iTunes LP Seems Bound for Failure After Just Six Months

In September, Steve Jobs unveiled the latest attempt to add value to the digital music download, and to distract people from the Web's vast stores of free and illegal content. The iTunes LP adds photos, lyrics, liner notes, and other bonus content, and offer material not found on file-sharing networks -- all to lure customers into buying full albums instead of individual songs. It's been six months, though, and there are only 29 iTunes LPs available. And almost half of those were available at launch.

So why did Apple's supposedly revolutionary format fail? Well, GigaOM points to a number of different factors, one of which is price. And we don't mean the price for consumers. The initial batch of LPs were subsidized by Apple, according to one person who worked on the project, at a cost of up to $60,000 apiece. Then, there's the fact that the format seemed better suited for tablet devices, like the recently announced but still unavailable iPad. Artists have also begun opting to package bonus materials as apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, which offer a level of interactivity not afforded by the iTunes LP format.

The iTunes LP isn't alone in its attempt to bring "value added" content to albums. A new format called MusicDNA offers many of the same features as the iTunes LP, along with a healthy dose of social networking integration. Even physical albums attempted to package unique content like videos, photo galleries, and screen savers with the Enhanced CD format. But it (and its various offshoots) failed for the same reasons that MusicDNA and the iTunes LP inevitably will. The customers targeted by such special editions aren't the same people who want to download music, or pop a CD into a computer to read liner notes. These consumers, with at least one Switched staffer among them, are too attached to the act of physically reading an album or CD booklet. Try as it might, the iTunes LP just can't replicate the experience of opening the cloth-bound special edition of 'Amnesiac,' removing the library check-out insert, and looking over the glossy abstract images while listening to Thom Yorke croon over the riff to 'I Might Be Wrong.' [From: GigaOM]

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