Why You Should Not Buy All of Your Music from iTunes

I love Apple.

I really do.

I own a Mac, which I absolutely adore - and wouldn't go back to PC if you paid me. (Actually, I probably would - but I'd feel pretty bad about it.)

I've abandoned Microsoft Office for Apple's far cooler & sleeker iWork.

I'm obsessed with iMovie.

I have an iPod, which I don't leave home without.

I don't have an iPhone, but I really wish I did.

And I have iTunes, which - assuming I'm awake - is always playing something. (Right now, of course, Manic Street Preachers' Peeled Apples.)

Basically, my life revolves around Apple. If they ceased to exist tomorrow, it's very likely I would perish right along with them.

So why, then, am I requesting you boycott iTunes?

And why am I telling you that Steve Jobs is a maniacal tyrant who needs to be stopped?

I'm not. Not even close.

What I'm suggesting is that when you purchase music from independent bands - or Australian bands, since Aussie's are getting absolutely sewered by iTunes these days (see linked articles below) - you buy it in whatever fashion will bring the most money to the artists. I understand that it's less convenient, and you might have to whip out your credit card or sign into Paypal, but if you cut iTunes out of the picture, you're giving a bigger chunk to the artists themselves. The ones - at least when we're talking about the independent ones - who really need it. (And if you like their music, and you want them to keep making more, then you should be doing whatever you can to help support them.)

Now, a common argument - and the one that's often used to justify pirating - is that artists don't make a whole lot from their album sales anyways, and the majority of their profits will come from touring. That is, of course, a fairly weak rationalization, equivalent to my saying it's okay to steal french fries from a burger joint because their primary profits are from hamburgers - but that's for another hub.

I am going to run with the burger metaphor for a second, though - largely because I'm hungry, and hamburgers are delicious. Now let's say one of the restaurants is McDonald's (aka Madonna - since she's about as natural as a Chicken McNugget), and the other is a new organic diner (aka The Tree Ring, since I currently have their touring schedule minimized on my desktop).

So at McDonald's, they spend $0.50 per burger, and charge customers an average of $5.50 per burger.

At the diner, they pay $1.75 per burger, and charge customers $2.

On any given day, McDonald's sells an average of one thousand burgers, turning a profit of $5,000, whereas the diner sells an average of 50 burgers a day, and subsequently turns a profit of $12.50.

Now, with regards to the french fries, the restaurants pay roughly the same price, as the owner of the organic diner just happens to come from a family of potato farmers (lucky guy...). Since they also charge roughly the same amount for the fries, each restaurant makes a $1 profit per sale of french fries.

So, the question for you math kids is: are both equally dependent on the sale of their french fries?

No, of course not.

And the same applies when you compare indie bands to pop stars. When indie bands tour, their aim is primarily to get their name out there. They want to do whatever's necessary to get as many people at the show as possible - and that typically means charging very little, if anything, for tickets. As an example - albeit an extreme one, as all indie bands don't have prices this low - you can click here to see The Tree Ring's current tour schedule, with prices listed on the right-hand side.

Once you've looked at that, you can then compare it with Madonna's 2008 tour, which StubHub claims to have averaged at $306 per ticket.

Okay, so now you get it - indie bands aren't making money from tours, and are consequently very dependent on album sales; the whole point of these profitless shows is to convince you to buy their album, and ideally convince your friends to buy it as well.

But if you don't buy their music on iTunes, where could you possibly get it...?

Go to their website!

Fortunately, there are some excellent publishing platforms out there, such as bandcamp, who enable artists to create stores rather easily on their sites. Beyond taking a smaller cut, bandcamp benefits its clients in that it allows them far more freedom, as they are free to do the following:

• determine the price of their music, even making it free if they so desire;
• offer their digital music in a variety of formats (mp3 320K, mp3 VBR Low, mp3 VBR High, FLAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, AAC Low, and AAC High);
• create whatever discount codes they'd like;
• sell digital and physical merch together, and create package deals;
• include 'bonus' materials with particular purchases (e.g., buy a shirt, get a sticker).

This is not to say that I'm entirely against iTunes, or believe that they provide no benefit for independent artists. They dominate the digital music industry, and provide an excellent resource for indie artists to connect with new fans.

If it weren't for iTunes, for example, I never would have been introduced to Andrew Bird years ago - and that would have been a real shame, as it doesn't get much better.

The point is that once you're already fans, you no longer need to rely on iTunes. Go to the band's website, subscribe to their e-mails, and when you want to buy some of their music (because, remember, they aren't profiting from the burgers, so no stealing the french fries!), try to make the purchase as direct as possible. Sometimes, your only options will be iTunes, and when that's the case, by all means buy the album from them. And when you're buying Jay-Z & Kanye's new album, go ahead and get it on iTunes as well - they'll be just fine.

When you can, however, make the effort to give the independent bands that extra buck or two, and help support them in their effort to continue bringing you great music. (And perhaps if you're lucky, there might even be a sticker in it for you...)