iTunes Indie Meeting Notes
BWJones writes "The CD baby! site contains notes taken from the indie music meeting recently held at Apple. Interesting statistics revealed were that there are about 500k songs/week being downloaded from the iTunes Music store and that 45% of songs are being purchased as albums. Other interesting items of note are that Apple is treating everyone as equvalents in that all labels receive equal treatment with the same deal, the same agreements and you work with the same team of people. What's more is that Apple cuts a check EVERY MONTH which is huge for the smaller labels." Wired has another story about iTunes which notes that what Jobs taketh away, the community is bringing back.
(a little OT)
Thanks to companies like Apple, the smaller labels will really reap the benefits of getting their music out there without heavy tampering to 'prevent' piracy.
I work for a music publication, and it's interesting to see which companies ignore the 'threat' of piracy, and which ones try to fight it.
For example, the new Cradle of Filth arrived with a hand-signed number on the CD, and a b/w CD case with a skull and cross bones on it, warning me (the music critic) that "this disc is watermark protected" whatever that means.
Meanwhile, the new Type O Negative arrived with a 10 second commericial attached (i.e. spliced into) each song ("Your listening to the new Type O Negative, in stores next month"). This CD will NOT get press in our publication, since it's hard to get into a CD when every 3-4 minutes some recorded message comes on; nice job, record executives. Way to prevent piracy!