Alan Cross: How much longer will we be able to buy digital downloads of songs? – National | 24CA News
When Steve Jobs made the rounds of main document labels in 2000, he knew he had them over a barrel.
Music piracy, kicked into excessive gear by the unique Napster the earlier June, was a risk to the recorded music trade. The new frontier for music was on-line and the labels have been utterly ill-equipped to cope with the best shift in music distribution in a century. They needed to get in on the business of promoting music digitally, however how?
Oh, the labels tried to construct their very own obtain shops, however Pressplay (initially known as Duet and owned by Universal and Sony) and Musicnet (all the opposite majors) have been depressing failures. First, they have been costly. For $15 a month, followers might stream 500 songs every month, get 50 music downloads and the flexibility to burn every of these songs to CD 10 occasions.
Second, it was chaotic for the buyer. You wanted to know what label a music or artist was on earlier than. The phrases of use have been complicated and digital rights administration (DRM) locks on the recordsdata made shifting them round tough and irritating. It was a lot, a lot simpler to only steal music.
Third, the labels couldn’t work collectively on a unified platform as a result of that may have violated every kind of anti-trust guidelines, a authorized scenario that additionally assist scupper the labels’ proposed buy of Napster.
The labels had all of the digital merchandise however no option to distribute and promote them. Apple’s iTunes provided a method out of this bind.
Jobs satisfied the labels that permitting him to promote particular person songs for 99 cents every was the way in which to go. And as a result of the labels had no thought what they have been doing — and since Apple was dedicated to spending thousands and thousands on advertising and marketing (to not point out they’d this new gadget known as an iPod) — the labels all signed on with the iTunes Music Store.
His pitch labored, and growth — the music trade modified perpetually.
There had been different makes an attempt at creating digital music shops. Cductive was based in 1996 and offered MP3 downloads for 99 cents (it was acquired by eMusic in 1999). Sony debuted Bitmusic in Japan in 1999, providing principally singles from Japanese artists (it failed). Factory Records launched Music33, which provided downloads for 33 pence every (ditto). There was even a Canadian digital music retailer known as Puretracks that lasted for a few nanosecond.
Nothing beat iTunes, particularly when the labels agreed to take away all DRM locks in 2007. (I nonetheless have songs on my pc within the outdated .mp4a format which are locked up and might’t be freely transferred from one place to a different.) It quickly turned de rigueur for all releases to be obtainable by way of iTunes.
And as a result of the iTunes Music Store was really easy to make use of on all computer systems (providing a Windows model was an enormous deal), it turned the favorite vacation spot for purchasing digital albums and tracks. At one level, iTunes was chargeable for 70 per cent of all digital music gross sales. Almost each would-be challenger was crushed. Hey, anybody bear in mind hmvdigital.com?
But the entire shift from promoting items of plastic to digital tracks left a nasty style within the mouths of the labels. They’d utterly ceded distribution of their product to an outsider who charged a 30 per cent fee on every file offered. They vowed by no means to let that occur once more.
Fast ahead to at this time. Streaming, not downloads, is king and the labels have agency management over how streamers might do business. They made greater than US$10 billion from streaming in 2022. They additionally repeatedly obtain petabytes and petabytes of knowledge on how music followers devour music.
And as a result of streaming is so low-cost — and even free — music piracy is a fraction of what it was once.
As a consequence, gross sales of digital tracks and albums proceed to plummet. In Canada, the gross sales of digital albums are down 15.9 per cent from this time final yr and digital monitor gross sales have fallen by 7.5 per cent. Meanwhile, streaming is up 13.9 per cent from a yr in the past as Canadians reliably stream someplace round 2.3 billion songs per week.
I could make the scenario sound much more dire. In 2012, we purchased 1.3 billion digital tracks. Last yr, we purchased 152 million. That’s a crash of 88.6 per cent in a decade. These numbers clearly aren’t good. Paid downloads are rapidly turning into the subsequent cassette.
Sales have been as soon as front-and-centre on the iTunes house web page. Now you must hunt a bit for the iTunes Music Store once you open the app. If you go to Amazon, a seek for MP3s takes you to a web page that pushes streaming and bodily product. Neither firm breaks out how a lot digital music they promote of their monetary stories.
So right here’s the query: How lengthy will Apple assist iTunes? Heck, how for much longer do all digital tracks/albums gross sales have? Let me concern a plea that this by no means occurs.
I desperately want iTunes to proceed due to my work. I want to realize full and authorized entry to songs to supply my radio present, The Ongoing History of New Music, so I purchase as much as a dozen songs per week. My Mac tells me I’ve 79,655 objects taking over 564.65 gigabytes in my library. A non-insignificant variety of these songs are iTunes downloads.
There are many makes use of for downloads. DJs want recordsdata they’ll combine as a part of their units. Older music followers introduced up on a food regimen of buying CDs and vinyl additionally like iTunes as a result of it affords everlasting possession as a substitute of renting music from streamers. Insiders know that if downloads for an artist enhance, it could present that the artist has crossed over to an older demo.
Artists also can see first rate income from iTunes, particularly after they’re within the news for one thing. Paid downloads spike up and so they pay out far, way over streams. Artists, labels and managers additionally monitor iTunes for songs that will pop on iTunes’ charts, a potential indication that one thing attention-grabbing is going on.
What are the choices if iTunes goes away as Google Play Music did? Well, there are different digital music storefronts. There’s the aforementioned eMusic, which got here on-line promoting DRM-free MP3s in January 1998, three years earlier than iTunes debuted. It has contracts with the foremost labels and dozens of indies. Unlike iTunes and Amazon Music, it’s a download-to-own web site that requires the acquisition of a month-to-month membership. Its library isn’t as deep as iTunes (15 million songs vs not less than 60 million) however it could possibly do the job for some folks.
The most attention-grabbing digital music storefronts are these promoting hi-res lossless recordsdata for individuals who demand the very best in audio high quality. For instance, 7 Digital will promote you every kind of digital music, together with loads of 24-bit FLAC recordsdata. That’s implausible — when you have the mandatory {hardware}.
The similar goes for Pro Studio Masters (I used it fairly a bit for purchasing FLAC recordsdata). If that’s your jam, you’ll want to take a look at HDTracks and France’s Qobuz. which can debut in Canada later this yr.
DJs and dance music followers have lengthy identified about Beatport. If you’re into the indie facet of issues, you’ve in all probability bought a obtain or two from Bandcamp. And then there’s Bleep, which focuses on impartial artists and labels.
Still, although, it’s arduous to beat iTunes for choice and performance. I actually, actually hope Apple doesn’t do one thing silly like kill it. But with every week’s music trade gross sales numbers, you must surprise how far issues can drop earlier than it’s time to maneuver on.
If that day comes, it is going to be very, very unhappy.
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Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.
Subscribe to Alan’s Ongoing History of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play
