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.
