ITunes has been the runaway hit of the music business, selling more than five billion song downloads since it started five years ago. But a growing number of record companies are trying to steer clear of Apple Inc.’s behemoth music store, because they think that in some cases it’s crimping overall music sales.
Kid Rock’s “Rock n Roll Jesus” album was kept off iTunes’ virtual shelves. It has nonetheless sold 1.6 million copies in the U.S. since its release last year — a sizable number for the depressed music industry. Sales of the album have increased in 19 of the past 22 weeks, according to Nielsen SoundScan, vaulting it to No.3 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. After witnessing the album’s performance, his label, Warner Music Group Corp.’s Atlantic Records, last week yanked an album by R&B singer Estelle from the iTunes Store, four months after it went on sale there — and the same week that one of its songs entered the top-10-selling tracks on Apple’s download service.
Avoiding iTunes runs against the conventional logic of the music industry, where it’s now taken as an article of faith that digital downloads will eventually replace CDs. But there is growing discomfort with the dominant role iTunes already plays: The store sells 90% or more of digital downloads in the U.S., according to people in the music industry. At the start of this year, iTunes become the largest retailer of music in the U.S., surpassing Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to research firm NPD Group Inc.
Label executives, managers and artists chafe against the iTunes policy that prevents them from selling an album only as a single unit. ITunes, with few exceptions, requires that songs be made available separately. Consumers strongly prefer that, though Apple also typically offers a special price for buyers who purchase all the songs on album.
Some artists see their albums as one piece of work, and don’t want them dismantled. Their handlers believe they can make more by selling complete albums for $10 to $15 than by selling individual songs.
“In so many ways it’s turned our business back into a singles business,” says Ken Levitan, Kid Rock’s manager. Mr. Levitan says the rise of iTunes is far from being a boon to the industry; instead, he calls it “part of the death knell of the music business.”
Maybe I’m old school, because I always buy the full album, rather than just a smattering of singles … in fact, oftentimes, I find that the “single” is not the best song on the album; not the one that most represents a band.
For example, currently, one of my favorite bands is Augie March (with many thanks to Ari for the introduction) … their biggest “hit” single is the song “One Crowded Hour”; but by buying their albums, I was able to discover such other wonderful songs like “The Cold Acre” and “Victoria’s Secrets”.
By buying Eels’ Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, not only did I get “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)”, but I got “Ugly Love” and “Things the Grandchildren Should Know” as well.
Of course, I also get a lot of music from eMusic.com which emphasizes more independent releases, not just alternative rock and punk, but alt-country, classical, jazz … everything. If it’s not on a major label, there’s a good chance it’s on eMusic.com.
In fact, if you click the eMusic.com link above, or on the banner to the right (if displayed), you’ll be able to try it out and download 25 songs for free … and beyond that, there are various low monthly subscription rates. Me? I’ve got two 100-song subscriptions at $24.99/month each … because I’m a complete music junkie … I don’t expect any of you to go to that extreme.
So when you hear the phrase “Down By Law”, what pops to mind?
Is it the incredible punk bank fronted by Dave Smalley (who also fronted Dag Nasty and ALL)? Or is it the even more incredible independent film by Jim Jarmusch, starring Tom Waits, John Lurie (of the Lounge Lizards), and Roberto Benigni?
As slang, the phrase “down by law” carries a couple different meanings. In a musical sense (primarily jazz), “down by law” means having paid your dues, to have earned respect for your talent through hard work. In its other sense, that of prison slang, “down by law” means to have someone’s back.
Having just finished watching the film, I find myself contemplating whether the phrase is applicable to my own life, and to the people in it …
Have I paid my dues? Do I have the respect of the people around me … and most importantly, will they have my back if something happens and I really need it?
This is when my self-doubt and lack of self-esteem are most apparent … I’m pretty sure the people I consider to be my friends respect me and will support me when I need their help, but there’s always a little niggling thought in the back of my mind that tells me that I’m a fraud, that no one really likes me, and makes me worry that my entire world is going to come crashing down around me at a moment’s notice.
