Apple: Think(ing) Different (About Censorship)

The so-called underdog of the computer world, Apple, is poised to overtake Wal-Mart in music sales sometime this year.

The NPD Group issued a report Tuesday that said Apple had outpaced Best Buy and Target to become the No. 2 U.S. music retailer. Unless the downward trend in CD sales suddenly reverses, Apple will be No. 1, said Russ Crupnick, the NPD Group’s president of Music.

“Digital sales were up close to 50 percent and CD sales were down 20 percent last year,” Crupnick said. “Even at half that growth rate in digital sales, Apple will in all likelihood catch Wal-Mart this year.”

Anybody in their teens or early 20s is going to ask, “So what else is new?” To them, digital downloads has been part of their lives for years. It’s only natural that a download store emerge as the top seller.

But anybody older is going to remember that it wasn’t too long ago when music buying meant flipping through CD racks at the former retail powerhouses.

Other than destroying the nostalgia of flipping through unorganized CD racks and purchasing an entire CD to get your hands on that one song, Apple’s success is weakening Wal-Mart’s power to censor the music industry.

With its roots in the Southern Christian heartland, Wal-Mart believes that being a “family” store is the key to their mass appeal. They refuse to carry CDs with cover art or lyrics deemed overtly sexual or dealing with topics such as abortion, homosexuality or Satanism. While Wal-Mart is the world’s largest CD retailer, and in some regions the only place in town to purchase music entertainment products represent only a fraction of their business. However, it is a different story for recording artists. Because Wal-Mart reaps about 10 percent of the total domestic music CD sales, most musicians and record companies will agree to create a “sanitized” version specifically for the megastores.

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[W]hen Sheryl Crow released her self-titled album [in 1996], Wal-Mart objected to the lyric, “Watch our children as they kill each other with a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores.” When Crow would not change the verse, the retailer refused to carry the album. This type of censorship has become so common that it is often regarded as simply another stage of editing. Record labels are now acting preemptively, issuing two versions of the same album for their big name artists. Less well-known bands, however, are forced to offer “sanitized” albums out of the gate.

As music commerce rapidly shifts from physical to virtual stores, Wal-Mart’s interpretation of family values will lose it’s power to prevent their customer base from being exposed to certain viewpoints.

*****

Dear Apple,
Thanks for helping restore my spirit to the music industry.
Sincerely,
The First Amendment.

Posted by Cass Brulott on Wednesday, February 27, 2008