Some Bands Still Refuse Music Downloads

Zelbinian writes "Wired News reports there are a number of artists, ranging from The Beatles to Radiohead, that are still holding out on iTunes. Some feel that per-track downloads hurt the artistic integrity of albums as a whole; for others it's simply a matter of negotiation troubles. From the article: 'Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download. Andrews said while record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold, now musicians are earning less than a dime.'"

Comments

I can see both sides of this

[erick99]

First, why is this under "Your Rights Online?" Second,while I prefer to be able to pick and choose tracks, I can see how a band might prefer that an album be sold as a complete "work" and not picked apart. I think the album that should be viewed as such is probably rare, however.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. This is especially true of well-established bands. I was listening to a greatest hits album the other day and none of the songs seemed to go together. But when listening to the respective albums in whole they sound much better.

On the other hand, I think people should be able to buy what they want. How is it a travesty if somebody only wants 2 or 3 songs off of Dark Side of the Moon? They are only hurting themselves. Give people what they want.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[dogbowl]

How about "chapter" and "volume" then?

If you think you can listen to Magical Mystery Tour on random play, then you're missing half the point of the work.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

If they do that then it will be at best an EP and they won't get paid nearly as well, nor will it get the same distribution. I'm not in the industry so I cant give specifics, but take a look at some of Mars Voltas works. Their latest cd is pretty much split arbitrarily so as to be long enough to be a 'real album'. They also have a live cd thats has a good 5 or 6 tracks that are just parts of the last song. Apparently the record companies will screw you over if you don't have enough tracks, even if one is 40+ minutes long

As an aside, Mars Volta is one of the few examples of music that is much better as a cd than as an individual track. You might like Inertiatic on its own, but until you've heard the full cd as a whole you havn't experienced the band.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[Simon Garlick]

A friend of mine, a jazz musician, recently released a self-produced album designed to be listened to on Shuffle mode. Each song blends near-seamlessly into the next, regardless of what order they're played in. It's a different album every time it's played.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[Simon Garlick]

http://www.nicholasrogan.com/

The album is "Simon Says".

Re:I can see both sides of this

[Don_dumb]

IIRC Radiohead didn't even release a single from their album 'Kid A' (or maybe it was Amnesiac), which is an action that massively damages sales (due to the lack of a song getting much airplay and TV play if it isn't a single).
And due to what members of the band have often said, I am willing to believe that they really do care about something other than the money.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[indifferent children]

You give it a range of times during the track.

After all, two seconds of Michael Bolton is just about enough.

Re:I can see both sides of this

[SatanicPuppy]

It's good that none of the tracks from that album showed up on any of the Beatles "Greatest Hits" albums...They did? Oh. Nevermind.

Ohh the irony

[iced_773]

The Beatles? On iTunes? What happened to Apple v. Apple?

Re:Ohh the irony

[Draconix]

Apple won.

That's fine.

[BigZaphod]

They can hold out as long as they want. If downloaded music sales start to eclipse that of normal CDs, then I suspect those artists will begin singing a different tune.

Man that's a bad summary

[QuantumG]

It aint the artists, it's the labels.

Re:Man that's a bad summary

[aapold]

It couldn't be because they get less per song than if you buy the CD, despite there being nothing to manufacture, print, burn, store, distribute, stock, or stores to man.

Re:Man that's a bad summary

[kn0tw0rk]

To be fair, there are costs for servers and maintenance, design and maintaince for the web site, and bandwidth to pay for. But I think that these would be significantly less than the above items.

Re:Man that's a bad summary

[Y-Crate]

"To be fair, there are costs for servers and maintenance, design and maintaince for the web site, and bandwidth to pay for. But I think that these would be significantly less than the above items."

The truly depressing aspect of it all is that Apple pays all of the distribution costs out of it's 10-12 cent-ish cut. Servers, bandwidth, payment processing, iTunes maintenance/design, etc. The record companies get the lion-share for simply saying "Yeah, you can use our artist's music" and providing the AAC rips and artwork. On top of this Apple provides them with a nice automated system that apparently makes it borderline effortless for them to convert their tracks and art assets and upload them.

Re:Man that's a bad summary

[ben_rh]

You have it backwards.

Microsoft is a company, and its employees are there to do their job, for the company. They get paid to serve the company.

(In theory), The recording labels are there for the artists. They get a cut of sales to do things for the artist like promote their work, and press & distribute CDs. They get paid to serve the artist.

