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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.
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.
"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.
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."
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...
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
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
"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"
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.
In order for it to be an Apple product, it has to be an Insanely Great idea that is overpriced enough to make you think twice before buying it.
This qualifies.
Well, yes and no.
For one, you hear a lot of complaints which run "Why should I pay [$12-20] for a CD when I only like two or three songs on it?" If that's true, that means you're only paying $2 or $3 with this pricing scheme, so it suddenly becomes less goofy.
For another, $12 is the exception, not the rule, for pricing--if you can find everything you want on CD at Target, more power to you. I can't. Best Buy charges $13-16 for CDs, generally, and they have about the best price to selection ratio of any place that I've found. The actual list price for CDs seems to be $18.99--and you may think people never pay that, but if they find the CD they've been looking for at the Virgin Megastore and nowhere else, you can bet they grit their teeth and pony up the cash.
Sure, there are going to be people for whom $0.99 a song is too much, and I think it'd be a good idea to have something like a "10% off when you buy the whole CD" promotion (and maybe to let you buy the physical CD for another $3-5 or some such). But I don't think it's going to be that big a deal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
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.
$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.