Apple said to be charging $10,000 for iTunes LP production, cutting out indie labels
By Donald Melanson 
posted Oct 9th 2009 4:07PM
posted Oct 9th 2009 4:07PM
Sure, it may be tough deciding whether to shell out the extra few bucks for a deluxe iTunes LP or not (okay, maybe not that tough), but it looks like that's nothing compared to what record labels are faced with. While Apple itself of course isn't saying anything official on the matter, Gizmodo spoke with the owner of one indie record label who got a bit of information after inquiring about the possibility of making some iTunes LPs himself. Apparently, not only is Apple not currently making iTunes LPs available to indie labels at all, but it's charging the major labels a hefty $10,000 production fee for each one, which no doubt also means they'll be confined to particularly big sellers unless something big changes.
[Via iLounge]
[Via iLounge]
Ouch thats pricy.
It's a steal compared to $3m/song that RIAA charges!
considering this is Apple, it has overcharged yet again.
Finally, a company doing all us consumers a favor and making our music choices simpler by making all those pesky "indie" labels irrelevant and hard to find. I look forward to the day when my iPod will just automatically download the Apple-approved playlist of the week so I can listen to whatever it has on it and be charged appropriately.
two points
1. this whole thing is not even 2 months old. making this a test run. so yeah, they are going to go with major labels and big artists to see if it's viable
2. what they charge a major might not be any sign of what they would charge an indie especially if they are working on some kind of SDK for the whole thing
Instead of *paying* Apple for this "service" why doesn't an indie artist just put this same kind of stuff on their website?
iTunes can still sell their songs like they always have... but offer photos, lyrics and videoclips on their own domain.
Chances are, an indie artist already has a website, and a YouTube channel, Myspace and Facebook page. They don't have the deep pockets of a huge record label, so they do a lot of promotion themselves...
What have we learned? Keep big corporation away from controlling your art. That's why they are "indie"
dude, we already know that the LP is just a bunch of files with meta files zipped up and then rename to something else. Apple probably just need to hire some cheap summer interns to put it together in like half a day.
How hard is it to type a few meta files, crop a few photos and then zip it up?
ridiculous.
@laGal
While I agree with you, my guess is they will make an SDK for it and that this is currently only a test run, they deserve all the flak that they get for this. Until they come out and say that there will be a better alternative than the current system we need to assume that this is how it is going to be and bitch about it until they see that there is a need for a better way to do this.
Considering this is mostly flash and firecrakers, why would indie band follow the same overproduced path? specially when you can't compete against million dollar budgets.
an indie band can easily make them fast once they sell 1000 copies, from 1001, the money is yours. and you bet you are going to get tons of publicity from Apple, since they also seem to hate music labels.
And remember, this is Apple's playground, they aren't always doing the correct thing with pricing.
It might seem pretty pricey from a consumer perspective, but I think it's actually pretty cheap. Try buying proffessional design services for that sort of price. $10k will buy you 1.5-2 weeks of a decent proffessional's time.
Exactly, richy. Speaking as a designer and developer who has worked at several interactive agencies, $10,000 for something like an iTunes LP project is a steal. VERY few independent agencies would do it for less, certainly not with the level of quality we've seen.
Ugh. I run a small motion design firm and we do a lot of media work for online stores and the manufactures who want to put stuff there. The other week we did a banner with some cool flash animation for a page on Walmart. We were given the job by our client because the company Walmart told them to use wanted to charge $15,000 to create something that looked like a intern webdesigner would build. We designed something FAR better for $5000, I feel like we still took our client for too much.
Sounds like Apple is doing the same. But I guess business isn't ethical in modern times.
Just buy the CD instead of this junk.
I agree. Buy the CD and have a real digital copy of it. Make MP3s of it for your media player if you want, you can encode them at a higher bitrate than Apple provides. And you have a physical copy of it. You win in so many ways.
Except that I haven't seen many CDs with the extra material provided in the LP edition of these. I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch, but the idea of positioning the extra material as an upgrade rather than a right (ie: it's "Special Edition" DVD versus DVD "Bonus Features") was marketing genius.
Then again, unless Apple themselves are producing the material that constituted the LP, that $10k is highway robbery.
You guys do realize that this article isn't about what regular customers pay for the LPs, but what the Indie developers pay to have an LP produced on the iTunes Music Store, right?
So I really don't see how, "Just buy the CD," helps out the Indie artist. Actually, it's cheaper to put your stuff on iTunes than mass produce it on a CD.
You are right, for the Indie artist it is cheaper, and if that's their best means to get their music to the masses then by all means they should do it. But when possible, buy the CD, not only are you getting higher quality music but you also have a physical copy.
But then, I also stand behind the Indie artist for not doing the whole LP crap, just put your music on there so you can be discovered and be happy about it. I also probably don't need all the extra buttloads of crap from an Indie artist.
Or rather, just by the normal LP, you know, the thing the iTunes LP is trying to replace?
If the iTunes LP is trying to replace the normal LP, then the bundled audio should at minimum be "lossless CD" quality (at or around 800kbps per song) if not higher. If Apple went to the trouble of making an Apple Lossless codec, they might as well use it for once.
I didn't think that anybody wanted those extras anyway.
There goes the artists' advance money... can't get the bling-bling anymore.
They will have to wait and buy the Bentley they really really want next week. Oh Noes!
What's the industry standard charging fee for producing LPs like they do in iTunes?
