Seven Ways iTunes Changed the Music Industry...........

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In less than 10 years, iTunes has become so embedded in people’s everyday lives that it has all but disappeared into the overall fabric of our digital commerce.

It’s hard to remember a time when selling a song by itself for $3.49 was an option, which it was, at least as a proposal, before iTunes came along. Or when people had to buy an entire album in order to get that one hit single.

For the industry, many business practices have become the norm – getting 70% of each sale, having proper invoices detailing exactly how many tracks have been sold and the ability to sell music on just about every device with a chip in it. What’s now taken for granted as standard operating procedures had to be carved through months of painful haggling, desperate handwringing and enough cursing to fill a thousand books.

Here are seven ways in which iTunes changed the landscape, in the words of the executives in the music business who played a part in making it happen.



1. iTunes created the first legitimate digital music store that competed effectively with piracy.

“Steve [Jobs] created something that made it so easy for people to buy music. He had a complete thought that went from iTunes to the iPod. It made complete sense, and it was something he felt people would be willing to pay for. In the end, he was right. It was all about having the right product.”

Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment and former head of Universal Music Group


2. iTunes + iPod turned digital music into a fashion statement.

“Steve made digital music fashionable. The iPod white silhouette campaign was a perfect representation of that. He turned music into a fashion statement, a wearable fashion statement. He made it sexy.”

Paul Vidich, angel investor and former head of digital at Warner Music Group


3. Digital music became ubiquitous through the combination of iPods and iTunes.

“Apple made music ubiquitous in a way it never was before. And they set music free from large PCs. Earlier MP3 players did that, too, but not like this. That ubiquitousness has driven a consumption of music that is unparalleled in the history of the world.”

Jeff Price, founder of TuneCore and co-founder of spinART Records


4. iTunes leveled the playing field for independent labels and artists.

“Apple was the great equalizer. With iTunes, it was a meritocracy. You couldn’t buy shelf space like you had to with all the other retailers. If you presented great music, iTunes would give you promotional space right alongside the major labels. They made it possible for independent labels and artists to compete with the majors.”

Robb A. McDaniels, Founder & CEO of Isolation Network Inc. and INgrooves


5. The 99-cent download became a standard price.

Steve Jobs “said to us, 'There're two things you have to accept: 99 cents for every single song, and every song has to be sold as a single.' And we went home and swallowed hard because that was tough for us to accept for us as a music industry…. If certain songs were really popular we should be able to set the price at whatever we thought was the right price as opposed to the $1 price. Steve said, 'You know, you've got to keep it simple, you've got to keep it clean.’”

Thomas Hesse, President, Corporate Development and New Businesses, Chief Digital Officer at Bertelsmann. He was Chief Strategy Officer for BMG Music Entertainment when the iTunes Music Store launched


6. The economics of the single rose in importance.

“Some people say Apple unbundled the album. In my mind, it had already been unbundled by piracy. So why not do it in a way in which we get paid? That’s what iTunes really did.”

Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment



7. Labels got paid faster – much faster.

“Physical takes a lot of money to produce. There are a lot of headaches: shipping, tracking, breaking of CDs and vinyl. Back in 2003, … people were still buying CDs. But to get paid on CDs was difficult. There was always a problem getting paid. For a small label like Frenchkiss, we needed that money to come in every quarter. When the physical distributor would say, 'Hey, sorry, these all broke,' or 'The stores lost the CDs' or whatever excuses came up, it would stall our money. As digital started to grow, it allowed [labels] to get paid more promptly.”

