AC/DC Finally Joins iTunes

Just a few weeks after longtime digital holdout Kid Rock announced that his new album will be available on iTunes, another holdout has made the move: in a release Monday morning, Columbia Records and Apple announced that AC/DC's entire catalog is now available digitally, exclusively on the iTunes Store. The catalog includes 16 studio albums, 4 live LPs, 3 compilations and two career-spanning boxed sets.

That leaves Garth Brooks as the remaining superstar artist whose music is not yet available on iTunes. The Beatles, another long holdout, signed on in 2010.

Reps for the band and Apple had not responded to Billboard.biz's request for comment at press time, but Alice Enders of media analysts Enders Analysis told the BBC, "AC/DC probably now understand that their future sales reside on iTunes given the steep decline of the CD in the US, long its top market. If you can't get your music in front of people in the retail outlet, then you have no choice but to embrace digital sales."

In 2008, AC/DC singer Brian Johnson told Reuters:  Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless 'em, it's going to kill music if they're not careful. It's a...monster, this thing. It just worries me. And I'm sure they're just doing it all in the interest of making as much ... cash as possible."

Regarding his decision, Kid Rock recently told Billboard, "As a musician, you want the music in as many hands as you can get it into," Rock says. "More importantly, I want people to get the music for the fairest price, and in the most convenient way. And that's really turned into iTunes when you're talking about selling albums."