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Looks Like That Plan To Remove Songs From iTunes Didn't Work Out So Well
from the music-back-on-itunes dept
Last month, we wrote about how some record labels were experimenting with waiting until a song became popular and then removing it from iTunes, hoping that this would somehow encourage people to buy the physical CD instead. Of course, it appeared to really just help cover bands who quickly filled the void (and it's likely that unauthorized file sharing shot up). However, it didn't create a huge boost for CD sales -- though, it didn't appear to harm the artist all that much either. Jon Healey over at the LA Times lets us know that the music of Estelle, for whom this experiment was conducted, is now back on iTunes, and the Nielsen SoundScan data suggested not much of a change in album sales. They went up slightly during the time period, but not significantly -- and clearly the label decided that it was better just to have the songs back on iTunes. Hopefully other labels recognize that making it more difficult to get music isn't a particularly intelligent idea.
