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Apple to Launch Music Service?
discstickers writes "The San Jose Mercury News is running an article about an Apple music service that might be ready to launch next month. $.99 a song with the ability to burn to CD doesn't sound too bad."
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This seems to be the business model /.ers have been yelling at the RIAA to adopt. Let's see if it's actually viable...
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Means I don't have to buy a whole album for one or two songs, the commpanies make just as much money so they're happy, aside from it's not free as in air, what's not to like?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Follow:
99 cents a track.
~12 tracks on a disc.
~12 bucks for the music, and you have to provide the bandwith, physical media, and case. oh, and no liner notes.
Thanks, but I'll go to my local indie store, where they have the media, case, and liner notes all for 12 bucks.
Actually they might make less. They like charging you for filler songs.
I find it interesting that the information comes from an unnamed source at an unnamed company, and no one will comment on it. Perfect food for the rumor sites, but the LA Times and San Jose Mercury?
The new service would only be available to users of Apple's Macintosh line computers and iPod portable music players
.99c and then burn to CD or email to your friends
Which indicates there is something in it that stops the rest of us using it. This would further indicate either a closed format with codecs only for these two. Or DRM on top of something that exists.
Now is that bad ? Maybe not, but I was pretty sure that the Slashdot perfect model was
Download for
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
That's true. I think a lot of people are downloading for free, because they have the excuse that there isn't a way to get just the songs they want on a CD. Now that there is an option to get CDs for $15, but with 15 songs you DO want on it. It's time to see who is making excuses for their piracy and who really just doesn't like the system.
Cripes! Where do these people get their pricing ideas?
For a typical 12 song CD, that would cost as much as the meatspace equivalent. And when I purchase it for $12 at Target, or where ever else, I get to keep a physical token.
I could, however, see using this for hard to find CD's, like the bad plus. A dollar per song would be worth it when I can't find it in stores, or wait for Amazon to special order it.
But for everything else, if they charged $.25 per song, they couldn't upload them fast enough for me. As long as they're a dollar, I'll think long and hard about downloading anything.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
I seem to remember Apple having difficulties working as a media business when another older company, Apple Records (The Beatles), is still around. Perhaps they have worked something out.
Yes, but what if that track was of higher quality then the crap you get on Kazaa? What if you were guaranteed a fast download, a complete song, and no virii?
I think it's worth looking into at least.
I have a shitty sig!
"I can get them 99c cheaper on KaZaA. ... and that is why it will fail. "
Not if:
a.) The selection's good.
b.) The quality is guaranteed.
c.) The transfers happen quickly.
d.) There's an ability to preview the song.
Believe it or not, the price tag is not the major contributer to using Kazaa. It provides the best service. But it's got plenty of room for somebody with good bandwidth to come in and make a better model of it.
You have to remember, this is the same country where people drive gas-guzzling SUVS, pay $3.50 for a coffee and pay over $1.00 for bottled water. They want quality and service, the cost isn't really that big of issue.
An anonymous slashdot post was the first good description of this whole rumor. No one thought it was reliable, but the fact that it didn't sound like it was written by a two year old helped its credibility.
I'm just waiting for some electronic music distributor to realize that they'll make more money if they distribute MP3s and use social pressures to discourage piracy. If an album cost $4 online, and they'll let you do whatever you like with the music, why would you steal?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I'm as big of a Mac Zealot as you can get, but I think this too is doomed to failure. $.99 a song? Ripoff. This means that the average CD will still cost $10-$12 to download, and you don't get a CD, a jewel case, or liner notes. Legal music swapping will not catch on until it is significantly cheaper, like around $.25 or less. THAT is a good business model. I assume that this hinges on the record labels and that Apple is just performing as the middle man with these prices. I, for one, will still use Aquisition until the record companies stop gouging me.
I would like a service to give money to the artists I enjoy in exchange for the songs I like...
So the big question is (and always has been), are people generally more like you or more like me?
If the service really does offer MP3's for download at $1 a song, then we might get a chance to find out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This would be great and wonderful if people didn't already know about KaZaA/WinMX/Gnutella/etc. As much as you say "Hey, we've changed! Songs are cheap now and you can get them from home!" there will always be those people who say "That's great... but I can still get the same songs for free.". Frustrating to say the least.
I am a filthy pirate.
1. No DRM, beyond that which is already in my iPod, meaning I am free to burn CD's as I please.
2. Catalog choices. If the selection is limited to Top 40 hits of the past ten years, no way. But if the choices are wide and deep (and maybe even out of print songs as was suggested earlier, and
3. Previews, allowing me to edit out the album filler. $.99 is cheap, and most albums only have a max of 4 good tracks.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
However, now that you can get a track for 99 cents, you don't have the excuse that the Recording Industry is ripping you off to justify your theft. Now you are just stealing and you really can't bitch for getting busted.
I'd definitely check this out, I like to buy my music. The article talks about how it is kind of an odd decision for the record industry to work with Apple because of their low marketshare. The thing is, a significant number of that ~3% have iPods, and I would think that anyone with an iPod has an obvious interest in digital music, and would be more likely to use a service such as this than other consumers. We'll see what happens...
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won..." ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
So long as I can preview it before paying for the download, and don't have to pay to re-cownload it if my CD gets scratched... While the RIAA is bitching about piracy, I've bought the same damn Nine Inch Nails CD 3 times at $17 a pop since 1993. I should really stop losing my stuff every time I move...
Basically, I'll believe it when I see it, and even then I won't be able to buy in because I don't have a Mac. Has one of these services so far failed to disappoint?
I absolutely love the system to order prints of my digital pictures through iPhoto. Not only is it simple to order (just a few clicks, apple-style), but the prints arrive lightining quick!
To order music through a similar system of Apple's would be a dream! I hope they're having success in offering a variety of services (.Mac, iphoto ordering, etc), and the addition of music seems a natural step for them to take.
Xnap should, it's based on the opennap protocol, and written in java.
For that matter, there should be more than a few java based gnutella clients. Those should work too.
Case in point: Evenesence CD, out today.
.99ea, that's $10.89 from this service, just for the music (no case, CD, or lyrics).
