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iTunes Cracks the Vault With 'Digital 45s'

by Lee Bains on July 15, 2009 at 10:25 AM


We're not going to lie. Very few of us here at Switched are old enough to remember when buying 45s (short-playing records) was de rigeur. Still, a good number of us have spent hours poring over record- and thrift-store bins, searching for that original Wilson Pickett single, or a Beatles Decca release. Although those trips are often motivated by a collector's impulse (or attempts to get rich quick on eBay), we've discovered a lot of random B-sides along the way -- powerful songs that we'd otherwise have never heard.

And that is exactly the point of iTunes's new Digital 45s. While everybody in every bar from Tuscaloosa to Timbuktu can hum along to Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire,' how many can honestly say they've heard its B-side 'I'd Still Be There' with its rollicking, church-in-the-tavern piano? Most anybody who's gone to college sometime in the past quarter-century has struggled to keep up with the rapid-fire verses of R.E.M.'s 'It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),' but who's heard the plaintive, 6/8 piano ballad 'Last Date?'

With that promise of discovery, music fans shouldn't have a problem paying iTunes's measly buy-in-bulk prices. (All the 45s are either $1.49 or $1.99, the particular cost depending on the individual songs' price tags.) So go ahead, throw down your buck and a half, and open your ears to new sounds. Just be sure you sample the songs in iTunes first and like what you hear. We don't expect there to be much of a collectors' eBay market for used AAC files anytime soon. [From: iTunes Store and Apple Insider]

Tags: apple, digital 45s, Digital45s, itunes, itunes store, ItunesStore, music, top, vinyl

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