None-Too-Great Hits

The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness

An outstanding article. I will read it again a couple more times over the next few days. For now, however, I would like to challenge the statement: "A hit song clearly should garner a higher price than a secondary track on the same album, and in any other business those items would be seen as premium offerings commanding a higher price point."

This is not clear to me, on two grounds:

First, one mans meat is another man's poison: listeners' tastes differ, and if somebody else finds value in a song that I deplore, who is to say which of us should be paying the premium?

And second, in the spirit of the proverb "promiscuity is its own reward," a hit song at the same price as a non-hit reaps the value of its own success simply by selling more copies, without the buyer being forced to pay a premium for it, or without the seller of the less-popular song being forced to denigrate its value.

It's unfortunate if "concept albums" get short-shrift in the new economy, but the days of albums loaded with second-rate songs coattailing on a hit are over, thanks to the pay-per-song model and uniform pricing. Steve is right.

DISCLOSURE: I myself have a home-made album on iTunes that isn't selling diddley-squat. If you check it out, you might say "rightly so" -- or you might not.