AC/DC have caused a major hubbub in recent days on news the band isn’t going to make its next album available through iTunes – but reports into the same may be based on flawed information.
AC/DC frontman Angus Young, whose band refuse to make their songs available on iTunes, said the move is simply because they don’t want fans simply downloading a few tracks from albums.
“We don’t make singles, we make albums,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “We believe the songs on any of our albums belong together. If we were on iTunes, we know a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album. We don’t think that represents us musically.”
AC/DC will release their new album, ‘Black Ice’, on October 20 – but not through iTunes, with Young allegedly claiming that the band’s back catalogue sales have actually climbed since the band decided to spurn the Apple music site.
But Bob Lefsetz argues that AC/DC fans will get the album any way they can – they’ll take it off the ‘Torrents if it isn’t available on iTunes.
“The joke is illegal acquisition will dwarf CD sales. Whatever is sold legitimately will be distributed online INSTANTLY! Which is great for the band ultimately. Breeding new fans. But, like the rest of the industry, the band wants to ignore this,” Lefsetz wrote.
It gets better – in a chat with the head of AC/DC’s label, Lefsetz is told the label chief doesn’t believe the interview is real, “Angus doesn’t talk like that.” A little confusion reveals an interview did take place – in Germany. It’s all a little “complicated”.
“We live in a track world. You can either admit it, or get run over by the future. AC/DC’s album will be available track by track. And that’s how it will be listened to. The only difference is, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO GET PAID!” Lefestz concludes.
It’s a time at which the music industry is pulling out all the stops, not just to fight file-sharing, but also to battle iTunes – which saved the industry.
This week, BPI chief Geoff Taylor even went so far as to slate iTunes for refusing to make its music interoperable with other DRM types. When challenged on this, given some of his members are precisely the labels that won’t license their music DRM-free (interoperability guaranteed) through iTunes Plus, he backtracked slightly and said Apple needs to work it out with individual labels. But his anti-iTunes barb remained echoing through the air.
But are the labels right to sue music fans? Outspoken UK protest singer Billy Bragg certainly doesn’t think so, telling a music industry gathering this week: “You know who the pirates are? The pirates are our fans, when you sue our fans, you drive our fans away.” Bragg believes the entire music industry requires root and branch change, and that the first focus in this should be fair income for artists, large and small.