Highway To Sell: AC/DC iTunes Snub Finally Over 247
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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!!!!
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If they wanted them listened to beginning to end they should have made it a single track.
They didn't.
Re:Individual Song Downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, he doesn't seem to object to radio play of single songs. Consumption is consumption.
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Perhaps he does, but he doesn't have control of how his music is distributed. We all are aware that most music distribution corporations own various rights to distribute music and they do so the way it is agreed.
So if AC/DC has not signed away their digital distribution rights, they may choose the way their music is distributed. And perhaps they believe that their music should not be chopped up.
It's the artist's choice. If they feel that strongly and are willing to forgo the money that they would make fr
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I like AC/DC, but I don't think of their music in the same album singularity of work thing.
LOL..in the vein of "no one will ever need more than 640K".
I think the Young broth
Re:Individual Song Downloads (Score:4, Informative)
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There's still time to do it.
One big mp3 file...the album from beginning to end.
Re:Individual Song Downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how it worked. When this music was new, we had vinyl records. No remote control, no "skip" button. You put the record on the turntable, pit the needle in the groove, and listened. No way to mix up the tracks short of making a mix tape.
Dark Side of the Moon was one of these, and it wasn't designed to be listened to like you listen to a CD; when side 1 was over, you walked to the turntable, turned the record over, and played side two. DSOM doesn't really work well as a single track, but as two tracks.
However, ACDC is full of shit on this one. Their songs were never meant to be listened to in any particular order, and in fact that cassettes often had the songs in a different order than the LP, unlike DSOM, Magical Mystery Tour, Tommie, etc.
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Then they'd only get 99 cents for the whole album.
Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok (Score:5, Interesting)
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CDs specify a pause before each track. Usually it's 2 seconds (my old player counts down -0:02, -0:01, 0:00, 0:01), but it can be set to zero, in which case there's no gap at all, and the index is just a pointer to a frame to start playback from.
I have a few electronic albums like this.
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All audio CDs following the Redbook standard are a single data stream, so I'm not sure where you are going with your argument. It is true that tracks are delineated only by the Table of Contents, but why would AC/DC program a Table of Contents if the Disc was intended to be listened to only in it's entirety?
I propose that they are completely full of shit.
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I believe it's MP3s which have the 2 second pause. The GP's CDs are probably compiled from MP3s. It's probably why I also see messages about "gap information" when I'm transfering MP3s to my ipod with fubar 2000
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An AC replied with this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap [wikipedia.org] which is what I was thinking of.
I don't know any more about the subject, so I won't pretend to.
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The PUBLISHER made the discs that way... Not the artist.
Of course the artist "made" the albums on dozens of different pieces of individual tape per track and often multiple takes per song. A Record or CD is like selling us a "picture" of an oil painting... Not the Actual painting with all the bumps and rough spots. The "Origanal Art" is the spliced up mix that can only be listened to on original recording equipment... ... Just to be specific.... Besides has AC/DC released anything since CD was INVENTED any
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CDs specify a pause before each track. Usually it's 2 seconds (my old player counts down -0:02, -0:01, 0:00, 0:01), but it can be set to zero, in which case there's no gap at all, and the index is just a pointer to a frame to start playback from.
I have a few electronic albums like this.
CDs do not specify a pause at all. The pause you're most likely referring to was that moronic burning software from the late 90s early 2000s that had those default options. A player that imposed such a moronic concept on its CDs would destroy the flow of an album like NIN's Pretty Hate Machine, from 1989, among others. Many CDs are mastered with a "quiet" period of approximately a second or so between songs, matching the pauses between songs on LPs, which were the visible areas (widely spaced grooves) so th
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CDs do not specify a pause at all.
