AC/DC has finally given in to the force of the digital world. The complete collection of the Australian band’s work can now be purchased on iTunes. The albums are priced at roughly $10 each and are all “re-mastered for iTunes”. There are two collections for sale that include all of the band’s albums and all of the band’s albums plus a few rarities for $99 and $150 respectively. Individual songs can be purchased for $1.29 each.
Prior to today, AC/DC was arguably the largest music group since the Beatles to have not put their music for sale digitally (another not on the store is Tool). The band was previously quoted as saying this about iTunes: “Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless ’em, it’s going to kill music if they’re not careful. It’s a…monster, this thing. It just worries me. And I’m sure they’re just doing it all in the interest of making as much…cash as possible. Let’s put it this way, it’s certainly not for the…love, let’s get that out of the way, right away.”
The band thought it was important to ensure that everyone who bought their albums heard the whole album and weren’t just purchasing individual songs. Unfortunately, waiting until now to put their content up for sale digitally has likely lost them a lot of money to piracy.
If people can’t buy your music digitally, they’re far more likely to pirate it for free online than they are to get in their cars and drive to a store to buy the CD. If bands want to survive, they need to embrace digital sales, not fight them.
Can you hear that? It’s the sounds of millions of AC/DC fans heading to iTunes Match to “upgrade” their “legitimately downloaded” songs to higher quality files.
