Record Albums & Fries

Filed in archive Apple , Commentary , Major Labels , Marketing on April 5, 2007

This post is part of a series that analyzes Apple's Complete My Album offering.

1. Apple Pimps The Single
2. Complete My Album Is Incomplete
3. Complete My Album Is For Singles
4. Complete My Album's False Promise
5. Albums & Fries

The major labels lost control over music packaging when digital singles, both legitimate and otherwise, became available. After ten years the music industry is finally accepting reality.

The recording industry says that Complete My Album will add revenues from album upgrades. Unlikely but ultimately irrelevant. It's minor compared to its natural place in the evolution of digital music. Instead of saving the industry as it now stands, it hastens its transformation.

Complete My Album says much more about singles than albums. It defines albums not by their unique properties but by their role as a collection of singles, like buying a dozen doughnuts instead of just one. Their place in the music firmament is now secondary as an upgrade option. Complete My Album crowns singles as THE format of consumer choice.

We've come full circle to the beginning of this series. Apple's Complete My Album indeed treats the album purchase as a secondary recommendation. It's suggestive selling at its finest. You bought the single. Would you like an album with that?

Complete My Album is a cosmetic change to the album. If the music industry is to save the format it's going to have retool the pricing, product, or packaging in more significant ways. It must accept or successfully counter the customer perception that the 99 cent single is the meat and the album with its non-hit songs and aggregated linear format is just the fries.