Sure they do. It's called INDEX 00 and shows in a CD player as countdown before the proper song start. Also known as the 'pregap', this was widely used on almost all CDs made in the 80s and 90s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap
Re:Most albums have index marks, unlike Amarok (Score:5, Interesting)
The track lead-in/leadout (1 second at the beginning, 1 second at the end) is really just a "landing zone" for the read head. A CD head is not particularly accurate - just because you give a HH:MM:SS.ff (frame) in the TOC doesn't mean if you select Track 3, you'll hit it exactly. In fact, you're likely to be quite a ways off. The quiet period simply lets the head be up to a second off either way without accidentally playing back the previous track or cutting into the next track.
Data CDs kept this for the same reason - a multisession CD also has the same limitation (each new session "patches" the prevoius session so it has to seek around and needs a landing zone).
Bad CD burner apps only do "track at once" mode where it writes a track at a time. This means every track requires a mandatory leadin/leadout (and a write to the TOC), and for audio, that means a quiet period of about a second. If you master in "disc at once" mode, you can lay down tracks with no quiet periods which is how you do "live" CDs with no quiet between songs (the TOC is written at the beginning). TAO does allow you to add tracks at the end, as the disc isn't closed, while DAO tends to force closing of the disc when it's done.
Sometimes shortening the leadout of the disc can give you a few extra MB of storage
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In the history of musicians giving a huge "fuck you" to their labels, it's tough to beat that album.
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I remember getting the wax cylinder out of the box, putting it in the CD player, pressing the "Side B" button, then the button labeled "Track 4", then setting the speed to 45 revolutions per minute and finally tuning to 101.7 on the frequency modulating carrier wave to enable the decoding of the psycho-acoustically encoded audio frames.
Oh no, wait, I'm thinking about horse drawn carriages. My bad.
Re:Individual Song Downloads (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Individual Song Downloads (Score:4, Insightful)
all AC/DC songs sound exactly the same
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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A friend put it this way: "They play that song better than anyone else."
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Only if you listen to them through a diode bridge and capacitors.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not sure why I was expecting this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sppRrbtxVD0 [youtube.com]
No, not a rickroll
Begining to end??? (Score:5, Insightful)
...submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end
So, where was all the outrage when radio stations were playing one song at a time? You know, the one or two good songs that people actually wanted to listen to?
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Their radio play was the equivalent of itunes free 30 second intro to a single song.
If you believe an 'album' is really one long track then giving away one part of it is just the preview for the rest of it.
Re:Begining to end??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The songs played on the radios were regarded by the bands as adverts (see: payola), and as such they didn't want to play the whole album because they wanted people to have to buy it to listen to the whole thing. The individual songs played on the radio were regarded as previews, not as complete works in themselves. In contrast, a downloaded track is regarded as a complete work by the band. No one complains that film previews contain scenes out of order, or that book previews only contain the first chapter, but the creators of both would strongly object to the idea of selling films by the scene[1] or books by the chapter.
[1] Certain Hollywood companies, however, would be very much in favour of this if they thought that they could get people to pay more that way.
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The songs played on the radios were regarded by the bands as adverts (see: payola), and as such they didn't want to play the whole album because they wanted people to have to buy it to listen to the whole thing. The individual songs played on the radio were regarded as previews, not as complete works in themselves. In contrast, a downloaded track is regarded as a complete work by the band. No one complains that film previews contain scenes out of order, or that book previews only contain the first chapter, but the creators of both would strongly object to the idea of selling films by the scene[1] or books by the chapter.
[1] Certain Hollywood companies, however, would be very much in favour of this if they thought that they could get people to pay more that way.
I'd argue they were almost there already. There's not enough story in the last Twilight to justify splitting it up into two films. There's only one motivation behind that.
Re:Begining to end??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really sure the movie analogy holds up.
It'd be more like a TV show analogy, after the TV series finally quits or gets cancelled... you have individual episodes which (more or less) stand on their own to varying degrees, some shows which are two-parters ("to be continued..."), and there should be an overall story arc that ties the shows together and provides some source of overall continuity (if the producers have any brains, anyway).