This is also when I know that I am not ready to quit seeing my crazy doctor, and I’m not ready to start easing myself off the happy pills … but that I’m also getting more control over my emotional well-being, and gaining better knowledge of who I really am.
And so I continue to live each day, with the conscious knowledge that the feelings are temporary, and that today’s emotional lows will be counterbalanced by tomorrow’s emotional highs; that the lows are not quite the same deep chasms they’ve been in the past, and that the transitions are not quite as drastic.
Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that I have pretty eclectic (or at least broad-based) musical tastes; ranging from jazz to (old) country to punk and back again.
Amnesty International released a CD a few months back of various artists covering John Lennon songs, to raise money to help the refugees from Darfur.
One of those song’s is Regina Spektor’s cover of “Real Love” … yet another shining example of an artist taking someone else’s song, and making it her own, like Green Day’s cover of “Working Class Hero”, from the same album.
All my little plans and schemes
Lost like some forgotten dream
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Just like little girls and boys
Playing with their little toys
Seems like all they
really were doing
Was waiting for love
Don’t need to be alone
No need to be alone
It’s real love
It’s real, yes it’s real love
It’s real
From this moment on I know
Exactly where my life will go
Seems that all I really was doing
Was waiting for love
Don’t need to be afraid
No need to be afraid
It’s real love
It’s real, yes it’s real love
It’s real
Thought I’d been in love before,
But in my heart I wanted more
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Don’t need to be alone
No need to be alone
It’s real love
Yes it’s real, yes it’s real love
It’s real, yes it’s real love…
Saw a great movie yesterday about skinheads in England in the early 1980s, called “This is England” …
Highly recommended. The film focused on a young boy of 12, whose father was killed in the Falklands War in 1982. In the movie, Shaun (played by newcomer Thomas Turgoose), was being picked on by kids at his school … on the way home he was rescued by a small group of skinheads, who took him under their wing.
At first, this group of skins was more traditional, working-class, traditional skins, who grew out of the mod movement of the 1960s … while fighting was definitely a part of their ethos, the racist elements had yet to fully invade; this was a time when both white and black skinheads hung out together, and music was often more influenced by Motown R&B, ska and reggae than by punk rock. Think of the two-tone mod-ska movement of the early 1980s, but with Dr. Martens boots (also known as “Docs”) and red braces, instead of suits and Vespas.
But things change … and disaffected youth are easily influenced … and when the National Front came calling, a number of the group signed up, including young Shaun … until a tragic event opens his eyes.
See the movie; buy it, rent it from Netflix … just see it.
Nov. 1, 2007 | Look, I’m the wrong person to bring any objectivity to Julien Temple’s movie “Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten.” It partly concerns the pop culture of my own teenage years, always a treacherous zone for any critic (or any other human being). Furthermore, it’s about a rock musician I once worshiped and then abandoned, and discovered again much later, who is now dead. So Temple’s film will inevitably be viewed by people of roughly my age and with roughly my background as a kind of generational myth, which is likely to irritate the crap out of everyone else.
Still, insofar as I can drag myself back from raving fandom to some kind of detachment, I think “The Future Is Unwritten” — which is Temple’s preferred title; the distributors have added “Joe Strummer” over his objections — is the most powerful documentary I’ve seen all year, and one of the two or three best films ever made about an artist or musician. It marks both the high point and something like the moral justification of Temple’s career, which includes big-money music videos for the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Janet Jackson, Tom Petty and many other artists, as well as a pair of splendid documentaries about the Sex Pistols and the 1977-78 punk revolution (”The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” in 1980, and “The Filth and the Fury” in 2000).
So, first Control opens here next week (as mentioned in an earlier post), and this morning I read that there’s a new documentary about Joe Strummer. If it’s also coming to town anytime soon, I’ll be in punk rock movie heaven!
