The Chili Peppers' Sour Grapes Over iTunes

Culture

from the backwards-step dept

A few weeks back, we pointed out that a number of well-known musical acts were making a huge mistake in opting out of making their music available at iTunes, unless it’s only available as a full album download. Now, even Business Week is telling the bands that this is a backwards move. They specifically single out the Red Hot Chili Peppers for missing out on an opportunity as a well-respected band that could control their own destiny (unlike some of the other bands speaking out against single song downloads). The writer says that this move makes them nothing more than shills for the music industry party line, rather than real musicians. He concludes by saying: “Bad album rock is dying, and no one — least of all paying listeners — should want it kept on artificial life support.” It’s a simple fact, if the songs are good, people will download them. If they have a strong core of fans, they’ll download all the songs anyway, just to have a complete collection. Cutting out the casual fan because they don’t want to be forced to buy music they don’t want is silly and doesn’t do anything helpful for anyone.