Albums
It seems that some artists are boycotting the Apple Music Store because they won’t sell albums unless the artists also agree to let Apple sell the songs individually as well. I can understand this - as “artists” they want to control how people experience their product. But, to be honest, even if I go out and buy a whole CD, the first thing I do is rip it to iTunes where, while I might listen to the album straight through one time, from then on I’ll listen to each song individually in random mix mode. I guess I missed out on that whole sixties vinyl album fetish thing.
But I have a different problem with the Apple music store policy of selling albums as individual songs. While some albums can be bought for a discount if you buy the entire album - some albums must be bought song-by-song. This can be quite expensive if the album has lots of songs. While their albums often go for under $10, the individual songs are all 99 cents, and an album with 16 or 20 songs costs a lot without a discount. It reminds me of grocery stores in the poorer neighborhoods of Philadelphia where they would cell individual cigarettes to those too poor to buy a whole pack, or the discount stores in my neighborhood in Queens where they sell items from “buy one get one free” packages as individual items.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
“A good record store like San Francisco’s Amoeba Music carries albums containing more than a million songs. The biggest online music services, in contrast, have around 350,000 songs for sale.
There are a variety of reasons for the gaps. Among them: complicated legal issues over who controls the rights to certain songs, and artistic reservations by some bands who are uncomfortable with the idea of selling individual tracks rather than whole albums. In some cases, artists don’t want to put their music on the Internet fearing that piracy will spoil their CD sales. And even when an act is willing to go online, getting Internet rights can involve lengthy renegotiations of old contracts, which may not have addressed digital sales.”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
That’s not an Apple policy, that is set by the record label. Apple’s policy is along the lines of: you can not just offer an album as an album with no singles available–so at least one or more songs must be available to purchase as singles. They also indicate that if selling the album as an album the cost of the album should not exceed the cost of the individual songs, and highly recommend that the cost of the album is $9.99 or less. But how many songs are sold as singles; whether or not the album is available as an album; and the cost of the album is decided on by the record company.
I’ve notice in my purchasing that about 1/3 of the albums, I want aren’t available in album format. From this, some of this is just a time delay–all the songs originally were not available, and as Apple added the remaining songs they hadn’t got around to switching the status of the album before I attempted to buy. In this case, I’ve actually sent three separate recommendations to Apple via their recommendations menu, and within a week the album was marked available by album.
Now, I’ve unfortunately come across those where, I want the album and they just aren’t selling it as an album. That burns. I generally just pick the songs I like the most then.