Garth Brooks Explains His Digital Decision

The CD cover of Garth Brooks' new 3-disc set, The Ultimate Hits. Photo courtesy of Pearl Records.

August 22, 2007 — While revealing the details about his upcoming The Ultimate Hits collection, which lands in stores November 6, Garth Brooks also announced that he still has no plans to release his music digitally through iTunes.

As Dial-Global reports, Garth says the main factor behind his decision is that iTunes requires each song to be made available on its own, and he prefers to release albums as a whole. Aside from that, he points out that people will actually save money by visiting their local retailer to purchase the project.

"For people who have all the records, to have them come get this compilation of 33 songs and then 33 videos and know that Wal-Mart is gonna have it probably somewhere between 11 and 14 bucks. I feel really good about that. When you go online, if you wanna pay 99 cents for all of them at 33 bucks...the math's pretty easy."

Garth adds that, being old school, he loves to give his fans something to hold. He believes the bad thing about digital sales is that the art of making an album, cover design being one example, is disappearing.