Why I think iTunes is killing the music industry.

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The iTunes Store and others like it are convenient ways to purchase music, and are incredibly popular. Chances are if you buy music on the Internet, it is through iTunes, Amazon, or something else similar to it. However, I feel that no matter how popular these systems are, they are hurting the music industry in the long run. 

Now Hear Me Out

iTunes is like Walmart, a massive selection of items that are marked down in price. If you hear a jam on the radio on the way home, you can boot up your computer and pay a whopping .99cents for the song, ($1.29 if the song is really popular). Before iTunes, if we heard a song we liked, we either had to wait for it to be played on the radio again and then record it from the radio, or just buy take the leap of faith and buy the full album, which is around $15 bucks for an average album. While iTunes gains many customers that just come to find the newest, hottest, most banging beats, they are not sustainable customers. If you take that leap of faith and buy a full album, you might find your next favorite band, which translates to merchandise, concert tickets, and at the very least, more album sales, which are important to the BAND as a whole. 

iTunes is creating One-Hit Wonders, even if the bands/artists are better than the simple hook/line/sinker forumla. If you look up an album on iTunes, you can see a scale next to each song that measures its popularity. There is almost always one song that is much more popular than the rest of the album, which says to me we are not living on the edge.

So How Do We Fix It?

Well, I just recently heard about a thing called Spotify, which is yet another platform to buy and listen to music. I am not here to sell you on this product, or even talk about it (well its name is gonna get mentioned), I am here to talk about its idea. If iTunes is Walmart, than Spotify is more like a Sams Club or a Cosco. You can buy one Walmart steak for 10 dollars, or 10 Sams Club steaks for 85 dollars, or as where iTunes promotes buying as little as possible; Spotify promotes taking that leap of faith and getting the full collection. The more music you end up buying, the better deal you get on it. If you are like me, than you like to gamble, and downloading new and unheard music is a gamble. However if you are gambling with iTunes, the house always wins. With an idea like Spotify, you can gamble at buying a few full priced albums and even if they all suck, at least you got them at a discount, you earned rewards doing it, and the band is happy that it can actually make its next album, as opposed to its next single. In times like these when money is hard to come about, if we spend it willy-nilly, we want some respect back. iTunes doesn’t really give us that respect or reward system, and if we buy a shitty album on iTunes, then we are stuck with a 15 dollar shitty album. 

 

So What Do You Think?

Obviously paying .99cents for a song is better than not paying anything, but I feel like we could actually revive a dying medium if there was just a little something-something in it for us. Would you buy more music if you were rewarded for it?

 

Peace and Chicken Grease,

Garett

Are you kidding me? iTunes saved the music industry. If it weren't for iTunes' easily accessible cheap downloads everyone and their grandmother would still be infringing copyright by downloading music from P2P, BitTorrent and Usenet and the industry wouldn't see a cent for those downloads.

Itunes has made it easier to buy music.  Why go through torrents when you can click a button and own it.

people buy music?

I thought this was a very good read.  I'm not sure if iTunes is really killing the music industry or not, but being a CD collector, I'm sad to see CDs are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

Itunes has made it easier to buy music.  Why go through torrents when you can click a button and own it.

And how many more people bought that song because they didn't have to but the rest of the album? Instead of just downloading it off limewire, people will pay 99 cents for a song they want instead of 12 dollars for a song they want and the rest of the album.

" Are you kidding me? iTunes saved the music industry. If it weren't for iTunes' easily accessible cheap downloads everyone and their grandmother would still be infringing copyright by downloading music from P2P, BitTorrent and Usenet and the industry wouldn't see a cent for those downloads. "

Paying for lossily compressed music is dumb to begin with. I refuse to use itunes until they start offering lossless or high resolution tracks.

Why do we need a music industry?

No

OP is correct. If you want Artists to get very little of the money you pay for their work then yeah sure, use iTunes. But if you want the money to go to the artists, the only people who deserve it, then buy physical CDs straight from them.

