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iTunes Store to add enhanced liner notes, extra media to album purchases

by Casey Johnston Jul 27th 2009 at 12:00PM


Digital music purchases have been dominating the market for some time now as physical CD purchases continue to fall. For Apple, a significant lead over the rest of the music proprietor world is not enough: according to the Financial Times, the company is now working together with the four largest record labels in the business to add new features to accompany digital music purchases through its iTunes Store in hopes of stimulating full album purchases.

[The FT also reports, without hedging, that Apple's "media pad" tablet device will ship in time for the holiday shopping season. According to the paper, the long-rumored iPad is intended as a full-featured portable computer and video & music player, like an oversized iPod touch, including wireless data connectivity but no built-in phone functions.]

Apple has formed an alliance with EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music to bundle whole albums with perks like interactive booklets, digital sleeve notes, and video clips. By doing so, Apple hopes to increase sales of the albums over single track purchases, a sales model that has been immensely popular in the advent of digital music.

The project, codenamed "Cocktail," is intended to recreate the former experience of album-purchasing, where you could browse the liner notes, follow lyrics, and look at the album artwork as the music played. Executives have said that users will even be able to play music straight from the proposed interactive booklets without having to use iTunes. Of course, the main motivation for increasing album sales is to increase profits, as albums have a higher margin than individual songs.

This change is one that should have taken place a long time ago- having to search for lyrics on shady, ad-ridden websites should already be a fading, shudder-inducing memory (though liner notes have been available on some albums, a change across the board has yet to take place). As items like liner notes and photos are possibly the last benefit that physical CDs can offer over digital purchases, this may turn out to be a very serious blow to the CD market. The iTunes Store album add-ons are set to roll out in September.

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Digital music purchases have been dominating the market for some time now as physical CD purchases continue to fall. For Apple, a...
 

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larry

All I know is, I like allot of '70's classic rock. Many of the really
good deeper cuts are available as

"album only."

July 28 2009 at 6:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
aatinko

Wow, thats gonna make things real cool!

RT
www.anon-web-tools.tk

July 28 2009 at 7:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Allen

Great. Gimme the liners, the lyrics and let me read them on the iPod, touch or iPhone.
But, while you're at it, ALBUM SHUFFLE, for god's sake.

July 27 2009 at 7:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

But will Apple expand the search feature in iTunes so we can search by label? Or is that nixed by the top four labels?

July 27 2009 at 5:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Michael's comment
Galley

Both Amazon and CD Universe allow searches by labels. That may help your research efforts.

July 27 2009 at 7:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
reallycrazyguy

Chester, you nailed it. Yes, the 'hit' song is the one the label spent a wack of money on payola and advertising, so the profit for selling that one song to everyone is fairly low, as sales of that one song has to cover all that money.

But, if they can sucker you into buying the 9 songs they didn't spend any money on advertising, that's a LOT of money that goes straight into the labels pocket.

July 27 2009 at 4:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Otsego_Undead

whoops, *Physical Medium

July 27 2009 at 4:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Otsego_Undead

This is something I've been asking for for a long time. At the very least, I just wanted the PDF booklets viewable without leaving iTunes and even better, viewable on my iPhone. This makes for a compelling reason to ditch the digital medium all together. If they want to make the booklets more interactive or whatever, even better-- again so long as you dont leave iTunes.
With well over 500 CDs the hardest thing to part with is the album art. And not being an audiophile, the quaility of digital music is just fine for me.
Now if only we can do something about the price. You would think with no production costs or materials that digital music would be DIRT EFFING CHEAP. Seriously, .99 is .99 pure profit.
Finally, let us re-download our purchased music. It would be so nice not having to worry about backing up our music. Apple/Amazon already have a log of every single purchase we've ever made.

July 27 2009 at 4:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Otsego_Undead's comment
jdechko

I'd like the ability to view this stuff in iTunes as well.

Given some of Apples advancements with iTunes (specifically, Cover Flow) and the finder (QuickLook and thumbing through multi-page files without opening them), I wouldn't be surprised to see it implemented this sort of way. Maybe it will come with iTunes 9 (which should probably be renamed to something else).

I also think that Apple needs to make it easier for us to view this information on our portable devices (iPod, iPhone, Apple TV). And I'm shocked that lyrics aren't included in iTS purchases yet.

July 28 2009 at 2:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Roberts

Are you telling me that it doesn't cost ANYTHING to write, record, mix, produce, and master music??? Yes you are correct that with iTunes you are omitting the duplication and packaging of cds but artists/record labels aren't going to sell their music for much less than what the current rate is. You probably think they should sell their music for a nickel a song. You're probably one of those people who thinks music should be free. Well buddy, music isn't free. Artists need to make a living just like everyone else. I rarely respond to anything on forums but what you said really just pissed me off. And whyyy would Apple let you download your music more than once?? When you buy a cd, do you go back to the store to get another copy if you lost it?? It's the same idea. Just because digital music isn't tangible, it's still a product.

September 09 2009 at 9:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Carniphage

The tablet story gets less credible with each twist.

No one wants a pocket device which too big for a pocket.
No one wants to run desktop apps on a 10" screen.

If Apple has a device like this, then they are targeting some unique selling point we do not know about yet.

C.

July 27 2009 at 1:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Carniphage's comment
frank

1) no one ever said it was intended to be a pocket device, and
2) no one ever said it was intended to replace the desktop workspace.

July 27 2009 at 5:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ianlive

Well, Casey beat me to that reply...

July 27 2009 at 1:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bobbar

Wow. And now if they could restore the Album Shuffle feature to the Touch and iPhone, they might convince us it's not in their best interest to sell single tracks, since that's how they expect us to listen to them.

July 27 2009 at 1:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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