Any event, the TV show analogy fits: You can watch just the favorite episodes, watch the whole season in one go, or get the whole series and do a marathon. Just like songs: singles, albums, discographies.
Some single episodes/songs are masterful and epic, while others simply blow goats. Sometimes you want to do the whole series/album, crappy episodes/songs along with the good, just to get the whole arc for that season. Sometimes it only makes sense to do it as a whole series or album (e.g. X-Files for TV, or Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime for audio.) Other times, you can very easily break it up and enjoy the individual bits (e.g. Invader Zim or, well, any album made by AC/DC).
All that said and done, I sincerely doubt that AC/DC ever had an album that was made with an arc or story that ties the individual songs together.
Re:Begining to end??? (Score:5, Informative)
More like, where was all the outrage when AC/DC were selling 45s [wikipedia.org] and other singles?
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were selling 45s
Looks like they released a new one last year [amazon.com].
But we don't really take their protests at face value - most likely album sales have taken a downturn, so it's time to unleash the 'digital' machine.
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...submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end
So, where was all the outrage when radio stations were playing one song at a time? You know, the one or two good songs that people actually wanted to listen to?
Not only that, but what about the compilation albums? Weren't they just an attempt to sell more records with minimal work? How were they put together?
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The compilation albums are collage, obviously. You clearly don't understand the artistic genius of AC/DC!
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AC/DC have never released a compilation album.
TFA says there were three. Here's one: http://www.amazon.com/Best-AC-DC-Top-Songs/dp/B004ASZXY6/ref=sr_1_22?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1353446380&sr=1-22&keywords=AC%2FDC [amazon.com]
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Re:Begining to end??? (Score:5, Informative)
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Pink Floyd made the same argument and they actually stopped releasing singles in the U.K. I wrote about this above... in terms of AC/DC using it it's just an excuse.
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FTFY.
Bands don't necessarily have any say in how their music is distributed if they want a record deal. Sad but true.
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Bands don't necessarily have any say in how their music is distributed if they want a record deal. Sad but true.
So ... why this story?
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Funny, then how AC/DC has released 5 singles since they've gained control over their own catalog - at least three of them after Angus made the comment mentioned above.
Re-fixed that for you. While they may not have had any say before, they certainly do have say since they bought their own catalog back... but they've continued to release singles.
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Well, they also did Iron Man 2 -- which no matter what your opinion of the movie, made a butt-load of money and got them exposure.
I was in a restaurant the other day, and two young kids (like 8 or 9) were singing along and head bobbing with the AC/DC which was playing -- my guess is that Iron Man 2 is partly to credit, though, maybe they got it from their parents.
At this point, any artists who are holding out from iTunes and the other stores have lost track of how most people are buying music.
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I think a lot if it has to do with the dearth of good music coming out today...actually since the 90's I'd say.
There is "some" good coming out, but what you see out for the mass public, which by definition most people see/hear, the landscape is pretty pathetic.
I see a lot
Re:Begining to end??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck, those guys ROCK in concert, though.
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I think with Pink Floyd it was a valid argument. In the 70s they mostly played entire albums as cycles at their concerts, and as I've wrote several times here they didn't release singles except in the U.S.
Too late (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Looks like I can get the CD NEW from Amazon for many of these albums cheaper than itunes sells the download version... disconnect much
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1981? $19/cd? BS.
Most good CDs are available at the used CD store.
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Looks like I can get the CD NEW from Amazon for many of these albums cheaper than itunes sells the download version... disconnect much
I'm sure I've got a player for an optical disk somewhere in my house. It might be in the computer that's unplugged and sitting in pieces under my old desk in the basement.
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And everyone who isn't as cool as you can easily rip a CD in moments to a lossless audio codec and throw out that optical disk and still have spent less
on the album than a itunes purchase.
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THAT's why you have an old Pentium IV laptop complete with parallel, serial and a VGA ports sitting in the corner.
