Garth Brooks unveils iTunes alternative: GhostTunes

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-garth-brooks-ghost-tunes-itunes-alternative-competition-20140904-story.html

by radley • 12 years ago

28 60 12 years ago

latimes.com

lucberlin• 12 years ago

PR stunt with some legs. Could lead to something...

justizin• 12 years ago

"Brooks’ beef with iTunes is that it is grounded in selling singles, while Brooks says he wants his music sold as complete albums to protect the songwriters and music publishers who depend on income from tracks included on those recordings."

In other words, he's concerned about a world where people aren't forced into spending over ten bucks to hear the song they want, paying for a bunch of cameos they may not care about, even if those people worked real, real hard on that music.

A lot of those singles selling on iTunes are replacing piracy, not album sales, and taking away the option to spend $1.29 will just drive people to services like spotify.

bitJericho• 12 years ago

If an entire CD minus one song is crap, then it's probably just all crap. For the few artists that do have only one gem, they shouldn't have to sell that for 99 cents. I'm all for what's going on here.

stephenr• 12 years ago

They allow radio stations to play one track at a time individually, so I call bullshit on the "this needs to be heard together" line

If the other songs on the album are good, letting someone buy individual tracks means more potential customers for that other track.

res0nat0r7• 12 years ago

You aren't being forced to by any music at all I'm pretty sure.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

If you want to download a song legally and the only option is a $10 album then yes you are being forced to spend $10 for a song.

We can argue the semantics of the word "forced" all day but I'm pretty sure everyone understood what he meant.

deveac3• 12 years ago

Forced in the sense that if you walk into a grocery store for a quart of milk, they refuse to sell it to you unless you also purchase some carrots, a container of yogurt, a sack of nuts, some table salt, a wooden spoon, a bottle of vinegar, and a pack of tooth picks as well.

That model is broken and the alternatives are numerous and successful because they make more sense. Singles on iTunes, Spotify, piracy...all better than paying a lot of money for content you don't want. We're seeing the same pressure applied to cable TV in the US, where consumers are tired of having no choice but to pay for content they do not want. Increasingly, they have a choices and are exercising them.

PeterWhittaker2• 12 years ago

I'm of two minds. On the one hand, as a consumer, I love being able to buy single songs, or, better yet, pay for unlimited play (I recently switched from rdio to Google Play Music, both of which have offline modes).

On the other hand, as a creative artist (I'm semi-professional actor: I do get paid, sometimes well, but it's not enough to live - in other words, I get rewarded for a rewarding, mind-and-soul-expanding hobby), I know that sometimes that "one gem" (to quote another comment) is the result of the entire creative process that went into the complete album.

$0.99 per person for the one smash song just doesn't seem like enough, unless it is a PSY-level smash.

On the third hand, there may be enough people producing music, et al, for most of us to get adequate entertainment and there may be just enough being making it big or having a patron at a high enough level to move things forward and get us high-quality work, so perhaps the economics are well in hand.

toomuchtodo3• 12 years ago

The problem is simply that music has dropped in value.

Now, I'm not saying that it isn't expensive to make, or your time isn't worth anything. I'm saying I'm awash in content. You won't sell me your single? No prob! I'm off to Spotify, or Rdio, or Pandora, or any number of other services.

As the amount of music available increases, the cost/value of all music diminishes.

ThomPete• 12 years ago

If one really feel like that one can simply turn 10 singles into one song.

mhurron• 12 years ago

I know that sometimes that "one gem" (to quote another comment) is the result of the entire creative process that went into the complete album.

That doesn't mean the rest of the album is worth anything, or that the artist is entitled to getting money for the tracks people don't want.

radley• 12 years ago

Apple got the hint: iTunes 11+ is now organized primarily for artists & albums; most single song based organization was gutted.

freehunter2• 12 years ago

Garth Brooks isn't on Spotify either. I bought his stuff on tape and then on CD, but if I want to stream it from the Internet, too bad.

For shame, Garth.

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

> "In other words, he's concerned about a world where people aren't forced into spending over ten bucks to hear the song they want, paying for a bunch of cameos they may not care about, even if those people worked real, real hard on that music."

