Highway To Sell: AC/DC iTunes Snub Finally Over

Hugh Pickens "The LA Times reports that after years of stubbornly arguing that iTunes was, in the words of singer Brian Johnson, 'going to kill music if they're not careful,' AC/DC has reached a deal with Apple to sell its entire catalog — 16 studio albums, four live albums and three compilations — through the service. AC/DC was one of the last high-profile holdouts from the digital music marketplace, outlasting the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd, all of which jumped into the realm long after much of the population had accepted the downloading future. Angus Young, AC/DC's lead guitarist (known for wearing a schoolboy's uniform when performing), had long argued against hawking the band's music because he didn't like the idea of allowing for individual song downloads — submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end. 'It's like an artist who does a painting,' he said in 2008. 'If he thinks it's a great piece of work, he protects it. It's the same thing: This is our work.'"

Comments

Individual Song Downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

He's against it because all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same. Download one and you've got them all.

It follows this pattern:

NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
you got me singing
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
now you're listening to
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[BitZtream]

If they wanted them listened to beginning to end they should have made it a single track.

They didn't.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[Beardo the Bearded]

He's against it because all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same. Download one and you've got them all.

It follows this pattern:

NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
you got me singing
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
now you're listening to
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!

Not the word I'd have used, but your point is valid nonetheless.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[jdray]

Furthermore, he doesn't seem to object to radio play of single songs. Consumption is consumption.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[crazyjj]

all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[mcgrew]

That's not how it worked. When this music was new, we had vinyl records. No remote control, no "skip" button. You put the record on the turntable, pit the needle in the groove, and listened. No way to mix up the tracks short of making a mix tape.

Dark Side of the Moon was one of these, and it wasn't designed to be listened to like you listen to a CD; when side 1 was over, you walked to the turntable, turned the record over, and played side two. DSOM doesn't really work well as a single track, but as two tracks.

However, ACDC is full of shit on this one. Their songs were never meant to be listened to in any particular order, and in fact that cassettes often had the songs in a different order than the LP, unlike DSOM, Magical Mystery Tour, Tommie, etc.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[jtownatpunk.net]

A friend put it this way: "They play that song better than anyone else."

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[ArcadeMan]

I remember getting the wax cylinder out of the box, putting it in the CD player, pressing the "Side B" button, then the button labeled "Track 4", then setting the speed to 45 revolutions per minute and finally tuning to 101.7 on the frequency modulating carrier wave to enable the decoding of the psycho-acoustically encoded audio frames.

Oh no, wait, I'm thinking about horse drawn carriages. My bad.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[ArcadeMan]

He's against it because all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same.

Only if you listen to them through a diode bridge and capacitors.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[R3d M3rcury]

Perhaps he does, but he doesn't have control of how his music is distributed. We all are aware that most music distribution corporations own various rights to distribute music and they do so the way it is agreed.

So if AC/DC has not signed away their digital distribution rights, they may choose the way their music is distributed. And perhaps they believe that their music should not be chopped up.

It's the artist's choice. If they feel that strongly and are willing to forgo the money that they would make from selling singles, so be it. I, as a consumer, can choose not to buy it or to illegally copy just the songs that I want. So not selling singles isn't necessarily a smart business move, but it is a choice that an artist can make with the music that they create and I respect that.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[cayenne8]

I could see this for bands like Pink Floyd too...I mean, their albums, especially from their heyday (DSOTM, Animals, WYWH, and The Wall)...I still to this day, can rarely play one song from those, if I want to listed to any of the songs on one of those albums, I'll listen to the whole thing as a singular work, with different chapters.

I like AC/DC, but I don't think of their music in the same album singularity of work thing.

LOL..in the vein of "no one will ever need more than 640K".

I think the Young brothers say something like "No one will ever need more than 3 chords!!"

