You know what’s coming, but if you delight in watching me writhe and convulse in the corner, read on. I’d never once connected to itunes.apple.com as I knew in advance that it had nothing to offer.
But a 17 year old kid assured me that they provide various masters of each recording for the listener to sample to help them identify which they should purchase.
This was, of course, completely false. By “various masters” he meant that Dark Side of the Moon was available in TWO formats –
The 2011 CD remaster
ooooooor….
The 2011 CD remaster (with bonus tracks).
So there you are.
But I was already deep in the filth so I said, “what the hell” and started throwing artists at its ‘search’ box.
I figured I’d start out with the easiest of pitches – the 2010 EMI Beatles Box Set.
iTunes ONLY offers the stereo edition and doesn’t even HINT that the Mono Box even exists!
Beginning to sweat, I looked up their page for Captain Beefheart…
NO MENTION OF TROUT MASK REPLICA. But that’s okay, it’s only one of the most important and critically acclaimed records of its decade.
The 49 awesome albums recorded by Ash Ra Tempel and Manuel Gottsching? Not today, sorry.
Pete Namlooks’ monumental Fax +49-69450464 record label – not a single word of any one of the 238 legendary albums.
So I tried another approach – searching for Deutsche Grammophon classical releases.
Lo and behold – iTunes offers NO MEANS of searching by record label!
Want to peruse the Ninja Tune catalog? Forget about it if you’re on iTunes.
Warp Records? Ohr? Brain? Mute? Mo-Fi? Too bad.
And the 94 albums produced and recorded by LTJ Bukem on Good Looking Records and its various sub-labels? You’re going to have to search for them one at a time. (Psst – don’t bother… they aren’t there anyway.)
Salvador Dali’s notorious opera, Être Dieu? Not so much as an artist entry for the man.
Dig Nurse With Wound? Only the 26 CD releases of their ~100 disc catalog are available for purchase.
The same applies to Tangerine Dream. Beside an all-too-small sampling of their most popular early albums, iTunes is overrun with 80s-2000s compilations and soundtracks. The pink years were easily their best work, but they never happened according to this marketplace.
Independent artists? Not a single one I searched for produced any results.
Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity – arguably his best free jazz work – doesn’t exist.
The original German master of Stockhausen’s Kontakte? Forget about it.
Wordless Music Orchestra’s historical live recording of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops? Never happened.
Spacemind’s 62 hours of psybient works? Not a one.
Raymond Scott’s Manhattan Research Inc. collection? Issued in the Netherlands, but nowhere on iTunes.
The Electronic Music series produced by Turnabout records throughout the mid-60s? Nope.
The popular Franklin Mint 100-disc Classical Collection? Nadda.
NASA’s majestic Symphonies Of The Planets series? The cat’s eaten it.
What It Is: Funky Soul & Rare Grooves Box Set? Not a scrap.
(This one killed me) Kraftwerk’s three critical early albums – Kraftwerk I, Kraftwerk II, and Ralf und Florian? No, no, and no.
Max & Dima’s 131 releases? 0 on iTunes.
Alban Berg? Not even an artist page.
Anton Webern? Zilch. (However Shoenberg gets some unfair attention.)
Throbbing Gristle has 137 albums and singles. Six of them are on iTunes.
The hundred-odd crazy moog/bachelor pad/and early synth records which defined the age of futurama in the 50s and 60s? If not for iTunes’ lonely copy of Perrey & Kingsley’s The In Sound From Way Out, you’d never know they happened.
The mash up craze popularized by 2ManyDJs “As Heard on Radio Soulwax” series? You’ll have to settle for Girl Talk.
Well done, iTunes. At least we can say you’re consistent.
· · ·
The world’s most popular public tracker currently offers over 6.2 million torrents, ranging from single albums to massive discographic archives. And the top 168 active private trackers host an additional 1.6 billion torrents collectively. Suddenly, iTunes’ measly 37 million individual songs seems rather inconsequential.
The audiophile community has built a tremendous archive of analog-only issued recordings which cannot be purchased digitally anywhere on the web. This community remains the simplest and most informative resource for discovering rare music. It inspires an average of $1200 in vinyl purchases annually for this user, alone… and there are many more like me.
I will not publicly endorse file sharing, but it clearly demonstrates the dire need for a change in the fundamental operation of the music market today.
#anythingbutitunes
The Innerspace Connection 