I think it's down to marketing. When the record company picks the single and promotes it that's the song people will buy from the album. It may not even be the best song on it or the one you will like the most. I've seen a few polls recently where people were asked to pick their favourite track from a recently released album (they had bought the full album). The decision was pretty evenly split over all the tracks and the ones that actually fared worst were the singles. So my point is, you're not buying the song you want or will like the best, you're buying the song the record company has promoted the most and probably missing out on some great stuff.

hamburglar3• 12 years ago

You can buy individual tracks on GhostTunes, it's just not the way they're promoting things. It's just a marketing and user experience strategy to encourage album purchases, not refusing to sell singles. Personally, I think it's a good idea: it's better for the artist to be able to sell whole albums, and as a listener, I resist the urge to buy singles because when I listen to entire albums, I discover great tracks that weren't obvious gems on first listen. If I can't find more than one or two songs I like from an artist, I guess I'm just not a fan.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Yup, pretty much. I would not buy an album until I wanted at least 3 songs on it (yes I've got a number of 'greatest hits' albums :-)) The dynamic that song 'x' can be worth $1.29 to someone and song 'y' from the same album is not worth $1.29 is hard for some to grasp. I believe Garth has just enrolled in a very expensive class on "Information Economics." :-) We'll see how it turns out for him (and others).

ryandrake• 12 years ago

An alternate way to ensure your album is only sold as an album would be to design/compose it as a single piece, deliberately making it difficult for your label or anyone else to chop it up into singles. Obviously this wouldn't work with all types of music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarok_(Mike_Oldfield_album)

el_duderino• 12 years ago

I honestly don't see this taking off. There's just too many existing alternatives, and it will lose steam as the days pass.

LeoPanthera• 12 years ago

Sounds like he's re-invented BandCamp.

(Which is awesome, and really doesn't need re-inventing.)

ramy_d• 12 years ago

My exact thought. Bandcamp is a great platform, why didn't he just use that?

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

Because he didn't invent it and therefore cannot capitalize on taking the X percentage off the top of all sales, as opposed to just the Y percentage of his own sales.

The web is basically one big not-invented-here enabler.

With lawyers, marketers and social media managers, oh my.

hamburglar3• 12 years ago

Presumably one difference between this and Bandcamp is that Garth Brooks thinks that in order for such a site to be successful, it needs big-label artists. This means they've spent a whole lot of money on licensing, which makes me question their overall viability. My guess is that the licensing forces their margins to be suuuuuper thin in order to be anywhere near competing with the other big music retailers on price.

stephenaevans• 12 years ago

Yawn. Garth Brooks does not inspire me to try this.

darkstar999• 12 years ago

Has anyone found DRM info? It's not on the FAQ.

easyfrag• 12 years ago

Way back before the mp3 era Garth Brooks' passion was stamping out the sale of used CDs

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/304702/GARTH-BROOKS-HASNT...

untilHellbanned• 12 years ago

Sounds like an ok idea, but "GhostTunes" and an icon of a ghost? Very strange branding. The site's UI doesn't help either.

Timetime5• 12 years ago

This whole project is a scam. Its just a cheap $60 Wordpress theme hooked up to a music distributor. It would take a day max to set up this site.

Has anyones else noticed every single ad banner on the website is for his own music.

http://themeforest.net/item/keronchong-band-music-event-wooc...

fuzzywalrus• 12 years ago

I read the article but I couldn't find any advantages to the consumer or did I miss something?

As it stands: the service seems to bring nothing to the table agains the stores (Apple, Amazon, Google) or streaming services (Beats, Spotify, Rdio) or indie artists (Bandcamp).

powrtoch• 12 years ago

There are niche-case advantages. Some artists (Tool comes to mind) refuse to sell on iTunes etc for the reason mentioned in the article: they only want to sell albums. Currently their only option (that I'm aware of) is to not sell digital music, or sell it through their own website.

So the advantage to the consumer would be that if GhostTunes catches on, we might at least have the convenience and price advantages of being able to buy these artists' music digitally, instead of having to choose between physical media, piracy, or going without.

For 99+% of artists currently selling music? No clear advantage.

dj-wonk• 12 years ago

Harvard Business Review on bundling vs unbundling: http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-b...

What’s becoming clear as time passes, though, is that this is not a one-way process. Yes, digital technology enables a lot of unbundling. But new bundles keep appearing.
Why is this? Well, maybe because there are “only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle.”

SunDevil71• 12 years ago

I believe we can all sit all day and come up with convincing reasons this will fail miserably - but when something seems so poorly thought out - I always think I must be missing something. In what scenarios can this be successful? Why is this a good idea? What am I missing?

Timetime5• 12 years ago

This whole project is a scam. Its just a cheap $60 Wordpress theme hooked up to a music distributor. It would take a day max to set up this site. Has anyones else noticed every single ad banner on the website is for his own music.

Its very clever marking aimed at selling more of his own records.

http://themeforest.net/item/keronchong-band-music-event-wooc...

Timetime5• 12 years ago

haha he even set the url straight to https://www.ghosttunes.com/garth-brooks/

Timetime5• 12 years ago

This is just a PR stunt!

http://themeforest.net/item/keronchong-band-music-event-wooc...

Garth Brooks unveils iTunes alternative: GhostTunes

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