Victory Records’ Tony Brummel offered a colorful and, I think, utterly wrongheaded rant to Hits Daily Double (registration req'd)
about why his label’s music, which includes
1)
Why did the major labels bend over and super serve Steve Jobs free content without negotiating a % of
each iPod sale, variable pricing of singles (if the labels CHOOSE to make one available from an album) and other say in
how the content is sold?
Tony seems to be mistaken about where the leverage lies in this
relationship. Apple could sell a hell of a lot of iPods even if there were no such thing as iTunes. When and if iTunes
shows itself to be a profitable enterprise at the operating level, I suppose Apple will merely consider it gravy. If
Apple killed iTunes, the labels would be in much more trouble than Apple would be if the labels’ pulled their
content. In the meantime, the average iPod is filled with quite a lot of content that wasn’t procured from iTunes
and I suspect that, if major labels were capable of gratitude, it would be for the portion that wasn’t ripped or
downloaded off of unlicensed peer-to-peer networks. The idea that labels are owed some portion of iPod sales is quite
akin to Exxon demanding some percentage of SUV sales.
2) I
absolutely believe that allowing people to cherry-pick the tracks they want from each album cannibalizes full-length
album sales and is ultimately detrimental to the artists who created the music.
Know
what’s even more detrimental to music? Crappy albums. Yes, I realize “crappy” is a subjective term,
but I think we all know filler when we hear it. I have my quibbles with the a la carte model, but I appreciate the
flexibility it affords. Take any boondoggle double or triple album, such as the Clash’s Sandanista! or any hip hop album released in the past decade. If a la carte services didn’t give me a way to cut
directly to “Police On My Back,” you can bet I’d be rooting around KaZaA for it. What everyone in the
business besides Tony seems to realize is that the toothpaste is already out of the tube – people want single
tracks and they have no shortage of venues to get them from. A la carte services such as iTunes are the only such
venues that trouble themselves with delivering some split of the revenue to the labels and yet these are the people
Tony takes aim at. Perfect.
Thing is, albums owe their existence to singles, inasmuch as the format began merely
as a repackaging of singles. And they’ve proven themselves to be a pretty resilient format: Radio was supposed to
kill albums, as were eight-tracks, cassettes and later CDs. Now downloading is supposed to do it. Sorry, Tony, I just
don’t see it.
3) If only 4% of this business is iTunes, who
cares? Focus on the 96% which is traditional retail. Traditional retail supports music 1,000 times more than iTunes
does. If someone does not want to leave their house, they can go to our webstore, Amazon or the hundreds of other
online sites that sell music. For the very casual consumer. there are digital consumption models that will work when
and if properly deployed. People are using iTunes because they like the iPod. When Dell or Samsung makes a better
device, iTunes will lose relevancy.
Hm, I could’ve sworn Dell et al have taken a crack
at this business. Oh, that’s right – they did. Apparently, Tony thinks
it’s still 2001 and those 1200 record stores that went belly-up in the wake of the majors’ Faustian bargain
with Wal-Mart and Target are still around. “Traditional retail” these days is Wal-Mart and I’d be
quite surprised if the folks in Bentonville, who account for 20% of all music sales yet only derive 0.1% of their
revenues from music sales, are 1,000 times more supportive of music than anyone in Cupertino is. But who am I to let
facts get in the way of a good rant, right Tony?
4) It is
important for people to experience the entire album. Not just a track(s).
Tony, to my
knowledge, there is no service that is selling songs to the exclusion of albums and, if there is, it’s not
iTunes. If you want to buy the whole album, I’m pretty sure they’ll sell it to you.
Aside from all of the above, I have and will never sign a deal
with any company that tells me, “The deal is non-negotiable. Go to our site, download the Agreement, sign it and
fax it to us. Everyone is paid the same amount (really…) and has the same terms. Regardless, we will not insert
or include any Most Favored Nations language in the Agreement to back this up.”
Yeah, as opposed to Wal-Mart, which is known for its sweetheart deals (and by “sweetheart,” I mean
“prison bitch”) with suppliers. I wonder what concessions Tony got for this.
1. Tommy, you're dead on right on every point. I recently blogged about iTunes weak sales of new music in relation to number of consumers with iPods, and your first point dovetails with this perfectly.
Posted at 11:43PM on Mar 5th 2006 by Jim Kerr