:)

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[hairyfeet]

I actually wish that were true, then they would be consistently listenable, but all their stuff from the mid 90s on is just lame. Where is the "You shook me" or "Shoot to thrill" after 94? They don't exist. AC USED to be able to write the most catchy hooks, you would hear an AC song and be singing along because you...just couldn't HELP but like it, it was too damned upbeat and catchy. it was great music to go flying down the freeway to.

I'm sorry but you listen to the later singles and they are just...meh. the hooks are NOT catchy, you don't remember the songs 3 minutes after hearing them, like many bands that were once good they just ran out of gas. This is why so many like their live shows, they have enough back catalog that they can just play the hits and not have to worry about the new stuff, but strictly on quality of hooks and catchy songs the later stuff just blows.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[xclr8r]

Dream Theater as well particularly "Scenes from a Memory"

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[hairyfeet]

Its the HOOKS man, the hooks just aren't there. As a bass player i can tell you there is just something...magical for want of a better term when you're playing and you just hit this...perfect sequence where you have the whole audience just moving in a perfect groove like, like, its almost like everything becomes connected, its like this perfect groove that everything just falls into and you just can't help but go with the groove like a wave.

But I can tell you its DAMNED hard to get that going just right, I know that if I'm not given a decent drummer that can read where i'm going and give me the right back up its just gonna trainwreck and trying to write a truly good hook on a timetable? Damned near impossible, it just don't work that way.

The fact that AC and Rush put out so many great hits in the past meant that at that particular moment in time everything was fucking PERFECT, all the musicians could read each other like books and once one of them starting on a groove the others would pick it up and build on it and the next thing you know BAM! they've got a killer song. Unfortunately chemistry is just one of those things you can't fake, either you are all on the same page or you're not. I have played with guitarists that at one time we just fucking gelled sooo damned good, when they would start playing I didn't have to be told a damned thing because I KNEW, just by the feel and the mood and the tempo EXACTLY where they were gonna go and likewise When I would start to percolate a nice thick bottom they knew EXACTLY where I was gonna go and would compliment my groove so fucking perfectly you'd swear we must have played that song a million times when we were making it up on the spot, but years later I get a chance to play with them and its just.....its not like anybody is BAD,its just you have had different experiences and just don't really feel and understand the person you are playing with so there is this...friction that keeps the parts from gelling, like a grinding gear that once worked wonderfully it just doesn't really...fit in that slot anymore.

I know that probably sounds hippy and weird but its really fucking HARD to describe what it feels like to just be in that zone playing, I've always said its almost like my brain has shut down and its just my emotions pouring through the fingers, i have to go back and listen just to figure out some passages because its almost like it isn't me that is playing it, because without the instrument in my hand I'm just not able to feel or express like that.

And that is what i think happened to AC and Rush, its not like any of them have gotten BAD, on the contrary that many years with their instruments they are more skilled that ever, but its not skill that writes the great hook, its emotion, its feeling that groove and just letting it flow and becoming this one living thing, you are just in this perfect zone and it all just flows, but these guys have grown apart and just don't have that ability anymore.

I'll never forget what an engineer told me when I was recording a song with one of the previous bands i had played with.I had spent a LOT of time on this song coming up with a very intricate but tasty bass line I wanted for the song, and I had played it enough live i could do that riff in my sleep. But when it came time to play the song in the studio while i did the riff i wanted in the first bridge we had been having a great day and we were all into it and I just completely forgot the riff and played what I was feeling then, this wild abandoned fun that we were having together. So afterwards I tell the engineer I want to punch in and replace the second bridge with the riff and he said "Are you shitting me? No way, no way in HELL do you want to screw that up! What you did in the first bridge was cool but the second is just fricking FUN with a capital F, and it fits everything soooo damned good, don't mess it up" and sure enough it got to that second bridge and I pointed out the difference and they played that part back a few times and they were all

Begining to end???

[superdave80]

...submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end

So, where was all the outrage when radio stations were playing one song at a time? You know, the one or two good songs that people actually wanted to listen to?

Re:Begining to end???