Syd Butler, President of Frenchkiss Records

 

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Apple's Plan to Own the Entire Music Industry

July 12, 2016

Apple's ambition in music continues to be misunderstood. Most of the focus remains on the battle between Apple Music and Spotify for paid music streaming subscribers. However, the much more interesting development relates to Apple's desire to grab music mind share. Apple is aiming to leverage its strong balance sheet to control the music narrative, and in the process, remove all of the oxygen from the music streaming industry.
Music Is in Apple's DNA
Music not only served as inspiration for the iPod, but also justified Apple's first major foray beyond hardware and software. Apple got into the messy business of distributing and selling digital music because it believed hardware and software expertise gave the company advantages that other companies lacked. Apple saw the increasing amount of chaos in the music industry as an opportunity to package and sell a superior customer experience. The one thing that Apple was missing: access to songs.
To make the case that Apple should have access to music catalogs, Steve Jobs explained to the big five record labels, BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner, how Apple would control the entire music experience. Everything from running the store that would sell the songs all the way to selling the device used to listen to those songs would go through Apple. The goal was to impress the labels and have them see how no one was better positioned than Apple to offer a superior customer experience. Since the iTunes store was initially sold as being available only on a Mac, if things turned out negatively for the labels, the Mac's low market share meant the mistake would be contained.
The sales pitch worked, and the world quickly embraced Apple's model of buying single songs for $0.99. A million tracks were downloaded in the first six days. Over the next few years, the iTunes store became the go-to place to buy music, and more importantly, it grabbed a significant amount of music mindshare. Eventually, the first thing that came to mind when talking about music was either iTunes or iPod. Apple had captured the music industry.
The Beats Acquisition
The iTunes juggernaut remained relatively unscathed for more than a decade. During this time, Apple held nearly complete control over the changing music landscape. However, behind the shiny facade, cracks were appearing. Start-ups focused on music streaming were gaining traction. By early 2014, Spotify had amassed 55M users, Pandora was flying high on Wall Street, and YouTube was the most popular destination for listening to free music. While the iTunes cash cow of paid song downloads was still growing, it was clear that change was in the air. For the first time in years, Apple wasn't the one selling that change.
Acquiring Beats in 2014 for $3 billion, nearly five times more than it spent on its previous most expensive acquisition, was an admission from Apple that iTunes was in trouble. While management never officially positioned the acquisition as such, the fact that Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine was selling a "solution" to Apple was a clear giveaway that something was indeed broken and required a solution in the first place.
Strategy to Own the Music Industry
Following the Beats acquisition, I see Apple striving to take back the music narrative with the goal of eventually owning the entire music industry. There are four distinct steps to Apple's strategy.

1. Pivot into paid music streaming.
2. Leverage a strong balance sheet to control the music narrative.
3. Remove oxygen from the music streaming industry by grabbing revenue share.
4. Create an environment for independent artist sustainability.

Although each step becomes progressively more difficult, ultimately, the four are interrelated.
Step 1: Pivot into paid music streaming. Apple's first step in owning the music industry is the most straightforward: work with music rights holders to successfully pivot from paid downloads to paid music streaming. The paid music streaming industry is still in its infancy with approximately 90 million people paying for some kind of music streaming. This number will undoubtedly rise over the coming years. In 2015, revenue from paid music streaming outpaced revenue from paid downloads in the U.S. for the first time. It's clear Apple had no other choice but to make the jump into streaming.
Apple's entrance into paid music streaming last year will be remembered as a mixed bag. For users with iTunes playlists, Apple Music was hit or mess as Apple oversold its ability to seamlessly combine streaming with legacy iTunes. However, for mainstream users living firmly in streaming, Apple Music was much better received. Last month at WWDC, Apple unveiled an improved Apple Music that addresses some of the larger friction points that came to light over the past year.
When judging Apple's performance in paid music streaming, the primary metric to monitor has been the number of paid subscribers. Accordingly, much attention has been given to the feud between Apple and Spotify, the current leader in paid music streaming. With more than 30 million subscribers, Spotify has nearly twice the number of paid subscribers as Apple Music with their 15 million. However, Apple Music has shown much promise as it took less than a year to reach that 15 million paid subscriber benchmark. It took Spotify six years to reach the same number of paid subscribers.
Despite a few missteps, Apple has successfully accomplished the first step in its mission to eventually own the entire music industry. In just a year, the company has the second most popular paid music streaming product in the world with Apple Music.
As seen in Exhibit 1, Apple Music's subscriber growth trajectory has ramped much faster than Spotify's. Apple was able to take advantage of its vibrant mobile ecosystem, a broad geographic reach, and a much more mature music streaming market.
Exhibit 1: Apple Music vs. Spotify Paid Subscribers

