AC/DC catalog now available on iTunes

AC/DC were one of the last major "holdouts" when it came to making their music available on iTunes, but I have a feeling that shrinking CD sales and "zero profit" streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and Rdio (where users have to listen to songs thousands of times before the band makes the same amount of money from a single iTunes sale) helped change their mind about opening an online revenue stream for their music.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/long-time-holdout-acdc-finally-shoots-to-thrill-on-the-itunes-store/

Pffft. Freakin' sell outs.

I am not surprised but they hate viewing their songs as singles but as part of an entire album.

manny wrote:

I am not surprised but they hate viewing their songs as singles but as part of an entire album.

I'm sure alot of bands feel the same way, but we are very quickly going back to a "singles only" marketplace (much like the early 60s), so most bands need to swallow their pride and take sales wherever they can get them.

I don't think they are on Spotify. If there is one place artists who want to make money should avoid, it's streaming services.

It was only a matter of time I guess.

They are not on Spotify. A girl at work listens to Spotify all day long and whenever she listens to AC/DC it's these odd 'tribute band' tracks that sound very generic.

I hate where music has gone. There are some good things about the digital age. I can't imagine that a band like Ultimatum would have fans all over the globe if not for the internet being that we've always been an indie band on small labels.

However, I like albums. I don't give a rip about some hit single. If I want to hear Thin Lizzy, I pop on one of their albums and listen from beginning to end. Every song, every emotion, the slow songs, the fast songs, the whole enchilada. I don't want to hear "The Boys Are Back in Town" 1,000x and that's it.

Also, the collectibility of music is fast becoming a thing of the past. When you own that LP or CD, you own a piece of the bands history. When you have an MP3 of their hit single on you iPhone, you own nothing.

I guess it's inevitable. Things change and us old folks hold onto the things we love from the past. I'm gonna go sit in my rocker and take a nap now.

ultmetal wrote:

I guess it's inevitable. Things change and us old folks hold onto the things we love from the past. I'm gonna go sit in my rocker and take a nap now.

I'm with you bro...

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

ultmetal wrote:

I guess it's inevitable. Things change and us old folks hold onto the things we love from the past. I'm gonna go sit in my rocker and take a nap now.

I'm with you bro...

Same here, I like owning a physical product, and I like having a wall full of albums. Also being 42, I grew up listening to an album from beginning to end.

I know S.D. is right that we have come back to the age of the singles, but I prefer albums, its a piece of history and snapshot of that moment in time.

Downloading help kill the music industry but I still blame brain dead record exec's, who saw a change coming and did not anticapte what changes would mean or embrace the new techonlogy. And over priced CD's.

ultmetal wrote:

They are not on Spotify. A girl at work listens to Spotify all day long and whenever she listens to AC/DC it's these odd 'tribute band' tracks that sound very generic.

I hate where music has gone. There are some good things about the digital age. I can't imagine that a band like Ultimatum would have fans all over the globe if not for the internet being that we've always been an indie band on small labels.

However, I like albums. I don't give a rip about some hit single. If I want to hear Thin Lizzy, I pop on one of their albums and listen from beginning to end. Every song, every emotion, the slow songs, the fast songs, the whole enchilada. I don't want to hear "The Boys Are Back in Town" 1,000x and that's it.

Also, the collectibility of music is fast becoming a thing of the past. When you own that LP or CD, you own a piece of the bands history. When you have an MP3 of their hit single on you iPhone, you own nothing.

I guess it's inevitable. Things change and us old folks hold onto the things we love from the past. I'm gonna go sit in my rocker and take a nap now.

Can I have that soapbox back when you're done? I need to crate up some CDs.

I love having physical product. I love holding the CD/entity in my hands and all that goes along with it.

HOWEVER -

I am beginning to feel inklings of "maybe I should let it go". Space, other priorities, etc have been steering me in this direction and, honestly, I think I still keep buying random, cheap CDs out of habit and denial. LOL! So, I may be following S.D.'s lead sometime soon.

Still keep my ultra-favorite stuff (anything related to The Beatles, U2, King's X, Perry-Journey, boxed sets, and a very select group of albums outside of this) and convert everything else to high-quality digital. I've asked for a 1TB external hard drive for Christmas...so we'll see.

THEY KIN HAVE MAH CEE-DEE'S WHEN THEY PRY'EM FROM MAH COLD DEAD FINGERS DAMMIT!

manny wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

ultmetal wrote:

I guess it's inevitable. Things change and us old folks hold onto the things we love from the past. I'm gonna go sit in my rocker and take a nap now.

I'm with you bro...

Same here, I like owning a physical product, and I like having a wall full of albums. Also being 42, I grew up listening to an album from beginning to end.

I know S.D. is right that we have come back to the age of the singles, but I prefer albums, its a piece of history and snapshot of that moment in time.

Downloading help kill the music industry but I still blame brain dead record exec's, who saw a change coming and did not anticapte what changes would mean or embrace the new techonlogy. And over priced CD's.

Yes, talk about a prime excample of groupthink!

I hate the whole movement to a "singles" marketplace...... Give me full albums!!!!!!!! I am sure the move to the digital download has pushed the singles market to new heights not seen since the early 60's. If someone likes a song, they can easily pay 99 cents and bam they have it, no wait, no going to the music story to buy it. The can even listen to it on their phone.

The other thing that I think has shrunk the albums market is that people that want a whole album are likely to just download it off a torrent. But I think it's something that's beyond the piracy problem. People just aren't buying albums like they used to......


Now people can buy one of the "now that what's I call horseshit # 2000002222222" compilations. They've taken the old Ktel model to new heights - except the people that buy those albums don't go out and buy whole albums to hear more of what an artist has to offer.

Radio listenership is way down (plus radio sucks now anyway), people can pay for XM and listen to what ever they want (even XM/Sirus sucks these days - it's all the same songs), they have Pandora and other internet radio, streaming services (like Spotify). The American Idol generation doesn't help at all - it just promotes the singles market (and that's all AI is about, "create" a new "artists" to sell singles.)

The younger generation expects to have a song or two they like from lots of artists on their playlist, as opposed to whole albums. They don't seem to care about whole albums anymore. My daughter is the same way - if she hears a song and likes it, she wants that song. I buy her the whole album anyway......

My son on the other hand wants to hear whole albums - he'll hear a song he likes and want to hear the rest. He does like hard rock and metal \m/

I know I sound like an grumpy old bastard, but today's music (the younger artists/up and coming acts) is no where near as good as the stuff most of us grew up on. The ones that play instruments don't play as well as previous generations. And one last thing.......

GIVE ME MY ALBUMS DAMN IT!!!!!! I DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO YOUR SINGLE!!!!!

But, maybe there is hope for the next generation..... maybe, just maybe as a new generation of artists start creating music, portable music space increases, wireless bandwidth increases, the market will correct itself back to an album oriented sales. And the next generation of teens will know the joys of hanging out with friends on the weekend listening to whole albums instead of playing DJ with their IPod........

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

I love having physical product. I love holding the CD/entity in my hands and all that goes along with it.

HOWEVER -

I am beginning to feel inklings of "maybe I should let it go". Space, other priorities, etc have been steering me in this direction and, honestly, I think I still keep buying random, cheap CDs out of habit and denial. LOL! So, I may be following S.D.'s lead sometime soon.

Still keep my ultra-favorite stuff (anything related to The Beatles, U2, King's X, Perry-Journey, boxed sets, and a very select group of albums outside of this) and convert everything else to high-quality digital. I've asked for a 1TB external hard drive for Christmas...so we'll see.

I have a networked 2TB hard drive that I can listened to my ALBUMS anywhere in the house on my laptop or my home theater system (my DIRECTV box will play music from my hard drive \m/). I have started buying SOME digital music (favorites like Iron Maiden will ALWAYS be purchased in physical copies), but often those are ripped to the hard drive and boxed up in the basement..... and I will keep them until the day I die!!!!!!!!!

I don't have an issue with buying digital.... in fact, I just purchased a new hard drive to make a back up of my networked hard drive. But, there is nothing the taking the wrapper off a new CD!!!!!

When itunes and other services go to Lossless formats, I will ditch CDs totally. I refuse to shell out coin for some 256 bit rate mp3 though. That is crap.

I still buy vinyl and it is becoming my preferred format for collecting.

Witchfinder wrote:

When itunes and other services go to Lossless formats, I will ditch CDs totally. I refuse to shell out coin for some 256 bit rate mp3 though. That is crap.

I still buy vinyl and it is becoming my preferred format for collecting.

I'm with you there.

There are rumblings that lossless is coming to iTunes very soon, one of mastering engineers I know here in town has been getting requests from iTunes for masters in 24bit/192khz. That is blu-ray quality audio, far superior to what CDs have to offer.

