Deciphering iTunes Parental Warning Labels
A couple of posts back I mentioned hearing Audio Adrenaline's cover of The Little Drummer Boy on the radio. What I neglected to mention was that in the process of searching for the song on the iTunes Store, I ran across something very odd. See if you can spot it in this screenshot:
I didn't focus on it at the time, but the question finally formed in my distracted brain...why did the iTunes Store feel it necessary to label specific songs from an evangelical Christian band as "Clean"?
And does that mean that the non-labeled songs are, well, dirty? (OK, Apple actually uses the label "Explicit" for songs that carry parental advisories.) Gosh, there's even a song entitled "Dirty" at the top of the shot, so that makes sense. Sort of.
Or, given the genre of music, does it really mean that the other songs are explicitly Christian, and perhaps these two are just nominally so?
I'd be interested in knowing just how the iTunes folks go about deciding which labels go on which music.
Well, if it's anything like podcasting, I think it's the owner of the content that chooses the "Clean" or "Explicit" tag. I think. So it might the band or the band's label that put in the "Clean" tag and then wasn't consistent about adding it to every tract.
Or not. But I've noticed that inconsistency as well.
Posted by: Denise at December 20, 2006 11:55 PMHmmm...I could see the side of a Christian band putting "Clean" on all their songs cause, well, they're all pretty clean...CCM groups that start swearing or otherwise being explicit don't generally stay CCM for all that long. :) But wouldn't the absence of a label at all imply that it's ok? Weird.
The other side I was thinking of is that maybe there was another group out there called Audio Adrenaline...right until I looked at which songs were labeled, so that's out (unless my brain is slipping on what those two songs are). Very weird.
I hope it's not labeling the "Christian Content" cause that would just annoy me.
Posted by: beth at December 21, 2006 06:37 AMDenise, self-policing by the artists? Yeah, that'll work. ;-)
Beth, I don't read anything sinister into this (naive trusting fellow that I am)...just found it rather odd.
Posted by: Eric at December 21, 2006 06:55 AMI had noticed that on some other Christian groups last time I was poking around itunes and it was the same thing...just a couple of songs...not all of them. Weird....
Posted by: Jennifer at December 21, 2006 06:56 AMHeh heh...I notice that 'Dirty' doesn't have a 'Clean' tag. :)
Posted by: Stephen Shores at December 21, 2006 07:58 AMMaybe it's a note about the quality of the file? Or perhaps a version of those songs featuring non-distorted guitar, which we guitar heads refer to as "clean."
I'm drawing at straws here as you can tell.
Posted by: Jim at December 21, 2006 11:49 AMJim, you may be onto something (as opposed to being on something, which only applies to me when I post these things). Perhaps the label highlights those songs where they got all the way through the recording session without screwing up, which we non-guitar heads refer to as "oopsies."
Posted by: Eric at December 21, 2006 11:55 AMWhy would one version of Ocean Floor be clean and the other not?
Posted by: soccer dad at December 21, 2006 01:45 PMAbout the publisher
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Interesting, Eric - veddy interesting!
Posted by: Janie at December 20, 2006 09:05 PM