The way you describe things, is as if the whole music world consists of a single entity, the collective recording labels, that employ artists to promote & be a face for their music. It almost sounds as if you're implying the music is being written centrally by the labels, instead of by the artists!

Oh wait, that's pretty much a functional description of the popular music industry.


In other creative fields, like books, the author of the content retains the copyright. The current state of the music industry, with so much central ownership and control, is a terrible setup. What you describe is actually closer to the truth than you imply. But that's not a good thing.

Re:Man that's a bad summary

[monoqlith]

True. But you can consider the fact that record contracts are exceedingly rare, making a career as an artist is extremely hard, and so the actual "worth" of the contract is much higher than the value of the promised outcome or the amount of money the contract offers. It can launch a lifelong career, after all. Thus, record companies basically coerce bands into signing the first agreement that comes their way, even if it is unfair(which it probably is), basically saying: this is your only chance, take it now, nothing better is going to come along. It is the band's decision to sign the agreement, but that doesn't mean the agreement is fair.

Now that internet distribution is picked up completely by Apple, and professional recording equipment and production is so common as to be available at relatively low cost to artists who record at home, it is simply absurd that record companies have somehow reduced the share of money given to their artists and are delivering the savings on distribution apparently to themselves all on the basis of inflated prices for "record studio time" and artifically high-valued distribution channels. As far as I can tell, the means by which record companies exploit their artists are corrupt. The artists are the people who are responsible for all of their revenue, after all, and should be proportionately compensated.

Hollywood at least recognizes that star power primarily drives the consumption of a film. It often pays stars $20 million just to be in a movie, on top of a share of the box office ticket sales. That is, a huge portion of a film's budget is devoted to paying the stars. While labels don't bring in as much money as Hollywood studios, major record companies don't seem to pay the same debt of gratitude to their talent. Executives and label owners whose only real talent is to broker unfair deals end up walking home with the lion's share of the cash.

  It's kind of like how the oil companies could afford to reduce the price of oil artificially, but they know that we are dependent on their oil(purposefully) so that we give them tons and tons of money at unfair prices to get our fix and as a result they become immensely, excessively, profitable. Sounds like a collusion in an oligopoly to me.

I think that a paradigm shift is happening with music because of the labels' obviously backwards dealings and the democratization that the internet and digital recording bring. The oil problem, on the other hand, is going to be around for a long time.

Of Course!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

'Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download. Andrews said while record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold, now musicians are earning less than a dime.'

Well, obviously when the record companies underestimated demand they also underestimated the rates of breakage and returns, so of course they would have to modify the artists' cut in order to better compensate the record companies for those costs.

Re:Of Course!

[sleeper0]

The better question is if there has been a change at all. While the nature of major label contracts means that it is very, very uncommon for the terms of them to be public, I worked in digital music both pre-ITMS and post launch and am very sure that bands on a major label were never close to averaging thirty cents a sale. There may have been an example or three of this, and probably still are but it was never close to the statement that "record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold". In fact, any averages that came close to this figure would only have _ever_ been for the situation where some smaller itunes content providers offered consolidation deals where they repped 3rd party or unsigned content to apple for more or less pass through costs. These situations never included things like promotion, development or recording costs on the part of the ITMS supplier.

Again, due the the nature of the contracts involved it's nearly impossible to cite sources for this, the same reason it is easy for a wired reporter to make up facts in their article. But consider this logical argument: It is well known that ITMS takes thirty five cents on every dollar on sales (3rd hand citation but other sources are common). That leaves about sixty five cents to the content providers. Even if you have limited knowledge of the music industry it should be easy for you to realize that no major label contracts passed on nearly 45% of gross income from their products to the artists. Whether you like that fact or not, wired is plain wrong in saying that "it used to be so much better" - and I'd bet that probably both the reporter and the editor involved knew that was an intentional distortion. From what I know, majors typically pass on between eight and sixteen cents per track to the artists, and that number hasn't changed much since the ITMS launch.

If anything I believe artist's gross revenue per unbundled song has had slight upward pressure though nothing very dramatic. As I understand this owes the the fact that artists gross revenue per customer with unbundled tracks is understandably down versus typical sales that are bundled (even singles shipped with at least one or two extra songs). Though for all the same reasons I can't cite that so you might as well ignore it.

iTunes already supports albums...

[Bender0x7D1]

"It's amazing how many people go there," Andrews said of iTunes. "We're hoping albums work there." Andrews said he wasn't sure if Apple eventually would allow the album to be kept intact.