Looking at recent subscriber trends, things become trickier to analyze. There is evidence that Spotify is moving the goalposts as its paid subscriber count is becoming diluted due to increased use of price discounts and promotions. These offers are inflating Spotify's paid subscriber numbers. Since Spotify has nearly 70M subscribers on its free tier, the company is likely trying to capitalize on this large user base by dangling discounts and promotions to entice upgrades. Apple Music has not seen this same level of price promotion. This means that the Apple versus Spotify battle will need to be judged along new metrics in the coming months.
In terms of other paid music streaming competitors, the industry remains disjointed. Riding on the back of big exclusives, Jay Z's Tidal has positioned itself as the third-largest paid streaming service with more than four million subscribers. Deezer, Rhapsody, and Pandora are close behind in terms of the number of paid subscribers. Meanwhile, SoundCloud's recent move into paid music streaming has not caused much of a stir.
Step 2: Leverage a strong balance sheet to control the music narrative. Apple's next step to own the music industry is to leverage its strong balance sheet in order to better position itself against the largest streaming players. Apple will use a portion of its $234 billion of cash to accomplish three things:

• Obtain music exclusives. Apple is betting big on music exclusives. By working closely with top music artists, Apple believes exclusives won't just help sell Apple Music subscriptions, but also go a long way in placing Apple Music in the center of the music discussion. Exclusives help drive buzz and press. As an example of how powerful exclusives can be, most of Tidal's 4.2M subscribers are a result of album exclusives from Beyoncé, Kayne West, and Rihanna. Meanwhile, Apple has seen exclusives from Drake, Future, and Chance the Rapper.
• Create original content. Instead of focusing just on exclusive songs and albums, Apple has shown a desire to work with labels and music artists to produce other forms of original content including feature-length movies (the Taylor Swift concert documentary), Beats 1 programming, and even scripted television series (Dr. Dre's "Vital Signs"). All of this exclusive content demonstrates how "winning" in the music industry is no longer just about having access to music. Music and video are becoming intertwined.
• Fund artists. Apple is increasingly looking and acting like a record label these days. While the company isn't exactly forthcoming in disclosing the extent of its involvement, we know Apple is bankrolling a number of artists when it comes to marketing expenses. Apple has produced a handful of music videos for Drake, M.I.A., The Weeknd, and Eminem.

