iTunes LP broken for indie record labels?
Update: ElectricPig is reporting on 10/13 that an Apple spokesperson said the LP format will be opened up for all, indies and majors alike.There's word from an indie record-label that iTunes LPs are not for the indies. Introduced at Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll" event in September, the iTunes LP format adds "bigger than a matchbook" album art, song lyrics, video clips, and other extra content to albums sold through the iTunes store.
Brian McKinney of Chicago-based label Chocolate Lab Records saw some promise in the new format and started looking into the idea of producing for iTunes LPs himself. But the truly small labels may have a hard time getting in. McKinney spoke to the digital distribution manager at his label's distributor, who reportedly told him that Apple charges a $10,000 production fee for iTunes LPs. $10,000 may be less than the heads of Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and EMI spend on breakfast, but could be cost prohibitive for the little label that could (if it had $10,000 handy for each of its acts).
It's not just the cost that prohibits the little labels. According to McKinney, it's also Apple. McKinney says his dude in distribution was told "that LPs aren't being offered to indies and that there are only about 12 LPs being offered right now."
"Foul, foul, filth and foul," cries Cult of Mac's Pete Mortensen. Like a financial analyst moving a stock from "buy" to "sell," Mortensen says iTunes LP has gone from "the first digital album good enough to criticize," to "the first major content misstep in the history of the iTunes Store." Assuming that Chocolate Lab's distributor info is on the up-and-up, Mortensen thinks iTunes LP is "less a new format for music than it is a new form of paid advertising on the iTunes store."
While it may be romantic to think that iTunes was turning into the record store of old, isn't it also unrealistic? Apple wants its customers to "think different," but may not always want to do so itself. The Cupertino-company's relationships with the big four record labels has gone from antagonistic to swell to antagonistic to swell to... well you get the idea. It's not indies that have bemoaned the death of the LP... Perhaps they have, but they have not been as loud about it as major labels or acts such as Radiohead or Smashing Pumpkins. Variable pricing for tracks in the iTunes Store (announced at Macworld 2009) was one concession to the big four. It's possible that keeping iTunes LP for the majors only (for now anyway) was another.
Still, all hope is not lost for the indies. Apple may make the iTunes LP format more accessible down the road (assuming the format lasts long enough to get down the road). In the meantime, if indies want to capture some of the iTunes LP experience, there could be an app for that. They just have to build it or have it built. AppleInsider's Prince McLean suggests the idea, noting that "any artist can build a custom app delivering whatever artistically interesting content they can imagine into existence," meaning bringing album art, song lyrics, video clips, and other extra content is something the indies might be able to do, or might be able to hire someone to do.
There may even be advantages to hitting the App Store instead of the iTunes LP for the indies. Right now, extra content for iTunes LPs is married to the desktop or laptop. Buyers can take tracks with them on their iThings, but the lyrics, video clips, and so on stay on the computer. Where iTunes LP can go may change with the introduction of Apple's fabled tablet or an Apple TV update, but that remains to be seen. Additionally, iTunes LPs are pretty passive. Sure there's a lot of content, but - once it's released - it is what it is. No uploading new content. No adding new features. No interacting with fans. The iTunes LP is a digital package set in stone (unless they are sold as part of an iTunes Pass).
On the flip-side, iTunes LPs would be great for indies today since there are still under 20 iTunes LPs available. With a quick production turn around, the local bar-band could share a pretty exclusive space with Pearl Jam (iTunes link), Dave Matthews Band (iTunes link), and The Doors (iTunes link). Compare that to the 85,000-plus applications in the App Store and the attraction of an iTunes LP likely rises.
There are many ways that this could be much ado about nothing. It's possible that what Chocolate Lab heard was not Apple's official policy. It's possible that it is official policy but that it'll change relatively soon. It's possible that the big four record labels will drag their heels, overcharge, and kill the format in its infancy. It's possible that people won't warm up to iTunes LP as a format. For now, though, word of barred access for the indies has some in a spin.
[via Gizmodo, Cult of Mac, Apple Insider]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Juan Silva said 1:52PM on 10-11-2009
We are already producing iTunes LPs outside apple, we developed the first creative commons licensed iTunes LP, take a look at our website, ilongplay.com
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Paul Mensah said 1:55PM on 10-11-2009
Stop reporting old news! Anyway this is not an issue because the only thing people should be listening to is Jay-Z and Beatles
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LD said 2:02PM on 10-11-2009
Very nice, Juan! I was hoping to see this and I'd love to see an open source TuneKit project develop around this. It's a simple matter to do the same with the movie extras. I experimented with it and it's not too difficult. The cNID is what links to the movie file. Just match that up with the HTML/js/XML and you're good to go.
I envision a site where user contribute to popular albums and movies and others can download from this central repository. For movies you could even link online trailers or extras. The same is certainly true of music as well.
Take the power away from Apple.
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peter.story said 2:07PM on 10-11-2009
"McKinney says his dude in distribution was told..."
Dude!
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LAGal said 7:16PM on 10-11-2009
and who knows if the person telling was giving the right info. sometimes those Apple Reps speak based on how they understand something to be and because they don't really understand what's going on, they screw up. Or they leave out things like "because we just started this little nifty idea we are limiting it to only a handful of titles but in the future there will be a kit for any label to make an LP and submit it." which will likely happen if the idea is deemed enough of a success
McKinney said 8:12PM on 10-11-2009
I never said dude. ;) I think they were paraphrasing.
