A Good Album is More than Just a Collection of Singles
Some people find it hard to understand my man Jay-Z's decision not to let iTunes break up his American Gangster album and sell it as single tracks. They say he's fighting the future and losing out on sales from fans who only want to download singles. But I say it was a stand somebody had to take in the music industry. Jay is speaking for all of us.
He's not the first. He's not the lone cowboy in all of this. Radiohead and AC/DC have turned their backs on iTunes for the same reason. Doug Morris, the CEO of Universal Group, has been fighting Steve Jobs on this for a minute now. But Jay is at a level people are going to pay attention to. He's had 10 number one albums. He may run Def Jam but he's also an artist who put his heart and soul into something that he wants people to hear all the way through. As the creator and investor, he has every right to demand this.
Not only that, I believe he's starting a movement that's necessary. More artists and producers are gonna take back control of how their art is sold because his strategy has paid off. Maybe Hova coulda sold another 100,000 to 200,000 units by playing it iTunes' way, but he still had the number one album last week. He STILL sold 425,000 units. Even more, he's proven you can still sell an album without those guys.
Jay made everyone realize that iTunes taking what we give them and doing what they want with it isn't the way it has to be. He put the light on and made other people realize, "Oh these guys are just selling our music, they ain't making it." If anything, WE made iTunes. It's like how we spent $300,000 to $500,000 each on our videos and MTV and BET went ahead and built an entire video television industry off of our backs. We can't let that happen again. These businesses exist solely because of our music. So if we as artists, producers and label executives stand up, those guys at Apple can either cooperate, or have nothing for people to buy and download on their iPods.
Apple thinks that's never gonna happen. They think that we as the record industry will never stick together. But Universal sells one out of every three records. All it'll take is for Warner Music to say, "You know what, I'm with you," for us to shut 'em down. No more iPods! They won't have nothin' to play on their players! We can take back the power if we're willing to sacrifice some sales to make our point.
These days people just assume that you need a number one single to have a number one album. But look at what's really happening. Soulja Boy sold almost 4 million singles and only 300,000 albums! We let the consumer have too much of what they want, too soon, and we hurt ourselves. Back in the day when people were excited about a record coming out we'd put out a single to get the ball going and if we sold a lot of singles that was an indication we'd sell a lot of albums. But we'd cut the single off a few weeks before the album came out to get people to wait and let the excitement build. When I put out Kris Kross we did that. We sold two million singles, then we stopped. Eventually we sold eight million albums!
Did consumers complain? Maybe so. But at what point does any business care when a consumer complains about the money? Why do people not care how we - the people who make music - eat? If they just want the single, they gotta get the album. That was how life was. Today we should at least have that option. Yeah, it's about the money, but it's also about quality. Creating each album as a body of work that means something gives the consumer something better to listen to, It's that simple. Otherwise all anyone would care about is making a bunch of ringtones.
A good album is more than just a collection of singles. American Gangster was a story with a beginning, middle and end. I came in at the end and did the last song, "Fallin'." But every joint was related. Each song gets better from listening to the one next to it, and the one after that. I didn't just sit by myself in my studio in Atlanta, crank somethin' out, and throw it in the pot.
That album was the product of the best minds in hip hop today: Jay, Puffy, the Neptunes, No I.D., Just Blaze and me. We all came together and threw ideas around. Me and Jay had long conversations about our favorite mafia movies, and that moment in all those gangsta stories - Scarface, The Godfather -- when the hero makes his big mistake and falls. We came in with respect for each others' craft so the whole album could do right by the story. We made quality music for our consumers. We made art.
None of this is new. Every record is in some way a concept album. The whole always strives to be better than its parts. I dedicate a whole chapter in my book to this process. Every thing I produce is a product of me spending time with the artist and getting to know where his or her head is at. Usher's Confessions album was all about where he was at that point in his life. Same with Mariah's Emancipation of Mimi.
Even if I'm not executive producing and I'm brought in at the end on someone else's album, I listen to what everyone else has done and try to make my tracks fit. I'm like an interior decorator who comes into a house and fixes up one room. It doesn't look like every other room, but at least it picks up some threads so that room looks like it belongs in the same home. Every album is created for you to hear the next song, especially on rap albums. Rappers make intros on their records for a reason- they want you to listen it to set the mood and get ready for that second song.
I'm not saying that music can't ever be sold as singles. Not every album is equal and consumers are always going to try to cherry pick the songs they like. But that doesn't mean the people who investing their time, money and sweat into a record shouldn't have the right to decide how it's gonna be sold, whether that's in single units or as a whole. My book, Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul, came out in hardcover last month, but Simon & Schuster doesn't let the book stores tear it up and sell it chapter by chapter. A record is no different.
Asking us to let other people mess with all our hard work like that is disrespectful. It's like when you go an art auction, and an Andy Warhol painting is up for sale at $5 million, but a buyer is allowed to just by off the top right hand corner of the canvas for a hundred thou'
Apple, why are you helping the consumer destroy our canvas? We don't tell you to break up your computers into bits and pieces and sell off each thing. When you go to the Apple store you may only need one thing, but you have to buy all their plug ins and stuff. You have to buy their whole package, even if you don't necessarily want it, or your equipment won't work. We're just saying, if you have the audacity to sell your products like that, don't treat our products as something less than yours.
Respect the craft!
**
Jermaine Dupri, who was named the most successful R&B producer of all time by the Guinness World Records 2007, is a Grammy-award winning music producer, president of Island Urban Records and author of Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul (Atria, October 2007). For more information about this blogger, click here.
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Every artist has the right to sell their music however they'd like (album only). However, Apple *also* has the right to sell music however they'd like (singles). If you don't like Apple's terms, you're free to sell your music elsewhere. Ain't capitalism great?
But I have some bad news for you. If an album isn't on iTunes, the songs will still be on iPods. Customers who like the music will either buy and rip the CD or pirate the songs they want.
For the record, I legally purchased all of the music on my iPod. I had about 100 CDs when I got my first iPod in my late 20s, and picked up most of the rest from the iTunes Store.
Here are a few things to consider:
1. Whether you sell your music by the album or the single, consumers will listen to your music however they'd like.
2. For a lot of consumers (particularly young people), iTunes isn't an alternative to physical CDs; it's an alternative to piracy. It's all about convenience and instant gratification -- neither of which is offered by physical CDs.
3. Whether or not you sell your music on iTunes, it will end up on iPods -- even if consumers have to pirate it or "borrow" a friend's CD.
4. If you insist on using DRM, then it is *you* who is locking consumers into a single device, like the iPod. If you truly want to break the iPod-iTunes "monopoly," DRM-free music is the only way to do it.
The music business of the 1980s and 1990s is dead, and there's nothing you can do about it. The internet has fundamentally changed the music business -- forever -- and your business model needs to adapt or die.
Jermaine Dupri has a point: any artist has to be able to chose how his/her work will be sold. But it stops here. The rest of the article is just moaning and whining.
The analogy with books and paintings doesn't fly at all. Why? Because painters don't sell their artwork corner by corner, but long ago musicians made their album available single by single. Writers neither sell their books chapter by chapter but again, musician sells singles. Music producers, as Jermaine Dupri pointed out himself, put out singles on purpose and then stop along the way to build excitement before selling millions of average albums.
I don't remember Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat or even Maya Angelou using the later marketing techniques to sell their genius work.
Please Jermaine Dupri, cut the crap. You are just playing the same game as Apple or Universal... the survival of the fittest !!!
What a load of Huey--- Mr. Dupri seems to have a problem with the fact that people have more choice in a free market economy and thinks Hip-Hop deserves more credit--- when it has in fact, to share in the blame for its current sad and sorry state. Here's a guy that was flashin around that 'Money aint a thang' boasting with a now 40 yr old thug (JAY-Z)
that he had it all,throwing money at the camera.We'll looks like people aint stupid enough to make the same mistake when you should be paying half of the sales of all your albums to the company that builds the Akai MPC 2000, since the rappers aint shit without it.
In the past year alone I don't know how many videos of Hip Hop have been produced(Seems like 100's, how these guys get the funding is beyond me) but it is his label and others like it that has made the music disposable,signing and selling trash(same for rock and pop music) on a weekly basis---while other genres play second.
Then we got retards like Kanye West sampling god knows who and giving himself all the credit....
Bottom line--- its a free market people are free to choose what music they like,how they should like it.
If you want real music watch reruns of the Midnight Special....Music and variety at its best. My man Rick James should rise up from the dead and beat all these guys up with that funky guitar.
Well, I'd buy a whole Springsteen album because that is art. Most of the other cr@p out there is a good song or two with 80% filler. If I felt it was art, I'd buy the album. It is nauseating to hear labels complaining that every single sold is the loss of an album, or even more laughable that every song pirated is a dollar they lost, let alone an album they did not sell. When some (single mom on public assistance, or college or high school student) has a few hundred limewire songs on her computer, do these morons really think she would have coughed the several hundred dollars to buy them? You are talking about money that doesn't exist. My gander would be that pirated music results in more like 5-10% loss of what it would be sold for- those sales simply would not exist.
It seems to me that folks in the music industry who are so "injured" by the single song format are still living pretty good compared to 99.9% of the US population, driving cars, being in People Magazine and living in mansions. This is why 99% of the population have no real problem getting songs off of limewire. It's not like these people are robbing the poorhouse food-fund. These worms should also keep in mind that without iTunes, there is no good alternative to limewire.
It seems to me there is also a segment of musicians who have a big break thanks to the single. Indies, who before the web one would never hear of. Look at some of the top videos on utube, a nobody getting several million hits. That would never happen 15 years ago.
What really would make sense is for musicians to dump their label and put the 65 cents Apple pays the label for their song into their own pocket. Instead of the nickle the labels give them. How's that for art?
I think Jermaine Dupri has a point. I read an excerpt of his blog on Global Grind and came here to read the rest. Music is an art form, whether you like it or not, its the expression of someone's thoughts and feelings. Jay-Z made American Gangster as a story, each song leads into the other and it tells his story, you can't break up his story, he won't get the same point across. Yes, artists need to make better music, so we, as the consumers are willing to buy the albums as a whole. I think what Dupri means is that he has nothing against being able to purchase songs that are released as singles separately, we've been doing this for years. But buying songs that aren't released as singles ruins the flow of the album and doesn't give the artist their chance to speak or express themselves.
This is crazy talk. I read about this on WWW.GLOBALGRIND.COM and had to come check out more. Of course Jay-Z can sell a whole album, he's the man and got one sick song after the next. But a lot of these new artists have only one song that you really want to hear, so why buy the cd for that one song. Dupri says people like him made mtv and bet and itunes. Actually, the fans made all of this. Without the fans, artists wouldn't be selling anything. You're still making money, way more money than you even know what to do with, as a result of your fans, so why go against what your fans want? It makes no sense!
iTunes forgives you if you decide to buy the whole album after you've already purchased a few singles--it deducts your download history from the album cost. I fail to see how Mr. Dupri loses out with such a strategy, unless they don't want you to hear the filler content.
As for the American Gangster Movie, the practice of commissioning a group of artists to contribute individual songs to a larger score is no different than any hundred other movie soundtracks out there. This ensures interest from a wide fan base, as well as the chance for-hey-a hit single from the soundtrack.
The analogy about "tearing off one corner of a painting" is inaccurate. It's ironic that Mr. Dupri mentions Warhol, an artist whose lifelong subject matter was disposable, throwaway post-modern culture perceived as art.
Jermaine, you are not going to win this argument. For years, the record companies grew rich off of selling watered down product. It was like buying a 12-pack of Cokes and finding out 9 bottles were undrinkable crap. Or buying a gallon of gas and finding out 3/4th of it was water. The CD was embraced because it let us skip over the crap tracks. There is a lot of pent up hostility over the abuse of the album format. The new technology lets us create the album we want, so we can put Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane BACK on Sgt Pepper. Frankly, it's like digital photography and Photoshop - we can do the editing, and are free of the professional dictating the presentation.
There are just not that many artists that can fill the album "Canvas" to make it a commercially viable product. 12 songs by the same artists is usually a form of shakedown, and the ear of the consumer has moved on.
The Warhol comment was reaching very, very far. Your man Jay-Z will get paid regardless, of course he'll get paid more if you HAVE to buy his entire release. But he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Wake up dude, this is America, you're lucky there even is a cake somewhere. Take the single downloads and be proud, all the way to the bank, leave the "concept" to your hard-core fans who will make sure they own the CD itself.
wow-
so just because a bunch of hip-hop producers get together and talk about their favorite movies make this album a cohesive piece of art?
If you're so sure of that, why not let the public decide? If it's so good, won't they HAVE to keep buying the individual tracks to build the album because they can't get enough of it?
If Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall" was released today on iTunes, I think 90% of the people would buy ALL of the songs, that album was THAT good.
Is your album good enough to stand on it's own? The public has spoken, and I think you may have the flow of power backwards here.
Mr. Dupri, it was consumers like myself that made Mtv, BET and you for that matter. Without the audience paying for these works of 'art' you would not be where you are today. The public has spoken, LOUDLY; they are no longer willing to pay gobs of money for one track buried between 9-12 tracks of filler.
I suggest that you look back at the history of the popular music business. Until the 1960's, the album was not the primary product it was songs. Quick name one album Glen Miller, or Elvis for that matter, produced before 1960? Answer: Nope can't name one. Why? The record companies pushed singles. Artists like the Beatles created the idea of the album as a complete piece of music. The record companies didn't realize until the 70's the potential profit involved with albums until records like 'Rumours' came out and sold millions and millions of copies. Then the business changed. They started releasing singles to promote albums. It had nothing to do with art, Mr. Dupri. The profit margin on an album is HUGE compared with the sale of a single. It's a simple business model. Tease the customer with one good song by releasing a single to heavy radio play, then force the customer to buy more than what they wanted because the mark-up on the package is really where the money is. Kind of like the option packages on new cars.
Once CDs took over LPs, record companies and people like yourself made a killing in the last 20 years. There wasn't a viable media option for the single. Most CD singles were 50-70% of the price of the entire album. Might as well pay for the entire album.
If you don't like it, then drop the price of an album. Work out a deal with Apple where the entire album is the same price as downloading 3-4 songs. You'll see more interest in the entire album. Oh wait, that means the profit margin on the album decreases and hence you make less money. That won't happen!
You're a producer who wants to get paid. And it must be annoying when the three or four tracks you produce aren't the singles getting downloaded. Totally understandable. But the hand-wringing over artistic integrity is a bit much. For how long would you defend the concept album if you made more money off the iTunes pick-and-choose model? Suddenly all those deep conversations about gangsters and their fatal flaws would seem like, yeah, whatever.
-- Christian Gulliksen
Also, Jay Z has said he wants to sign artist that are actually talented and can sell albums, I hope your label begins to sign true artist with something to say like Lupe Fiasco:
CONFLICT DIAMONDS
Allow me to break down the game,
behind the bracelets, earrings, chains, watches and rings.
The bling,
the crystal incrusted, princess flooded, canary studded, blue coloured and blood stained.
Yeah the older brother of the drug game,
that give her a fame, then take away her lane.
the empowerer of the kings that came to claims and disease
believe wat the native people were saying.
Believe, my engagement ring received and flossed at the cost of a bondage child minus pain.
Making paper with slave labour and hittin little kids with life time bids making em cut and shine stones.
Inflating the price and making em look nice and i wasnt thinking twice when i was putting mine on.
About a young shorty in Sierra Leone or other conflict countries that people call home.
I figured i would never go to Angola so it never did affect me that maybe indirectly.
That my neckleash was funding a rebellion or a military coup,
Started by militias that dont believe in following none of Geneva's rules.
I was brushing off the haters, trying to be cool.
Didnt have a clue that the rapper was helping the rapers, raiders of the villagers, pillagers of the schools.
Shooters of the innocent, torturers of the witnesses, burners of the businesses
And my bracelet was the fuel.
Uhh, i aint pushing an agenda homie,
Im just pushing the facts, F- Bush!
Cuz theres people doin worse on this earth and there black,
I took it for years now let me bring it back,
We all know on foreign shores that they finance wars, but asks yourself do they finance yours.
When i first got mine i took em out on tour, they only lost half the value when i took em out the store...
I know you have been in the business for a while but any good business person will tell you to look at what your consumers want. I would never download an entire album just b/c I like one song. The marketplace is deciding and the reason some people are not selling albums is because mainstream hip hop is sooo bad right now. Radio One's CEO has stated that consumers are rejecting hip hop but I think consumers are rejecting the hip hop he puts on his stations(PAYOLA).
Please start signing real MCs instead of rappers, think Rakim:
Rakim:
In the city where life is animated with colors
Contaminated with aggravated brothers who knows where the love is?
Growing up swinging through my upbringing
My limits is the sky from the all eye seeing
Of so called realities filled with technicalities
I watch my steps stay on my p's and check my casualties
Not to get played equipped with all the tricks of the trade
I even learned from the mistakes that the next man made
I know to choose and pick the people I grow up around
I know to grow and get to know the town up and down
But there's no instructions, so many directions
A lot of crooks look to get hooked with connections
Some thought they knew all adolescence could teach
They graduated from school but fail life in the streets
Your pops taught you to strive and stay a live, no ditty
It's easy to die when you're living for the city
It’s not an art when you’re sampling of peoples stuff. These are money hungry guys making money off rapper glorifying the streets and at the same time decaying the streets with these hood anthems. I grew up in the hood so I understand all aspects of our society. This hip-hop music that is coming out theses days is a black on black crime.
"Just a word from the streets"
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