[TheRaven64]

The songs played on the radios were regarded by the bands as adverts (see: payola), and as such they didn't want to play the whole album because they wanted people to have to buy it to listen to the whole thing. The individual songs played on the radio were regarded as previews, not as complete works in themselves. In contrast, a downloaded track is regarded as a complete work by the band. No one complains that film previews contain scenes out of order, or that book previews only contain the first chapter, but the creators of both would strongly object to the idea of selling films by the scene[1] or books by the chapter.

[1] Certain Hollywood companies, however, would be very much in favour of this if they thought that they could get people to pay more that way.

Re:Begining to end???

[tilante]

Funny, then, how AC/DC has released 52 singles in the course of their career... the most recent in 2011. You'd think that if they didn't want people to buy single songs, they wouldn't make singles....

Re:Begining to end???

[Pope]

More like, where was all the outrage when AC/DC were selling 45s and other singles?

Re:Begining to end???

[nicholasjay]

...submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end

So, where was all the outrage when radio stations were playing one song at a time? You know, the one or two good songs that people actually wanted to listen to?

Not only that, but what about the compilation albums? Weren't they just an attempt to sell more records with minimal work? How were they put together?

Re:Begining to end???

[crazyjj]

Fuck, those guys ROCK in concert, though.

Re:Begining to end???

[Penguinisto]

Not really sure the movie analogy holds up.

It'd be more like a TV show analogy, after the TV series finally quits or gets cancelled... you have individual episodes which (more or less) stand on their own to varying degrees, some shows which are two-parters ("to be continued..."), and there should be an overall story arc that ties the shows together and provides some source of overall continuity (if the producers have any brains, anyway).

Any event, the TV show analogy fits: You can watch just the favorite episodes, watch the whole season in one go, or get the whole series and do a marathon. Just like songs: singles, albums, discographies.

Some single episodes/songs are masterful and epic, while others simply blow goats. Sometimes you want to do the whole series/album, crappy episodes/songs along with the good, just to get the whole arc for that season. Sometimes it only makes sense to do it as a whole series or album (e.g. X-Files for TV, or Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime for audio.) Other times, you can very easily break it up and enjoy the individual bits (e.g. Invader Zim or, well, any album made by AC/DC).

All that said and done, I sincerely doubt that AC/DC ever had an album that was made with an arc or story that ties the individual songs together.

Re:Begining to end???

[cayenne8]

I was in a restaurant the other day, and two young kids (like 8 or 9) were singing along and head bobbing with the AC/DC which was playing -- my guess is that Iron Man 2 is partly to credit, though, maybe they got it from their parents.

I think a lot if it has to do with the dearth of good music coming out today...actually since the 90's I'd say.

There is "some" good coming out, but what you see out for the mass public, which by definition most people see/hear, the landscape is pretty pathetic.

I see a lot of teens and so, wearing AC/DC shirts, and often listening to the music "I" grew up with...it kinds shocks me whenever I see this going on. It is surprisingly prevalent too.

Too late

[Beardo the Bearded]

Hey guys, it's cool that you held out for so long and were all principled, but I've already got copies of most of your work.

I paid somewhat less than what iTunes is suggesting. I guess you win.

Re:Too late

[jaymz666]

And everyone who isn't as cool as you can easily rip a CD in moments to a lossless audio codec and throw out that optical disk and still have spent less
on the album than a itunes purchase.

Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[tepples]

Vinyl records have index marks where the grooves are more widely spaced. CDs have index marks in the table of contents. If you want to make your album a unit, make it one continuous mix like a Mike Oldfield album.

Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[MightyYar]

All audio CDs following the Redbook standard are a single data stream, so I'm not sure where you are going with your argument. It is true that tracks are delineated only by the Table of Contents, but why would AC/DC program a Table of Contents if the Disc was intended to be listened to only in it's entirety?

I propose that they are completely full of shit.

Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[Gr8Apes]

CDs specify a pause before each track. Usually it's 2 seconds (my old player counts down -0:02, -0:01, 0:00, 0:01), but it can be set to zero, in which case there's no gap at all, and the index is just a pointer to a frame to start playback from.