And why you boot it up and let XP update for a couple of hours. I just do this in the winter when I need a bit more warmth in the basement.
hold out? (Score:2)
Re:hold out? (Score:5, Informative)
Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!
Artist Rights and Wrongs (Score:2)
Attention artistic narcissists:
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For those about to post we SALUTE you!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
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."
No longer relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry guys, your work was good 20-30 years ago, but most of us don't care anymore.
And the few of us who do care already have your stuff on CD and can rip it ourselves, or buy a used CD and rip that.
When I sell a painting it's part of a show (Score:4, Interesting)
Violating the sanctity of "Givin the Dog a Bone" (Score:5, Insightful)
— submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end.
I could easily see that argument for a Pink Floyd album, but AC/DC? Really?
I mean, seriously. This is from a fan. I've probably listened to the Back in Black album straight through cover to cover more than all but two or three people walking this earth, band members included. I'd agree that the song ordering on there is probably better than a random one would be (note: the "Title track" leads off side 2 rather than 1, which is interesting, but it works).
But would I ever sit down and argue with someone that its a travesty to listen to "Shake a Leg" without following it up immediately with "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution"? Hell no! Just listen to it and enjoy.
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There's one thing I can always count on Slashdot for, be it quantum physics, obscure linux distros, a complex mathematical proof, or AC/DC music - there's always a hardcore expert that provides needed insight. LOL
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Really? You'd reorder the tracks on "Wish You Were" Here willy nilly? The album that is bookended with a continuation of the same song, and several of the tracks actually smothly transition into each other? You're cut up and reorder that?
That's it AC! I've had it. I've put up with your sillyness for over a decade with no complaint, but you are now officially dead to me.
Oblig (Score:2)
Come on come on, lovin' for the money
Come on, come on, listen to the money talk
It's like an artist who does a painting,then hides (Score:2)
AC/DC - Dual Power Heating Pad (Score:2)
Thirty-year-old rock group with fifty-year-old members:
"I'm on the sidewalk to heck"
Fucking pretentious asshole (Score:2)
Yeah, because you really can't appreciate the subtle nuances of "Sink the Pink" unless you hear it after "Danger" as originally intended [wikipedia.org] in 1985. Or, um, after "D.T." in 1986. [wikipedia.org] Right. Anyway...
I love their music, but seriously, he's full of shit.
The pinball game came out with mix of music (Score:2)
The pinball game came out with mix of music from there albums and you get the pick songs as well.
Everyone that likes ACDC... (Score:2)
... has already converted their DVD's or downloaded flac's (or mp3's) of them already.
No one listens to albums anymore. (Score:2)
The long form factor where anyone listens to an entire album has been dead for years. Dead Dead Dead. No one even listens to whole tunes either. And why bother, it's all shit.
No one? (Score:2)
"Come on, come on, listen to the money talk"
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Of course, in the 6.5 seconds between the time I check and I type it in and hit submit...
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AC/DC aren't Metal. Never have been. They are rock or hard rock. No matter what anyone says.
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AC/DC isn't metal. They're stuff is pretty much juiced up rock and roll and they happen to have as a key member probably one of the best blues guitarists around.
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I agree Gwar concerts are some of the most fun concerts one can go to.
I still remember going to the "When the shit hits the fans" tour, my contacts were dyed bright blue for around a month from all the stuff they sprayed the crowd with. My eyes were already very blue, this made them damn near glow.
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GWAR rules live. I thought I was going to die. I really think they hate their fans. When they started playing about the front three rows where knocked over. I was picking up then boosting girls on top of the crowd, so they could crowdsurf to safety. Looked up and looked Oderous in the eyes. He could see people were in trouble. They grabbed a gear and rocked _even_ harder. It was cool.
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Hmm, the place I saw them was an old movie theatre with the seats removed, I think it was called The Strand. It wasn't an intense mosh bit, was rather relaxed as far as mosh pits go, just a few idiots.
