Friday, December 30, 2005
Singing a Different Tune
For a while now I've been petitioning iTnes music request pages to get them to include British artists, like K.T. Tunstall (right)that are currently not sold in the music store (this due to my addiction to Virgin radio UK which is streamed through iTune's radio feature). Yesterday, as I was looking at the iTunes catalog, I decide on a whim to switch my store view from the U.S. to U.K. Imagine my surprise when I found every song I've been requesting available there for immediate downloads. But, due to the licensing agreement that iTunes has with the labels, to do so would risk being suspending from the service.Wow, and double wow. If the labels truly want to reverse their declining business model, they need to find a way to allow digital access to work across the board, regardless of national boundaries. That's about twelve dollars of revenue lost because of no availability, just from one consumer, after three weeks of exposure to new music on the radio. I think that translates to millions being lost to myopia world-wide.
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