Pete Townshend: iTunes a 'vampire,' not helping bands enough
updated 06:05 pm EDT, Mon October 31, 2011
Who frontman says Apple should focus on bands
The Who lead Pete Townshend used a presentation at the John Peel Lecture to chastise Apple for not doing enough to support bands. He argued with the AP attending that iTunes "bleeds like a digital vampire" artists whose music it sold but didn't encourage. He suggested that Apple should pay more independent artists directly, rather than favoring distributors, and let artists stream their music instead of one-off downloads. He even proposed Apple take on label-like tasks, such as running talent scouts to find undiscovered bands and promote them itself.
To some extent, iTunes already fulfills some of the goals. While not as simple, some artists have had direct access. Apple has also been conducting early experiments in letting artists stream music, such as a Red Hot Chili Peppers stream in the run-up to their most recent album launch. The company still tends to prefer agencies, including relatively hands-off conduits such as TuneCore, and doesn't have an option for artists who want more permanent options for streaming.
Famous musicians such as Bon Jovi have accused Apple of killing music before. Typically, though, these have been veteran artists used to the traditional physical store model and not those who have adapted to downloads. Coldplay recently took the opposite approach to Townshend and kept its album Myxo Xyloto off of Spotify and other streaming services as they don't often make significant revenue from plays.
Townshend in his speech was more even-handed in arguing for broader change. He saw both sides needing to adjust their approaches to music, although he contended that some fans were too selective in what they they were willing to pay for.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Not with him on that
I can sort of understand where he's coming from, particularly being a musician from back in the Big Label era, but I think he's sort of got it backwards.
It's quite easy for an indie band to get on iTunes, and while it's true that Apple doesn't promote them, it does put them on a fairly equal footing with every other band apart from front-page placement (for which there's only room for, what, a dozen acts?). You're going to show up in the "others bought" list, and any other sort of list or social media as everybody else, and once somebody hits your album page, you're just like everybody else.
Sure, that means that big bands / acts with label promotion dollars behind them are going to sell more, but in the age of flat content and social media, every indie has the chance of making their own shot all on their own.
You post that YouTube video that goes viral, and you've sold 100K songs overnight without having to sign on with anyone and 70% of the profit going right into your pocket.
And you DON'T go viral but have a nice little fan following buying 100 albums a month, and you STILL get 70% of the profit from that.
Good luck getting ANY percentage of the profit from album sales after you get that initial advance from the big label, unless you sell into the millions.
Sure, small acts might not get the big-label talent scout to find them and elevate them to the big time, but more often than not they probably don't need it thanks to YouTube and Facebook, and without question there's now room for a hundred--probably a thousand--times more small-time bands to make some actual money off of consumers instead of never being "discovered" at all.