"Jay Z and Kanye West album deal irks indie retailers" reads this latest news story, that details the reaction of America's independent retailers to artists Jay-Z and Kanye West who have secured a deal for iTunes and Best Buy to have exclusive selling rights of their new album for two-weeks.
This follows lots of recent examples on both sides of the pond where, here, Status Quo sold their latest album just in Tesco, Blondie their new one in a magazine, and lots of other examples where Tesco and even Starbucks are sole suppliers of an album.
It's easy to look at this article and roll your eyes that it's another nail in the coffin of independent music stores. But, like small book-sellers, we are all to blame. When was the last time you bought an album from a high-street provider like HMV, never mind a small independent store? I download all my singles and, when I do buy an album, Amazon is my shop of choice, so I can't really criticise two artists for going to the big guns to promote their albums.
In many ways Jay-Z and Kanye West are just selling their albums where they'll get the biggest exposure and you can't really blame them for that. What you could argue is that Jay-Z runs an independent record label so should appreciate the benefits of independence over big conglomerates, though his group is, of course, part of Universal so maybe not as independent as it looks.
Instead of criticising the artists for doing these deals maybe we should look to ourselves and where we buy our music from. If we value the smaller record stores, and other independent shops, then maybe we should start using them more. And then the artists and record labels will follow.
Tweet
Saturday 30 July 2011
They've got 99 problems... and the new album deal by Jay-Z is one...
Posted on 04:26 by Unknown
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment