Saying that he considers his material to be part of a cohesive whole, Garth Brooks said he won't be offering any of his newest material online individually.
He said in a press conference Saturday (August 18) that a single from his newest CD/DVD package will be released on August 27 called "More Than a Memory."
Brooks added that the new albums, which will consist mainly of his past best hits, along with four new singles, will probably be sold at discounted prices of $11 to $14, making the cost of $.99 a song online not worth it.
"If you want to go online -- if you want to pay 99 cents [per track] for all of them -- at 33 bucks, the math's pretty easy. So I feel really good about this."
This deal marks the end of the exclusive sales Brooks had through Wal-Mart (WMT).
There are few people that probably would get away with neglecting selling their material digitally, but if anyone can get away with it, it would be Garth Brooks.
Even so, I'm not sure he will. He does appeal to a wide audience, so many of his older fans will probably not care whether he offers music digitally or not, but his younger, mobile ones may.
I'm surprised he doesn't at least offer his four new singles as online options, but as he said, he considers his work as part of a cohesive whole, and for that reason won't offer them individually in a digital format.
When you consider he's offering a single to be played on the radio and not digitally, it does raise the question of why he'll offer it that way as a single, but not digitally.
Sales will tell us if he's made the right decision.
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