Why There Is No Garth Brooks On iTunes

Country super crooner Garth Brooks announcing that he is ending his retirement millions of fans are going to be searching online music stores when any new material is released, but they will come up with nothing to show for it. All the back catalog and any future works are not on any online music store including iTunes because Mr. Brooks doesn't want it that way. Mr. Brooks has a couple of beefs with how music is sold on the Internet. Firstly Mr. Brooks wants to right to variable pricing, which of course is a red herring. Since songs on iTunes sell for .69, .99 and 1.29 there is some variable pricing in the system as opposed to traditional retail which the retailer sets the prices, not the musicians, songwriters or recording companies.

The other problem that Mr. Brooks has with how music is sold online, every song from every album available for download as a single. Mr. Brooks wants to force consumers to buy the whole album. Isn't paying twenty dollars to buy a dozen or more songs just to get one or two songs that the buyer wanted the whole reason that original Napster took off in the first place and forced big music to rethink their business model?

This isn't the first time Mr. Brooks tried to dictate to music retailers how they should conduct business. In 1993 just before the release of In Pieces, Mr. Brooks got on his high horse and criticized music retailers that bought and resold CD's that people no longer wanted. Mr. Brooks' label at the time Capitol Records refused to ship copies of In Pieces to music retailers that engaged in the practice. The Music retailers retaliated and filed anti-trust lawsuits against Capitol Records. In Pieces eventually shipped to all music stores even those that sell previously enjoyed CD's.

Back then it Mr. Brooks didn't get his way, but now music retailing is so much different than when Mr. Brooks first retired some eight years ago. If his mind set doesn't change than any future new songs will be available online, on Limewire, Bearshare, Ares and Frostwire. Doesn't things will end very good for Mr. Brooks this time around.