Apple's goal with these three items is to place Apple Music in the center of the music discussion. If something big happens in the music scene, Apple wants it to occur within Apple Music. The key ingredients to accomplishing this step include lots of cash and the right kind of industry relationships. The Drake exclusive reportedly cost $19 million. It's clear this is where the battle is being fought for subscribers in music streaming. Spotify recently hired Troy Carter as global head of creator services and getting exclusives is a top priority.
Step 3: Remove oxygen from the music streaming industry by grabbing revenue share. With a successful pivot into paid music streaming, and now a focus on getting exclusives and building music relationships, Apple's next step toward owning the music industry is coming into focus. Apple will look to gain music streaming revenue share in order to form stronger relationships with music rights owners. In the process, Apple hopes to remove much of the oxygen in the streaming space.
The ultimate goal is to create a feedback loop in the music industry. If Apple Music is the top revenue source, the belief is this would lead to stronger relationships with music rights holders. In turn, stronger relationships would lead to a better Apple Music service with more exclusive content and additional access to artists. The better content will then drive additional paying subscribers and a larger piece of industry revenue share. Completing the loop, the higher revenue share will give music rights holders an even greater incentive to work with Apple. It was this goal to get close with music rights owners by going after industry revenue share that led Apple to bypass a free tier to Apple Music. This continues to be regarded as a controversial move given how Spotify has shown the ability to use its free tier as a tool to grow its paid tier.
By seeking to control much of the revenue in music streaming, Apple would be looking to make the streaming market that much less attractive for competitors. Removing the oxygen from the room would add further strain to music streaming companies' balance sheets. This is where Apple's rumored interest in Tidal comes into play. Any deal for Tidal would not be about getting access to the service's 4.2 million subscribers. Instead, Apple would be interesting in gaining access to Jay Z and friends. Losing out on Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Kanye West album exclusives over the past year irked Apple. While Apple Music eventually got access to most of the exclusive content, the amount of attention and breathing room that Tidal received was obviously not something Apple enjoyed. Acquiring Tidal and bringing Jay Z on board Apple Music will be a way for Apple to make Apple Music more attractive and capable of getting additional revenue share. (My complete analysis on the Apple/Tidal acquisition talks, including my thoughts on Tidal's current price tag, is available here.)
Step 4: Create an environment for independent artist sustainability. The last step for owning the music industry is arguably the most difficult but also the most intriguing. Up to now, we have largely focused on Apple attempting to gain control of the music industry by appealing to the top one percent of music artists, those who hold the most power in the industry. These artists are the ones that go on tour and are overall able to do things capable of shaking the boat when it comes to deals and news. In essence, these are the artists that are not relying on music streaming to find sustainability.
Missing from this strategy are indie artists, the musicians trying to find a way to not just reach their fans, but also find sustainability. I am not optimistic that paid music streaming is the answer for these artists. Something else is needed. This is where a platform that makes it possible for smaller artists to connect with their fans and then monetize their art can go a long way in adding sustainability to the music industry. If Apple is successful in acquiring the most valued music listeners, the company has a fighting chance to own such an indie platform given greater odds that people will spend money. However, as seen with the growing troubles surrounding the App Store and independent developer sustainability, it's clear that this step is still some distance from fruition.
The combination of owning a significant portion of the music industry's revenue share and having a platform that offers sustainability to all musicians would give Apple much of the available power in the music industry. By consolidating power, Apple would hold the strings to the entire music industry.
Potential Problems and Risks
With each step, Apple faces challenges and risks in its quest to own the music industry. Spotify continues to demonstrate skill and talent when it comes to understanding how consumers listen to music. The company should not be underestimated.
When it comes to exclusives, music rights owners have an incentive to make their music available to as many people as possible, potentially complicating Apple's strategy to bet big on exclusives. In addition, exclusives spread out across a number of streaming services are not user friendly, especially when viewed in light of the era of music exclusives found with brick-and-mortar retailers. An extensive expansion of music streaming exclusives may lead to a rise in music piracy.
For acquiring streaming revenue share, any friction in terms of Apple Music's design or user interface decisions may impact Apple's ability to sell the experience to customers. Finally, for independent artist sustainability, the biggest risk Apple faces is not dedicating enough resources to the cause. In addition, social will end up playing a key role in how artists find sustainability, potentially complicating Apple's efforts in this area.
Future Implications
If Apple is successful in terms of gaining control of the music industry for the second time in 15 years, there are quite a few significant implications. Apple would be able to pivot from legacy technology (paid music downloads) and win at a new business model (music streaming), despite being a few years late to the game.
Apple would utilize its user platform to establish a beachhead in a new technology and then leverage its balance sheet to find a more competitive position by grabbing revenue share. This strategy provides a framework for how Apple will look at its next content realm: video. While one can argue the music industry has certain qualities that make it much more friendly for a company like Apple to control compared to video, there are qualities both music and video share that Apple will look to exploit.
Apple's primary lesson from the early iTunes and iPod years was that a focus on the customer experience had an outsized impact on an industry that was undergoing significant change. It was much easier for Apple to offer a superior experience that customers valued when there was much chaos and unknown in the air. Apple's master plan to own the music industry involves adding chaos into the music industry by leveraging its $233 billion of cash. Apple continues to think big with its music ambitions.
http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/7/12/apples-plan-to-own-the-entire-music-industry​