I think you're missing the part where between 1999 and like 2005 people would just use a P2P service or something to find the one song from an album instead of getting ripped off buying the whole damn CD, or recording it off the radio like an old man or something. 

You don't have to buy music to listen to it in Spotify. Don't even have to download the music - it's a streaming service. I haven't bought a single thing through Spotify, except for the subcription price. Spotify is hardly the savior of the music industry.

I only buy music directly from artist's sites or BandCamp because I'd like the actual musicians to have my money rather than Apple.

Some of you guys are largely missing his point. He's not saying that digital distribution of the music is bad. He wants to discourage people from buying individual tracks. Read it before you jump to conclusions.

So shitty music isn't the culprit? Hmm... interesting.

Its like been that way already. A single is like 1 buck (or less if its an old one), but a full album downloaded is like $10 (or less). As long as the album has more then ten songs, the price per song will win out in the end. Oh, I don't use Itunes, but use Amazon as a way to download music legally. So my comment is mainly about amazon's pricing scheme which comparing to the OP's dislike at Itunes prices, Amazon seems to win out that much more. 

As much as I can't stand the program on a PC, iTunes saved a still dying industry so no idea what your talking about. The music industry instead of trying to evolve they just decided to try a fools errand and beat Piracy.  I haven't bought a single piece of music, Ever, but I've never pirated music, Why do I need to buy music? I have Youtube, Pandora, Car Radio, wtf do I need to buy any of this for? Its all free through PLENTY of Legal means, If I just want Random good music I listen to Pandora, Want a certain song? Youtube. Thats it, never found Any need to go outside those two mediums.

 I can't reply to everyone, so I will try to sum it all up.
As long as you are paying for music, then I am fine with it. iTunes brought a lot of people back form just stealing the music, but we didn't start over, we basically started new, by buying things one at a time. Spotifiy was just an example, I was going for the idea of it. The idea that the more we spend, the more value we get. 

Tomorrow the music industry isn't going to be dead, but in a few years it will be hurting. I hate to bring it up, but look at Rebbeca Black's, Friday. A song that was literally built for those one time downloads. I don't want to see musicians skipping heart and soul for a formula that produces the most radio-friendly hit. 

And no one has yet to answer my question if you would buy more music if you got a reward with it. 

the music industry dying would be a good thing lol. encourages bands and artists to be independent.

This is funny on so many levels.
It's actually kind of scary.

Hey great, let me pay .99-1.29 for a 128-256 kbps audio file. That sure sounds like a better deal than buying it through Bandcamp in FLAC straight from the artist for a dollar. Or at worst, CDs are not hard to find on sale for under 10 bucks. Rip them in lossless yourself.

iTunes provided the change the industry needed. It shook things up, but only because most of the industry were too stuck in their ways and didn't adapt and it bit them in the ass.

I don`t know if it`s killing it or not, but I hope it dies.

All the music I buy via the internet is vinyl.

iTunes did more good than harm. Like most people have said, it did practically save the industry.

If anything, it's the business side of the industry that is in fact killing the music industry.
@Axxol said:

" So shitty music isn't the culprit? Hmm... interesting. "

 Before iTunes, if we heard a song we liked, we either had to wait for it to be played on the radio again and then record it from the radio, or just buy take the leap of faith and buy the full album, which is around $15 bucks for an average album. While iTunes gains many customers that just come to find the newest, hottest, most banging beats, they are not sustainable customers. If you take that leap of faith and buy a full album, you might find your next favorite band, which translates to merchandise, concert tickets, and at the very least, more album sales, which are important to the BAND as a whole.

Hey, you know what pisses me off?

When I buy a new album, but there's an iTunes exclusive bonus track. Then I have to deal with their shitty software to get the song, but oh wait, it turns out I have to buy the entire album to get the song. Then I uninstall iTunes forever and just download the song somewhere.

