Music Labels Look To Luddite Kid Rock For Answer To It's Apple Problem

Kid Rock is selling music without the internets.

Note to Bob - if it's not on iTunes, it's surely going to be on Limewire. If the labels are looking at this as a way to push people back towards the physical sale, they're sorely mistaken. Although, that should come to us as no surprise.

First of all, the average Kid Rock listener is most likely going to be a Wal Mart shopper who's not so much into the digital music market to begin with. While these are good numbers for a non-digital release, they need to consider the audience. Furthermore, we've all grown accustomed to the convenience of being able to purchase our music on impulse in the comfort of our homes. You simply can't just take that away. Doing so will most likely just push people back towards file sharing and the tech is a lot more robust now than it was in 2000.

Part of the reason why iTunes worked was because many of us were already feeding from the binary music trough. iTunes was attractive to those of us with a conscious about stealing music. Also, most of us now use an mp3 player as our primary music source. Does Bob or his label honestly think that we're going to carry our fat, lazy American asses out to retail to buy CDs that we're going to have to bring home and rip?

I think the answer is going to be a resounding no for the majority of artists out there that unlike Kid Rock, don't have a solid luddite, white-trash fan base.

Subtle New iTunes Feature?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it would appear that one of my biggest peeves with iTunes has been corrected in 7.7. Previously, if I were using album or coverflow views and I clicked to browse mode (formerly known as the eye of Mordor), I would be switched to a 2 pane view with the browse nav in the top pane and a flat list view on the bottom. Now it seems to honor the view you were using: