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Apple Plans to Purchase Universal Music
mrbiiggy writes "Apparently Apple has been plotting to purchase Universal Music for $6 billion, reports Spiegel Online (read the Google translation). Who knew Apple even had that kind of cash? (The L.A. Times is also reporting this, free reg required.)"
I buy my music on CD, although I only grab them off the shelf when I want to check out the cover art and lyrics. I suppose I might start buying electronically, but unless the price drops to reflect the savings on manufacturing and distribution, I don't really see the point. I still like having a tangible object to associate with the artist's work. (so much so that whenever there's a sale on I end up buying albums I like that I ripped from friends)
Steve must be pretty sure that he's got a killer reason if he's planning such a huge move. I suppose that killer reason could be big savings to the consumer, but somehow I doubt it. What else is he going to offer?
Could this be a step towards one record lable that won't be total asses about copyright and ripping your songs to mp3 format?
;)
well, that or suddenly all Universal CD's will come out looking way better than every other CD on the market, but only have songs a few years old.
So will Apple Computer have to pay off Apple Records again?
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
lots of people. remember when their stock took a hit a year or so ago and people were wondering what the fate of apple would be? then also remember that news came out they had over 12 billion in cash assets. yeah apple is a huge company. they may not have market share yet in the OS world but they are a very very large company. make no mistake.
From the Google translation:
An entrance into the music business would fit the strategy of the Computerbauers.
Heh ... I'm going to have "Computerbauer" put on my business card.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
According to Apple's financial reports, they had 4.4 billion dollars in cash reserves. Vivendi, who currently own Universal, has somewhere between 6 and 7 billion dollars of debt, so I don't think Apple is going to be able to pay part cash, part stock. Vivendi is just looking to get out.
What I'm waiting to see is how this interacts with Apple's new music service which supposedly debuts next month. Nice catalog of music to choose from.
If the Universal execs gain the upper hand in the merger/takeover:
Rip... Mix... Burn... Sue...
If Apple execs gain the upper hand in the merger/takeover:
Buy... Rip... Mix... Burn...
~ kjrose
round six billion dollar wants to pay jobs for universal, reports the "Los Angeles Times" with reference to anonymous sources.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
Went to Google News and searched for "Apple Universal Music" -- several additional links available. And you can avoid the "Free Reg. stuff".
-- Rick
That explains the reent "Rip, Mix, Burn" ads we've been seeing. Makes perfect sense now.
The Pigloo
Apple, makers of iPod and promoters of the fact that the Mac can easily do the mp3 thing. Owning a record company? w00t again! If Apple turns the company around with a new business model that acknowledges where technology is taking us it could show that all the other record companies are just makin' shit up about losing money to pirates.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
What rock have you been leaving under if you think that Apple would want to buy Universal Music? And 6 billon, geez that's like 20% more than Apples annual revenue.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Despite Apple's rampant efforts to protect their own IP, they've been remarkably free, say compared to Microsoft, in distributing technology that allows more liberal uses of information.
This could be very good or very bad.
Free giveaways out of Universal's catalouge could be an incredible boost to sale of music-related hardware like the iPod or software like iMovie. We all need soundtracks, right?
On the other hand, apple could be planning on using their new acquisition in order to further lock apple users into a single platform with costly upgrades. The idea that comes to mind is that they will start making 'Apple Only' music releases that can only be played on Jobs-approved hardware.
Personally, I hope that Apple will use this aquisition to free up music and maybe some more of their own IP and use it to further hardware sales.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
What about that injunction from Apple Records (the old Beatles record company) preventing Apple Computer from getting into the music business? Anyone know if this would apply?
Reeses
Or read the Altavista Babbelfish translation:
? urltext=http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,24 4270,00.html&lp=de_en&doit=done
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Jobs is the only one that "gets" it. With Univeral being one of the largest record companies- this could change the face of music inthe digital age.
My fear is that it's such a big addition to apple- will they loss focus. Look at the problems sony electronics have trying to be cutting edge but catering to Sony music's fears of piracy.
And what about that pesky lawsuit with Apple Records. Apple was never to go into the music business.
Their accountants, I'd assume.
Some anonymous Google translation doesn't do this justice. This is Big. Very big. Changing the way the world does business big.
Adapt or die, as Lessig says.
Wow.
(Not logged in due to copyright infringement, and fear of being called a Karma Whore...)
-----
Apple Reportedly in Talks to Buy Universal Music
A deal could yield up to $6 billion for parent firm Vivendi and make tech maverick Steve Jobs the most powerful figure in the record business.
