University Star

If I know John Lennon as well as I think I do, he’s probably throwing back a bottle of Cristal with Tupac and Elvis right now. The celebrity camp in West Texas they share with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III, duh) can get pretty boring so these guys like to celebrate anytime the opportunity presents itself.

And what, you might ask, is the reason for today’s celebration? The Fab Four’s entire catalogue, including 19, No. 1 albums, has finally made its way to iTunes. At press time, 15 of these little gems had managed to crack the digital music retailer’s Top 50 albums chart.

Great news for iTunes. Great news for the Beatles (and Yoko Ono). Perhaps another digit added to Steve Jobs end-of-the-year bonus.

But this isn’t great news for fans or artists. The most influential band in rock putting its music on iTunes essentially only strengthens the beast.

According to the iTunes Artist-Producer Royalty Calculation sheet, Steve Jobs and Co. keep about 34 percent of every song downloaded from the site. So each time you feel the itch to support struggling artists like Ke$ha or the Jo Bros., remember that only 66 percent of your good deed is going to the artist. But not really. Labels typically take a cut in the area of 50 percent (a whole different problem for a whole different column). That leaves about 15 percent going to the artist. But not really. The producer normally gets a 3-percent cut. After all is said and done, about 12 percent of your purchase goes into the pocket of that poor little waif, Ke$ha.

Really?

The really great thing about this usury is that bands must pay for the right to be bamboozled by Apple. Individual songs cost $10 to upload while albums come out to about $20. Then there are the annual renewal fees of $20 per album.

The brilliant thing about iTunes is that it is basically the “old” music sales model — from a time when record execs sported tailored suits and pony tails — parading around as one of the “new” models. A wolf in jeans and Belle and Sebastian T-shirt, if you will.
The good news is that bands and artists have a ton of alternatives.

In the past few years, music distribution services have been springing up all over the Internet. The few that have survived offer great alternatives to bands and fans. Services like CD Baby and TuneCore offer music distribution to sites like iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster for a one-time fee and small commission for each sale.

One of the most promising direct band-to-fan sites is called Bandcamp. The site is essentially a bare-bones, music-streaming site. Think MySpace but without the gaggles of 50-year-old men posing as middle schoolers. In addition to streaming, Bandcamp allows sales (the site skims 15 percent off the top of each sale), a feature that has been utilized to great success by artists like indie-rock demigod Sufjan Stevens. Stevens released his EP All Delighted People in August exclusively through the site for three days before sending it to iTunes and other music retailers. In the first three days, the album sold 10,000 copies which was good enough for the No. 9 spot on the Billboard Independent Chart and 48 on the Top 200.

My band began using the service over the summer and the strangest thing began happening. We started receiving e-mails telling us we had sold an album. We were making money. Through record sales.

And it was weird.

—Brett Thorne is a general studies senior