 

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The entire music industry is just another feature of the iPhone

Apple spent a lot of time at WWDC heaping praise on developers — the middle point of the keynote featured a video celebrating all of the apps and experiences enabled by the iPhone and the App Store in the seven years of its existence. Neil deGrasse Tyson called the combination of apps and handheld devices "a watershed moment in civilization." When Tim Cook announced that watchOS 2 would allow developers to make native apps for the Apple Watch, he told the crowd they would "change people’s lives." Heady stuff, to be sure, but deserved — there’s no doubting the impact of mobile and apps on our lives.

Cook also said that Apple has now paid developers over $30 billion dollars since the App Store opened in 2008, which sounds like a lot until you realize that Apple posted profits of $13 billion and $18 billion in its last two quarters against revenues of $58 and $74 billion.

THERE’S JUST WAY MORE MONEY IN SELLING IPHONES THAN SELLING APPS

Apple makes more profits in six months than the total revenue paid to developers since the App Store opened. There’s just way more money in selling iPhones than selling apps, and every new app is really just a new feature that helps sell more iPhones.

That happens in big and small ways, but the relative scale of Apple’s ambition was sharply highlighted yesterday by Apple Music and Apple News, two new apps that reduce entire swaths of the media industry to mere features of the iPhone because Apple doesn’t have to worry about their business models.

Take Apple News and Flipboard, for instance. Apple News feels like a combination of Flipboard and Facebook’s News Feed, a news reading app that shows you stories it thinks you might like from topics and publications you’re interested in. It looks really nice, but it’s easy to dismiss it as just another Flipboard clone. There are a lot of them, and they’ve all failed. Flipboard’s entire business is an enhanced newsreading experience — just like Apple News, it pulls in stories from a selection of media partners and presents them to you in clean, modern layouts. It’s great! People love Flipboard.

But wait: Flipboard is failing, and the company has been trying to sell itself for weeks.

It’s just really, really hard to make money in news. Few companies are doing it, and even popular apps like Flipboard are struggling to turn users and eyeballs and attention into revenue. And because there’s no other obvious way to make money, Flipboard might just blink out of existence one day.

But Apple doesn’t have that problem at all — Apple News doesn’t need to make any money, ever. It just needs to make the experience of using an iPhone slightly better, so that people keep buying iPhones. Media partners who put content in Apple News keep 100 percent of the money they make selling their own ads; Apple only takes a 30 percent cut if it sells ads for you. Apple can integrate News ever more tightly into the iPhone, and it’ll be great for consumers, because no one at Apple ever has to balance the overall user experience against the desire to increase revenue or make money or do anything other than sell more iPhones.

You can’t turn around on the internet without reading hand-wringing about Facebook and the potential extortion of media companies that depend on the social network for traffic, but publishers signed up by the dozens for Apple News. (Vox Media included.) It doesn’t seem nearly as threatening, because Apple has virtually no incentive to make money against news the way Facebook does. Apple has $178 billion in the bank; Apple News could lose a million dollars a year for the next five years and it’s not clear anyone would even notice. Hell, Apple News could lose a million dollars a year for a hundred thousand years and Apple would still have over $50 billion to burn.

In one fell swoop, Apple’s taken the entire media machine and turned it into just another feature of the iPhone.

It’s the same with music, really. One of the big criticisms of the WWDC keynote I’ve been reading is that it was really two presentations: a first, tightly focused presentation of Apple’s new OS updates, and then a second rambling mess about Apple Music featuring Drake. Nothing about the presentation made it totally clear why Apple thinks its new music service will help kickstart the music industry into the streaming era, but then again, maybe it didn’t need to. Music might never be a huge business for Apple — the entire US music business did $11.83 billion in revenue last year, less than Apple makes in profit every three months.