Slymentra hymen was fingering herself when I looked up, as a teen that was pretty cool.
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Naw, it only colored the contact lens, not the whites of my eyes, now that would have been REALLY cool.
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AC/DC was never meant to be thoughtful metal. They were a fun hard rock band, and that's all they ever aimed for (and they were great at it). It's not like they were writing songs about politics or social issues. Megadeth those boys weren't, but they weren't trying to be either.
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Were? They just finished a tour in 2011. My guess is they'll have another coming up shortly. Heavy metal, hard rock, etc. are very popular...probably not as popular as hip-hop or whatever monotoned crack many listen to, but they have their niche and their own concert venues which tend to sell out. Hell, even Deep Purple is still touring. Jon Lord retired in 2002 and then died just earlier this year. Ritchie Blackmore was replaced with Steve Morse sometime in the 1990's. The keyboardist is Don Airey who's pl
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Not necessarily. They'll probably get a flood of purchases from people when they go live on itunes, people who wanted their music could still order CD's and rip them. And their primary compensation at this point might not be from music sales anyway.
This may have actually made them money, people who only wanted on track gave up and bought a CD and ripped it, as long as the amount they earned from that is more than they lost to piracy from people not wanting to buy a full album for one song they ended up ah
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I prefer to just pick up old cds at half price books and other places used cds are sold. Starting to get the physical copies of what I pirated.
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Wait, you've been freely giving out copies of St. Anger to people? You are a sadistic fucker!
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I wish I had mod points right now. Your entire post was idiotic.
And wrong.
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Your post was quite idiotic, too. Calling someone wrong doesn't make you sound smart. If you share a little more information about why they're wrong and maybe help them get to be right, that might make you sound smart.
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Then you would have been modding incorrectly.
If someone is wrong you don't mod them down, you explain why they are wrong, that is why there is not a -1 Wrong option.
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Sales figures would suggest otherwise. Both have nearly equal global sales, and are among the biggest sellers of all time.
Love DSOTM, but there's nothing quite like the experience Back In Black played very loud while cruising down the highway.
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DSOTM is best played in the car when the inside of the car is smokey. Very smokey.
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3) I too find the idea of a great acdc song blasting out of some gen z tiny earphones right next to some gawdaful pop track by my chemical romance sick that I wouldn't want to see it on itunes either.
Thank you for informing us that only teens purchase and consume music in digital format, and that music in such a format can only be heard through crappy earphones. If you're too old and stubborn to appreciate the convenience and quality of digital music, that's fine, but do us all a favor and stop pretending that you know better than us or are on to something.
4) Itunes killed the record store. Which sucks.
Obviously the record store was an inferior business model. That's called progress.
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4) Itunes killed the record store. Which sucks.
Wax Tracks, [waxtraxrecords.com] Vintage Vinyl, and these guys [recordstores.com] beg to differ.
Looking around the town I live in, there are no less than 5 record stores still around, all apparently doing quite well for themselves.
Personally, I think there will always be a market for the 'durable good' version of digital things, as it's a lot harder for Amazon (or whoever) to remove my CD collection from my house than it is to just close my account and deny me access.
Digital distribution is a fad, just hasn't hit the backlash point yet.
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That's what open standards are for. You can bet Amazon can't erase my tape backup either.
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Agnes' argument about albums is demonstrably false. Here's why...
The era after Pink Floyd's two first albums they made the same argument about listening to the album as an entire piece. Because of this they didn't release singles (at least not in the UK. There are some late 60s early 70s singles in the U.S., but this their secondary market).
AC/DC always released singles. If they really cared about it they would of stopped like Pink Floyd did.
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If they truly wanted people to buy the whole album, then wouldn't they simply make the tracks album only. I know google play and amazon mp3 allow a band to do this, so I assume iTunes has the same option?