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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Fri - July 4, 2003
Bands may say no to Apple's music store, but change is
inevitable
Rock bands The Red Hot Chili Peppers
and Metallica are refusing to make their music available as individual downloads
on Apple Computer Inc's iTunes online music store, according to news reports.
The
Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica won't make their music available as
individual downloads on Apple Computer Inc's iTunes online music store,
according to a news
report because the rock bands would "rather not contribute to the
demise of the album format."
Bands have an absolute right to choose how their music will be sold, but if downloads are the wave of the future, their fervent desire to preserve a dated business model by shunning new technology won't save it.
Back in the 1980s when Microsoft first developed Encarta, the software maker approached the publisher of then best-selling Encyclopaedia Britannica with the idea of converting the world's most authoritative reference books to a CD format. Britannica balked at the idea. CDs were a relatively new technology in personal computers; besides which, Britannica feared that promoting a low-cost computerized version of its venerable encylopedia would cannibalize the high-end book sales it relied upon.
In other words, Britannica didn't want to "contribute to the demise" of the paper format.
We all know what happened afterwards.
Microsoft bought rights to the content of a lesser-known publisher and introduced successive versions of Encarta to growing critical acclaim. Sales of the multimedia Encarta helped propel the adoption of CD ROMs in personal computers. Meanwhile, Britannica book sales plummeted. Today, Encarta remains a best-selling CD product and Encyclopaedia Britannica is available online for a modest $59.95 annual subscription.
A set of Britannica books costs $1,395—an initial payment of $150 and subsequent payments of $69.16 for 18 months.
In hindsight, Britannica misjudged both the market for electronic encyclopedias and its ability to protect the market for paper encyclopedias. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica may be making the same mistake.
The great value in an album format is its ability to immerse listeners in a collective body of work. The great value of a single format is its ability to stir interest in this body of work. Making a band's songs available as singles for individual downloads does not necessarily mean loss of CD sales or, for that matter, loss of music sales in general. The fact is, music lovers have been duplicating their favorite singles for years, and long before file sharing services made piracy efficient. Selling singles as downloads might allow bands to tap into this latent demand, this impulse duplication, from which they currently realize only indirect financial benefit.
In the meantime, single downloads could be used to promote offline or online CD sales and the content of albums enhanced (or perhaps recorded at higher quality than the singles?) to take full advantage of new multimedia capabilities and encourage album sales.
Bands have an absolute right to choose how their music will be sold, but if downloads are the wave of the future, their fervent desire to preserve a dated business model by shunning new technology won't save it.
Back in the 1980s when Microsoft first developed Encarta, the software maker approached the publisher of then best-selling Encyclopaedia Britannica with the idea of converting the world's most authoritative reference books to a CD format. Britannica balked at the idea. CDs were a relatively new technology in personal computers; besides which, Britannica feared that promoting a low-cost computerized version of its venerable encylopedia would cannibalize the high-end book sales it relied upon.
In other words, Britannica didn't want to "contribute to the demise" of the paper format.
We all know what happened afterwards.
Microsoft bought rights to the content of a lesser-known publisher and introduced successive versions of Encarta to growing critical acclaim. Sales of the multimedia Encarta helped propel the adoption of CD ROMs in personal computers. Meanwhile, Britannica book sales plummeted. Today, Encarta remains a best-selling CD product and Encyclopaedia Britannica is available online for a modest $59.95 annual subscription.
A set of Britannica books costs $1,395—an initial payment of $150 and subsequent payments of $69.16 for 18 months.
In hindsight, Britannica misjudged both the market for electronic encyclopedias and its ability to protect the market for paper encyclopedias. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica may be making the same mistake.
The great value in an album format is its ability to immerse listeners in a collective body of work. The great value of a single format is its ability to stir interest in this body of work. Making a band's songs available as singles for individual downloads does not necessarily mean loss of CD sales or, for that matter, loss of music sales in general. The fact is, music lovers have been duplicating their favorite singles for years, and long before file sharing services made piracy efficient. Selling singles as downloads might allow bands to tap into this latent demand, this impulse duplication, from which they currently realize only indirect financial benefit.
In the meantime, single downloads could be used to promote offline or online CD sales and the content of albums enhanced (or perhaps recorded at higher quality than the singles?) to take full advantage of new multimedia capabilities and encourage album sales.