I have a few electronic albums like this.

CDs do not specify a pause at all. The pause you're most likely referring to was that moronic burning software from the late 90s early 2000s that had those default options. A player that imposed such a moronic concept on its CDs would destroy the flow of an album like NIN's Pretty Hate Machine, from 1989, among others. Many CDs are mastered with a "quiet" period of approximately a second or so between songs, matching the pauses between songs on LPs, which were the visible areas (widely spaced grooves) so that a person could drop the needle near the beginning of a particular song of interest. There are also LPs where an entire side appears or sounds as one track - I believe side A of Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure and Rush's 2112 were 2 samples, but it's been a long time since I broke out any vinyl.

Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs do not specify a pause at all.

Sure they do. It's called INDEX 00 and shows in a CD player as countdown before the proper song start. Also known as the 'pregap', this was widely used on almost all CDs made in the 80s and 90s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap

Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[xaxa]

An AC replied with this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap which is what I was thinking of.

I don't know any more about the subject, so I won't pretend to.

Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[tlhIngan]

CDs do not specify a pause at all. The pause you're most likely referring to was that moronic burning software from the late 90s early 2000s that had those default options. A player that imposed such a moronic concept on its CDs would destroy the flow of an album like NIN's Pretty Hate Machine, from 1989, among others. Many CDs are mastered with a "quiet" period of approximately a second or so between songs, matching the pauses between songs on LPs, which were the visible areas (widely spaced grooves) so that a person could drop the needle near the beginning of a particular song of interest. There are also LPs where an entire side appears or sounds as one track - I believe side A of Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure and Rush's 2112 were 2 samples, but it's been a long time since I broke out any vinyl.

The track lead-in/leadout (1 second at the beginning, 1 second at the end) is really just a "landing zone" for the read head. A CD head is not particularly accurate - just because you give a HH:MM:SS.ff (frame) in the TOC doesn't mean if you select Track 3, you'll hit it exactly. In fact, you're likely to be quite a ways off. The quiet period simply lets the head be up to a second off either way without accidentally playing back the previous track or cutting into the next track.

Data CDs kept this for the same reason - a multisession CD also has the same limitation (each new session "patches" the prevoius session so it has to seek around and needs a landing zone).

Bad CD burner apps only do "track at once" mode where it writes a track at a time. This means every track requires a mandatory leadin/leadout (and a write to the TOC), and for audio, that means a quiet period of about a second. If you master in "disc at once" mode, you can lay down tracks with no quiet periods which is how you do "live" CDs with no quiet between songs (the TOC is written at the beginning). TAO does allow you to add tracks at the end, as the disc isn't closed, while DAO tends to force closing of the disc when it's done.

Sometimes shortening the leadout of the disc can give you a few extra MB of storage

Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok

[Stiletto]

In the history of musicians giving a huge "fuck you" to their labels, it's tough to beat that album.

Artist Rights and Wrongs

[AmericaRunsOnDunkin]

Attention artistic narcissists:

• You have the right to create beautiful works of art that stir people's souls.
• You have the right to keep your work private and only share it with those you want in the way you want.
• You have the right to release your work to the public and try to profit commercially from it.
• You DO NOT have the right to tell me how to experience your work. Once I have access to your album / song / painting / show, I can chop it up, listen to it backward, peer at it in a funhouse mirror, or feed it to my dog if I so desire.

In short, your right to swing your art ends at my nose. That is all.

For those about to post we SALUTE you!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a fast machine, she kept her buffers clean
Was the biggest damn kernel that I ever seen
It wasn't crap from Fry's or a Rasberry Pi
Knocking me out with those solid state drives

Bootin up from the share, fast as a mac book air

Looked for the root folder but I was already there

The case started shaking, doom started quaking

My mind was aching, we were making it

And you shook me all night long

Yeah, you shook me all night long

Re:For those about to post we SALUTE you!!!!

