The death of the music album? iTunes puts pressure on bands
The most important development in the success of iTunes, Apple's new music downloading service, is that it allows music lovers to legally download single songs and put together playlists based on what they like and in the sequence they want to hear those songs. The day of the album is now history...Napster made that happen a few years ago!
Charles Haddad writing in a BusinessWeek story shares responses from numerous readers:
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe established bands such as Metallica should fear Apple's iTunes Music Store. Longtime Metallica fan Marc McCoy, a graphic designer in Pittsburgh, wrote me that he would have bought just two songs off the band's new St. Anger release rather than the whole CD if he could have. Writes McCoy gleefully, referring to the coming PC version of the music store: "When iTunes for Windows rears its head, we'll see who's in control."