On Offering Albums as Complete Works

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

randall — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:03:13 GMT

If "the album stands as a unified piece of art, with all tracks weaving a cohesive narrative."

Than it should be offered with gapless playback.

;)~

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

David Abraham — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:52:41 GMT

Cesar,

...all good on the "Artists' choice" angle...but what is the Zune team going to do about MusicNet? they've locked out some of the big indie aggregators.

not sure how we can support the idea of Zune Marketplace when we can't get our Albums on there, and meanwhile we are selling thousands of downloads per month on iTunes...AmazonMP3 is looking pretty promising as well.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

LunarFlame17 — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:18:29 GMT

"What does get my goat though are those albums where chunks of the album are simply not available on Marketplace in any way."

Yeah what's up with that? I can name several albums off the top of my head that are not jazz that have the same problem. "Ire Works" by the Dillinger Escape Plan (ZMP only has 2 tracks from the album, out of a total of 13!) and almost every album by Neurosis offered by ZMP is missing a few tracks. And while I'm ranting, what's up with the seemingly arbitrary way certain albums are excluded from ZMP? Anberlin just released an album called "Lost Ones" and it is not available from ZMP in any form. Every other album by Anberlin is available, and "Lost Ones" was released by the same record label that released those other albums. If there is a good reason for this, I'd like to know, because it sure seems completely arbitrary to me.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Dan H — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:09:14 GMT

This commentary from iLounge summarizes my view of the situation quite well: (Cesar, sorry 'bout the link to an "i" site, but the commentary is a good read)

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/wrong-thurr-how-dupri-jay-z-and-universal-misunderstand-itunes/

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

DaveWorld — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:39:48 GMT

While I respect Jay-Z move (I am one of his biggest fans who went out and bought the CD), he should understand that us consumers went through a period of the record labels pushing one hot single with the rest being trashy filler music on albums. iTunes came along and gave us consumers the freedom to pick and choose what songs we want of an album. I respect iTunes policy because it gives us consumers the choice between buying singles or buying the full album. If Apple were to grant Jay-Z his wish and only sell the album and not singles, then many more artist and record labels would want the same. It would be like stepping back in time where you had to buy the whole album with filler music in order to here that one hot single.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Khidr — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:51:33 GMT

I think this should absolutely be up to the artist, and I certainly appreciate the constraints MS is under to orchestrate deals with artists to include their works on the marketplace and as part of the zune pass. What does get my goat though are those albums where chunks of the album are simply not available on Marketplace in any way.

I see it a lot with jazz albums, and the problem there is that oftentimes they have guest artists that have agreements with other labels not interested in putting their artists on marketplace, but nonetheless, it's much worse to only have access to parts of an album. Unless of course I'm wrong and those missing tracks are downloadable if you buy the whole album separate from zune pass? wouldn't know.

Check out John Scofield: This meets that, to see what I'm talking about.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

LunarFlame17 — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:17:12 GMT

I totally agree with what Adam K says. I couldn't care less about Jay-Z, but Radiohead? How come I can't download Radiohead's albums as part of my subscription? I WANT to download their entire albums, I just don't want to have to pay extra to do it. This does kinda seem more like concern for profits rather than concern for artistic integrity. If artistic integrity was really their main concern, there's no reason why you guys couldn't make it so that Zune Pass subscribers have to download the entire album.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Jimla in Redmond,WA — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:39:24 GMT

A single audio track of an entire album would solve both gapless problem and artistic integrity. If an artist would not allow this with a Zune Pass then they only into the money.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Adam K — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:13:18 GMT

I wish there was an option that forced you to download the entire album, but didn't make you _buy_ the album. Specifically, I wish the entire album was part of the Zune Pass, but in order to listen to it, you have to download the full thing.

You guys should implement this--it'd be a great middle ground between artistic integrity/album completeness and adherence to Zune Pass ideas.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Jaxim — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:30:20 GMT

>jaxim - same counterpoint - it wasn't "the industry's" choice, it was the artists'.

I never said that some "artists" wouldn't choose for themselves to produce an album. My point is that the album is a dying format, and the consumer is the king and eventually the consumer will win out. Many consumers want DRM-free music and we're gradually getting it. Many consumer want singles and at some point, most bands and singers will producing singles.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Matt — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:21:18 GMT

I can understand Jay-Z's position on this and thats ok. Saying "all tracks weaving a cohesive narrative" like a lot of albums before it. I'm guessing the music runs into each other as the tracks play. Pitty the Zune doesn't have gapless playback. When will we see this????

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

aaron — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:34:27 GMT

i agree artists should have control over the way the music is sold and presented. consumers also have a right not to purchase an entire crappy album for just one decent song if they choose to. of course, don't pretend to be naive; there is some backlash against Apple. there are so many grabbing greedy hands right now. personally, i'll just get my music from emusic and the russian site, go music. both are legal and way cheaper than zune or itunes.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Dan H — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:58:06 GMT

You'll get no argument from me on Radiohead.

It's simply my opinion that the overwhelming argument for selling whole albums only usually comes from the record companies and is not motivated by what consumers want, but by their desire to protect their profits.

I think it's rare that the whole album argument is really an issue of artistic integrity.

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

Cesar Menendez — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:30:48 GMT

True, Dan - we can never know what's in Jay-Z's head "I don't know what you take me as/Or Understand the Intelligence that Jay-Z has" ;)

what about Radiohead though? non-record industry moguls like Radiohead also make the decision to go album-only. Before they decided to sell entirely direct, they were on capitol - home to Corinne Bailey Ray and Ok Go. Hard to argue that it was a label decision for Radiohead?

re: On Offering Albums as Complete Works

The Baker — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:28:23 GMT

I'm not really sure where the disgreement is coming relative to ZMP. I was incredibly disappointed initially when I was unable to download Jay-Z's album using my subscription. I was then incredibly pleased when the subscription model paid off for me, the consumer, in (eventually) giving me an option not available to iTunes type single song only services.

Regardless of whether or not you support the album only model, there shouldn't be any question about the value of Zune's subscription model.