iTunes download service and others only help rip-off musicians

October 17, 2003

WarpedRecord used our news submit to tell us that iTunes and many other legal download services are not any more 'artist friendly' than selling CDs or even using free P2P services. While we all know that CDs are very expensive and the artist only gets a tiny fraction of the CD cost, the same holds true for legal download services including iTunes. First, even though Apple does sell full albums below the regular retail price, they are still too expensive. The Audio is compressed using a lossy compression to simplify distribution and next there are no overhead costs involved in running record shops, hiring shop staff or paying physical transport services either. With this, what is keeping the song title pricing still close to the shop's retail price?

Well, here is where your money goes when you make an iTunes song purchase: Apple gets a 35% cut and the other 65% goes to the music industry. Of this 65%, they pay the artists between 8 and 14 cents per song depending on their contract. Finally, artists must also make a large pay out for producer and recording costs. If the artists' music does not do so well, they could end up owing rather than earning! In the end, iTunes and many other legal download services just give a 'modern shiny look' to the exploitative system of the music industry over the past 50 years .

WarpedRecord said: It's time ALL musicians were rewarded for their efforts!

People are paying for songs on the iTunes Music Store because they think it's a good way to support musicians. But by giving musicians just a few cents from each sale, iTunes destroys a huge opportunity. Instead of creating a system that gets virtually all of fans' money directly to artists-- finally possible with the internet-- iTunes takes a big step backwards. Apple calls iTunes "revolutionary" but really they're just letting record companies force the same exploitive and unfair business model onto a new medium.

It's too expensive
Let's start simple: the iTunes Music Store is not a good value for customers. Apple says many users are buying whole "albums" for - each. That's less than the store price, but used CDs at Amazon or ebay cost , and those come with liner notes. If you don't care about liner notes, you can burn the CD from a friend for 25 cents and send the musician a buck. In both cases, you end up with a real CD, and you can always use iTunes to rip it onto your computer or mp3 player. And you don't have to deal with restrictions on how you use it.

Lossy - Lossy means loss

iTunes AAC files don't sound as good as CDs. AAC is a "lossy" compression format: it shrinks the sound file by throwing away subtle nuance and texture that a computer program thinks you won't be able to hear. The thing is, you can hear it. You might not notice listening to your iPod on the subway, but if you get home, lie back on the couch, and listen to your new iTunes album on a real stereo, it won't have the same nuance, punch, and presence that a CD has. A burned copy of a real CD will always sound better than a burned iTunes album.
"But I don't really care about compression"
Then you're in good company: lots of people just want to hear the songs they like and don't mind listening to compressed music. The majority of those people (the sensible ones) choose peer to peer filesharing programs like Kazaa or Acquisition to get their mp3s. Downloads are fast, there's a bigger selection, and peer to peer sharing doesn't prop up the music industry. Plus it's free.

If you build a shiny new house on a landfill it still stinks
Apple says iTunes is "better than free" because it's "fair to artists and record companies." That's simply not true. First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never Artists Get Ripped Off. even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing.

I'd recommend reading the whole story here

It looks like that most legal download services are after all not any much better to the artists than purchasing CDs or just free P2P file sharing. According to this article, Apple get three times the payment than the artist gets per song sold. Compare that to the small work Apple have put into their service all the work what the artists put into their work to get ripped off. It is likely another reason why the music on the radio has got so bad in recent years and another likely reason why CD sales are dropping. Many artists that are well capable of producing good music may feel that it would be better to sell their music directly to their customers locally rather than get their work seriously ripped by the music industry.

A better approach to support your favourite artists and boycott the music industry would be to download their album or copy it off a friend and send the artist a check for a few quid. If the music industry were to still pay the artist 10 cent, but only add another 10 cent per song sold for packaging and distribution (easily done on legal download services), this would bring a typical 20-song album down to just $ 4!

Source: Downhill Battle