iTunes Royalties: Nothing Like the Old Days for Classic Acts

Kevin Maney writes: A Wall Street Journal story seems to imply that keeping songs off iTunes is the equivalent of plugging a leak. Instead of buying songs off Apple's dominant service, fans are forced to slog to a store and buy the physical CD, so CD sales are better than if an album gets released both on CD and iTunes. And since the royalties on a CD are way more than royalties on iTunes -- because, for one thing, when you buy a CD you're forced to buy all the songs on the album that otherwise suck -- artists like Kid Rock and the Eagles are making a calculation that they should run from iTunes the way you'd run from a buffalo stampede.

Although, it seems to me that the calculation only works if you primarily sell your music to an audience over 30 -- people who might still have a CD habit. All the rest of us who rely almost entirely on downloads -- well, you plug the iTunes leak and we're either going to (a) not buy your music or (b) find it somewhere else on the Web, which could very well result in zero royalties for the artist, if yaknowutimean.

Anyway, I wouldn't do that to my legion of rabid fans. I'd previously mentioned here the new CD, Privacy, from Kevin Maney & His Briefs. I'm proud to say it is now on iTunes.