“The Who’s Pete Townshend says Apple Inc.’s iTunes is a ‘digital vampire’ that profits from music without supporting the artists who create it,” The Associated Press reports.
“Townshend says that faced with the Internet’s demolition of copyright protection, iTunes should help artists by giving space to allow them to stream their music, and pay smaller artists directly rather than through a third party aggregator,” AP reports.
“Townshend asked if there was any reason iTunes ‘can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire’ to make money,” AP reports.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Without iTunes – iTunes Store, to be exact – there would be no music business. Unless he was massively misquoted, Pete Townshend should brush up on his facts before opening his mouth again. Apple not offering a streaming service currently hardly makes them a “digital vampire.” Besides those who torrent, the real vampires are the often unnecessary middlemen (the music labels) standing between Apple and the artists with their greasy palms ever extended for their too-large cut. As is typical, these artists who complain about the oh-so-evil iTunes generally aren’t the world’s greatest businesspeople, nor do they seem to really understand how the music business works. You’d think someone like Pete Townshend would have a firmer grasp of things by now.
As for his “pay smaller artists directly rather than through a third party aggregator” idea: Yes! Yes! Yes! If he’s talking about artists going directly to Apple’s iTunes Store without a music label, but it seems that smaller acts would need the labels more than established acts who already have fans. It can be done, but even someone like Lights had a record deal before establishing her own personal label.