For those who want to legally download AC/DC albums, instead of find a torrent or buy a physical copy or borrow Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap for your local library, you’re in luck: the only hard rock band to ever prominently feature the male knee is coming to iTunes. According to Rolling Stone.
AC/DC has become one of the last big holdouts to make its music available on iTunes, joining previous acts including the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Metallica as late arrivals to Apple’s digital music store. AC/DC announced the news on their website this morning.
The Australian hard-rock band had previously refused to sell their music through iTunes in an effort to preserve the album format instead of allowing users to purchase single songs. It’s not clear what prompted AC/DC to change their minds, though they’re not the only act to relent: Kid Rock recently lifted his boycott of the digital service with his new album Rebel Soul. (Via)
Copies of Ballbreaker are flying off the digital shelves! AC/DC was one of the last major iTunes holdouts, for reasons having to do with the singles band vs. albums band debate that doesn’t really matter to anyone anymore. But there are still some popular groups/artists with famous albums that you can’t purchase via Apple’s music store. Here are eight of the biggest.
#1. Master of Reality by Black Sabbath
(You can, however, download Mob Rules.)
#2. Lateralus by Tool
#3. Against the Wind by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
#4. Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
#5. Face to Face by the Kinks
#6. Hysteria by Def Leppard
#7. In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson
#8. No Fences by Garth Brooks
(Hey, I didn’t say “good,” just “famous,” though “Friends in Low Places” is a shameful pleasure.)
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Can you get other works by Tool, just not Lateralus?
Nope. Tool’s kinda dumb for being so good.
Ya, Maynard is a weird cat, that’s for sure.
Ænima should be the gold standard for albums you can’t get on itunes then.
/old.
Tool and all of the Ozzy Sabbath albums. So i just listen to em on Slacker.
So you just down-borrow them from the Pirate Bay, what?
Like flex said, none of them are available. That’s a goddamn shame. I just slightly prefer Lateralus.
If musicians really wanted to preserve the album format, then they should stop releasing albums with only 4 or 5 good songs and 10 songs of crap filler. 8 tracks or GTFO.
Care to tell me which songs you’d classify as “crap filler” from Laterus or In The Court of the Crimson King?
Fun fact of the day: members of King Crimson went on to form both Foreigner and Bad Company. Not at all the bands one would expect to come out of King Crimson
The “preserve the album” argument is stupid because there are plenty of albums that disallow purchasing single tracks.
And I bet those albums suffer on the iTunes platform. Most of the people who use iTunes to buy music prefer buying tracks rather than albums.
I don’t know. I understand the argument being made for preserving the integrity of the art when you allow people to buy individual songs instead of the entire album. Of course, this is a stronger argument when the discussion is about albums that are actually cohesive works (I’ll use Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ as an example but there are plenty of options for suitable examples out there). Anyhow, I guess the point is that you wouldn’t divide any other work of art into pieces and sell it that way. Let’s use the Mona Lisa as an example. Even in reproductions, nobody just sells the face of the picture. They sell the whole thing.
I don’t know. Art is a strange thing. I’ll go back to listening to the entire b-side of Abbey Road now.
Garth Brooks’ No Fences is one of the top country albums of the 90s and has probably sold more copies than any of other seven combined.
Garth Brooks changed the face of country music. I’d say he’s a little more than one bloggers guilty pleasure. But that’s just one blog commenters opinion.
Yes, but it’s important that you don’t just listen to “Friends in Low Places” RIGHT AFTER “Two of a Kind Workin’ on a Full House”. I mean, what kind of rube would you be if you did that?
Exactly, he took it from regional fare to full-on hated by mainstream America!
thanks Garth!
A lot of people get very mad at Garth; everyone who uses the “I only like Johnny Cash” argument always points to him as being the downfall of everything that was once holy. That may be true, and his music is soulless, but goddamn is it catchy. I also considered him a pop musician with country roots.
AC/DC sold music to EVERY commercial and movie the last few years (probably for HUGE $$). I guess they figure nows the time. Sabbath needs to get on board!!
Honestly, “wanting to preserve the album format” is a pretty lame excuse for not putting your stuff on itunes–if it was really that big a deal, why not just make it so you could only download individual tracks of the singles you release off the album like in the old days?
That way a band like Led Zeppelin, who wasn’t keen on releasing singles, could have their albums available, but just as whole albums, not as a single song bonanza.
Also, another reason why it’s bull crap is because it’s nothing new: single song downloads for a band like AC/DC is the 21st century version of the Greatest Hits album – one you can pick yourself.