-11 tracks @
-Alternately, the CD is 9.96 at my local Target.
-With tax, that's $10.65 (with CD cover, notes, lyrics, etc).
Can anyone then explain which is the better buy, especially after I pay for the DSL connection from home, and the blank CD?
Oh, and if I may add, the cost of the music for taking my friend to the store to get the CD, then rip it and share it with me...$0. Of course, that's just so I can listen to it and decide if I want to spend my $10.65 on it as well ^_^
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I think you've got to admit that a business model which financially rewards the creators of content is likely to be more sustainable in the long term than one based on 'everybody gets the content for free'. If you want to see the continued creation of music, you've got to consider how you can fund artists (not that I'm condoning the current business model which ensures that the few commercially successful artists that exist make thousands of times more than, say doctors, but hey... they deserve a few pennies for their efforts). Options like this one just might provide a better solution for that than the current publishing/distribution model.
The problem is that the existence of 'free' (modulo the long term social cost of killing the creation of future music) alternatives could prevent this potentially sustainable model from catching hold.
Normally, when a society wants to proscribe some activity which is destructive to its long term health (such as the widespread freeloading of music), it uses social norms and, in extreme cases, laws to prevent them. Hmm - maybe copying music without giving anything back to the artist ought to be socially unacceptable, or maybe even illegal?
Ket's face it. Kazaa is annoying. Sure, you can get free music. But you still have the problems of mislabelled files, low quality rips, disconnects, slow transfers, interrupted transfers, incomplete 'catalogues', scarcity of uncommon material... The list goes on and on. The BIG advantage of a commercial (B2P ?) service is that, unless Akamai goes down, the files are always Right There. It's the classic "you get what you pay for" situation.
An Apple-designed service can be expected to be well-designed, reliable, and cool. If 4 major record labels really do provide content this could take off in a major way. This could materially increase Apple's marketshare. Contrast this with Microsoft's DRM-laden plans and you'll see that there will be a clear choice
My employer pays a lot of ASCAP fees, and we have to support Limewire because we have legitimate needs for rapid access to a vast music library. The #1 question during the iTunes 'rollout' was "can I download MP3s with this ?" That answer is about to change.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
According to this (registration required...bleah) article from the L.A. Times, "Users will be able to buy and download songs with a single click and transfer them automatically to any iPod they've registered with Apple....Rather than make the songs available in the popular MP3 format, Apple plans to use a higher fidelity technology known as Advanced Audio Codec."
As seen on macslash
What gets me is the "registered iPod" bit...can't we do anything anonymously anymore? Geeze!
You can't take the sky from me...
>>Now that there is an option to get CDs for $15, but with 15 songs you DO want on it.
Says who? I can guarantee I wont find 15 songs I want on their site. It'll be all mainstream top 40 type of stuff that I dont buy (its on the radio ad nauseum, why would I?)
I dont use P2P, but I do download some mp3s once in awhile, and it's usually from a friend or someone I know who has similar tastes sending me obscure old punk or metal that is hard to find in stores, and impossible on services like this.
Show me a link to Mr Bungle on Apple's music site. Not even a really obscure example, but I can guarantee it wont be there.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I imagine it would be a much higher adoption rate, if it were all this, and the RIAA and record congloms saw $$ coming in.
But in a sense you are right. There will always be those that weren't going to pay for it to begin with.
Someone mentioned one of Apple's good philosophies above.
Kepp the honest people honest by offering incentive such as 5 liscense packs of OS X for only $70 more
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
What ever happened to Apple's agreement with the Beatles? Way back in the early 80s (or so), the Beatles were concerned about trademark infringement against their "Apple Corps" music label, but the issue was settled when it was clear that Apple would not be in the music business. Things got dicey again when music processing became a normal everyday computer-based activity, but I could still see a clear distinction. A service like this, though, would be a likely trademark conflict.
Anybody know what became of that agreement?
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
"Now that there is an option to get CDs for $15, but with 15 songs you DO want on it. It's time to see who is making excuses for their piracy and who really just doesn't like the system."
That depends: does the customized CD have the original CD audio files, or CD audio recordings of a lossy-compressed format? If I'm going to be paying for it, I want CD-A, not MP3s.
I'm one of the RIAA and company's most vocal critics. I also use filesharing services from time to time.
.. the goal is to cut out the middle man and make music cheaper to buy for the consumer, and more economically viable to pursue for the musician.
... this is not an option going forward, as more music will be created in such a way that it cannot be performed live. A much, much, much cheaper cost per song than we're paying now (20$ for 2 songs, as the saying goes) is the ideal goal in my mind, and I do hope that you support that. While you clock dollars at your job, musicians have to work minimum wage jobs and live in shitholes (or with the parents) in order to provide you with the music you want. Given how ubiquitous and important music is to people, I'd like to believe that most people would volounteer some cash to help artists if the option were available and reasonable in the marketplace. Its just a matter of reducing the expected production value of current music (the artificial barrier to the mainstream music market is insane thanks to the labels) so that both consumers and creators can stop worrying about the economics and focus on the music.
But please, if you remove the RIAA from the picture, and thus their bilking of the arist, the artists would like to be paid *somehow*.
I give my music away on mp3.com, besonic.com for free. But if I entered into a recording contract, I would like to imagine that people dont want all their music for free, for ever, no ifs ands or buts.
Kazaa is preferable to handing over money to the RIAA's members, but paying 1$ a song should be preferable to most people than getting all their music for free.
Even building a cheap mini studio to make music can cost anywhere from a grand (if you dont mind poor sound quality and only listen to intrumental/vocal music), to ten grand (approaching radio-quality production quality, more electronic type music). While many artists would like to give music away for free, its just not economically possible. So please temper your opinions with the realization that money has to come from somewhere
People say musicians make money from touring, but alot of the new kind of music coming out doesn't make sense in a live context (electronic music, mostly.) So its a pipe dream to imagine that getting distributed copies of music should always be free because musicians can just tour
Thanks.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I don't understand how this is different from rhapsody from http://www.listen.com Listen.com has a plan where you pay $9.95/month, then you can preview as many as you like. You can also download and burn as many as you like for an additional 49 cents per track. I've seen someone use it, and it works really well. it also has links for other artists that are similar, and some history and info on each artist. It's not perfect selection, but pretty darned good, and it's legal AFAIK.
