"I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED... I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure."

Al is specifically referring to the iTunes music store. The Digital Music Weblog suspects he gets roughly $0.31 cents per song via CD sales, but only $0.045 on a digital download. I suspect he would do much better at eMusic. Unfortunately, that's not a decision he gets to make.

It looks like iTunes is an even worse deal for artists than it is for consumers.

• digital is a raw deal for some artists

previously on WTG:

• why the beatles won't use itunes, existing record contracts or DRM
  
• microsoft actually innovates with windows media player 11
• emusic: free and clear mp3s
  
• apple itunes powered by foobar2000
• "indie label" label does more harm than good

Filed in: shopping business