There is an interesting article in the Telegraph this morning about the somewhat marginal anti-iTunes trend among popular musicians and the possible demise of America's largest music retailer. The premise is basically this: iTunes is destroying the artistic integrity of the album, some artists are making more money without iTunes, one of the most anticipated albums to come out this year won't be sold on iTunes, so this may be the end of iTunes.
The biggest evangelists of this trend include AC/DC, whose highly anticipated album, Black Ice, will not be sold on iTunes, and Kid Rock, who recently sold 2 million copies of his album Rock 'n' Roll Jesus without the assistance of iTunes.
In comparison, the Telegraph's Brian Boyd points to examples like Kate Perry, whose single "I Kissed A Girl" sold 2.2 million downloads on iTunes while the album it came from, One of the Boys, sold a paltry 282,000 copies.
That's not to say that these artists are like Metallica, and are slow to embrace the digital distribution model, just that they are not interested in working with iTunes. So the question is, if big name artists are having more success without iTunes, then who needs it?
AC/DC has been making this argument for some time. There have been many people moaning over the death of the album and pointing to iTunes as the culprit.
"We don't make singles, we make albums," AC/DC guitarist Angus Young told the Telegraph. "If we were on iTunes, we know a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album - and we don't think that represents us musically."
Young also told the Telegraph that AC/DC's legendary album Back in Black is poised to overtake Michael Jackson's Thriller as the number one selling album of all time, and the rockers from down under did it all without the help of iTunes.
Fair enough, but to my mind this sets up a false premise. The assumption is that if consumers can't get what they're looking for from iTunes, they will obediently go to the store or a digital retailer that sells the full version of AC/DC's work and purchase it.
But one quick search for AC/DC on a popular torrent site brings up over 500 possible downloads of AC/DC's music. True, it's illegal, but considering the doubt cast on the future of penalizing music piracy recently after a Minnesota federal judge threw out the verdict against Jammie Thomas, who was convicted of copyright infringement last year as part of the Recording Industry Association of America's campaign against illegal file sharing, people are not going to be giving up their P2P habits anytime soon.
It seems to me that iTunes sells music the way it does because Apple recognizes that the nature of the consumer has changed. If an iTunes user just wants to pick up one song off an album, they are less likely to sign up for another service to get an entire album when they can get what they actually want for free with a quick Google search. iTunes may one day knock off the album, but don't shoot the messenger. You see, the fault, Dear Musicians, lies not within iTunes, but within ourselves.