I recently asked a non-geek who gave up buying CDs a few years back if he would be willing to pay about $0.15 for this kind of service. He said no. This is the same person who spend $60+ on a concert ticket.
The paying for recorded music meme is dying, and there's very little that can be done to prevent it. No law is enforcable when more than about 10% of the population are breaking it, and so they will have to either loosen copyright law, or not enforce it at all. Artists are worth money, and people will pay good money to see them. Recordings are just advertising, and most people object to paying for advertising.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is another article at the LA Times. The service will be making use of a technology known as AAC or Advanced Audio Codec. There is a project at Sourceforge with an implementation.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Well, the price of a CD if you putting together the album.
I mean, I don't have any problem morally with downloading a couple of songs for free if I don't like the band neough to buy the album. It's just the same as getting a copy from a friend, or recording it from radio or whatever. If I like them, then I get the album, and for 99cents a song, it'd be about as cheap to get the CD, then it's better quality, especially if you were to write the mp3 to CD (two encodes, loses that little bit more quality).
Dude, you can live off lawn grass and rain water for free if you like, and yet, for some odd reason, you're not doing it.
...
Is that because you might actually pay for something that is otherwise available for free if the quality of that product is offered at a price you consider worth spending on it? Gasp
"Old man yells at systemd"
While I agree that being able to pick song by song would be nice in the short term, I do think it would have some long term consequences that may not be so good.
Imagine some future world where everyone gets their music via these services... you could easily wind up with a situation where every new song is overproduced (and possibly run by one of those 'AI' music-hit detectors mentioned here previously) to try to ensure it is a hit, since any time spent writing/recording it will be 'wasted' if not enough people pay for the song by itself. Right now you have an environment where artists can put some experimental tunes in between the sure-fire hits. Maybe these tracks hit the mark and become huge, maybe they tank, but at least they are trying something different. If everything is per-song I think we'll eventually see even less artist experimentation and artist growth than we do now, and that is scary.
I have a service called "Armed Robbery" that I access with my copy of "Smith & Wesson .357 magnum". It lets me use every Best Buy and Circuit City as a free CD vendor and costs me 0 cents. It also lets me get all the blank CD's I need for free too. I like that better.
Why not go make a subscription to emusic instead?
:)
15 bucks a month with unlimited downloading of mp3s that you can burn. A much better deal
(shameless plug)
if you want to use a GTK2 Emusic album downloader that I wrote, Hot Lead
http://www.emusic.com
arcane for life
I mean duh, dude do you know whut a iPod is.
His question wasn't really off the mark when you factor DRM into this. I'm sure he's well aware that the iPod doesn't have a CD player, he was merely asking if copying the track to CD marks the song as 'used' in the DRM system, and thus stops you from transferring it to the iPod.
In other words...maybe you're the one who needs to do a little thinking before posting, jackass.
The article says, in effect, that in exchange for reduced audio quality, providing your own CD's, a lack of liner notes, you too can make record company executives happy.
If you really like music, you would never accept a lack of subsonic. You buy full albums of artists you like, and you Kazaa / live 365 to find new artists. If you don't really like music, you probably have never even heard of Kazaa. Maybe you will like this service, then.
In a world where costs have been cut dramatically, you can't go on charging the same. Tapes were a step above records acoustically, and CD's were a premium above tapes (despite being cheaper to manufacture). What do MP3's offer? They're cheap. Charge a premium for a lower quality? Nuts.
All you can eat 128k MP3's for 19.95 per month, with 180k MP3's available for 29.95, and lossless CD for 59.95. Why is supply, demand, and competition such a hard concept for record executives?
The ______ Agenda
Don't forget the other important fact: not breaking federal copyright law. Downloading with Apple's service would not be a violation, while Kazaa is (except when permission to redistribute is granted by the copyright holder of course).
If you think popular music is crap now, wait until this business model becomes successful. Artists will be pressured to have every song on thier album a hit to maximize downloads. We'll also face lables promoting even more Britney Spears and N'sync type groups. Perhaps labels will just use the hit-song detecting software and just hire a little T&A to sing it for them
;^)
Well, then again maybe we'll not see a whole lot of change after all
On a completely different note, if you download an entire CD, they should make available a printable version of the cover and liner notes.
Dude, just go to a bar and grab a matchbook for free.
will the first song they release be called sosumi?
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
The problem that the industry KNOWS is presenting itself is the fact that the idea of an album or LP is quickly becoming an anqiquated concept. Before the mid-to-late 70's, LP's didn't sell all that well - record labels made their bones off of 45's which sold for around a dollar, or roughly $3-4 today.
The concept of downloading legitimit music is such a good and strong one that the process will eventually become inevitable, but labels don't have a model where they can profit from this.
When you spend $15-$18 on the latest pop-crap-metal-teen-craze, your not paying for the other 10 tracks you didn't hear on the radio - your paying the dues that it took that one track they did manage to get out there, and even THAT is condisdered a huge success. Even today, only about 1 in 30 signed by a major get to even that point.
For backcatalogs, it's certainly a good idea, but it suffers from "Greatest Hits Syndrome", or where sales have lowered to such a point that it's more profitable to sell the singles than hope they people buy the full record. Same with on-line singles - it's a bottom of the barrel effort that there's no backing away from, and you can bet there going to make damn sure there's not other outlets before defaulting to this.
For new music, it's simply not going to happen. Sure you see a few labels experimenting with this, but not on a wide scale. They know there's no money in it - it's simply another promotion to get the name out there.
What I see happening is albums as we know them dying out, and Apple may be in a good place to present this eventually. It's not going to happen overnight by any means, but if labels realise that they can produce a single, and not have to spend the production on a full 40 minutes of filler, they might buy into the idea.
