iTunes in Top 10 U.S. Music Retailers

[winmacguy]

I prefer to spell it with a U also, but this is an american website and the audience is primarily americans, so I follow their convention.

That tends to depend on the topic of discussion

 

[winmacguy]

The reason indie labels are so happy with Apple is that they actually have accounting standards, pay on-time, and are not in the payola game that retailers are wading neck-deep in. When you buy a song through iTunes, you can be sure your artist is actually getting paid. So for those not inclined to steal music (hehheh), iTunes is a pretty good way to go as far as supporting artists you actually like who are not on a major label.

Cordially,
B.G.

Interesting. Thanks for the insight. On the down side of that from what I have heard regarding indie artists and iTunes is that you shouldn't expect to see your music or start getting paid for it in any short time frame after you have uploaded it and gone through the necessary chanels etc, apparently Apple are understaffed and overworked with a very large back log of tracks to review and load into the system. I would say however that it would appear to be a better way of doing business for musos than via any record company although that could be up for debate

 

[hookahco]

amazing.. is this based on album sales or individual songs?

 

[lolex]

It will be an Apple big enough to feed every hungry for online tunes

 

[EricNau]

amazing.. is this based on album sales or individual songs?

kinda both;
"NPD used 12 tracks per album in order to compare sales between physical CDs and individual tracks."

Since you cannot buy individual songs at a "real store," they took the number of albums Walmart (for example) sold, and multiplied it by 12. (12 being the average number of songs in an album) Then compared that number with the number of songs iTMS sold.

 

[buddhagoth]

Interesting. Thanks for the insight. On the down side of that from what I have heard regarding indie artists and iTunes is that you shouldn't expect to see your music or start getting paid for it in any short time frame after you have uploaded it and gone through the necessary chanels etc, apparently Apple are understaffed and overworked with a very large back log of tracks to review and load into the system. I would say however that it would appear to be a better way of doing business for musos than via any record company although that could be up for debate

You are welcome. From my perspective, there is always a downside to the "gold rush" times in any business. Apple has been clear from the get-go to allow at least 2-3 weeks from upload to appearance in the store. But the day it's there, if you get a sale, it will show up the next month. No lag in that sense. Yeah, they are a bit behind but that is good in the long run. Any serious alternative to regular retail is most welcome by indies.

The indies and the bands then have to do their old job of letting people know that their music is available there for downloading.

But as far as a way to do business, Mr. Jobs himself was very clear about this at the very first indie label meeting in 2003. Apple's iTunes was to be "all about the music" and he specifically said Apple did not want to be a record label or act like one. Labels (and I speak about indies here) are there to help artists with all sorts of things like careers, post-production, tours, image, all that sort of stuff. Apple wants them to the gatekeepers for the store. As you point out, the iTunes folks have enough to do and are overworked without having to hire a couple more thousand people to take on more parts of the music life.

However, to all that have spoken about quality, yes, I'd love to see higher-quality files available. Most consumers don't notice much difference, but as someone pointed out, the Big Dirty Secret is not widely known, that being a vinyl LP sounds 10 times better than a CD and 100 times better than current iTunes formats.

But as a way into the 21st century and as a way to break the control of mega-major labels, I'm all for iTunes.

Cordially,
B.G.

 

[amateurmacfreak]

Walmart is cheapest arent they?... so if Apple inroduces variable pricing they will no longer be on the chart...

Just my 2 cents.

yeah, and wal-mart is the most awful, greedy corporation so...that sucks.... it would be so cool if itunes could move up a bit... and wal-mart down, haha. i wonder where limewire would be if you compared the number of stuff people get from the other sources to it... it would probably be right on up there.
if itunes does variable pricing, people that are computer people will probably turn to limewire, and just more of the general public will switch to best buy, wal-mart...
it would overall hurt the record companies and itunes i think.

 

[Poff]

This is a MacRumor how???

set your browser to applerumors.com and there's nothing to complain about.