I've seen a bunch of tracks that weren't available unless you purchase the entire album. The albums usually have 1 or 2 tracks for sale individually but the rest require you to buy the album. I understand the artistic concerns, but if you would release some of the songs as singles for play on the radio, why not make them available as downloads? Or do artistic concerns end when you want a hit single so the album sells well?

this is more about the money

[grapeape]

Can you really blame them? The new contracts take away any monetary incentive that digital formats offered. What I dont get is Itunes delivers the tunes at their cost, the publishers have no packaging, promotion or media costs, so where does the money go? Maybe im a tin-foil hat type here, but it seems to me that the labels are just attempting their best to make sure that digital downloads are no incentive to the "artist" in order to keep their control over the industry. If it isnt cost effective, artists will stick with cd's and big labels as they see that as the only path to success. Too much success in digital format would show the artists that the labels were not needed in the modern age so from the labels perspective thats something best to avoid.

Not a big surprise

[Black Art]

I remember when CDs came out. The labels pulled all sorts of renegotiation tricks to pay less money on CDs compared with vinyl. One of the excuses was that it was a "new technology".

If the RIAA really wanted to go after music thieves, they would be sueing the record labels.

You should get it

[XanC]

BTW Taco, I want a raise.

You deserve one; you post here all the time!

Well...

[blackmonday]

I would recommend that artist negotiate a seperate contract for digital sales. My band is unsigned, but we get 91 percent of the iTunes cash (after Apple takes their cut). What band could be against that deal? iTunes is a potential cash cow for forward-thinking bands.

Re:Well...

[Kadin2048]

My band is unsigned...iTunes is a potential cash cow for forward-thinking bands.

I think you just answered your own question. The problem here is that too many artists are lured into thinking that the only way to make a living in music is to sign away your soul to record label, for pennies on the dollar.

Now I'll grant you that I don't really know much about the intricacies of the music business, but based on conversations I've had with quite a few people lately, it seems like an artist would perhaps be better served staying unsigned -- if they have any management skills at all, or know where to find someone who does -- than to get on board with a label. What does the label give you? A chance at a very, very small slice of a larger "pie," but really what's the advantage of that over having a much larger slice of a smaller pie?

If you get 91% back from your music sales, it doesn't take nearly as many sales for you to make a living than it does for a signed band. I'd bet that properly done, the margins on CD sales are similarly large. Sure, you probably won't see an unsigned band's stuff in WalMart, but again: if you can make the same amount of money being a regional band, and have total creative control ... I don't understand the allure.

The one thing that the labels still seem to have is a pretty tight grip on the music flowing into radio stations, particularly the corporate controlled (*cough*ClearChannel*cough*) ones; but the relevance of that mode of distribution is fading daily. Particularly if your audience is in a younger demographic, it doesn't seem like radio play is necessarily the requirement for sales that it once was.

I guess maybe I'm not a musician and I don't understand the desire for fame that might lead someone to believe that being nationally recognized is a good thing per se, versus making the same amount of money as a regional band, and not feeling like they're taking it up the ass every day. If someone can explain what the value proposition of the record labels is, in today's economy, where it's widely known that they compensate artists poorly and essentially do nothing but take your music as payment for questionable PR campaigns, I'd be interested.

Re:Well...

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] if they have any management skills at all, or know where to find someone who does [...]

Aye, there's the rub.

One place to find people with management skills is at a label. They'll take care of calling radio stations for airplay, sending promotional versions out, arrange tour dates, and getting your name known in the business. All you have to do is be creative.

Of course, they'll also take the lions share of the money. But, hey, where else will someone pay you to just sit around and strum on your guitar and come up with songs?

How are they performed live?

[st0rmshad0w]

Are they performing the albums in their entirety at live performances?

Or selling singles/releasing singles to radio?

Seems they are defeating their own argument.

Change of Heart for the Bands

[Quasicorps]

It's strange how Radiohead have chosen to do this, considering they were one of the first major bands to offer MP3 downloads to the public. Kid A was released for free online before in stores, and they found it advantageous. This was at the same time as their refusal to release singles or advertise the album in order to sell it purely on its merits.

Radiohead made Kid A top the charts, both here (UK) and America, through online publicity.

Perhaps it is since the culture of iPods is to create playlists and to "shuffle" that they wish to avoid it, and their release on the internet was in the idea that people still listened to music, downloaded or not, as a whole work, as if on CD.

