A note about pricing in the age of Apple.

Producers of concert, or "classical," music have a dilemma in this new world of DIY music making. Sure the tools are available for anyone who has the skill to use them. But it seems to me that with all this music available ALL THE TIME, the perceived worth of it has diminished. I never thought I'd be making Taylor Swift type 'hits' where we net millions in the first month. The music I've always made is what in the industry is called "evergreen," meaning it's always available but the ROI takes much longer. Now consider Apple and my latest release “One More Dance.” Small producers such as myself have absolutely no control over our pricing models in Apple’s world. If this album is posted on iTunes it will sell for $9.99 and each track might be sold for $1.29. Now. Do the math, why would you buy the full album? You wouldn’t. The other problem is that .99 cents or $1.29 per track is fine if the music your offering is the typical pop format (12 or so songs that make it a better deal if you buy the full album rather than each track separately). So what to do if your album has three tracks only? Call it an EP and only charge 5.99? Once again, this is concert music. Track 1 is 20:45 long, track 3 is 16:39 long. Now, if you're comparing apples to oranges, that means that each of those two tracks is ‘worth’ 3 or 4 regular pop songs combined. Which would make this album total about 12 pop songs in length (even track 2 is almost 9 minutes long). So each track should cost its equvilant pop song cost. So “Westwood Song” is 20:45 long, that about 5 pop songs, so it should be at least $6.00 to purchase on its own. Yes, you can see just how absurd this becomes if your trying to sell a symphony with 4 movements that lasts over an hour.

Ahhh, but see Apple uses algorithms and not logic. Now, clearly I can’t really use that pretzel logic outlined above so I just have to make an album (that is over 45 minutes long) an ‘album only’ purchase, i.e. you can’t buy the ‘singles.’

I provide this little screed in the hop that the reader may see a little deeper into the world of making music for the masses, and to understand a little more clearly the struggles that we producers are faced with. Music IS worth paying for (just look at how much Ms. Swift just netted) and we who make it do deserve compensation, just like creators of the computer based tools that we use to make this music.