Ben Folds, iTunes and 'Made on a Mac'

 Apple’s iTunes team have figured out a brand new music marketing move with top tier US singer/songwriter, Ben Folds.

The partners are working together for a streak of combined marketing that combines the artist’s latest album, his tour, live recordings and an exclusive live album – by making exclusive live performance tracks delivered during Fold’s current US tour available for sale through iTunes the very next morning.

Folds calls the collection “The Sounds of Last Night…This Morning.” One track is being recorded at each of the ten dates of the tour, sold the next day and will be made available exclusively through iTunes as a complete release.

For Apple, the deal looks even nicer as the recordings are made on a Mac – tracks are recorded to the computer, they’re previewed on an iPod, Folds makes the original cover art using PhotoBooth application and sends the music to iTunes for sale the next day. 

It’s not the first slice of combined marketing we’ve seen emerge from iTunes. The iTunes ‘Live From London’ series has been extremely popular, the company has quietly continued to offer exclusive live recordings from beyond that remit. Use of music from Coldplay in a recent Apple ad drove sales of the band’s ‘Viva La Vida’ album to shift over 349,000 copies digitally in the US (mainly through iTunes) in just three weeks.