[Sloppy]

My personal version from 1984:

It was a nice machine
I kept the keyboard clean
It was the best damn computer that I ever seen

Five Twelve Kay
Blew my mind away
A lot of memory I must say

Parallel interface
Transfer data with grace
And dual disk drives with plenty disk space

We were playin' Donkey Kong
But before long
Somethin' went wrong, my computer's long gone

'Cause you
Poured Coke on my keyboard
Yeah you
Poured Coke on my keyboard

The screen went berserk
Thought it was just a quirk
But then the printhead started to jerk

The repairman spoke
Laughed like it was a joke
They were full of Coke, my chips were soaked

Any other verses have been lost. Sorry about the awful chorus meter.

The "parallel interface" stuff is a reference to my unhappiness with the 1541's serial bus. Nowdays, serial buses are preferred. Funny how things work out. The liquids on keyboards thing is sort of a reference to one of the alleged features of the upcoming(?) Apple IIc (not that I ever actually saw one of those), which was supposedly highly resistant to such disasters.

Oh yeah, and AC/DC has been in the "digital marketplace" for at least two decades (whenever they started allowing the CDs to be published). And I'd like to stick Brian Johnson's "you're going to kill [commercial] music" comment right back in his face, since the very best way to kill commercial music is to tell paying customers "fuck off, we don't want your money."

No longer relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry guys, your work was good 20-30 years ago, but most of us don't care anymore.

And the few of us who do care already have your stuff on CD and can rip it ourselves, or buy a used CD and rip that.

When I sell a painting it's part of a show

[kawabago]

When I have a show of my paintings I don't insist someone buy all of them or none of them. I want people to buy the one work that speaks directly to them. Some works never sell and they are taken out of their frames and put away for posterity. I care very deeply what happens to my art work but I certainly don't worry about how people view it. That they do view it is what matters to me.

Violating the sanctity of "Givin the Dog a Bone"

[T.E.D.]

— submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end.

I could easily see that argument for a Pink Floyd album, but AC/DC? Really?

I mean, seriously. This is from a fan. I've probably listened to the Back in Black album straight through cover to cover more than all but two or three people walking this earth, band members included. I'd agree that the song ordering on there is probably better than a random one would be (note: the "Title track" leads off side 2 rather than 1, which is interesting, but it works).

But would I ever sit down and argue with someone that its a travesty to listen to "Shake a Leg" without following it up immediately with "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution"? Hell no! Just listen to it and enjoy.

Re:Whatever

[MightyMartian]

AC/DC isn't metal. They're stuff is pretty much juiced up rock and roll and they happen to have as a key member probably one of the best blues guitarists around.

Re:hold out?

[Aardpig]

Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!

Re:Bologna

[MickyTheIdiot]

Agnes' argument about albums is demonstrably false. Here's why...

The era after Pink Floyd's two first albums they made the same argument about listening to the album as an entire piece. Because of this they didn't release singles (at least not in the UK. There are some late 60s early 70s singles in the U.S., but this their secondary market).

AC/DC always released singles. If they really cared about it they would of stopped like Pink Floyd did.

Re:Whatever

[gtall]

Were? They just finished a tour in 2011. My guess is they'll have another coming up shortly. Heavy metal, hard rock, etc. are very popular...probably not as popular as hip-hop or whatever monotoned crack many listen to, but they have their niche and their own concert venues which tend to sell out. Hell, even Deep Purple is still touring. Jon Lord retired in 2002 and then died just earlier this year. Ritchie Blackmore was replaced with Steve Morse sometime in the 1990's. The keyboardist is Don Airey who's played with just about every hard rock band. Ian Gillan's voice has seen better days but at 70+, we should cut him some slack. And the original muppet Animal, Ian Paice might be a tad slower, but he's still one killer drummer.

Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and a host of others are still kicking.

Re:Spite

[reub2000]

Wait, you've been freely giving out copies of St. Anger to people? You are a sadistic fucker!