APPLE DOESN’T HAVE ANY OF THESE PROBLEMS, BECAUSE IT JUST WANTS PEOPLE TO BUY IPHONES

Compare that to Spotify, which is building its entire business around music streaming. Spotify is in a jam right now: the more money it makes, the more money it loses, because of how its deals with the labels are structured. Spotify needs a free service because that’s how it gets people in the door and convinces them to pay, but the labels hate the free service because it doesn’t pay them enough. Spotify needs to add subscribers at a high rate to cover the revenue gap; the best way to add more subscribers is to aggressively sign people up for the free tier, increasing the revenue gap. The flames climb ever higher into the night.

Apple doesn’t have any of these problems, because it just wants people to buy iPhones. You can pay the $9.99 a month for Apple Music and unlock almost all the songs in the iTunes library, or not. It’ll barely dent Apple’s balance sheet either way; the company is doing a music service because it likes music and sees the writing on the wall as digital downloads collapse in favor of streaming services. Spotify has to invent an entirely new business model, but Apple just has to make listening to music marginally easier.

The entire music industry, turned into just another feature of the iPhone.

Now, Apple News could be terrible — it’s built on the wreckage of Newsstand, which did not exactly save the print industry. And parts of Apple Music sure feel like Ping, which has a special place in Apple’s Hall of Pretty Bad Ideas. But none of these products are existentially important to Apple; they’re just features, ways to make the iPhone more compelling and interesting. That’s sort of incredible; it’s hard to think of another company that can just subsume an entire industry in the service of making its products more attractive.

The real question is: what industry will turn into Apple’s next big feature?

 

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A decade of iTunes singles killed the music industry

by Adrian Covert @CNNTechApril 25, 2013: 6:09 PM ET

After Apple's iTunes Music Store debuted on April 28, 2003, sales of 99-cent digital singles surged. But that had a disastrous impact on overall music revenue.
Believe it or not, Apple's iTunes Music Store turns 10 this weekend. Although iTunes has in many ways been a godsend to fans of digital music, it has been a source of endless frustration for the music industry.

Since the introduction the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, music sales have plummeted in the United States -- from $11.8 billion in 2003 to $7.1 billion last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. When adjusted for inflation, revenue has been more than halved since Apple (AAPL) launched the iTunes Music Store.

Interestingly, during that same time, people have been buying more music than ever. How is that possible? It's because the iTunes Music Store popularized the cheap digital single.

After manhandling the major record labels during a series of now-legendary negotiations, then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs was able to initially offer digital albums for $10 and any individual track off that album for 99 cents.

That changed the music industry forever. When music sales reached their peak in 2000, Americans bought 943 million CD albums, and digital sales weren't even a blip on the radar. By 2007, however, those inexpensive digital singles overtook CDs -- by a wide margin -- generating 819 million sales to just 500 million for the CD.

Related: See iTunes' evolution from the early days to iTunes 11

Last year, there were 1.4 billion digital singles sold, dwarfing CD sales by a factor of 7. More than three-quarters of all music-related transactions were digital singles last year, according to the RIAA.

Apple's iTunes is behind that sea change. According to NPD estimates, iTunes is currently responsible for 63% of all digital music sales. Even after the emergence of competition from Amazon and Google.

The popularity and ease of downloading cheap digital singles has transformed the industry. Not since the vinyl era has the single been this popular. The smaller, cheaper "45" record dominated music in the 1950s and '60s, but the music industry wised up in the '70s.

Vinyl, cassette and CD singles were always cheaper for consumers, but manufacturing costs were not. Nor was the space required to house them in stores. Thus, the single became harder and harder to come by.

Related: How iTunes crushed music sales

The reality is if singles were as available a decade ago as they are now, they would have been just as popular. Music nerds notwithstanding, the average music listener has really only cared about a few tracks off an album at most.

