Apple will do what's good for Apple, not necessarily what's good for artists and labels. So if they make a change that temporarily messes things up for artists and the thousands of web sites already developed, it's the artists (and labels) that have to adapt their marketing and sites. Recently, artists might consider modifying every existing iTunes link the artists currently control, such as those links they include on their sites or in emails from today forward to their email lists.
Since 2003, artists have generally made much more from iTunes downloads than from any other download service, and in most cases more from iTunes than most of the streaming services. Artists spent years not only producing original music, but adding more album and song links to itunes onto their web sites.
Apple Music and iTunes are two different entities now. On iOS mobile devices, they are literally two different apps that connect in one direction: from Apple Music to iTunes store, but not back to Apple Music from iTunes. On desktop they are only one iTunes app, but once opened have different tabs, including 'New' and 'iTunes'. On desktop, the 'New' tab is Apple Music streaming, and only the 'iTunes' tab is for iTunes downloads.
Most of what I'm going to discuss here is related to the desktop version of Apple Music and iTunes.
All existing (from prior to the existence of Apple Music) iTunes store links (to album and song downloads for purchase) now point to Apple Music streaming only. Someone who is not subscribed to Apple Music will not be able to hear even preview clips of the songs, but they can click some options (looks like three dots ... when you hover over the right of each song or album title) to 'show in iTunes store'. So you can get there (to iTunes downloads) but it's just extra unnecessary steps.
For example, at this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/steven-cravis/id6366669 you will go into the New tab of Apple Music.
The only way around it is to make a smarturl at http://www.smarturl.it like http://www.smarturl.it/sc or simply add
?app=itunes to the end of all your iTunes URLs like this:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/steven-cravis/id6366669?app=itunes
Note, don't make changes to your web site links yet, if it's too much work. It's probably worth testing the impact on itunes download sales, for one or a few albums, for one month, because who knows what changes Apple will make to it's next version of iTunes, or iOS upgrades to Apple Music and how that will affect these links.
Luckily, Pandora already has the ?app=itunes added to it's buy album in itunes links. However, I notice YouTube (in those buy links for iTunes and other stores under millions of videos) did not add the '?app=itunes' to the end of iTunes URLs as of the writing of this post.
If you are an artist with much traffic to your web site, and interested in maintaining your download sales, I would recommend either adding this ending ?app=itunes to your existing site links, OR, give the option for both on your site. Such as one button that says Play in Apple Music, and the other Download from iTunes. In my next site revisions, I would write my linkable text like this for clarity to my fans:
Apple Music streaming (subscription required)
iTunes downloads (subscription NOT required)
While the above is perhaps not a marketer's dream wording for the links, giving both options would make the most sense to me, in my site revisions, because I look at it like this: If someone knows they are subscribed to Apple Music or are in a free trial period, they will like having that option. If they know they are not subscribing to Apple Music, they should have the option to go at least hear the 90 second previews in iTunes, which are not available to a non-subscribed Apple Music user on desktop iTunes, and therefore puts a burden of extra steps on the listener to find it on iTunes.
The one thing I like about Apple's current configuration is that the potential path is a one way ticket to the downloads. So if your site gives only the link ending in ?app=itunes where the customer lands (iTunes Store) will give them no link from there to the Apple Music streaming (New tab) location of that album. Though if they (likely) land in Apple Music first, at least if they use any song option (those three dots on the desktop version of itunes that appear when you hover the mouse just to the right of each song title) at the Apple Music page, to 'Show in iTunes Store' they will land in the iTunes (tab) page for the entire album. In this way, it gets the album onto the New tab first, and shows it in the iTunes tab second, as long as the user knows how to find 'Show in iTunes Store' from the New Tab song listing. I'm guessing this was Apple's logic (besides driving up subscriptions) for changing past links to now go to the New tab Apple Music streaming version of the album.
Steven Cravis is a piano and soundtracks composer, producer and publisher. He created music for the award winning Fallen Tree Games 'Quell' puzzle apps and has numerous albums available at all music services, in many genres. Special thanks to Ari Herstand who first wrote about this topic over at DigitalMusicNews.
