06.18.2003

The more I write for weblogs, either on my own or posting replies at others, the more I feel for some professional writers like Salon’s Sahar Akhtar. Sure, they get paid to opine online about technology and culture, while people like me do it as a hobby, but they also have to come up with an opinion on a fairly regular basis to get paid, while we don’t, and sometimes you have to wonder if it affects the quality of their arguments. I’m going somewhere with this. You see, the flaws in Ms. Akhtar’s recent article about iTunes, in which she argues that the new model of selling songs one at a time online will mean the death of the artistic innovation that comes with bundled “B” sides and album cuts, were apparent right away, and we can go into them in a second. What I wonder is, were they apparent to the folks at Salon as well, and they just said, well, dammit, if we go into those, will the article be worth publishing? Is there some editorial pressure by mags like Salon, desperate for readers, not to present both sides of an argument, but instead to stake out just one side of the fence, and provoke postings and discussions like this one? I don’t mean to slam anyone’s professionalism, as I clearly don’t know what goes on over there, but the point is, I don’t know what else to think when it’s so easy to deflate the points in the article. It’s like they’re putting up the straw man for you.

Point one: Akhtar argues that sales of LPs are currently driven by a hit commercial single with radio airplay, which artists are encouraged to make to appeal to a large audience and which are usually “catchy and forgettable,” and that artists take their true flights of fancy on other LP tracks. This seems to me a gross oversimplification of the way musicians create music, and a potentially insulting one to both artists and the people who listen to them. While surely, artists and labels often pick songs off their albums early on as the singles, and they usually pick the ones they think will do best on the radio, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the singles they choose aren’t as artistically valid than the less catchy songs on the album. In many cases, it’s simply the strongest, and best, song on the album. But this is also mistaking how people listen to music. I haven’t listened to commercial radio regularly for probably over ten years at this point. I’m not saying this to be a snob, either; I think there are a lot of people like me. For me, the album is the main unit of music. When I find a new artist, it’s often from seeing them play live, or from hearing part of an album, and that’s what I buy, download, or get from a friend. I’m often completely ignorant of what ended up getting released as singles unless I happen to catch a video on TV. In my experience with the iTunes Store so far, I haven’t bought individual songs, I’ve bought albums, and I will likely continue to do so. If you like the artist and want all of their latest songs, for one thing, buying them bundled as an album is cheaper.

And that leads to the next big flaw in Akhtar’s position: she seems to assume that the pay-per-song purchase model is somehow immutably fixed, rather than an easily changeable parameter in the ephemeral collection of code that is the iTunes Music Store. If an artist wanted to offer B side-type songs for free, bundled with a catchy single, it can already be done in the existing iTunes system, and you can see this in action in the “Exclusives” section of the iTunes store, where songs never released anywhere else are bundled together as albums, as well as sold individually. Simply create a construct — right now what’s called an “album” in the iTtunes store — consisting of the single and one or more B sides, and then set the price point to whatever you wish: 99 cents, $1.99, $5.99. Consumers could still buy the single individually for $.99, but if they see it bundled in a collection for just a little more, with more songs for the money, do you think they won’t take a chance on it?

I won’t disagree that we will see changes in the way people buy music as a result of services like this. There are a lot of people who listen to songs more than albums, and for whom the playlist is the main unit of music. Those people have more time than me to fool around with their collections, and they may decrease album sales, but the increases in sales of singles will likely make up for it. I’ll likely continue to mess around with whole albums, and for me, a playlist will continue to be several albums thrown into one list, and the shuffle button turned on. And there are probably enough people like me still around to keep artists able to produce interesting, challenging stuff.

And that’s not even getting into what’s going to happen when more artists start putting out their albums for free, and making their money off touring and licensing. But that’s a post for another day.

Thanks go to Jim for letting me know Sahar Ahktar is a she, not a he. Pronouns have been duly edited above. And I feel dumb/sexist, and apologize.

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