The boss of leading American independent label Victory Records has again spoken out against Apple's iTunes, this time via an opinion piece on US music industry website HitsDailyDouble. It is not the first time Tony Brummel has criticised the market leading download platform - a digital music service which he has refused to supply with his music.
In the new piece Brummel presents his grievances with iTunes in four sections. Firstly he claims that Apple has no real interest in music and that they are abusing the music industry's assets to sell computer hardware - why, he asks, hasn't the music industry demanded a share on iPod revenues given that their music is being used to sell the technology?
Secondly he objects to Apple's insistence that consumers should be able to buy albums on a track by track basis - he writes: "If you were buying a painting from Picasso, would you have said, "Look Pablo. I like this painting man. But I only like that corner part with the tree and the guy's finger. How about you chop off that corner and I give you $1 instead of $10 for the painting? Is that cool? I really do not care about the rest of what you were trying to convey in that piece of work".
Thirdly, he criticises Apple's unwillingness to negotiate, especially with independent labels, saying: "I have and will never sign a deal with any company that tells me, "The deal is non-negotiable. Go to our site, download the Agreement, sign it and fax it to us. Everyone is paid the same amount (really...) and has the same terms".
And fourthly he argues that while iTunes may be the big digital music player just now, the whole digital music market is too small for that to be as significant as some suggest: "If only 4% of this business is iTunes, who cares? Focus on the 96% which is traditional retail. Traditional retail supports music 1,000 times more than iTunes does. People are using iTunes because they like the iPod. When Dell or Samsung makes a better device, iTunes will lose relevancy".
You can read the full article at:
http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/newsPage.cgi?news06061m01