Estelle Bombs On Being Removed From iTunes
by 
Dave Parrack on September 1st, 2008
Estelle was riding high in the US charts with her album Shine, and the best-selling single from it, American Boy, and her career seemed to be heading in just one direction: up. Then her record company, Warner Music, decided to remove her material from Apple iTunes, and it’s all gone horribly wrong.
The short-sightedness of record companies continues to astound me. They are wholly failing to embrace the Internet and the related technologies that are changing the face of music distribution. This unwillingness to evolve is now affecting one British artist directly and unequivocally.
American Boy has been a huge hit all around the world, and transformed Estelle from a struggling artist to a diva who is loved on both sides of the Atlantic. The single was sitting at number 11 in the US Billboard charts before Warner decided to remove it from iTunes. It then fell to number 37.
They also did the same to the Album it came from, Shine, which has been nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. Shine had peaked at number 39 on the US Billboard before plummeting to number 159 when it was removed in its entirety from market leader Apple iTunes.
BBC News explains that Warner Music has removed Estelle’s material from iTunes in an effort to cash in on her new success and force fans to buy the full physical album rather than individual tracks from iTunes. The reason being that the record companies make more money from selling CDs than they do from digital copies sold over the Web.
This is a shockingly bad move by Warners, and has got to be harmful to Estelle’s long-term prospects. Sure, it may add a few zeros to the record company’s bank balance but what of offering consumers the choice over how they purchase their music?
[Photo Source: Amazon.co.uk]
Tags: American Boy, Apple, Billboard, Brit, British, Estelle, iTunes, Mercury-Music-Prize, Shine, UK, Warner Music| 2.5 |
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POSTED IN: Albums, Charts, Estelle, Gossip, Industry, News, Op Ed, R'n'B, Singles
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