Blog Archive

Friday, 26 September 2008

Comment: Shuffle Culture - Is iTunes killing off the album, and is anyone really bothered?

600,000,000 copies of iTunes distributed. 3 billion songs downloaded so far. The digital downloading phenomenon, which accounted for 32% of all music sales in the USA in 2006, continues to grow and grow. But how will the



But it isn't as if iTunes is actively and openly trying to make the album defunct. Apple are openly keen to reduce the amount of packaging that ships with their product line, and the reduction of physical media by buying digital downloads is something they see as a major environmental plus for their concept, so in the sense of renouncing the CD as a physical entity, their intentions are clear. However, their



aaa
Apple are essentially providing customers with something they want, although they have their own motives - the new Genius feature is ultimately a way for iTunes to rack up more sales from its store. People may have listened to albums in their entirity thirty of forty years ago, but then nobody was giving customers the option of playlists and shuffling. Since the humble 80's mixtape, music listeners have chosen to mix up their music, and whilst nostalgic yurnings for some of the great albums says that shuffling will kill off the album altogether, the reality is that it provides quality control. For every What's the Story Morning Glory, there's an album with two singles surrounded by filler. Throughout its entire product line, even the Shuffle itself, Apple has never attempted to prevent customers listening to entire albums in the order the artist intended them to be listened in, we just don't.
aaa

I suspect the future, and the very near future at that, will inevitably see the disposal of all physical media as a result of evironmental isses and sheer convenience. Without the constraints of a high data capacity disc, and the costs of manufacturing the packaging itself, labels will offer bands five of six song E.P download deals, simply because there's less risk for them, and obviously when customers have the option of buying tracks individually labels won't be able to effectively force customers to buy every track in the way they do presently. iTunes is ultimately an open platform for third parties. It is not dictating the way in which people listen to their music, the listeners are doing that themselves, all it is doing is giving people options. Apple can continue to promote themselves in this way by giving iTunes users the option of downloading albums in full, safe in the knowledge that by providing customers with the option of only having to pay for the songs they want, the generally will. The relationship between iTunes and the labels themselves is a complicated one, and both parties are guilty of greed by abusing their . For record labels who have rushed out an entire Michelle McManus album on the strength of one single, digital downloading will force them to up their game. But iTunes aren't the modern day Robin Hood, they may be offering

No comments: