The daily tech news aggregation and commentary DailyTechRag does a god job describing the AC/DC – Verizon Wireless deal. They have more detail than my previous posting did and actually correct one thing that I did not know. Evidently the song “Shook my All Night Long” will be the only AC/DC song available as a single.
My spirit was embiggened by their use of the Simpson-inspired phrase “craptacular.” It’s a very cromulent description of this deal.
AC/DC–not the electrical current acronym but rather, the hellraising purveyors of ’70s hard rock–have apparently decided to extend their bad boy ways well into the digital age. Eschewing the usual iTunes deal, the band has decided to sign a contract (presumably in blood) with Verizon Wireless for the exclusive digital distribution of their music.
So, what do AC/DC fans get out of the deal? Well, you can now purchase all of AC/DC’s albums from Verizon–but only as albums, there will be no single track sales (with the exception of ”You Shook Me All Night Long,” the only single that will be sold as an individual download). Well, at least those albums will be
priced to move, right? Wrong. At $12 a pop, these puppies are going to be more expensive than iTunes albums–heck, they’re even more expensive than physical copies of the same albums on CD from Amazon. But for $12, you’ve got to own these things for real… right? Wrong again, my friend: the tracks will be available only through your VCast account and will not actually download to your handset. So let’s recap: for
more than the price of the same album on a CD, you gain the ability to stream songs (that you probably already own in another form) over Verizon’s network to your handset … and that’s it. I’m sure AC/DC and
Verizon are going to be laughing all the way to whatever the opposite of a bank is thanks to this brilliant strategy.
