Highway To Sell: AC/DC iTunes Snub Finally Over

Hugh Pickens "The LA Times reports that after years of stubbornly arguing that iTunes was, in the words of singer Brian Johnson, 'going to kill music if they're not careful,' AC/DC has reached a deal with Apple to sell its entire catalog — 16 studio albums, four live albums and three compilations — through the service. AC/DC was one of the last high-profile holdouts from the digital music marketplace, outlasting the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd, all of which jumped into the realm long after much of the population had accepted the downloading future. Angus Young, AC/DC's lead guitarist (known for wearing a schoolboy's uniform when performing), had long argued against hawking the band's music because he didn't like the idea of allowing for individual song downloads — submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end. 'It's like an artist who does a painting,' he said in 2008. 'If he thinks it's a great piece of work, he protects it. It's the same thing: This is our work.'"

Individual Song Downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

He's against it because all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same. Download one and you've got them all.

It follows this pattern:

NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
you got me singing
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
now you're listening to
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!

Too late

[Beardo the Bearded]

Hey guys, it's cool that you held out for so long and were all principled, but I've already got copies of most of your work.

I paid somewhat less than what iTunes is suggesting. I guess you win.

Re:Individual Song Downloads

[Beardo the Bearded]

He's against it because all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same. Download one and you've got them all.

It follows this pattern:

NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
you got me singing
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!
now you're listening to
NAME OF THE SONG!!!!

Not the word I'd have used, but your point is valid nonetheless.

For those about to post we SALUTE you!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a fast machine, she kept her buffers clean
Was the biggest damn kernel that I ever seen
It wasn't crap from Fry's or a Rasberry Pi
Knocking me out with those solid state drives

Bootin up from the share, fast as a mac book air

Looked for the root folder but I was already there

The case started shaking, doom started quaking

My mind was aching, we were making it

And you shook me all night long

Yeah, you shook me all night long

Re:For those about to post we SALUTE you!!!!

[Sloppy]

My personal version from 1984:

It was a nice machine
I kept the keyboard clean
It was the best damn computer that I ever seen

Five Twelve Kay
Blew my mind away
A lot of memory I must say

Parallel interface
Transfer data with grace
And dual disk drives with plenty disk space

We were playin' Donkey Kong
But before long
Somethin' went wrong, my computer's long gone

'Cause you
Poured Coke on my keyboard
Yeah you
Poured Coke on my keyboard

The screen went berserk
Thought it was just a quirk
But then the printhead started to jerk

The repairman spoke
Laughed like it was a joke
They were full of Coke, my chips were soaked

Any other verses have been lost. Sorry about the awful chorus meter.

The "parallel interface" stuff is a reference to my unhappiness with the 1541's serial bus. Nowdays, serial buses are preferred. Funny how things work out. The liquids on keyboards thing is sort of a reference to one of the alleged features of the upcoming(?) Apple IIc (not that I ever actually saw one of those), which was supposedly highly resistant to such disasters.

Oh yeah, and AC/DC has been in the "digital marketplace" for at least two decades (whenever they started allowing the CDs to be published). And I'd like to stick Brian Johnson's "you're going to kill [commercial] music" comment right back in his face, since the very best way to kill commercial music is to tell paying customers "fuck off, we don't want your money."