Kid Rock & Rhapsody

I recently blogged about Kid Rock’s take on digital downloading. He’s taking a different route with his latest album, ‘Rock N Roll Jesus.’ Namely, he is not selling on iTunes, but his album is selling well elsewhere.

So on Friday, Kid Rock made an announcement that he would be selling his album in full on Rhapsody. That means that you can’t download individual tracks, you have to download the album in full. That’s fine if Kid Rock really made it a point to create an album and not just a string of singles strategically put together.

The whole iTunes revolution was that consumers finally had the choice of songs on an album. You would hear a song on the radio, go to Best Buy, and most of the time, have to buy the whole album. That one song was usually the only song worth purchasing, but the record companies had figured out a way for you to spend $14.99 on that one song.

When consumers had the choice, they usually chose one song. That was good for the artists who could only come up with one good song, but quite sad for the artists who spent time carefully crafting an album flow. If Kid Rock is selling his album and not allowing singles to be sold, then hopefully he spent a lot of time considering the album as a whole.

On another note, this is a pretty neat deal with Kid Rock and Rhapsody which also brings in MTV. MTV will be promoting the album through advertisements and Kid Rock music video play. We will see more of these deals encompassing artists, websites, and media outlets.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com