iTunes = Death to Albums? Maybe not...
Category: Music...
Posted Friday, March 30, 2007 at 09:01 AM [GMT-6]

A recent post about the "Definitive 200" list of "must have" albums generated some interesting discussion about a peripheral issue: whether or not the ability to purchase and download individual tracks instead of buying the whole album is a good thing for musicians. My general feeling is that listeners shouldn't be forced to buy "filler" they don't want; others, such as Scott (whose opinions are always worth considering), felt that this was a disservice to the artists, and especially to so-called independent musicians without big studio or label budgets behind them.

I guess Apple must have been monitoring the discussion, given yesterday's announcement of a new feature at the iTunes Store called "Complete My Album" (CMA). CMA basically ensures that if you buy individual cuts from an album via iTunes and later decide you want the entire album, you don't have to pay again for the tracks you already own.

This feature is being applied retroactively -- for a limited period. You have until June 26th to complete any album you've ever purchased from the iTunes Store. Thereafter, you'll have 180 days from the purchase of an individual track to take advantage of CMA. (Update: I just checked the iTunes Store CMA page, and the retroactive offer applies only to "eligible" albums, of which there are only 86. Going forward, all "qualifying" albums will be available via CMA; presumably, some artists/labels have not agreed to this feature. You can check Apple's FAQ page for more details.)

Further update: I completely misunderstood the CMA page on iTunes. It's not showing ALL of the albums that are eligible, just those in MY iTunes library that I can complete under the new program. Sorry for the misleading information. I thought it was odd that every one of those 86 albums looked verrrry familiar! ;-)

Obviously, Apple is hoping this will spur music sales -- and it does seem to remove one of the barriers to taking the plunge on music which you've sampled and liked, but didn't want to buy again in order to get the rest of the album. It also adds some incentive to try out music from new and/or obscure (in the marketing sense of the word) musicians. It's not a complete answer to the concerns expressed by Scott, but it may be the best that can be achieved in the new world of digital music delivery.

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Comments

I never chimed on the conversation you had with Scott, though I did read it. I don't think individual downloads are a disservice to artists, they are more likely to garner additional listeners that may not otherwise have heard the artist's music.

On the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily call other material on discs "filler," as you did in the post (albeit in scare quotes). The artists I personally know (myself included) would never think of any of their songs as being there just to take up space. I do recognize that, especially in the pop music world, it's all about the single, and that the idea of filler does indeed apply to a great many releases.

Paul Simon's "Graceland" is an ex-ample of a no-filler disc, as is Collective Soul's "Dosage." Nora Jones' debut is another, though it's not really up my musical alley. Yes, it's a matter of opinion... but the point is that to fans of a particular band, or of a certain style of songwriting, "filler" may be a foreign concept.

I don't think this invalidates your argument, though. It may in fact strengthen it. Fans will probably by the disc (in whatever form) anyway. But if songcraft becomes important again (which seems to be happening, IMHO) it may be a partial result of the iTunes single song download phenomenon. That can only help artists for whom writing a whole disc's worth of great songs is important.

What I'm trying to say is, I like iTunes even though I don't have a pod.

Posted by: Jim at March 30, 2007 12:05 PM

i can't stand buying single tracks. i completely understand the point of it, and do still think it's a good idea, for the reasons that jim mentioned: it'll get somebody interested in an artist because they'll be willing to spend $.99 on an unknown artist's most popular track, whereas they probably wouldn't be willing to spend $9.99 for a whole album.

although it's not quite this lopsided now, i remember a few years ago watching cnn do a report on iTunes, wherein they said that 95% or so of iTunes sales comes from individual tracks, and only 5% of customers buy full albums! i was appalled! or surprised at least, because my single:album ratio was probably reverse that, and maybe even more extreme.

even if i've heard only one song from an artist, i will at the very least listen to the other samples from the album, and if it sounds promising, i WILL buy the whole album. i do that for a couple of reasons: (1) you get $.70/song from iTunes. if you're an independent artist like myself, i know they would appreciate somebody taking a chance and buying the whole album, and they get $7.00/album. and more importantly, (2) because i know that as a musician, the album plays a huge role for the context of a song. in other words, the tracklisting can really set the mood. for instance, track 7 might not come across the same way individually as it does on the heels of track 6 and before track 8. a good song is made better by the context of a full album around it.

i don't like shuffle either. :-)

Posted by: kyle at March 30, 2007 01:15 PM

See, and here all I'm left to wonder is if the Country Music Awards are going to sue Apple.

Obviously the single song vs. whole album debate has had a deep and profound impact on my life. :)

Posted by: beth at March 30, 2007 01:29 PM

I like the opportunity to buy single tracks because there are albums where I do only want one song and I don't like the rest of the cd.

Posted by: Rach at March 31, 2007 06:36 AM
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