Problem remains, the artists simply won't. And there's your stalemate. Even crap rockers have SOME integrity, and won't give up on the idea of the LP for a long time coming. It could be that full lenghs aren't even dealt with by the majors, or at least not promoted. They once again become secondary to the process - you push the single, find the best way to get it out there fast and cheap (duh), and let the artist have there little masterwork remain out of the spotlight for those who aren't spending there parents money.
Once teenage girls are paying for downloaded music, it becomes a viable model. But not until then.
Sure, $1 may sound good, but if you want a whole album it could easily be over $10.
.50.
;).
Sure people say that you don't have to download all the songs...only the good ones...
Well...see, I like certain bands that are more than one-hit-wonders...I want to here the whole CD, not just that one Made for radio to be popular song most bands have.
I already believe CD's are way over-priced as is...I won't settle for downloading songs at $1, I want it down to
But this really isn't a problem for me since I don't own a Mac or an iPod
First off, CD manufacturing is less than $1/ea. (some have said as low as 25/ea.) Taking the "plastic token" out of the equation does not represent a significant reduction in cost.
Secondly, it's common practice that when manufacturers break out single units that they charge more. Ever buy a Coke from a vending machine? How much did you pay for it, 65? And what is the cost per unit when you buy a 12 pack from Food Lion? 40/ea.? Nothing new here.
Third, there are real savings here. Yeah, if you want the entire album, you may be better off just buying it from the store. However, if you just want one or two songs, then you have saved yourself $10 or more. I can think of a LOT of songs from the past 30 years that I'd like to buy, but I don't care to get the whole album. There's a lot of one-hit wonders out there, but very few artists that can pack out an album with great material.
I think that the price is right. In fact, if I were doing it, I'd set the pricing as a range, from 75 for the "moldy oldies" to $1.25 for the latest stuff. Really, the only hitch I see so far is that they haven't answered the question of DRM. If there is DRM technology built into this, then yes, you're right that the cost is way too much. I wouldn't be willing to pay more than 25 for songs with DRM, if that.
$4,571.82 for my music stash, not including taxes.
So, letsee... hmmm... [scribbles] wait... hourly rate... [scribbles]...
$9,354.23 searching for my music stash, not including connection costs.
But wait... hmmm.... [scribbles] hmmm... broken marriage... [scribbles] hmmm... gray hairs... [scribbles] inane chats with "chics" from Argentina... [sobs] hmmm... downloading Pink Floyd and hearing some Iranian guy... [sobs]
So yeah, I think I'll pay for it.
[scribbles] ...
It's not like the album concept will disappear. This just gives more choice. I would gladly pay $20 for 20 great songs.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Forget about it being free--it was just easier to go to Napster or WinMX and get the song you wanted. No funny players to install, no crazy licensing software, and all the songs were there.
I believe that if the record companies got together and made millions of songs available for download at prices ranging from $.10 to $1.00 depending on the age of the song, and maybe a subscription that gives you a set number, they'd do well. But it has to be simple--type in the name of the song, click download, and get an MP3.
Let's hope Apple gets it right. (Will this also cause the old lawsuit between Apple Records and Apple Computer to come up again?)
Best Buy can have you arrested
The LA Times article says that the AAC files can be DRM locked, but that Apple has required that they can be burned onto a CD, which would unlock them.
then nothing can. C'mon now... Suppose you get 12 songs to put on a CD. $11.88 still less than what you'd pay retail plus you hand-picked the songs!! You've just decided exactly what songs you want, what order they'll be in, and they're yours You don't have to hear the 10 filler songs on a CD with two radio hits. What more could you possibly want, except to have it free??
... I've put thousands of dollars on eqipment, software, etc... and am still not to the point where I can expect a reasonable return on my music because even on my level, people just don't want to pay for music, and it's frustrating...
People are so reluctant to pay for music, but nobody seems to realize that if musicians don't make money, they can't make music. Studio time is not cheap. Equipment is not cheap. Manufacturing, distribution, advertising, all these things take money, but consumers want it free. Even a small-time musician like myself, for example
Who doesn't like free music?
See I have a couple of different reasons why this doesn't hit me as a fair deal from apple. Reason one is that I have an eMusic account, same premise. You pay a monthly $10 fee, and you have unlimited downloads of music off their service (And there is a lot that they offer.). Great place if your into punk music too, Epitaph Records is always releasing titles to eMusic for exclusive downloads.
Why would I pay $1 a track, $15 a cd when I can go to a used Record/CD store, pick-up used copies of the artists I want to hear for about $6-$9 a pop. And lets say that Artist releases 5-6 Songs off said album I got as a used CD, Those with this music service from apple will have to go out, get to the site, log in, find the track, pay for track, wait for confirmation of the payment being recieved, then once that confirm is recieved - download it, and then play it where as all I had to do was find case, open case, remove cd, insert cd, play, enjoy.
Oh and I don't have to worry about falling victim to someone else's idea of "High Quality". Commonly people and services will encode at 128 or 192 to save space on their drives, and if you even remotely concidered yourself an audiophile, such sampling would be really sub-standard to your ears. =)
Besides, I for one am still really leary of any site that wants me to pay for digital downloads, what's really there to stop the RIAA or some of their Brain Washed supportive Artists from coming after members on that service? And what's worse from such acts like in the case of Napster, this time they'll have your Real Name, Real Address, Real Credit Card information, etc where as on Napster you at least had Annoniminity from such worries.
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
The reason is that it costs a lot to package and market a product. In the case of matches, it costs a very tiny fraction of a cent to make one, but to package, market and put it on store shelves costs enormously more. So it's not economic to sell something as cheap as a single match, or even ten matches.
Last time I looked, CD singles cost a substantial fraction of what albums cost, and I think that's why albums are popular. If we can reduce the transaction cost, as Apple has, then we can sell individual songs.
I like buying albums, though, because there are at least a few songs in a typical album that I will enjoy that I didn't hear before buying it. For instance, I bought Vanessa Daou's 'Make you Love' CD based on a couple of tracks, and my favourite song happens to be one I didn't hear before I bought the CD. I wonder how you could work around that problem. If people only hear one song on the radio, that's the song they'll buy.
