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Bands Bypass iTunes With iPhone Apps
iminplaya writes to tell us that the band "The Presidents of the United States of America" (yes, the peaches guys), are trying to expand their engagement with fans by selling their music via Apple's App store, something others have experimented with but never dealt with on this level. "The app, called 'The Presidents' Music — PUSA,' sells for $2.99 on the App Store (iTunes link) offers users access to four full albums, including the band's early 'lost' recordings. This includes the previously-unavailable FroggyStyle — 'unless you have one of the 500 cassettes the band sold in 1994, you've never heard this before,' reads the app description. The app also features a number of extras and exclusives that the band says are updated regularly, and fans can read the band's blog directly from the app on their iPhones or iPod touches. The music, however, is not actually contained within the application itself; instead, it is streamed to the app from a server, requiring the user to be connected to a network of some kind (iPhone users on the cell or WiFi network, iPod touch users on WiFi) in order to access the media."
Per your own source, Lump > Peaches > Kitty in terms of charting.
Look carefully --
* "Kitty" (1995, #13 US Modern Rock)
* "Lump" (1995, #26 US, #15 UK, #1 US Modern Rock, #7 US Mainstream Rock)
* "Peaches" (1995, #29 US, #8 UK, #8 US Modern Rock, #24 US Mainstream Rock)
* "Mach 5" (1996, #29 UK, #11 US Modern Rock, #24 US Mainstream Rock)
* "Video Killed The Radio Star" (1998, #52 UK)
* "Some Postman" (2004, #31 US Modern Rock)
Remember to compare like units!
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Masnick's Law! You can always see it coming from a mile.
Actually, Radiohead didn't do so well with their internet release. They actually stopped doing it and now only sell it on iTunes and CD.
If a huge band like Radiohead couldn't make it work with tons of media coverage and massive internet buzz, most smaller bands don't stand a chance.
Maybe not
So if you think Apple is going to lose money from this, you're an idiot.
This is an app from a band that if they were lucky as a pig in shit, people bought two of their songs from iTunes. In reality, most people bought one.
Thats what hurts the record companies. People aren't buying a CD of 6-15 songs for $10-20 anymore, they go buy the one song they hear on the radio for a dollar and thats it. The record companies loose out on truck loads of money because users no longer have to by the crap they don't want to get the tiny portion they do want.
So all this is, is a way to get $3 from people wanting to buy that one-hit wonder instead of a dollar.
Apple won't care, its great for them, instead of buying that one song for $0.99 where Apple ends up giving a good portion of that away to the labels, and other costs of serving the music. Now they sell one app, which is certainly smaller than a song since it streams the audio from else where, and now they've made $0.90. Thats almost as much as the entire sale of the single song. And they don't even send you the audio! They only have to send you the tiny app.
The record label is happy because they just made twice as much off that one hit wonder, so they have to give out some streams of the audio, big deal, copies of bits are free, and bandwidth is practically free so its not a big deal to them.
What happens next? Why, Ads of course! They stream the audio to you, why not inject a little advertising, its for YOUR benifit, they can tell you about all the other great bands that you can buy as iTunes apps.
Now, congratulations, you have just paid $3 to get the same thing I currently get on the radio. No, I take that back, radio is far more reliable than AT&T 3G service so you've got a bad radio that has an selection thats extremely limited (even compared to most radio stations) playlist, and likely advertising in the near future.
So I restate, if you think Apple will be upset about this, you're an idiot. Everybody involved will make more money (except for the parents of the kids buying this sort of crap) from this. Its just another attempt to hold on to the old business model. What scares me is that from reading the slashdot entries to this point, hardly anyone has realized this. Sheep.
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Sadly the iPhone does not allow folders on the "Springboard".