So how was it that the iTunes Music Store, with its proprietary file format and limited device support, that led this charge?

By the time the iTunes Music Store arrived, the iPod was well on its way to becoming a run away success, which meant that Apple already had an installed base of customers using iTunes.

Competitors, such as Rhapsody, were mostly concerned with streaming music. Most crucially, their files weren't designed for use on the iPod, let alone most other MP3 players.

Without the iPod, iTunes and its music store were seemingly innocuous. But the magical combination of buying a song instantly and taking it with you anywhere gave music lovers a good reason to ditch the CD.

Can music sales ever come back? Likely not, says NPD analyst Russ Crupnick. He believes musicians will have to increasingly rely on touring, merchandise sales and endorsement deals to make up for lost album sales.

The subscription streaming services of Spotify and other music apps could help bolster the business, Crupnick says, but the thought of those bringing the industry back to its former peak seems lofty.

Ironically, it could be Apple that is in danger of losing its grip on the music business. Whether or not Apple can maintain its relevance in digital music could very well depend on its ability totransition to the streaming subscription model, which is rapidly adding users.

Nevertheless, the iTunes Music Store's effect on the way people buy music over the past 10 years has ensured that the music industry will never again be the same.

CNNMoney (New York)First published April 25, 2013: 5:22 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/25/technology/itunes-music-decline/

 

[djpolo]

Thanks OP good info. Guess after SJ died they changed that $1 per single thing. I miss the 12 inch remix days of TR. I use to be in a record pool and those 12inch remixes were the shit.

 

[djpolo]

Napster changed the game. You cant stop piracy. Now if only we can do the same for movies. I would pay to get a 1080 copy of something still at the movies and chill at the house to avoid the drama of the movies. I went to go see SS the other day and had to pay $4 for a bottle of water when i brought a bigger bottle from the crib that I had frozen to last the whole movie. I told them do you guys have anything healthy to eat? He said no. I said welp if Im gonna pay $4 for some water I already have Im going back to the car to get my almonds. Ill be back.

 

[mailboxpimp]

Thanks OP good info. Guess after SJ died they changed that $1 per single thing. I miss the 12 inch remix days of TR. I use to be in a record pool and those 12inch remixes were the shit.

yea..... I miss 12 inch remixes..... the type where the entire song would be redone with a totally different sound!!!! multiple versions....
t

somebody should make a 12inch remix version thread in the music section.

 

[djpolo]

Fund artists. Apple is increasingly looking and acting like a record label these days. While the company isn't exactly forthcoming in disclosing the extent of its involvement, we know Apple is bankrolling a number of artists when it comes to marketing expenses. Apple has produced a handful of music videos for Drake, M.I.A., The Weeknd, and Eminem.

Apple on some sneaky shit. As I continue to read I get it.
Apple's Plan to Own the Entire Music Industry

Thsy come at the labels like hey were just trying to get the music to the masses more effciently and after gaining trust comes the take over, Nice.

 

[djpolo]

yea..... I miss 12 inch remixes..... the type where the entire song would be redone with a totally different sound!!!! multiple versions....
t

somebody should make a 12inch remix version thread in the music section.

Exactly.

 

[shams]

yea..... I miss 12 inch remixes..... the type where the entire song would be redone with a totally different sound!!!! multiple versions....
t

somebody should make a 12inch remix version thread in the music section.

Labels stopped producing them and stopped releasing acapellas because most of those remixes were better than the actual singles.

 

[mailboxpimp]

Labels stopped producing them and stopped releasing acapellas because most of those remixes were better than the actual singles.

WOW!!!!! WHAT ELSE DO YOU KNOW..... can you explain that with more detail if possible?

 

[VAiz4hustlaz]

Labels stopped producing them and stopped releasing acapellas because most of those remixes were better than the actual singles.

WOW!!!!! WHAT ELSE DO YOU KNOW..... can you explain that with more detail if possible?

This.