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iTunes is great, but…

a few months ago an old colleague/friend who I hadn’t heard from for a couple of years called me about his upcoming CD release:

“…sounds great Steve. When will you have the master finished?”, I asked
“Actually we finished it last summer, but”
“So you’ve been sitting on it?”
“No, we tried the iTunes music store route and it’s been going nowhere fast!”
“Hmmm, honestly Steve I’ve heard that one a lot lately…”

Don’t get me wrong, I love the iTunes program. We’ve been referring to ours as Jukebacca, (Juke for short) for the last 4 years… yeah o.k. we’re Star Wars junkies. We have over 300 GB of music and video, how ’bout you? I’ve also been through six iPods (with five kids sometimes daddy “looses things”) and even Mom, keeper of the old school analog Jedi way, broke down and got a Nano for her afternoon jog. SO BELIEVE ME, I GET IT, WE LOVE IT!!

iTunes is great, but… something still ain’t right here.

My buddy Steve confessed that he thought their lack of sales at iTMS was ‘their bad’ initially. He’s always been super critical of his own music, so I was not surprised to hear him say, “At first we thought maybe our music just sucked”. But then he said something that really blew my mind… he said “Dude, I looked online everywhere, searched Google, Yahoo, etc.. and no one, NOT ONE indie artist was bragging, blogging, or even mentioning anywhere how they made any real money from sales at the iTunes music store, NOT A SINGLE ARTIST!!?????” So I poked around myself searching. Everywhere I found countless praises that the model is “too cool”… but sadly, it looks like no one’s making any significant revenue (except maybe Apple and the labels).

Worse yet, it appears the indie acts are the hardest hit of all! I’ve heard over and over how bands are putting their music up on iTunes, Napster, etc.. but time and time again it’s the same thing – no one has seen any significant money, nothing really worth mentioning. So just because you have music posted online, doesn’t mean buyers are beating down the doors of the unknown, unsung heroes of the indie scene. Bummer, this is where all the great revolutionary music is usually nurtured and then evolves into the next BIG THING!!

I told my bud not to take it personal, “Zero downloads blows, but don’t feel too bad Steve, even the major labels and acts aren’t making big bucks online these days”.

So Steve ran his usual 1000 piece CD release and stated selling grass-roots at shows etc. Cool part was, he sold out after just a month and now he’s running another 5000 discs – ROCK ON STEVE!!