Interesting article over at downhillbattle.org (whose t-shirt I love and wear regularly) about iTunes and the accounting behind their “artist-friendly” business model. Before I got the Amoeba job I used to use iTunes to get some of my music. I don’t think I’d go back. DRM issues aside, my main gripe is the sound quality of the downloads. There’s too much high frequency. Too little of the earth-shaking rumble. It’s a fine music library tool, simple and effective, which combine to form “elegant” in my book, but I would never be satisfied with the piping nasality of their proprietary compression nightmare.
The article is here, and it gets into the specifics of money distribution to illustrate just how little each artists get from a sale. It’s not necessarily anti-iTunes, but it does try to make the point that Apple isn’t as kind to the artist as it once claimed to be. They do make the point that Apple’s improving a little, and that quality indie distribs like CD-Baby have a foot (or two) in the iTunes doorway.
. . .
And as long as I’m poking around on the Internet and showing you shit, check out this nifty little exchange between Adam Carolla (of Love Lines and The Man Show fame) and Ann Coulter. She is very late calling his show. He is not exactly accomodating.
Later.
(is “nasality” a neologism?)
2 Comments
wow suddenly i love adam carolla.
Hey Will, sorry I hadn’t checked the site out lately. Thank Michael Keefe for his column. I love the new “As Fast As” album. I wouldn’t have found it elsewhere.
I agree with the downer of the 128K compression for iTunes and wish they’d at least double to 256K or their “lossless” codec (I’ve heard rumors it’s in the works). At least the quality of songs is reliably consistent vs the hit and miss quality of file sharing sites.
The biggest reason I use iTunes is to discover new music (and make impulse purchases of said music). I love being able to sample every track of an album to decide whether to purchase the whole thing, or the 2-3 songs I like. That brings me to the other reason I like iTunes… most albums (especially Pop/HipHop) only have 1-3 listenable songs, so I don’t wanna pay for the whole album.
When it comes to albums, I still buy the CD whenever possible (which has been made easier since record companies are starting to re-discover the magic price of $10) but just rip the songs off it and toss the CD in a bin. My iPod(s) is (are) attached to my hip 24/7.
Later,
Aaron