Just like Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock,” Garth Brooks can’t make it 1997 again through science or magic. Too bad, because that’s when CD sales were robust and Brooks reigned over the music industry as the best-selling artist in history.
As a result, Brooks — notoriously opposed to distributing his music through iTunes and online retailers — is now simultaneously adapting to the 21st century and staying rooted in a ’90s mentality. Releasing “Man Against Machine” on Tuesday, his first new album in 13 years, the country veteran is also officially launching GhostTunes, an alternative music sales Web site that dubs itself “the spirit of music.”
What makes it different? For consumers, the actual site looks very similar to iTunes (featured artists, divided by genre, top-selling singles or albums on the right-hand side), except that it’s more simple to access as a Web site instead of a separate program. The key difference is more apparent to the artists: Because they have a say about how they want their music sold.
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On GhostTunes, artists can set preferences requiring fans to buy complete albums — or, they can just as easily sell individual singles or physical copies of the CD; hawk merchandise; or provide links to Ticketmaster for their latest tour. Or, they can offer “bundles.” Brooks, for example, famously hates the idea of albums being broken up into singles. So his new record is only available as a whole, but he’s offering a bundle that includes eight old albums and live concert footage for $29.99.
The point is that artists have the control, as opposed to a digital company that limits their sales options.
While some observers, including the Wall Street Journal, note that it’s not exactly a new business model, the GhostTunes mission claims that it’s the most “artist-friendly.” The site pays 80 percent of revenue back to music-makers; other digital music services pay around 70 percent. “The difference is that the copyright owner gets to make that decision” about how to sell their own music, Brooks said when making the announcement.
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In an interview with Billboard, GhostTunes Chief Operating Officer Chris Webb explained that they are not competing with digital music services from Apple or Amazon, “they’re simply providing an alternative.”
Share this articleShareAnother difference is that when customers buy music, it’s transported to a personalized “locker,” or a cloud that will make the music available anywhere they want to stream it when they log in to their GhostTunes account: via any type of iPhone or Android smartphone, desktop computer, tablet, etc.
“GhostTunes is about choices. We don’t view ourselves as a platform in competition with other distribution platforms,” Webb told Billboard. “It’s about the formats the artists want and how the consumers choose to absorb the content. It’s a win-win for the music industry.”
A look at GhostTunes shows that so far, many artists (from Universal Music, Sony and more) have opted to take the “singles” route, following the lead of iTunes by offering songs for $1.29 or less. However, Brooks and his wife, Trisha Yearwood, are listed as “featured artists” and their new projects are album-only.
There’s every type of genre — country, rap, hip-hop, Latin, jazz, pop, rock and comedy. And so far, many big-name artists, though Brooks says there will be independent acts available later as well. Some prices are slightly cheaper. Taylor Swift’s “1989” is $11.99, as opposed to $12.99 on iTunes. Sam Hunt’s “Montevallo,” the top-selling country album last week, is $6.99 instead of the iTunes price of $9.99. Still, some are the same: T-Pain’s “Happy Hour: The Greatest Hits” is $9.99 in both digital stores.
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Meanwhile, Brooks’s entrance into the crowded digital music space comes at a fascinating time. Taylor Swift made many headlines last week for pulling all of her music off Spotify, a move that some said helped her album go platinum. She called the hugely popular streaming service an experiment, and told Yahoo, “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music.”
Could GhostTunes be the middle ground, a site that tries give control back to the artists themselves while making it easy for fans? It will be fascinating to watch it play out, especially keeping that sort of ’90s mentality in a very troubled 2014 music industry.
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