesn’t sell through iTunes?
His record label must be in it’s death throes. He’s delusional and ranting from the fever. That made my morning. =)
Why don’t the oil companies get a cut of every car sold??? STUPID MORON CRAP WRITER WHO WRITES FOR FOOD!!!!
Geez, what is in the drinking water these days? Most of the stories on MDN are about terribly-nutty ideas. This one takes the cake.
Artist: “So Tony, why aren’t my CDs selling so well?”
TB: “Dude, it’s because of those damn iPods and that damn iTMS.”
Artist: “What do you mean, my man?”
TB: “Well, everyone is buying songs from them, but we are better than that. We don’t want to sell your soul.”
Artist: “Tony, I need more money for my songs, dude. Why don’t we sell on iTMS?”
TB: “Uhhhhhhhh……”
Artist: “Tony? Why do I deal with you?”
“I absolutely believe that allowing people to cherry-pick the tracks they want from each album cannibalizes full-length album sales and is ultimately detrimental to the artists who created the music”
Translation: By allowing people to buy only the songs they like, it prevents the record industry for forcing people to buy 2 good songs and 8 crappy ones on each overpriced 20$ CD.
Victory Records may be obscure to most people, but they are huge in the underground rock scene and they are right here in Chicago so that makes it even cooler. However, Tony needs to shove it and has lost a lot of respect in my book. If he doesn’t want people to cherry pick individual songs, that’s his prerogative, but to say that the iPod and iTunes will be irrelevant when Dell or Samsung makes a better device? Sorry Tony, not gonna happen.
Dirty secrets the record co’s will not admit to
One, when calculating the amount of losses from online piracy, they look at the number of tracks downloaded and say that stolen music would have translated into sales on a one to one basis, when the truth is people will always take what is free but not necessarily buy it.
Two, one of the reasons that people justify stealing music is because they know that the vast majority of the money they pay for a CD goes into the pockets of the drug snorting record company execs and very little of it to the artist. That the record Co’s use ‘it hurts the artist’ as their means to advance their agenda is hypocritical and disgusting.
Why don´t gasoline companies get a cut of every vehicle sold?
Why beer companies get a cut of every bag of popcorn or peanuts sold?
Why don´t toilet paper companies get a cut of every toilet sold?
Or vice-versa.
why not ask for back-profits for turntables, 8-track players, CD players and reel-to-reels too?!? What a huge JOKE the recording industry LEACHES are and always have been. Leach on the back of artists who evidently haven’t figured out how distrib for themselves yet. Primary example of why the RI is such a loser industry..SAD
I have to agree on one thing though – people should buy albums, not single tracks.
Gentlemen, if you’re listening to “artists” who only make one good track per album, you have bad taste in music. Simple as.
Why doesn’t a cut of every bag of Cheetos sold go to fight the war on drugs?
Quote: “Without the music industry, their site and their iPods are useless.”
Well, duh. The whole point of the iPod is… um… music. His inclusion of the word “industry” proves he’s missing the point.
iPod needs content, which he sells. Maybe he’s bitter about something?
I can understand someone making the argument about “stealing the soul” of music when you’re talking about longhair conceptual works from Yes or Waters-era Pink Floyd. I can even vaguely sympathise when you’re talking about “proper” bands like The Strokes, The Killers or Radiohead.
But what “soul” can be claimed by a track from Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake or a hundred identikit pop puppets who record their karaoke vocal tracks over backing tracks recorded in Norway, prior to promoting them with their vapid cod-sexuality dance routines.
The record industry made these works disposable the moment they started releasing more than three singles from a given album. Don’t point the finger at iTunes for simply extending the logic started by whichever bit of CBS Records (Epic??) was responsible for releasing over 50% of Thriller as singles (Wanna Be Startin Somethin’, Girl Is Mine [YUK!!], Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean).
Free content?? This guy is living proof of the delusional effect of an institutionalized drugs culture in the music industry. Either that or he didn’t read about the positive effect that the iPod platform had on Warner Music Group’s recent revenue announcements.
My second article credit. I’m on a roll.
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But, yeah, this dude is not too bright.
record labels are a bunch of greedy fscks. they are getting 73% of all itunes songs sold and now they want a % of iopod sales – so notorious for greed.
Bergen, I have found very few CDs/albums that is entirely full of great tracks that are worth buying. Artists have always written filler tracks. Should I not purchase the one great track from a one hit wonder, just because all of their other stuff is crap?