Digital Technology for Digital Living.
April 18, 2005
Music Industry Plays Games In Australia.
In a press release today, Sydney lawyer, music industry commentator, and academic, Alex Malik has revealed further evidence that the recording industry in Australia has little respect for their customers.
Jesse McCartney’s single, “Beautiful Soul”, is currently number one on the Australian single charts. Unfortunately the record label has discontinued production of the single. Now why in the world would a label end the life of a single while it’s still at the top of the chart? Malik believes that it’s to force customers to buy the newly released album, which of course provides a greater profit margin.
The evidence is compelling. Unless you get lucky and find the single in a store, the only method for getting the song is to buy the album, or use illegal methods such as peer-to-peer technology. Even every online Australian music store doesn’t have the single available to purchase. McCartney isn’t alone.
Mr Malik’s comments follow his recent study, which showed that many of the songs in the Australian singles chart, including McCartney’s #1 hit song were unavailable to be purchased in Australia as a paid download. In the study, Mr Malik found that 20% of the songs in the top half of the Australian top 50 could not be purchased from any of the authorised retailers of digital downloads. Many tracks could be purchased on one or two of the websites but not all websites. Less than one third of all recordings in the top half of the singles chart could be purchased from all authorised MP3 websites.
This begs the question, when will iTunes Music Store come to town, and when it does, will it stock these elusive singles? There are several rumours for the launch date, with all indications that it’ll be before June.
Cross posted to The Gadget Show.
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