HDTracks is catching on but so far they charge way too much per release, they are generally $3 more than the physical product, if iTunes gets into the game I have a feeling their prices will come down to be competitive.

I'll be jumping for joy when master-quality audio becomes easier to collect.

S.D. wrote:

Witchfinder wrote:

When itunes and other services go to Lossless formats, I will ditch CDs totally. I refuse to shell out coin for some 256 bit rate mp3 though. That is crap.

I still buy vinyl and it is becoming my preferred format for collecting.

I'm with you there.

There are rumblings that lossless is coming to iTunes very soon, one of mastering engineers I know here in town has been getting requests from iTunes for masters in 24bit/192khz. That is blu-ray quality audio, far superior to what CDs have to offer.

HDTracks is catching on but so far they charge way too much per release, they are generally $3 more than the physical product, if iTunes gets into the game I have a feeling their prices will come down to be competitive.

I'll be jumping for joy when master-quality audio becomes easier to collect.

That's some great news!

S.D. wrote:

Witchfinder wrote:

When itunes and other services go to Lossless formats, I will ditch CDs totally. I refuse to shell out coin for some 256 bit rate mp3 though. That is crap.

I still buy vinyl and it is becoming my preferred format for collecting.

I'm with you there.

There are rumblings that lossless is coming to iTunes very soon, one of mastering engineers I know here in town has been getting requests from iTunes for masters in 24bit/192khz. That is blu-ray quality audio, far superior to what CDs have to offer.

HDTracks is catching on but so far they charge way too much per release, they are generally $3 more than the physical product, if iTunes gets into the game I have a feeling their prices will come down to be competitive.

I'll be jumping for joy when master-quality audio becomes easier to collect.

If they do, I will be buying all my music that way!!!!!! Hopefully in 24/192 it won't be brickwalled either!!!

I like to own albums as well, but unfortunately most of the ones I want to buy are pretty expensive, so it's much cheaper for me to buy all the songs individually off sites like "MP3va", where songs are 15 cents each, that way i'm able to get ahold of songs from bands like Treat, whose albums are only availible as very pricey imports.

For new releases, I usually just listen to the songs on Youtube, but that's more so I can save money to buy video games then anything else. Another reason is I just don't have the storage space for a lot of CDs, if i'm going someplace and I want to bring music, it's just not very convenient to bring along a case of CDs and a walkman, it's just so much easier to bring an iPod.

I agree that music today isn't nearly as good as it was back in the 80s, that said there are still some pretty good bands from this generation that I enjoy, so I do still listen to the radio.

I do a mix of CDs, legal MP3s and vinyl.

Sometimes, if I am interested in something new, and the MP3 album is $5 on Amazon, I will go that route.

However, the new KISS, Alice Cooper, etc., albums will be purchased on CD, no question.

Vinyl is for when things have awesome covers.

I'm with all of you guys, I prefer having the full album instead of just the singles.

S.D. and others have also brought another fact, that is how people listen to music now adays, thru ipods, their car, phones, consumers what their music to be more convient and portable to different devices, and they do not wish to be tied down with a physical CD, when they go and buy a digital download of the song, and take it anywhere they wish.

Go in public anywhere and see how many people have ear sets on listening to their music on their phones.

I am afaird I am a dinosaur and I like the idea of collecting something. I think its cool I can go to my Jimi Hendrix section and see I own 40 CD's, as opposed to 40 files. But that is me, I am not going to change.

I had hard enough making the conversation from albums to CD's back in the day. I love the fact that newest Aerosmith and KISS albums are not just digital downloads.

I don't see this as big of a sell out as most of the hipsters on here. The majority of those who will purchase AC/DC's music through iTunes are going to be hard rock/metal fans who further appreciate the experience of an entire album than any other music buyer.

I buy vinyl, cassettes, and cd's. Even have 8 tracks (dontcha love havin the best song being broken up on the end of track 2 and the begining of track 3)

Even if they do that 'lossless" thing with downloads. It don't interest me. Mostly due to what else can be lost when you download stuff to a computer or device.

I have an Ipod, but don't use it much. I only download entire cds onto it. Listen to those than dump. repeat as necessary.


As far as AC/DC doing this...Well of course, it's a sell out. (IMHDO) Why do it if ya don't wanna make make (more) money ? They have a greater fanbase than just fans of hard rock and metal. A band that has an album with over 25 million in U.S sales is proof of that.

More power to them