Betalogue

USA Today has a good article about Magnatune, an on-line music distribution service that might be closer to what the future of the recording industry is than Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

The sad truth about the iTunes Music Store is that it’s a compromise that leans too heavily (for my taste) on the side of the major record labels. For the most part, it does not provide access to rare, out-of-print recordings. For the most part, it sells the same crap that’s already available in traditional record stores. Who needs yet another way to buy a Britney Spears or Céline Dion album?

Until Apple focuses much more heavily on independent labels, restructures its pricing arrangements so that more money goes to the artists themselves, and forces the major labels to open up their vaults of scandalously inaccessible recordings, the iTunes Music Store will pretty much remain an artificially maintained status quo. The real on-line music revolution will continue to take place elsewhere.

Besides, the iTunes Music Store is not even available in Canada yet! :-)

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Wednesday, January 21st, 2004 at 11:01 pm and is filed under iTunes, Music, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.