Often called pretentious, the desire to have your work viewed and heard as a whole appeals to an older perception of music, one that I personally still subscribe to. It holds the idea of an album as a progression, as something that has a beginning and a conclusion, such as one might expect from a traditional symphony.

It can be very discouraging to an artist when an entire medium is practically devoted to destroying that construction. And if they care more about their artistic integrity than making further sales, I can only applaud them.

Re:Change of Heart for the Bands

[today]

It can be very discouraging to an artist when an entire medium is practically devoted to destroying that construction. And if they care more about their artistic integrity than making further sales, I can only applaud them.

Partial listening has been a problem since opera houses seated people after the first act, since needles on record players could be dropped anywhere, since tape players had a fast-forward feature, and since CDs had a track skip feature.

The only thing iTunes adds is the ability to partially pay for parts of the music. Before iTunes, you had to pay for the whole thing even if you didn't listen to it all.

So this obviously has nothing to do with "integrity". It has to do with getting paid for stuff people don't want to buy.

Re:Change of Heart for the Bands

[chris_eineke]

Often called pretentious, the desire to have your work viewed and heard as a whole appeals to an older perception of music, one that I personally still subscribe to. It holds the idea of an album as a progression, as something that has a beginning and a conclusion, such as one might expect from a traditional symphony.

Then why not sell the album as one track?

(I'll let that sink in for a while.)

Is this really a big deal?

[clontzman]

It's not like Beatles and Radiohead albums are hard to come by, both new and used -- who cares if they're sold on iTunes or not? Is there anyone who wants to buy the Beatles catalog who hasn't already purchased them on CD?

Online music stores (especially the subscription ones) are great for discovering new or obscure music, and they're ideal for buying a single on an album that's otherwise lousy, but the Beatles and Radiohead -- the most common holdout examples used -- don't fit any of those descriptions.

Sweet, sweet irony

[Dachannien]

Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download.

The irony is that with online distribution, artists don't need to go through their record company middlemen anymore. They can sell their music directly through services like iTunes and claim their profits for themselves. All that's needed is for a few musicians with some guts to stand up to the people holding their leashes.

I get 64 cents per song...

[venomkid]

...but I use CDBaby.com to sell my music on iTunes. I actually make more money per song than I would per song per physical CD sold, which is how it should be. I also get paid per play on subscription services. And while that's just a fraction of a cent, it does tend to add up if someone likes a CD and listens to it often.

I chalk this one up to major labels just being bloated and greedy.

Radiohead

[Anonymous Coward]

All of Radioheads catalogue is available on warchild. It's like iTunes but it all goes to charity.

Whoever said iTunes needed to get all the goods.

Ripoff and Not Artist Driven.

[twitter]

The story drones on asserting that 50 and 60 year old bands are resisting the itunes move for artistic reasons like not being able to force the album format. Anyone who wants me to listen to a whole album is free to put it all on line anytime they want. I'll be happy to check it out, and then add it to whatever playlist I feel like. The story also mentions the artists not getting a fair share of the earnings and this key point:

For musicians, it's another way to resell their entire catalogs to fans who want the songs in multiple formats, he said.

Musicians my ass, this is being driven by the media companies. They are dying for a change of formats like album to CD. Album to tape did not do it for them and CD to lossy format outside of DRM and device maker collusion won't either. Yeah, I'd like the artist to get their fair share too. Reselling DRM'd versions of the exact same thing every 10 years is not my idea of a fair share. Only a few RIAA poster boys think iTunes is really a fair deal.

The device collusion is not happening, so it's all a dead issue.

Whole albums? Are you kidding me?

[Aqua OS X]

I tend to buy whole albums simply because I'm a music pack rat; however, I can't stand musicians who complain about people not appreciating the entirety of their albums.

Give me a fucking break. Most top 40 artists already prescribe to a 3-6 minute song model, segment their album for radio play, and don't maintain any overwhelming unity between tracks. Moreover, they've been doing this for DECADES.

People have grown accustom to picking and pulling individual songs. We been promoting this model long before iTunes came around. If respecting the whole GD album was so damn important everyone would be producing albums like The Wall and releasing them on 8 Tracks.

Re:These idiots

[walnutmon]

First, you are completely wrong, second... What makes them idiots?

