David Emery OnlineYouTube killed the iTunes star
9 August 2006
Apparently, in a further move to show how outdated modernise the UK singles chart music video sales are going to count towards chart position. Read more on NME.com
I’m of the opinion that this is a fundamentally stupid move; but doesn’t surprise me in the least. The music industry’s current drive towards monetising video is fascinating in the contradictions it causes. Music videos have always historically been about promotion; obviously if you don’t have a video then the multiple music tv channels won’t play your song – and if you have a really good video it’ll help build buzz about both the song and the artist.
Now, contrast that with trying to sell music videos. Firstly, we’re still not really seeing proof that demand is there for music videos in their current purchasable state. Secondly, how do you convince people that something they have always got for free, and continue to get for free on tv, is now magically worth something?
Then of course, is the YouTube dilemma. YouTube, now one of the most trafficked sites on the internet, is almost certainly the most important place you can put your music video. Front page coverage on YouTube is now probably more useful then a low rotation on MTV for a large demographic of potential music buyers; do you sacrifice that, though, for more (any?) download video sales.
Sure, the videos on YouTube aren’t great quality, but in most cases it doesn’t really matter (it’s not really too different to VHS quality, and we managed with that didn’t we?); they’re not that much then what you’d buy anyway. This is coupled with the other problem inherent to YouTube: even if you don’t put your video on YouTube, it’ll appear on there anyway – and stay there (if you take one copy of a video down, three more appear in it’s place…).
The other problem with adding music video sales to the charts, other then the stupidity of anyone trying to make money off them in the first place, is where you buy them from: iTunes. You are really not going to buy them anywhere else, are you? This would be great if their wasn’t several problems with iTunes being the only retailer in this market.
To start with, and this harks back to some of my previous points, is the actual product that you get. From iTunes, this means a DRM’d 320×240 Quicktime movie. The quality of this isn’t great by any means, so the YouTube quality argument goes straight out of the window, and the DRM (which disallows any format changing or burning, unlike their music DRM) makes the product much less appetising.
However, the major problem of the iTunes music video store is that Apple doesn’t care about it in any major way. Sure, they like selling videos – and have according to the NME story have sold 35 million since October 2005 – but what they like selling (and what sells) are TV shows. The focus on TV shows means that Apple couldn’t care less about what music videos they have on the store – they’re just an added bonus.
Which is why the music video selection on iTunes is awful.
They just don’t get videos onto the store quickly, and if you’re an independent they might not get your videos on their at all.
If music video sales get counted towards the charts, they’re only going to get skewed even more towards major label pop, and no-one wants that, do they?