The label screwed up. Interscope gave iTunes a one week exclusive and violated its agreement. The track should be back up on Spotify in four days. Van Halen had nothing to do with pulling it down.

Then again, they certainly approved the ticket prices!

But that’s music today. If everybody’s doing it, why shouldn’t we? And in a country where bankers get off scot-free and the little guy pays the price it’s hard to get people to do the right thing, because nobody’s doing the right thing, from a President beholden to the money to a candidate who’s rewriting his history, saying he was in danger of losing his job and was a job creator. Looks like everybody’s a lying cheating scumbag. And under the rubric of "it’s just business", the game goes on.

But does the game of exclusives have to continue? Isn’t it funny that labels kept satiating Best Buy and Wal-Mart as they reduced SKUs and the indie stores are still standing.

Everything should be available everywhere at the same time.

Isn’t this one of the ways RIM got in trouble? The new BlackBerrys would be on one carrier, but not another. Whereas Apple released the iPhone 4S on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint simultaneously.

Not that Apple’s a prince. Hell, did you see the commitment they extracted from Sprint? It’ll either be a success or it’ll put the carrier out of business.

The labels could stand up to Apple, but these are the same people who couldn’t stick together and get rid of indie promotion, it took an outside force, Eliot Spitzer, to make inroads. Furthermore, in the digital world, a lot of this stuff is available online even before release date, what does an exclusive mean anyway?

Ain’t it funny watching these guys try to play their old game in the new world.

Then again, Microsoft charged manufacturers for Windows even if they didn’t put it on machines, i.e. installed Linux or another operating system instead. That’s one of the reasons the company was adjudged a monopolist.

But if you’re waiting for the government to save you, you’re screwed. The government couldn’t save Microsoft from Google or the iPhone.

But bands are in a different business. As the SoundScan era fades, it’s not about initial sales but continued listening. That initial blast, pumped up by the labels, means less every day. Hell, even ten year olds know number one is meaningless, that it changes almost every week. There’s less of a hunger for new and more of a hunger for great.

And everything is ultimately available so if you’re looking to get ahead via exclusivity shenanigans, you’re not gonna get a lot of traction.

And I know Spotify does exclusives too.

And I don’t applaud those either.

Why can’t these services just win on the merits?