“Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying — out of the four million such goods the Apple site offers. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target’s ad circular,” Nick Wingfield and Ethan Smith report for The Wall Street Journal.
Wingfield andSmith report, “How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site — or whether Nickelback gets no mention?”
“Apple has jettisoned some of the conventions of traditional music retailing — notably, the practice of selling prime promotional spots to recording companies willing to pay for better visibility for their acts. But behind the scenes there’s plenty of horse-trading going on that influences which songs are seen and purchased by iTunes customers,” Wingfield and Ethan Smith report.
Full article (subscription required) here.
Related articles:
Fortt: Apple becoming the Sony of this century, not with Mac or iPod, but with iTunes – January 19, 2007
Apple’s iTunes Store passes two billion songs milestone; 50m TV shows & over 1.3m movies sold – January 09, 2007
MacDailyNews presents live coverage of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo 2007 Keynote – January 08, 2007 (iTunes Store – over 2 billion songs sold – 5m songs per day – 4th largest US music seller – just passed Amazon, Target (#3) is next )
Apple’s iTunes Store sells 90% of paid video downloads – December 20, 2006
Apple iTunes has the power to save TV shows, drive new viewers, even change production methods – October 31, 2006
More movies, please.
If you are buying music only because of what is being fed to you by iTunes/music store/radio, you don’t really care about music anyway.
No actual horses were harmed in the behind-the-scenes promotions of various media interests.
I always wondered about that.
(Warning- this posts adds absolutely no value to the discussion)
It would be cool if apple gets indie bands organized and exposed in itunes.
Every day, I buy anywhere from 1 to 5 new songs, carefully picked after scouring through new releases, iMixes, and the random searches for words like “buttercup”. You’d be surprise how much good music is buried behind the scenes.
I want my iTV.
Apple really needs to open up an indie section that bands can easily upload to.
Hey, here’s an idea I haven’t heard before: How about indie music?
I really do not care for Indian music.
It’s the music BUSINESS after all.
I want Star Trek:TOS back!!! what happened? they were there for awhile and now gone!!
plenty of indie music is being sold on iTunes
It’s very easy for an Indie artists to get their music catalog available at iTunes.. All they have to do is register their music through CdBaby who have a distribution deal with iTunes… (http://www.cdbaby.com)
It’d be next to imposible for Apple to deal with each and every one band Indie artist and music label, so Apple struck a deal with CdBaby, the largest online retailer of Indie music in the world.. This way, CdBaby deals with all the individual artists and labels and Apple just sends CdBaby one check per month for them to distribute to the individual artists accordingly.
The iTunes/CdBaby deal is very favorable to the artist as well. The Indie artist gets about 60 cents per song sold (way more than major label artists get,) while CdBaby takes a 9 cent cut per track, the other 31 cents goes to Apple. Artists get paid monthly with a detailed statement.
I know the system well because my music is sold on iTunes.
Don’t worry, I won’t post a shameless plug
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Personally, I prefer undie music.
Chip- Get back to your twink vids.
Indie Music?
What about Dr. Jones Music?
Because the music scene, today, is so vast and fragmented.. it seems one must wade through a thousand “road apples” to come across a gold nugget (or two) ..
For those who also think along these same lines .. take heart … there is hope on the horizon …
Forget Napster.. and all the rest .. and you may look to ..This as a way of
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music salvation ! ..
Plug away Allen.
Please do not be hesitant … Go for it.
Shout across the world about your tunes, if we like em we might buy em, if not, no loss to you.
Anyway –
I’d like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to hold it in my arms and keep it company
I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills “Ah, peace throughout the land”
(That’s the song I hear)
I’d like to teach the world to sing (that the world sings today)
In perfect harmony
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves
—–
I love that song, but for total emersion and audio exquisiteness, Phu-lease you must try this Link
Speaking of pugs.
Fotochop @ flickr
I actually bought The Journal for this article and it was decent reading. I was struck by the number of times the writers mentioned that there was no payola whenever Apple dealt with music labels. A real fluff piece.
Needless to say, I avoided the Paul Gigot page like a plague.
Allen,
Thanks, I didn’t know that.
Yo, Sky Lark… Those are some nice pics you’ve got there, foto*chop. Time for some more recent uploads, though.
Here’s a plug for my own Flickr pics, starting with some of that $400 million in free marketing for Apple’s iPhone:
MacSmiley@flickr
MDN MW: show
as in
Show me your Flickr pics!
@MacSmiley.
I am not going to bust over the 200 pix limit, as I will not pay the Pro fee – at this stage – I really do not like the on going costs for little return, thus I am thinking of putting a link on Fotochop flickr and running my own server. I have such a large portfolio of photographs, that well over a thousand are still in Prints, Reversals and Negs, let alone a H.Drive jammed full of Digital work.
It’s difficult to gain ground on flickr and I want to express both my abstruse and my simple dispositions to the world … And why not, I’m vain.
You are right, it’s time to upload some fresh stuff … and to spend the bucks and get a new SLR n glass kit.