I wonder if this might be a way to eliminate the truly stultifying "we only play three songs" commercial radio experience? It maybe become necessary, for marketing purposes, to play a wider variety!
D
When will companies stop pricing things ending in .99? It is deceptive because it is an attempt to disguise the true price of a product ("Oh it's only a couple cents, not dollars."). It is annonying because I actually have to THINK (bog forbid) about it to figure out the real price and it makes it hard to do math ("hmm 3 tracks are .99 x 3 = $2.97" instead of just $3).
Even if it is too much expect companies to change at there very least we can stop perpuating their pricing games in everyday conversation and writing. Next time you post a price, round up!
END OFFTOPIC RANT
"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."
Or for that matter, music selection. It only mentions that it will only be available to people with Mac AND iPOD, whatever that means. Where did the poster get this information? We really need to have a moderation system for articles, with karma influencing bonus @slashdot or something.
Exactly. If any of these services want to succeed they need to realize that targeting small audiences IS financially viable with electronic distribution. The main complaint a lot of record companies seemed to have in the past was the problem of maintaining stock for things that don't sell a lot. With digital distribution, this problem no longer exists since you don't need to have 35,000 copies of an album by VanDerGraff Generator for instance. You have one which is duped and has a one time unlock code inserted so that it can be burned to CD by the user.
BTW... I went to a Mr. Bungle concert back in the early 90s in Cleveland. Very cool show. I wish I knew who the opening band was though. They were awesome too.
Un-news
Here in Canada we can now make copies of CDs legally. I borrow my friends CD, copy it, and give it back to him. My copy is perfectly legal thanks to the blank media levy that was introduced. I'm not sure it's worth it, though.
I believe, that there are different kinds of music consumers. On the one side we have the Top-40 audience. They only want the hits. They buy CD-singles and compilations, download single songs from file-sharing services and listen to heavy-rotation radio stations. On the other side we have the album buyers. They buy the full album, adore soulseek, and hate most of the radio stations. I am sure that there are different in-between types of music listeners, but for the sake of simplicity let's just look at these two.
If you only like hits then that is what you will keep buying. I would hope, that full albums will not be priced number of songs*$0.99. So album buyers will still listen to all songs an artist has to offer. A lot of artists will continue to make the music they want to and not only machine-selected hits.
Hank! White!
There is already a great program for downloading movies and music on the mac. It's called Giftbox. Giftbox utilizes the openFT protocol. This thing is fast like the fasttrack protocol used in Kazaa, but is opensource. It is still in beta now, but it is the best file sharing client available for the mac. Better than limewire, aquasition, and iswipe. It's free and fast. A network supported by apple will not be necessary with the openFT network out there.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Seems a little short sighted... I mean, when you buy a good $18 jazz CD you often get four 15 minute songs. When you buy a "best of" cd, you get more like twenty 3 minute songs. Seems like they should charge by length or at least have a ranged cost.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
$0.99 per song isn't too bad -- but who wants to bet this'll be a .Mac service?
irb(main):001:0>
Key difference: Listen.com requires windows. Apple is doing this to make an apple version, because there has been little effort on the part of 3rd parties to cater to apple users.
You say
Personally I'd use this service to download singles if:
1) shn or flac is available
2) I can re-download the songs later for free (i'm always messing with my computer and I only have partial mp3 backups)
oh yeah, I don't own a mac or an ipod so apple would have to support windows/linux...
I'd cream my jeans if all those one-hit-per-cd musicians went down in flames. I'll still get every last track off every damn Radiohead album ever released. EPs included. Same for Pulp. Same for Blur. Same for Sublime. Totally worth my $1.
Some rockstars care about the quality of their product.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Think about it. Even if a $16 CD has 16 tracks on it, that doesn't mean each song is worth $.99. When you buy a CD, you're buying an "archival quality" medium with accompanying documentation and other tangibles such as disc art, case layout and the ubiquity of being able to play anywhere.
Plus you're buying intangibles, such as the pride of ownership. Yeah, I said pride. Owning a CD means you're more of a fan than somebody who has an mp3, even if they paid for it. CD collections are important things that impact a person's perceived personality and lifestyle. First thing I do when I visit a person's place for the first time is check out their CD collection. And yes, having a collection of all burns does negatively impact my perception of them.
This isn't to say I think it's necessarily a bad idea. I am a subscriber and an avid downloader from eMusic, and I don't feel their price is too expensive if you like what thy offer. My biggest complaints with the emusic model are the 128 kbit mp3s and the lack of major label catalogues, though they have a lot of great second tiers. If Apple does this right, they'll adopt a similar model, or at the very least offer volume discounts.
I don't think I'd ever buy a _single_ song on mp3, mostly because I feel a lot of work and effort goes into making an album into an artform that transcends simply slapping a bunch of tracks on a disc. I'd DOWNLOAD a single song, if it wer popular, to see if I'd like the album, but after I've already got it I'm certainly not going to pay for it. Catch-22.
Now maybe if they combined it with an "uncapturable" radio service, with the option to "purchase this song," they'd have a winner. Apple realizes the important of second string artists (as evidenced by the mp3s you get "gratis" on a new mac...fantastic stuff, without a Nelly or Britney track in site).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Yes, using third party software. Go to www.versiontracker.com and type in "iPod"
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Man, everyone is ripping on this guy, I have to come to his defense...
Everyones analogies to other real-world products are cute, but they don't apply. One guy said, (paraphrasing) "you can live off grass and rainwater, but you dont, do you?" No... but if there was a totally free, in-home chef that would make me food exactly like I'd pay for at a restaurant, but it takes him a little longer or I can't get exactly what I want off the menu at any given time, I'd probably choose that alternative a lot of the time.
People post, "Kazaa is annoying", "slow downloads", etc. For movies, maybe. For most songs (I realize a lot of smaller artists are not represented as well), downloads are plentiful and fast, and for a 5 MB file it's QUICK.
Others post, "You have to supply the bandwidth, CD, no liner notes, etc". This is true. But a LOT of people don't want a CD, don't care about liner notes. If you like the band enough to want all 12-15 songs, I totally agree, buy the CD. But for most people, this is more of what they want. And obviously the people that would use KaZaA or this service already have cable modem or DSL (or dialup and don't care about speed).