If you listen to albums that are simply a collection of songs made in a certain time span for a certain end date, then those artist will likely not care if it is sold in bits and peices on the internet. However, the bands that will take exception are the more progressive ones that see music as more than easy money. Frank Zappa devoted a large portion of his songs to making fun of people like you.

I doubt very much that Radiohead really cares about the extra money they lose because a handfull of people like you will not give them your extra 10 cents to listen to Creep. There is a reason for that too. It is because they are the artists, and the really good ones who deliver consistantly good music don't really care about marginal increases in profits, they care about making something that they feel is worth producing. They actually had an idea, and if you only listen to a small portion of their idea, they would rather you not listen at all. May seem like strange reasoning, but I guarantee a large portion of the greatist creative minds throughout history would echo Radioheads sentiments.

They created the work for us to enjoy, not for themselves to tell us how to enjoy.

Actually, many good artist are pretty damn narcisistic. They probably would rather someone like you die than enjoy one of their songs, just due to the principle of someone who "doesn't understand art" shouldn't be dancing to their backbeat.

Basically, what it comes down to, is while I agree that it may be their loss in some ways, they probably don't care about it very much. And that is what makes them different, it doesn't make them idiots.

Re:Missing the point

[hackwrench]

That's just it. Whether the work is sold by track or by album, most people are going to miss a great deal of the point of the work as laid out by the artist. Insisting that people buy the entire album instead of a track makes as much sense as making sure that people take a test to ensure they grasp all the artistic points.

Easy Solution.

[Kaenneth]

Just sell the entire 'album' as a single 'track', for $.99

Re:Missing the point

[Buran]

most people are going to miss a great deal of the point of the work as laid out by the artist.

And who is anyone to tell me how I should interpret art? Being able to not have to buy filler, or just stuff I don't want in general, is a huge advantage of iTMS and other shops like it. Shovel more stuff on me that I don't want (and force me to pay for it) and I buy nothing. You (the hypothetical artist/label/store) just lost a potential sale that way.

Re:So.. umm...

[Khyber]

How much is a dime?

Ten to fifty bucks, depending upon the quality of the grass, man. ;)

Re:Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe these artists actually care about their art more than the corporate bottom line, and thus deserve enough of your respect to buy their entire album or none at all.

Re:Missing the point

[Buran]

Good albums don't contain filler material.

And mediocre albums have great songs on them.

Hollywood is probably worse

[Namarrgon]

It's a very rare actor that can demand millions up-front. Most have to settle for a percentage of the profits. However, due to accounting practices "considered odd by any normal business standards", 95% of movies, even box-office hits, somehow fail to make a profit - as defined by the studio, anyway. This article lists many of the ways in which this is managed, including spreading of gross receipts amongst poorer-performing pictures, "distribution fees" far in excess of reality, a 10% "overhead" fee to be applied to all marketing expenses, tax breaks that are kept by the studios & not counted for the picture, and many others.

Stan Lee got nothing from the Spider-Man movie, because the studio claimed it did not make a profit, at least as defined by his contract. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was produced cheaply and was a huge success, yet somehow "lost $20 million". Even Babylon 5, which took in $500 million in DVD sales alone, is apparently "$80 million in debt". As the creator, J Michael Straczynski said, "Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits."

Steve Vai says very similar things about the record labels' own standard contracts, not least their various bogus deductions for digital download sales. As the saying goes, the really creative people are the accountants.

Re:Missing the point

[stereoroid]

Fine, but some artists do view an album as more than just a series of tracks. Can you be sure, in advance, which tracks are "filler" and which aren't? Why, when I was a lad, it was my pleasure to unearth an "unsung" album track with special meaning to me.

Radiohead is mentioned in the article: any thoughts about the overarching story told in the order of the songs on OK Computer? It's there, almost a hidden message that rewards careful listening, and it would be destroyed if the songs were Shuffled. My "unsung" song on that album is Let Down, one that got no attention and would be left out if I had bought the "singles" on iTunes.

You should try this with a book - after all, who the heck is the author to decide that Chapter 7 comes immediately before Chapter 8?

Re:Missing the point

[Baki]

So if you buy the complete album, should they forbid you to skip some tracks?

Re:Missing the point

[Peter Mork]

So, each file currently costs about $1 to download. Consumers want to be able to mix-and-match songs across albums. Enter the artists that either want: 1) to sell more songs by bundling them into an album or 2) to maintain artistic integrity. In the latter case, let them bundle the entire album into a single file (to be sold for $1). Call the bluff and we'll see whether it's profit or art that rules.