iTunes Music Store Dance Selection Is Limited
The 90s were tough for clubbers like me. Because it’s rare for an artist to get more than one song into the mainstream, dance albums are usually compilations from various artists. This make buying dance music a guessing game decided largely by the skill of the cover’s graphic artist.
I bought my last physical CD around 1998, and am just as guiltyas everyone else as spending the Napster years stealing music left and right. Now that corporations weren’t deciding the music I could choose to listen to, I discovered many new artists and genres of dance music.
Enter 2005 and the iTunes music store- It’s better than the Wal-mart Death Star, but it’s too closely modeled after the American music industry.
American dance music just honestly sucks. Its attack of the Britney/Jessica/Christina clones, and iTunes has become part of the process of marketing me a manufactured product. Dance music is about escapism and fantasy, and blatant marketing taints its purity for people like me that roll their eyes at a product for the masses like “Jenny from the Block”
Advertising Ashley Simpson on the iTunes dance music page was a crime against the gay community. iTunes needs to add better tools to let me surf through unknown dance artists and find music not advertised in the mainstream media.
Unknown artist Emma B recorded a single song “What you need tonight” that was a steal at $0.99 cents, but it’s a random chance I found it.
The iMixes are a step in the right direction, but the database needs to respond faster.
iTunes should hold on moratorium on all American music until it fairly represents Europe. Their dance divas are exponentially more talented than their manufactured American counterparts. When your music is played it actual clubs and not MTV videos, you get a product that will actually make you want to dance.
The store also needs to understand that 30 seconds is not enough time to judge the quality of house and trance music. These musical genres build upon each other in series of progression, and are about atmosphere. It’s like trying to deciding to read a book based on a single page.
iPod commercials feature people gyrating in ecstasy to independent dance music they’ve never heard before. It would be great if that was what Apple came through and delivered.
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Comments
iTunes needs a lot of work. Apple shouldn’t be suprised that the studios want to raise their rates when all iTunes does is provide another marketing arm for the Big5. Hell let’s make a deal..let the Christina/Brittney/Ashley studios raise the rates on their crappy songs. I don’t buy’em anyways. Once they do that Apple simply needs to start creating portions of iTunes that cater to small label and independents. Show them some freakin love Steve!
I discovored some Quebecois (French-Canadian) music I liked this weekend (http://www.vikrecordings.com/projetorange/multimediaen.html)
so I decided to buy the CD. iTunes? Not there.
Maybe the all-Canadian puretracks.com? Nope. They only work in windows, only sell in Canada, and won’t even disclose to US Americans what they sell (!)
OK—how about archimbeault.ca(sp)—a leading seller in Quebec? They’ll show me what they have, but don’t ship to America.
Amazon? Bingo! It’s there, and it’s a $39 import.
I’m singing a song that others may have sung before, but this amazes me.
(It’s not that Canadian music never reaches here—I’v listened to Bruce Cockburn for years, saw a special on Kathleen Edwards last week on TV, and heard Sarah Harmer at Starbucks this weekend.)
Emma B isn’t an unknown artist, she is Emma Bunton from the Spice Girls. Also I concur that the iTMS dance selection sucks, and that genre search tools/user rating system would be very helpful, and possibly the “killer feature” if properly implemented. However, Napster’s selection is literally non-existent compared to iTMS.(I’m a mac user, but my roomate uses The napster subscription provided by the university)
I must agree with John. It’d be nice to get some of the other songs of artists showcased in the Apple/Mercedes Benz promo at [url=http://www.mixed-tape.com]http://www.mixed-tape.com[/url]
Not everything there is perfect, but there are some gems.
How about some Euro indies in North America!?!
I’ve found one iMix you might enjoy—It’s for C89.5 FM, aka Nathan Hale High School, a Seattle-based radio station that plays a goodly amount of dance music. Part of the reason iTMS is lacking is because they don’t have the resources or depth to challenge the genre. The usuals are there—BT, Tiesto, The Crystal Method, even a few selections from Way Out West—but nothing past scratching the surface. There’s a couple reasons for this.
1) iTMS needs to reach out and make it easier for independent artists to get their music up. I know a few people trying to put up their albums and they’re being delayed.
2) The turf is already owned. There’s a half dozen dance-exclusive digital download websites that all charge more that 99 cents a song, but their catalogues can be exclusive and there are definitely gems to be found. Among these are:
-Beatport.com, the leader in volume, selection and price value.
-EDMdigital.com, primarily for progressive house and breaks, also noteworthy of having the highest quality downloads regardless of bitrate.
-3beatdigital.com, they charge a premium but also hold exclusive songs in their catalogue.
-ReleaseRecords.com, who’ve started including an mp3 download section in addition to their vinyl.
-Audiojelly.com
-Karmadownloads.com
-bedrock.org.uk, for digital versions of songs owned by the label
iTMS is late to the party. They surprised a few of us by including tracks from Sasha’s “Involver” album, but Beatport already had it… 1.49 per track for 320 kbps or WAV, not just 128 AAC.
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