Music 'Cocktails' Coming to iTunes

Jul 27 2009, 10:00am CDT | by Robert Evans

It's not been the best time ever for record companies. The Internet has completely shifted their business model, and now they are struggling to survive in a world that no longer needs them. Artists have always made more money from touring than record sales, which is why many of them are starting to turn away from the labels in droves. Apple's iTunes remains one of the few surviving islands of profitability for the labels, and now even that is turning against them.

Customers are ordering more and more single songs and less albums. That cuts down on profits for the labels, so they've been hard at work trying to find some way to increase whole album sales. One of their new ideas is to start offering music 'cocktails' on iTunes.

AppleInsider described the plan for 'cocktails', “Cocktail would seemingly resemble an app and include both the usual notes but also separate lyrics, photos and other material that listeners could navigate outside of the usual iTunes player. It would even be possible to play all the songs from this environment.”

Record labels are trying to find a way to get people back in the spirit of listening to whole albums all the way through. By turning albums into app-like multimedia programs, they hope to rekindle interest in the old ways of listening to music. Of course, what they don't get is the reason why customers aren't buying full albums. We're not being cheap for the sake of being cheap, we just don't like most of the songs on most albums.

The big reason iTunes garnered so much earlier success is because it was a way for customers to pick and choose exactly what songs from a band they wanted. There are plenty of different groups that only have a few songs I like. Thanks to iTunes, I can buy just those songs and not waste my money on the ones I don't like.

If Apple can come up with a really unique selling point for 'cocktails', they could succeed, but I highly doubt that will happen. The age of the album has passed, and the major music labels need to accept that and change with the times.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.