Brian Johnson defends the exclusive sale of the new Black Ice album to Wal Mart to 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," Johnson, 61, told Reuters. "It's a...monster, this thing," he said. "It just worries me. And I'm sure they're just doing it all in the interest of making as much...cash as possible. Let's put it this way, it's certainly not for the...love, let's get that out of the way, right away," he said.

Johnson also pointed out that Wal-Mart has been very loyal to AC/DC over the years, so the band had no problem giving the retailer an exclusive. "A lot of people were saying 'Ah man, you're going to the big Wal-Mart, you're selling out,'" Johnson said. "Wal-Mart were the only big store to stock all of our albums, every single one of them, and they've never deviated. And they sold AC/DC shirts and pajamas for kids, which we thought was really cool."
 
I can't really agree with you, Mr. Johnson. I think the only hit against iTunes is that they don't allow you to sell full albums. This has been a point of contention for a few bands, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and AC/DC being three large bands who hated this fact. Though Led Zeppelin got over that and now offer their stuff on iTunes.
 
I could see if you made a concept album like Ziggy Stardust or Tommy and you didn't want those albums sold as singles. I can see that, however, AC/DC has never made a concept album, so who cares if you sell 4 billion singles of Whole Lotta Rosie and only 1 million full CD's of Let There Be Rock?
 
The reality is bands put shit songs on albums to put them out. For instance, Pearl Jam's Vitology has one of the worst Pearl Jam songs ever written, Stupid Mop. The rest of Vitology is a solid album containing Tremor Christ, Corduroy, Spin the Black Circle, Not For You, but if I could buy Vitology without Stupid Mop, it would have been worth it. (I use this as an example because I actually have Vitology on CD and refused to burn in Stupid Mop).
 
I can't help but see this as a greed issue. If AC/DC sold 1 million singles of Hells Bells at $0.99 or 1 million albums of Back In Black at $9.99, what scenario do they make more on? Obviously, the $9.99 scenario.
 
As I stated earlier, if this was an artistic issue, I can see that. You want people to hear your art, but times are changing, people don't want to hear art (sadly). They want the singles and that is it. The refusal of iTunes forces people to find what they want elsewhere. That might explain why AC/DC's Black Ice is the most downloaded on Bit Torrent sites with over 400,000 downloads. (Source)

But the refusal of iTunes, hasn't hurt the sales of AC/DC's back catalog and only time will tell if exclusivity will hurt the sales of Black Ice.