@Juan - That looks awesome. I'll take a look at your LPs. The problem therein is that Apple will not "sell" these LPs through us. That's the exclusionary tactic. Sure, we can build them ourselves for well under $10,000 as you did, but selling them through iTunes' store was what we were looking at doing. Your example at iLongPlay is to sell them (or give them away!) through your own site just as we sell digital albums on our label site. That's a great alternative, though probably won't reach as many people as the iTunes store. We'll definitely look into offering our own LPs. Cheers!
Fritz Liess said 2:11PM on 10-11-2009
"if indies want to capture some of the iTunes LP experience, there could be an app for that. They just have to build it or have it built."
There is already an app for it. It is called Adobe Flash. Flash can be used to build a menu identical to iTunes LP and the result can be played on any computer.
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Galley said 2:56PM on 10-11-2009
Yeah, and Adobe Flash is a steaming pile of dog poo. I'll stick with HTML and CSS.
Yoshi1080 said 3:09PM on 10-11-2009
iTunes LP is based on standardized open-source XHTML5, CSS and Javascript, thus is clearly favorable over Adobe's proprietary Flash. I'm pretty sure it will be opened and specified more in the near future (like mini DisplayPort did, for example).
ramkanda said 2:40PM on 10-11-2009
I'm a little confused about iTunes LP. I'm a hip-hop fan so forgive my examples: I got the Jay-Z iTunes LP album and it came with the songs, liner notes, music videos. I then got Kid Cudi's iTunes non-LP album. It came with songs, digital booklet (liner notes), music videos....
As far as I can tell, the only thing I was missing was that large LP window with the Jay-Z equalizer. Am I missing something because $10k seems a lot to charge a label for just that.
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Chris Korhonen said 3:25PM on 10-11-2009
One thing I don't get is what is to stop the indie artists building their own files in the iTLP format, and distributing them on their own?
The file format isn't particularly complicated - we've managed to produce our own iTLP's which incorporate music, video, photos. The user just opens them in iTunes like they would an MP3 file, and it works seamlessly.
Charging indies $10,000 a time is likely to drive them away from the store if they choose to develop in this format - the only thing they would miss is the DRM aspect, as-well as providing a poor experience for the end user.
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Paul Motz said 3:41PM on 10-11-2009
It is all about timing. I understand that this is a deliberate slow rollout so nothing breaks (à la MobileMe). You will see Apple in the indie business in a big way (including third party support) at an affordable price by January.
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Nate MC said 4:43PM on 10-11-2009
iTunes has always been rather hostile to indies. I approached them years ago about getting the 5 bands I have distro rights for on the store, they told me I was not big enough for them to allow me into the store and that they would not be offering their services to us.
I had to wait 2 more years before TuneCore opened up the iTunes store to everyone.
Apple really doesn't care about indie music. They want you to go through a middle man. Which defeats one of the reasons to go digital.
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usingpond said 4:52PM on 10-11-2009
Ugh, this is so dumb. Are they trying to position it as some really expensive service? You'd charge maybe $1000 for someone to do this on a web site (which is essentially all it is). Or just in-house for free.
There's gotta be some stupid division of iTunes run by industry people who just don't get it -- the very idea of cost-prohibitiveness is antithetical to publishing content to anything run by Apple.
Xcode for example is FREE, which is relatively unique for a large software company to do. This doesn't need any crazy API or IDE or whatever, it's completely open and the only question here is "who should we allow to publish this?"
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jonathan said 5:01PM on 10-11-2009
To be fair, the iTunes LP format is sufficiently complex that should someone want to produce one, even my company would charge around $10k for it. There's visual design iterations, direction, assets creation, and code to consider. The one for Muse's new album was pretty technically advanced for HTML/CSS/JS.
Saying you could do the same for $1k is disingenuous at best. You could MAYBE find a freelancer to produce something for that kind of money, but it'd be rushed and probably suck.
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Sinister Joe said 5:17PM on 10-11-2009
It' Business Basics 101. You sometimes launch new products/services at a high price to manage demand. Apple produces the content for now. How many people do they have working on that? A dozen? two dozen? At $1k they would be flooded with demand and not keep up. Apple probably doesn't want to hire a small army of designers/producers for a new service they plan to open to third party developers/producers in the short term. So what do you do? Price it high, keep demand low, basically a public beta. If it's successful it will trickle down.
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frank.lowney said 5:33PM on 10-11-2009
If you've used iWeb or, better, RapidWeaver to create web pages, you already know that very sophisticated coding can be done without much, if any, expertise in HTML, CSS, Javascript and so on. Content expertise and a RapidWeaver template are sufficient.
That being the case, it is not a stretch to imagine templates that sell for $15-30 being available to create iTunes LP and iTunes Extra files quickly, easily and inexpensively. That handles the cost/expertise barrier.
What I don't have much knowledge about is what happens next. How do you get Apple to accept and publish an .itlp file? They are the gate keepers of iTunes so what if they simply say, "no, we don't have the time to review your LP file so forget about it."
In other words, is there a case of someone not with a major label who has gotten Apple to publish their home-grown LP file along with an album full of music? This would be the acid test I think.
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Chris Korhonen said 7:53PM on 10-11-2009
@frank.lowney:
The thing is, Apple are only the gatekeepers if you want to distribute your iTLP file through the store with DRM.
There is nothing to stop you distributing homebrew LP's through whatever channels to your users - this could be as a straight up download, or via. your own digital payment/delivery service. You just open them in iTunes and enjoy the LP functionality.
The question remains - will Apple take steps to prevent this, especially if companies begin to use this as a means to distributing digital content.
henk duivendrecht said 5:44PM on 10-11-2009
$10.000 for allowing a user to view a JPG and some lyrics? Am I missing something here?
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debt relief counseling said 7:21PM on 10-11-2009
Was there a real point to this
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