Kid Rock Finally Says "Yes" To ITunes

Lets bust open a can of "WTFI" You already know the junk in the trunk that pertains to WTF...now spike it with the word "IF" WTFI! Let's say you were born to Rock. The garage and basement are a great place but you bust free from that space and through scientific mystic rainbows the universe lands your guitar strap on huge stages that feel like they stretch from Charleston, SC to Memphis. To own a stage that big you gotta be big. So big that sportin your tunes on websites has never come across as a well thought out ride. Yet fans always find a way to musically trade. In the end who truly wins? Napster wasn't the first to illegally digitally spit up vibes. They became the most exposed. In the end...it forced music companies with fat *** presidents to look a little deeper into the channels of modern technology. From the trenches of flat out creative but horridly poor because of it...came ITunes, Amazon, Walmart.com and massive amounts of other copycat sites that felt they belonged at the celebration. Not overnight but maybe six pence past the richer...writers, producers and groupies disconnected from Radio and began to pour hordes of tunes into IPods, smart phones and whatever else could handle your reasons for wanting astronomical amounts of music knowing full well there's only about 50 to 150 you listen to over and over again. Up on the house top there did sit...a few musical bystanders not so into it. Their art being an important part of the expression puzzle deserved better treatment. If a Rock fan was to be had, they would do all they could to load up at old fashioned Best Buys and Targets. I can't tell you the last time I purchased a compact disc. Oh wait! I tried to land my fingers on a performer called Rumor but the man behind the counter said, "I can only order it." WTF! A man by the name of Kid Rock loved his fans beyond the norm. He wanted to treat them with ample amounts of respect. How dare he whore his lyrics! To be part of his fan family meant not buying his music on ITunes and other web based outlets ending with .com or .we make more money than you neener neener. Sadly...I haven't purchased Mr. Rock's last releases due to no longer dancing with discs. Until this year when Santa has finally heard my Christmas wish. RollingStone Magazine reports Kid Rock, who has pointedly stonewalled Apple in the past, will release his new LP Rebel Soul through the dominant online retailer. The album, due on November 19th, is available by pre-order on iTunes, and its first single "Let's Ride" is already for sale. "We have landed," says Lee Trink, the Detroit rapper's manager. Until now, Rock withheld all his music from iTunes, and he once recorded a sarcastic video encouraging music pirates to "level the playing field – steal everything." "Times are different than they were on the last release," says his manager. "There are fewer record stores available, and there are fans who don't necessarily want to get in the car and drive to the store. They've been accustomed to buying it digitally. He's proven his point that he was able to have an incredibly successful record without iTunes, [but] that doesn't mean you can't reassess the landscape and take a look at people's buying behaviors." After lengthy conversations with Trink and Atlantic Records executives, Rock made the decision himself. He has argued for years that albums should be sold as a unit as opposed to a collection of inidivual tracks, and has ripped Internet pirates for dictating how he gets to sell his own music. In the summer of 2008, as "All Summer Long" was dominating the charts, he told Billboard: "As soon as someone says, 'You have to be on iTunes . . . they're the Number One retailer' . . . I don't have to. Because I remember being a kid when I heard a song that I liked, I would jump on the bus, ride to Detroit, get a $2.50 transfer and walk a mile to the hip-hop store to buy the new Eric B. and Rakim record. You're not going to stop people from obtaining what they want if it's available at some level." Rock has appeared to needle Apple and iTunes over the years, selling his music through competing online retailers such as Amazon and walmart.com; in his "steal everything" video, he deadpanned: "Bill Gates and Steve Jobs – they're not gonna miss a couple laptops and a couple iPods." Trink, a former top executive at EMI and Atlantic, wasn't managing Rock when he authorized other retailers, so he wouldn't comment on that issue. Rock has also appeared to contradict his label's iTunes policy – like all the big record labels, Atlantic has sold the majority of its catalog through the online store since it opened in 2003. (iTunes has sold 25 billion tracks as of March, long ago becoming not only the top online music retailer but the top music retailer.) Contractually, Trink says, "Let's say there's a disagreement in how the language read – but [Atlantic executives] respected his wishes. It didn't wind up being a point of contention." Now, Rock is no longer one of the final iTunes holdouts. Although the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Rock's hero, Bob Seger, have caved in recent years, AC/DC, Tool and Garth Brooks remain absent. (Trink says Rock's reps are even considering a Spotify release, although they haven't made a decision.) So far, competing retailers haven't complained about Rock's iTunes decision, Trink says, and pre-order sales of Rebel Soul are strong. "Now is the right time," the manager adds. "Digital will only be a greater and greater proportion in the way recorded music is purchased. At a certain point, there will be a very tiny, tiny proportion of physical goods. You're going to have to make that decision."