Garth Brooks unveils iTunes alternative: GhostTunes
latimes.com
latimes.com
In other words, he's concerned about a world where people aren't forced into spending over ten bucks to hear the song they want, paying for a bunch of cameos they may not care about, even if those people worked real, real hard on that music.
A lot of those singles selling on iTunes are replacing piracy, not album sales, and taking away the option to spend $1.29 will just drive people to services like spotify.
On the other hand, as a creative artist (I'm semi-professional actor: I do get paid, sometimes well, but it's not enough to live - in other words, I get rewarded for a rewarding, mind-and-soul-expanding hobby), I know that sometimes that "one gem" (to quote another comment) is the result of the entire creative process that went into the complete album.
$0.99 per person for the one smash song just doesn't seem like enough, unless it is a PSY-level smash.
On the third hand, there may be enough people producing music, et al, for most of us to get adequate entertainment and there may be just enough being making it big or having a patron at a high enough level to move things forward and get us high-quality work, so perhaps the economics are well in hand.
Now, I'm not saying that it isn't expensive to make, or your time isn't worth anything. I'm saying I'm awash in content. You won't sell me your single? No prob! I'm off to Spotify, or Rdio, or Pandora, or any number of other services.
As the amount of music available increases, the cost/value of all music diminishes.
That doesn't mean the rest of the album is worth anything, or that the artist is entitled to getting money for the tracks people don't want.
We value this stuff wrong. Without wanting to get all grumpy old man, the longer we stay on this $0.99 for this one, nothing for the rest path, the worse the "product" will get.
I think it's down to marketing. When the record company picks the single and promotes it that's the song people will buy from the album. It may not even be the best song on it or the one you will like the most. I've seen a few polls recently where people were asked to pick their favourite track from a recently released album (they had bought the full album). The decision was pretty evenly split over all the tracks and the ones that actually fared worst were the singles. So my point is, you're not buying the song you want or will like the best, you're buying the song the record company has promoted the most and probably missing out on some great stuff.
If the other songs on the album are good, letting someone buy individual tracks means more potential customers for that other track.
While I get that people are very attached to music, I don't really get why people care so much about being able to buy a single from an artist who doesn't want to sell it to them that way (which is distinct from a label not wanting to sell music that way against the wishes of the artists).
Just to be clear, I buy mostly singles in the era of the ITMS, but if some artists don't want my money, then I don't give it to them. There are already plenty of other great songs out there by people who will gladly sell me their songs as singles. Missing out on a few songs in my daily playlist is far from being the end of the world.
We can argue the semantics of the word "forced" all day but I'm pretty sure everyone understood what he meant.
In this particular case, Garth Brooks doesn't want to be forced to sell singles if he thinks albums are bodies of work that should be sold as a set.
The seller is perfectly in the right to charge you $10 to buy an album as a whole, take it or leave it. You don't have the right to download a song illegally since you think the price is too high, sorry.
I could cure cancer and be "perfectly in the right" to only sell it for millions of dollars to the ultra-rich, but that doesn't meant it's not a shitty thing to do.
You argument is that Hollywood is also 'dickish' because you can't pay $0.50 to watch only the last 15 minutes of a movie in the theater.
Just because you can easily get away with not paying what he's asking doesn't mean you should be legally entitled to do so.
Just as Apple can choose to sell parts of albums but not parts of computers, other companies are perfectly welcome to only sell whole albums. There are other nice songs/trashcans available in other stores under different terms, if that's a priority.
That model is broken and the alternatives are numerous and successful because they make more sense. Singles on iTunes, Spotify, piracy...all better than paying a lot of money for content you don't want. We're seeing the same pressure applied to cable TV in the US, where consumers are tired of having no choice but to pay for content they do not want. Increasingly, they have a choices and are exercising them.
Yes - they can be distributed separately, and sometimes are, and I would agree that it would be better for the consumer to be able to pick and choose, but they were produced as part of a set, a single work. If that's the way they want to distribute it then it's not 'force' because you happen not to like most of it - it's their decision to make and yours to take or leave. It's not unfair.
edit: I should not have jumped on 'force' the way I did... it's clearly derailed the thread a bit.
Not at all. It also makes sense if you merely want one particular song and do not want the others, because they are not the song you want to hear.
> it's not extortion or 'force' because you happen not to like most of it.
If you look above, I defined the precise way the word 'force' was being used in order to avoid this kind of overly pedantic argument. If you can't roll with the term as it was defined directly above, feel free to disregard it entirely or substitute any word that matches the clarification following it, which is the point :)
Finally, remember that singles have been central to the recorded industry from the days of the 45 straight on through the LP era to the present. A good friend of mine is a studio owner that records many major acts everybody has heard of, and the idea that albums are cohesive collections meant to be listened to together is anathema to how the single-driven business works in many cases. In fact, that's been one of the major complaints against the industry for decades :)
I'd observe, unless I'm way, way more out of the music loop than I realize, that the correct terms are that they are almost always things that can be distributed separately, and very few "albums" have more than a faint trace of coherence between the songs. That is, sure, an album might alternate "upbeat" and "downer" songs or do some other basic management beyond "random ordering", but that's usually the top end of coherence. Contrast with The Wall or something, where it really is difficult to pick out separate tracks, excepting the ones that Pink Floyd deliberately made separable so some part of it could be played on the radio.
And really, people, let's stop trying to pick apart the word "force" as if several people up thread haven't been extremely clear what they mean by the term. "Forced bundling" is a perfectly reasonable use of the term, and trying to equivocate with other sorts of force is, well, that fallacy I named.
Who said that an album has to be coherent, or follow a narrative flow, for the distribution model to be justified? That's an entirely subjective way of seeing it - not invalid, but also not relevant to the question. There are probably plenty of people who would consider most of The Wall to be crap as well - and that coherence to be rambling nonsense (note: I loved the Wall, but I also really liked the Division Bell so what do I know?). My point is, there's nothing 'broken' about the model, even if there may be more convenient models available.
I can get my egg anywhere. Same with music.
For shame, Garth.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/304702/GARTH-BROOKS-HASNT...
(Which is awesome, and really doesn't need re-inventing.)
The web is basically one big not-invented-here enabler.
With lawyers, marketers and social media managers, oh my.
> What’s becoming clear as time passes, though, is that this is not a one-way process. Yes, digital technology enables a lot of unbundling. But new bundles keep appearing.
> Why is this? Well, maybe because there are “only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle.”
Its very clever marking aimed at selling more of his own records.
http://themeforest.net/item/keronchong-band-music-event-wooc...
This whole project is a scam. Its just a cheap $60 Wordpress theme hooked up to a music distributor. It would take a day max to set up this site. Has anyones else noticed every single ad banner on the website is for his own music!
http://themeforest.net/item/keronchong-band-music-event-wooc...
As it stands: the service seems to bring nothing to the table agains the stores (Apple, Amazon, Google) or streaming services (Beats, Spotify, Rdio) or indie artists (Bandcamp).
So the advantage to the consumer would be that if GhostTunes catches on, we might at least have the convenience and price advantages of being able to buy these artists' music digitally, instead of having to choose between physical media, piracy, or going without.
For 99+% of artists currently selling music? No clear advantage.
Has anyones else noticed every single ad banner on the website is for his own music.
http://themeforest.net/item/keronchong-band-music-event-wooc...