Very informative and very encouraging article about Apple getting indie labels (and music) into iTunes. Among the salient points:

- Placement/promo is based on their preference; they claim to have refused all payola (and to continue to do so). So they'll do special artist "spotlights" or push certain tracks, but mainly for the benefit of Apple (i.e. they like it or think it'll drive traffic), not the labels.

- Indies get the same deal as the majors.

- Indies get listed right by everyone else.

- Sales are reported to Soundscan! As single songs, though, never as albums.

- 45% of songs purchased on iTunes have been in the context of full-album downloads, which is encouraging, and they're trying to drive the per-album price down, which I'd imagine would be helped by letting the indies in the door.

- Self-released artist won't be listed (which is understandable, honestly, since the payment scheme would be way more hassle than it would be worth) but the author of the article, who runs CDBaby, says since he's an "iTunes partner" he'll try and get self-released stuff up there through the CDBaby connection.

Of course, there's still the DRM issue, but we all knew that when widespread online sales came for music, DRM was just plain ol' gonna be a requirement. Apple's, by all accounts, is not too stringent. But hey guys, when you givin' us a Windows version, eh?
posted by Mike B. at 11:37 AM 0 comments