I think $.99 is a good deal for a track, a GREAT deal. But when it comes down to logging on to some secure server, giving a credit card # up, etc, it's just going to be quicker to hit KaZaA or whatever P2P alternative there is and download.
I agree with the parent, I don't think anything like this, however good the service, will take off as long as a free alternative exists that is anywhere near as user friendly as the for-pay service.
Mark
Except of course that eMusic's selection sucks. and they are bald faced liars about many aspects of their system.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
What is your point? Apple licensed one-click from Amazon.
mbbac
Want OS X? Want this service? Want all the other things you get with an Apple product? Buy their hardware.
Why should Apple support people who don't even own their hardware? Should every company make their services available to everyone else, even at a loss of revenue?
I think not. Again, this is what you have access to with Apple hardware. You get what you pay for.
$1/track strikes me as a pretty good deal. I imagine the price is not imformed so much by Apple (while you may think their stuff is expensive, this scheme does nothing to directly contribute to their bottom line, i.e. hardware sales), as it is likely informed by whatever potential deals they want to strike with the existing content providers.
The pieces are all there - Akamai's hooked up, hell, the whole QuickTime network must be in bed with several studios already with the movie trailer video streaming service (easily the best on the net). One wonders if they have already laid the groundwork for those music-based partnerships.
And, lets not forget QuickTime. It's fantastically powerful and flexible, and they could package their media any way they wish. Some have mentioned the lack of liner notes, artwork etc. I would consider that moot if they provided, some real digital packaging. In Mac OS X, you can assign graphic files to the background of windows, you've got those 32bit 256x256 icons... if I could browse through my MP3 folder and have those icons sized nice and big with the appropriate artwork, fully tagged ID3-wise, and it's a high-quality file... yeah, I'd bite. Absolutely.
On another note, there is DRM of a sort in the iPod, specifically for the Audible content, but I think that is unique to their format and not system wide.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Anybody notice this service is only for Mac and iPod owners? No way will this do enough volume to turn a profit. If Apple was smart, they'd make it platform neutral and increase their potential customer base 30 fold.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I get sick of hearing about "oh, no liner notes." Half of the local artists around here never bothered to spend the money on anything more than a 1 page liner note/j-card anyway. They just slapped lame artwork and a band photo on a j-card and called it good.
Somehow, I really don't see the big value..
Also, your "indie store" might not be so "indie" after all... check into it.
I thought the record label apple (of beatles' albums) had a legal issue with apple computers using the apple name, but it was decided b/c they were two seperate markets, there would not be confusion. So if Apple (computers) starts selling music, will this get them in trouble with the Apple music publishing company?
Yup, great point. As an example, Limewire is available for the Mac and they don't bother to install any extra crud either, they just nag you now and then to buy the pro version.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
First we have Napster and other services being attacked and now we have companies like apple and AOL starting up services.
:-)
Remember how everyone a year or two ago mentioned how the RIAA is behind the times and are playing catch up? Well.. seems they are still playing the game while other's are moving forward.
Slashdotters were right. It's a great idea. Our prophecy has been proven correct
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Hello, hello? Is this thing on? Hello?
Attention: I started this rumor. It was me. I made it up.
Guys, I'm not sure if anybody is going to believe me or not, but I started this rumor way back in December. I made it up. It was all a big lie. I posted it because it sounded reasonable enough to me, and because I wanted to get people talking about it. I wasn't trolling in the strictest sense; I just posted something that I knew to be false but that should have been true.
I'm posting this anonymously because I'm a pretty well-respected poster here on apple.slashdot.org. I post a lot, and it wouldn't be too hard for you to guess who I am. I'm a little embarassed to admit that I did this, but I did.
The post got modded up to +5, and somebody sent a link off to MacRumors.com and other rumor sites. Nobody believed it at the time, which makes sense because I made it all up, but a couple of days ago MacRumors.com pulled it out of storage and posted it on their front page. Now the Merc has picked it up.
Look, one of two things is true here. Either (!) this is just complete crap that I made up and that a lot of other people have been fooled by, or (@) this is all really happening, and I fucking called it months before anybody else.
Either way, I'm feeling pretty fucking powerful right now.
I don't know what to tell you, man. I've got the latest QuickTime running on my PC at work (Athlon 1.8Ghz w/XP and QT 6.0) and it has only asked me the upgrade thing once. It's not as elegant in operation as the Mac one, I'll grant you, but it's hardly the catastrophe you make it out to be.
It could be that you blew through the intaller, pounding Enter past the screen where it explicitly asks you how you want to map things. You also missed the control panel where you can set it after the fact. It's in the system tray usually upon install.
And, what's the problem with the interface? Pretty straightforward, don't you think? Did you miss Play, Skip back/forward, pause, volume? Worse, do you like the Windows Media Player, which is more like the mess you describe?
QuickTime was a real pig on Windows around v3-4 (some of which might be MS's fault), but it's really not a problem now.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
You can buy burnable tracks from Liquid Audio right now for $.99 per song or $10 per album:
http://store.liquid.com
The tracks are (unfortunately) only in WMA and Liquid Audio formats. Still, I think this is a good deal.
Or you might see chinese menu packs where you pay 0.99 for hit stuff and 0.50 for stuff that doesn't make it onto the radio. There's no reason that pricing has to be flat across an artists entire inventory of songs.
Since electronic distribution makes changes easy to make, I can see a lot of experimentation done in terms of pricing. I can even see a lot more artists not going through record companies at all because they can make more money recording for on-line services like Apple's.
One thing that I've noticed about Mac users is that many of them are in the business of creating content (graphics, music, writing, etc.)
.. these users understand the costs of creating content and that someone's making a living doing it.
This is the perfect market to test this pay-to-play scheme
If this scheme doesn't work with Mac users, it won't work with a larger audience...
You're right -- that doesn't sound too bad, it sounds terrible! The music industry has just eliminated all shipping, storage, storefronts and sales personnel and the price is still $12 for a 12-song CD?
