Because of the long-awaited release of the Beatles' catalog on iTunes last week, I've been reading a lot of articles bemoaning the rest of the iTunes "Holdouts" (artists whose recordings are either not available on iTunes, or who only have a limited selection of their music available through the channel). Among the various artists mentioned are AC/DC, Garth Brooks, Kid Rock, Bob Seger, Tool, Def Leppard, as well as some of the early recordings by Black Sabbath and Aerosmith. Now I will admit to not knowing much (okay, pretty much nothing) about how the music business operates, so most of this is coming from a vantage point of complete ignorance, but I'm finding the discussion mostly focusing on the artists themselves and I wonder if that's misdirected.
The most-cited example I've been reading about lately is AC/DC's Angus Young declaring that their music was never meant to be purchased as individual tracks...that they meant for the entire album to be enjoyed, and that you don't break up an artist's work to sell piecemeal. OK - I can get with some of that statement, if it weren't just a little disingenuous (I remember being able to buy 45's of AC/DC's hits back in the day...isn't that akin to "breaking up an album" and "selling the tracks piecemeal"?) But other artists (prog-rockers Tool, for example) stress that their albums are meant to be listened all the way through, and not as individual tracks. Again, I can get with this statement as well - but iTunes does let you sell albums in their entirety instead of offering single-track downloads...so that argument doesn't really hold water either. But my point is that most of the articles I've read put the focus squarely on the shoulders of the artists themselves, and ask "why are you still holding out"?
But I'm not sure how much of this is up to the artists themselves. For example, the Black Sabbath early catalog (the first eight albums with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals) is not available on iTunes, but the rest of their catalog is. Ditto with Aerosmith - last time I checked, their early output is unavailable in digital format. So, is this selective availability really the artists' own choice? Or does this have to do with the record companies not wanting to sell the (more popular) parts of those catalogs on the (less expensive) iTunes store? Why sell an album online for $9.99 if you can still charge $15 through more traditional outlets? I haven't researched this, but is the iTunes distribution agreement that prohibitive that the record companies don't want to pay Apple's fees? And, does the artist have any say whatsoever about which portions of their discography can be sold digitally? I mean these as actual questions, by the way, and if anyone has any insight, please feel free to leave a comment.
And then we have the strange case of the "here today gone tomorrow" selections like the Frank Zappa catalog. Frank released his albums through his own record label. His catalog was available on iTunes for a short time, and then all of a sudden it was gone. I've subsequently read that Gail Zappa (Frank's widow) pulled the albums off the service because of the poor audio quality afforded by the iTunes compression scheme. OK, fair enough, but really - if that was the case, then why did they ever make it to iTunes in the first place? Did Gail all of a sudden realize after the fact that the sound quality of compressed audio is not 100% on par with a CD? Or did the catalog just not sell very well in the digital world and she realized that the CDs would sell better if left whole? One hates to be cynical...but I really think that, if Frank were alive today, he'd have no qualms about saying "I can make more money by selling CDs through my own label".
So I suspect that we still have iTunes holdouts not necessarily because Angus Young thinks his art should be left completely whole. Unless I'm informed otherwise, I would suggest lobbying the record companies if you want to be able to download your favorite holdout's catalog through iTunes.