Cost of materials, so like $0.05 at most? The record company makes their own albums with all the LP stuff. Unless you're talking about competing online marketplaces in which case it's free.
No no, I don't mean fabrication costs.
I mean the fees involving in producing an LP. In other words, the fees to pay for producers, graphic artists, coders, film making/editing, and all that other work that goes into creating the material that goes along with the music in an LP.
From my understanding, it still takes the same amount of production costs to make an iTunes LP as it does to make a normal one. There's just an extra $10000 fee to sell it on iTunes. At least, that's what I'd hope. If it's actually just someone at Apple throwing these together then it's not really worth it IMO, since it should be coming from the band and the record company.
"it's charging the major labels a hefty $10,000 production fee for each one"
That statement suggests that Apple is actually making the LPs for artists, I'd like to find out more though. 10k is pretty much inline with what decent web designers get, if Apple is producing LPs then the cost would be justified.
No Mark. The LP content is not just repurposed, existing material. Have you checked it out? I don't see the appeal, personally, but I can see that there is a real cost to this. Moreover, the record labels will more than recover the "deposit" of $10K if there are sufficient buyers of the add-on material. iTunes LP is just like a special edition DVD or BluRay. If you want that extra stuff, buy it. No one is forcing the artist/label or buyer to play.
Actually 10k almost sounds a bit cheap. A multipage website with embedded media throughout. I've seen web devs charge $20kAU for less, far less with a couple of effects or menus lifted from code demo sites, in fact using style shells they don't even know how to edit.
BTW the iTunes LP is not a bit of metadata with some media. It's actually a HTML 5 website, with CSS, media and all that crap bundled into a zip (I think zip), not saying that's amazing...
Rather LP is very comparable to a HTML 5 media rich website, which is what it is. Go get a quote for a 30-50 page html5 media dense website. $200 - $500 a page...
Hardly a ripoff, well unless u think web devs over charge; which I reckon they do, esp since most just use harvested code and templates
Mark, what are you on about?
They're not charging $10k just to sell it on iTunes... Apple is producing these things, and $10k isn't completely outrageous for the amount of work involved.
Are we sure they are completely cutting out indie labels? Or is it just that the indie labels don't have the $10k to do it?
I think it's understandable for them to do a trial with larger labels and more well-known artists, to show what the format is really capable of, and what sales it can produce.
Also, the band and record label ARE involved in the process of making the iTunes LP, Mark. They provide info, behind the scenes footage, pics, etc., and input.
And it costs more than 5cents to make an LP. And the record companies don't make them themselves... they outsource to large factories.
Anyways, a lot of talking out of one's ass in these comments, with very little information to go on in the first place...
I didn't realize Apple actually made all of that stuff in house (didn't really look into it)... but if they've got a lot of people working on it to put that stuff together, I don't think it would be THAT outrageous. I don't quite understand the indie lock out though...
Not something I'm personally interested in downloading anyway, but whatever.
Jeez... $10,000? Crazy.
Not crazy, it's GREED!
Hey im not sure if you all aware but your comments are being recorded by apple for enternity and beyond that to, so listen if you want to be represented in eternity by apple shout out im a sheep for apple as loud as you can or its not going to be recorded.
and maybe apple might throw you a bone and drop a dollar off there macbook pro lines or any of there products.
What? I understand you're trying to troll, but your comment doesn't even make sense.
"their"
L2Grammar, Troll.
It made sense, it was just stupid.
@Sergio
The Invention of Lying was a good movie, but you need to realize its only a movie. Just because you say something to a bunch of people doesn't mean they are actually going to believe it.
The whole world doesnt make any sense im just trying to spread the nonsense. try it sometimes you might like it.
Your comments are FAIL. Learn to use proper English grammar and punctuation, and perhaps people won't vote you down.
Troll elsewhere.
Which may go to prove that Apple really wants the album format to die. They've done their best so far to eliminate it, what with individual song pricing, etc. They know it's a bad deal, but it makes it look like they're doing what the record cartels (I refuse to call them something as benign as "company") want. It even kind of explains the exclusion of the independents. The record cartels probably insisted on it, and Apple didn't want to rip them off anyway.
The album is dead. Apple's just animating the corpse to milk the greedy cartels.
what's amusing is that the major record labels would rather sell albums, even online, than tracks. they hate the individual track option. that's why they push some tracks as 'album only'.
That's how I interpret the whole LP thing. It's a fob by Apple to the labels to encourage the sale of whole albums rather than individual tracks. Some people will buy this if they want the extras. This is just part two of the labels hitting back (the first was to charge different prices for "popular" tracks rather than the 99c flat fee).
@LAGal
Agreed, however you left out the reason why they want to sell albums and hate the individual track option. If an album only has 1 to 3 good songs they only make $.99-$1.29 to $2.97 to $3.87 before any fees from Apple/Online distributor. If they could only sell albums online they would get some people to buy the whole album to just get a few songs similar to the way they sell physical CD's. Notice how their are no "single's" CDs anymore either?
amazon DRM free mp3, any one?
You fail. iTunes has been selling DRM-free music for a very long time. Steve Jobs pushed the idea about 3 years ago:
February 6, 2007 -- Thoughts on Music
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Amazon was one of the first stores to offer just that.
Apple has only been selling DRM-free since april of this year.
Why not iTunes DRM free? Or were you unaware that itunes music is DRM free?
Um... PASS!
The LP stuff is lame anyways. It's just a bunch of HTML and pictures anyways.
this is ridiculous. all it is is some artwork scans. 10 grand? come on now.