The difference between one of these CD's and one you purchase in a store is that the one you assemble would presumably not have any filler that you don't like. You would get 12 songs that you enjoy for $12 rather than having to buy approximately 6 discs at $12/each to get two good tracks off of each one... which is the better deal?
The radio companies aren't stupid... they know they put out filler. Most people don't do the math and figure they just paid $12 for a CD for that ONE song that they liked... thus paying $12 for that ONE song...
I can purchase songs at 30c/each AND
Again, your pricing off the filler... think about just getting the "quality" songs that you personally enjoy... none of the B.S.... the songs are worth more then, no?
the ability to get a partial refund -- say, 90% -- for songs that I download but don't enjoy. So lets say that I download 200 songs in a given month and I decide a third of those (65) of those are worth keeping. I'd pay $19.50 for the ones I keep and another $4.95 for the ones I "returned." Frankly, I'm not going to bother spending 10 minutes of my life tracking down that song I just returned to them on Kazzaa to save 30c.
Go to amazon or any one of the millions of sites out there that offers previews... just preview the song there. And if you're going to argue that point, why pay ANYTHING for a song you don't want?
Snooze and you lose your sushi.
If you had RTFA, you would have realized that the article doesn't mention any price. The $.99/song price tag is a mere guess/wish by the story submitter.
As far as cost, .99 cents is beyond cheap. Remeber, most "CD Singles" are 3.99 or more, and it's basically one popular track, and filler. Egad, it may cost $12-$15 to get a whole cd - and most of those who complain about it are ones who have forked out $150 for a bigger hard drive to store their MP3 collecion......
Moreover, has anybody tried to buy any CD that is not on the Billboard charts lately? $19 for a SoupDragons CD is par for the course, and I dont even want all of it!
And some of you complained about other costs... like media... Media! Oh my!!, $.12 a CD, Maybe $.50 if you go with the ultra high end media. What next, are you going to start amortizing the cost of your broadband, processor and RAM into it? Get over it. If you are reading it here, these are not real costs for you.
Further, .99 (or whatever) gets you one thing, at least, that KaZaa never will. It gives you guaranteed consistent quality and availability. I cant tell you how many songs I have from the various P2P services that:
- a) sound like they were recorded in a machine shop from a badly eroded 8 track,
- b) have clipped beginnings or endings, or are so poorly compressed that you can't listen to them on a good speaker system without cringeing.
- c) are completely the wrong song.
- d) get remotely queued for 2 days
That is what your *GASP!* $1 a track gets you, along with accurate and complete ID-3 tags, and consistent and CORRECT naming.There will ALWAYS be a market for KaZaa and its ilk... I was a starving college student not all that long ago, and $1 a track was a lot when I could go get it for free, but now, I dont mind paying a little bit for convenience and reliability.
$1 a track, for no headaches, no bad copies, no spyware, no hours spent rewriting ID3's and sorting and deleting bad and truncated songs is not a bad deal for me, and probably not for a lot of other people.
And as always, if it sucks, it wont work. Its the American way, not all great ideas are successful, but all the lousy ones go broke eventually.
I'm sick of all this whining about 99 per song=$12-14 per album.
.Mac members" or some such thing that highlights tracks recorded by Mac users, not just über-chic stars-of-the-moment.
The whole point it, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY THE WHOLE ALBUM! This isn't meant to replace gonig to the store and buying a CD. It is supposed to COMPLIMENT it. Buy one song. If you like it and feel comfortable buying the whole CD, why on earth WOULD you sit there downloading inferior quality files to burn to a generic CD-R without any liner notes? Look, wookies don't live on Endor, OK? IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!
The whole point is to let people choose a few songs here or there. Or to give a band who can't get the $ together to record a whole album a chance to have their music distributed AND receive some money from it. And do you think it'll just be major label music? Let me tell you this - if this whole thing DOES go through, you can rest assured you'll see a "featured
And as far as the whole "I can get it for free on KaZaa" argument - well, have it then. When the DOJ comes knocking on your door after the RIAA's spyware tracked u down after downloading a bugged file, let me know how that free prison food is. Besides, the kind of music I like generally isn't available on KaZaa, because KaZaa reflects, for the most part, a large portion of society that listens to really bad pop music. If I were to trust any company to make cool, obscure music available to the masses, its Apple.
So before you start bitching and whining about price and convenience, please know what you're talking about. They're not trying to replace going to your local record shop to buy a new album. They're trying to offer a NEW service that will be easy to use, fun to explore, and relatively inexpensive considering the years of joy that a single song can bring.
IT HASN'T BEEN ANNOUNCED YET!!!!!
There are a lot of options here, and the truth of the matter is we don't know what, if anything, Apple will unveil. Hell, maybe they'll charge .89 for a song, or maybe 1.59. Or maybe they'll run a buy two songs get one free, or maybe they won't do anything. Maybe it will be Wndows compatible and maybe it will only be compatible with OS 9 (okay, so that one is a bit farfetched)
The only thing that is certain here is that no matter what happens...a journalist will find a way to say that this signals the death of Apple Computer.
If a dozen eggs cose $1.20, what basis do you have for saying $0.10 is too much to pay for an egg?
If a single song cost less than 1/Nth the cost of an N-track album, then why wouldn't you just download all the songs individually, and save a little money?
I challenge any of the whiners out there to present me with an example where you pay *more* for a set of something than you would buying them seperately.
If you pay $12 (or more) for a 12-track CD, there is no way to say paying $0.99 a track is a rip-off, except for the hardcopy/liner-notes argument, which in my opinion is offset by not having to go to the store or wait days for Amazon.
Kevin Fox
Some of you are never satisfied, are you?
...and now songs are 99 cents each (cheap).
...and now you can burn to CD. ...and now it becomes "I won't pay for downloads until they offer raw CD files" (at 600-700 megs for a whole CD).
"I won't download from a paid service - too expensive"
"I won't download from a paid service until I can burn to CD"
I hate to say it, but sometimes I think the RIAA et al is right - no matter what they do, a large percentage of people will NEVER pay for legitimate downloads so long as free alternatives are available.
