Hey, remember vinyl? Remember when there were no such things as cassettes, compact discs, or mp3s? No? Damned whippersnappers. Why, when I was your age, we didn’t have the “BitTorrents” and the “filesharing”. We bought our music on extremely fragile black platters of wax that we broke all the time! And some of them only had two songs on them and we liked it that way!
Well, for those of us who remember and pine for those halcyon, carefree days, Apple Computer has introduced a new format for buying iTunes music: the Digital 45. These will be two songs by an artist that cost less than buying them singly. Looking at the initial offerings, it seems as though the songs could very well be the same ones that were available on actual 45s (also known as “singles”) back in The Day. Usually, the record companies would put an established hit together with a deeper track as a way to promote purchasing the full album. Sometimes it even worked.
What’s crazy about this new thing, though, is that the metaphor follows the limitations of a physical product, which is no longer a concern in the all-digital age. So will Apple eventually offer three songs at a reduced price? Four songs? How committed are they to the pursuit of nostalgia? Will we be able to buy mp3s with the sound of the scratches and hiss common with vinyl albums?
Comments
Kevin
July 14th, 2009 - 4:50:57 PM
Sounds like a good idea - better value, coupled with a wider range in what you get (i.e. the single, plus - as you mentioned - a deeper cut). allows for serendipity, and - again as you said - maybe an album purchase. Sounds like a good model to me. I guess we'll see if it works though. Plus, now - maybe - people will understand what I mean when I refer to B-sides. One can hope, at least.
1