The music industry's current problems started when it killed Napster. Maybe if some of those execs had some foresight they would have seen that i tunes was coming no matter how hard they fought against it. Anyway I don't use i tunes or any services of the like cause I prefer buying the whole album. Thanks to review sights and some friends who are in the music industry I know whose albums are worth my $10.

The music industry started to die around 98 with that Brittany spears shit and all the boybands now everything is just clusterfuck of shit.

Meh...I still prefer vinyl.

The only thing iTunes may have killed is album sales. It's easier to just buy the one song you like and skip the rest of them which might vary in quality.

OP is correct. If you want Artists to get very little of the money you pay for their work then yeah sure, use iTunes. But if you want the money to go to the artists, the only people who deserve it, then buy physical CDs straight from them.

I see what you're saying. I agree that it is hurting the music industry to some degree. But on the other side, it is helping the consumer.

" people buy music? "

The spotify concept that you mentioned sounds interesting, if only it wasn't limited to users in the UK.

As someone who grew up used to paying $20 for a tape (pre-CD era) only to find out that I didn't like eighty percent of the album I am glad that iTunes and piracy stepped in.  I have been burned by buying an album out of faith that the one song I enjoy is enough to support me spending my hard-earned cash on it too many times before.  I became sick of buying CD's because of it and now I refuse to spend money on an album that I haven't heard in its entirety.

You say that singles are killing the industry, creating a base of users that sees music more as a consumable item than a commodity that should be invested in.  Yet I see differently.  What is happening is the music industry is seeing a period of disintermediation, where artists are able to move away from the traditional confines of the five major labels. Digital delivery platforms like iTunes, bandcamp, and Amazon are combining with a lower financial barrier to produce an album nowadays.  It is easier than ever to discover a band, listen to their music, then support them.  It is so easy to be in a band that sells CD's nowadays that artists have to split the income (because there is only so much people are willing to spend on music) instead of the major labels taking the money for themselves.  This industry has ballooned to the point where I believe that if anything is hurting the music industry it is this.  Well, I don't actually believe it is hurting the industry.  It is hurting the industry for the big and famous rock star, yet at the same time it is allowing the smaller independent acts to at least be able to record.

For example.  I have a bunch of friends that moved to Calgary, Alberta because of the music scene there.  They quickly formed a band, started playing live shows, producing albums, and now going on national tours.  It cost them a couple of grand to create a studio that can produce a recording on par with what local studios charged $400 an hour for.  Now they have recorded three albums, and sold almost 20,000 copies in their three years of existence.  It isn't enough money to live off of, yet the band makes enough to continue doing what they love.  Yet the $200,000 gross split between five people over three years is money that isn't going to bands like "Green Day," or "Rhianna," or any other major label band that is trying to do this for a living. 

@Zidd: 

It solved a problem and created one in its place

Also like Axxol said, shitty music is the real problem. Not many artists create albums worth buying anymore, and when they do, I usally purchase them.

itunes and amazon already reward you for buying the full album; it's almost always cheaper to buy the whole thing than to buy each track individually. Not sure about itunes, but amazon also has those "album-only" tracks which you can't buy individually.

" people buy music? "

This is basically the story of the Blue Oyster Cult. Everyone knew (and still knows) the song Don't Fear the Reaper, because it's awsome, and they made a ton of money because people bought the album for that song. But I challenge you all to ask a friend if they can name one or two other BOC songs and they can't.

Piracy is killing the music industry. iTunes has done nothing but help.

iTunes is creating One-Hit Wonders, even if the bands/artists are better than the simple hook/line/sinker forumla. If you look up an album on iTunes, you can see a scale next to each song that measures its popularity. There is almost always one song that is much more popular than the rest of the album, which says to me we are not living on the edge.

I don't think you should blame iTunes, but rather blame the artists for putting out mediocre records. When I hear a song i like, I go check it out on iTunes an immediately check out the album. If I like 4 songs, I buy it. In other words, the other works of the artists are really great too. That's the way it should be if you ask me.