ITunes sells more music than anyone on the planet. They put just about every music store out of business with their new model of single song sales for .99. ( The same thing happened in the photo world via Getty Images and Shutterstock) In other words all the profit for most artists on this planet is now going into the hands of corporate America.
Beyonce did something that has never been done on iTunes. She struck a deal to release a full length album with not a .99 cent single to be found – anywhere. In other words for the first time in years you have to purchase an entire album to hear her new music. She did this without so much as a tweet of advertising and something no record company would of allowed. Now granted this album contains 18 videos as well – she wanted to do a visual album was how she put it (and of course she was influence by the last person to attempt anything this big which was her king; Michael J). One has to mention the millions of dollars that were spent to do this kind of thing is not within any normal musicians reach or reality. So can this be repeated by anyone else on the planet? Not really I am afraid…
What does this suggest for the future of music and images on the web? We have to wait and see but still it gives some hope to all visual content now being devalued on the web. Maybe photography has to create musical content to sell a still image? Maybe it’s all going to a video/music combo hybrid? What ever the new paradigm is it involves adding lots of expensive content to get a $15.99 sale apparently. That would be more bad news for the artists everywhere, musical or visual.
Beyoncé Attempts to Change the Music Business