I'm just trying to antcipate what the excuses will be if and when they DO offer CD audio downloads. Probably something along the lines of "they're too big, why should I use my precious bandwidth, and then burn onto a CD that I buy?". Yeah, that sounds about right.
In any case, I think Apple will make an excellent testing ground for a music service. Small, dedicated, user base, wide acceptance and love of the iPod, etc etc.
It costs 50 to print a 4x6 image with iPhoto's Kodak printing service... a unique, PHYSICAL printout. Yet it's assumed that music from this service will be $1 per (EASILY REPLICATED) digital track.
Does anyone else see the bullshit in this?
This was news in December when an Apple employee leaked the information in a Slashdot forum post.
I wonder if he's still around?
This is a test of the idea that so many people have been yelling about for so long.
If, in fact, the reason (some) people don't like paying for CDs is because they have to pay for a bunch of songs they don't want in order to get a few they do, then this model works great.
If, in fact, the reason people don't like paying for CDs is because they want free stuff, then this idea won't go anywhere.
Of course, there are other things that could make this fail, and I'm sure everyone will be keeping a sharp eye out for them. But on the whole, this is a grand test of veracity.
Personally, I don't hold out a lot of hope. But I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I recently bought a mac and one thing that surprised me is the lack of a kazaa client or alternative. There are gnuetella clients like limewire and there is an excellent port of direct connect, but nothing with the vast amount of music kazaa has. So here comes apple with an atractive, most likely easy to use music setup. It's already shown that apple has a niche market and the type of people that buy a mac will be thrilled to pay 99 cents a song, I think this will be as big a hit for apple as in can be. I know I'll try it at leat once.
...will be Joan Baez tracks. Damn you, Steve Jobs!
You must think in Russian.
Unless they make low-qual versions of the songs (I'm talking 56k, low enough that nobody would want it) available for free, then you still end up paying whatever (even if it's only a buck) for each song, and you have no idea if you'll like it or not.
In addition to this, everyone who says they want the songs DRM free, there's a problem with that.... you know that the first thing everyone who pays a buck a song would do is put it in their shared folder and let it fly. same songs, same quality, for free on kazaa, imesh, etc = low money for apple = goes out of business quickly.
I'm not saying DRM is good, I'm just saying that it may, in the long term, be necessary.
Phish has recently started selling their recordings online. They are the live show soundboard recordings. Very high quality, and you can download in SHN or MP3.
the price is around $10-15 depending on which show you get and how many songs the download has in it. They average about 2-4 CD's per download set after it is decompressed from SHN and burned to audio CD.
Apparently, they plan on releasing previous shows and all future shows in this format. It's a nice change from the $25 each for the live albums they had put out previously.
Maybe some day, other bands will follow suit.
For those of you who just want one song, and are willing to pay MORE than it would cost at the CD store just so you only pay for one song, you should probably start listening to better music that isn't on the top 40. top 40 is just a measurement of how much the CD stores were force fed that particular album by the record label, it isn't a measurement of quality or popularity by any means.
If this new service has all the songs from all the labels, full length and in a reasonable format for both lossy and non-lossy compression (read: not encyrpted for DRM), it might be a decent thing. But at 99 cents a song, only lossy downloads, and probably not many artists signed up for it, add the fact that it will say DMCA and DRM all over the package, and I doubt this service will do any good.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
The problem is that imperfect selection. People don't want mom and pop corner stores access to music, they want an online Walmart where everything ever made is in the catalog. You don't even get that with Kazaa, and if someone in the music industry would get off their ass and stop bitching about people ripping them off and consolidate their catalogs for cheap they might even access to everything themselves right back into control of the market. The only drawback is that I shudder to think of what the advertising would be like on a site with that many mouth's to feed.
Apple already previewed their upcoming service in a commercial a long time ago. There's nothing to download. Using the iTunes interface, you schedule live acts (Smashmouth, Lil' Kim, and George Clinton were part of the beta stage testing) to play a private show in your own auditorium. You get to arrange the order of the acts and ask request of each. Or something like that...
"Form should follow function...unless it's just plain ugly."
This could lead to Artists being pressured to shorten the length of their songs. The song meat by moe. is 45 minutes long. Would this cost the same as Storm Troopers of Death's Anti-procrastination song which clocks in around a whopping 8 seconds? They should charge by the MB instead.
Who in hell wants to pay a buck a pop for compressed/lossy audio? I don't get it.
You are correct about the audible.com encrypted downloads.
.aa file. A dialogue popped up, I provided my audible.com username and password, and the files were decrypted and available to iTunes.
.tar file of the .aa files.
.aa files and imported them into the iTunes on my laptop. Same dialog, same username and password. No network connection.
I created an audible.com account, supplying a username and password. Then I bought the three volumes of "Learn Japanese in Your Car," (I guess "Learn Japanese on the Plane" just doesn't sound as catchy...) downloading the @47MB files in MP3 format, which were actually stored locally as "x_mp332.aa" files, where "x" was the selection name.
From within iTunes, I selected "File->Import..." and selected the
Next, I activated the Software Base Station option on my tower, brought my TiBook laptop within range, did "arp -a" to find the IP address of the Tower, and scp'd over a
Later, with the Software Base Station disabled, I untarred the
The only complaint that I have about the audible.com content is that it doesn't fit nicely into the "artist/album" views for sorting data. I found it useful to make a new playlist for the audible content, so that I could find it again without too much searching.
'should' != 'does'
This will be great.
/. crowd is one of the major proponents of on-line distribution-
Here's something to keep in mind. Which labels will Apple be able to distribute using this service?
Music is distributed on a label basis, not an artist basis, (at least for "signed" artists), so if Virgin doesn't sign on to join the service, you can't download willy nilly from the Virgin catalog (which mostly sucks ass anyway it seems).
You may be able to get a couple tracks from their current flavor of the week, but not something that was done a couple years ago probably.
But, never mind that, here's a more important question, given that the
"When was the last time you actually bought music from an on-line service such as mp3.com?"
And yes, you can buy "signed artist" music, and not just indie music from some of these existing services.
Just once, I'd like it if someone called me "Sir".
Without adding, "You're creating a scene."