By Chuck Philips
Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2003
In a pairing that would alter the architecture of the music business, Apple Computer Inc. is in talks with Vivendi Universal to buy Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, for as much as $6 billion, sources said.
Such a seemingly unlikely combination would instantly make technology guru Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and chief executive, the most powerful player in the record industry.
Universal, which reaps about $6 billion in sales annually from artists such as 50 Cent, Shania Twain, U2 and Luciano Pavarotti, would be controlled by a maverick who revolutionized the computer market and coined the mantra "rip, mix, burn," which many in the music business read as an invitation to electronic piracy.
The discussions, a closely held secret for several months, could founder over unresolved issues. Apple hasn't made a formal bid but may offer $5 billion to $6 billion for the music company before Vivendi's April 29 board meeting, according to the sources.
Jobs and other Apple representatives declined to comment, as did representatives of Universal Music Group and Vivendi Universal.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker's surprise play for Universal Music could alter the dynamics of the bidding for Vivendi's entertainment assets. The French giant, in a move to reduce debt, seeks to raise $7 billion this year by selling assets that probably would include some or all of its Universal film, television, theme park and music units.
Investor Marvin Davis has offered about $13 billion for 65% of the entertainment assets and has been the only known bidder to express serious interest in the music company. A separate sale of the music operation would appear to work in favor of Liberty Media Corp. and others that are focused on the company's other entertainment properties.
Jobs' pursuit of Universal comes at a time when Apple, with less than 3% of the desktop computing market, has been struggling to find its next wave of growth and the music industry has been buckling beneath the pressure of online piracy and falling sales.
Defying conventional wisdom, Jobs apparently is betting that music is finally on the verge of becoming a profitable presence on the Internet. Apple has been quietly testing a service that some music business insiders believe could pave the way for widespread online distribution of songs.
People who have tried the service, expected to debut by the end of April, say it makes downloading and purchasing music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com. It allows users to buy and download songs to their computers with a single click and to transfer the music automatically to their portable MP3 players.
The computer maker, known for its iMac desktop computer and other high-profile products, posted an $8-million loss on sales of $1.47 billion for its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 28 -- marking the company's first back-to-back quarterly losses since Jobs returned to the CEO post in 1997. Apple has annual sales of about $5.74 billion and had about $4.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments as of Dec. 28.
Jobs, who also is chairman of Pixar Animation Studios, helped found Apple in 1976, then stepped down as its chief nine years later to launch Next Inc. He returned to Apple when it acquired Next.
Universal Music Group, which saw operating profit slide 23% to $510 million last year, dominates the industry in 63 territori
Apple's new slogan will be "Rip, Mix, Burn.. Except anything by Universal Music."
Trolling is a art,
Knowing Apple's stance on DRM this could be very interesting indeed.
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
the largest record company (LA Times) and a member of the RIAA, therefore are they the largest member of the RIAA?
Given the fact that apple is officially against DRM, though not pro piracy, that would be a first merger between computer and media groups, not consumer eletronics (SONY)
Will it be one of the rare cases of a merger beneficial (besides economically) to the end user ?
Part of the reason why Apple may be doing this is that Vivendi is basically bankrupt and they have been looking to sell off some of their less profitable assets, among them, Universal Music. Being as Vivendi is in that situation, Apple can probably put down a lower bid than they would have to buy the company otherwise.
You can also find more information at Google News if you don't want to register and don't want to read a machine translation.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Apple Reportedly in Talks to Buy Universal Music
A deal could yield up to $6 billion for parent firm Vivendi and make tech maverick Steve Jobs the most powerful figure in the record business.
By Chuck Philips, Times Staff Writer
In a pairing that would alter the architecture of the music business, Apple Computer Inc. is in talks with Vivendi Universal to buy Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, for as much as $6 billion, sources said.
Such a seemingly unlikely combination would instantly make technology guru Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and chief executive, the most powerful player in the record industry.
Universal, which reaps about $6 billion in sales annually from artists such as 50 Cent, Shania Twain, U2 and Luciano Pavarotti, would be controlled by a maverick who revolutionized the computer market and coined the mantra "rip, mix, burn," which many in the music business read as an invitation to electronic piracy.
The discussions, a closely held secret for several months, could founder over unresolved issues. Apple hasn't made a formal bid but may offer $5 billion to $6 billion for the music company before Vivendi's April 29 board meeting, according to the sources.
Jobs and other Apple representatives declined to comment, as did representatives of Universal Music Group and Vivendi Universal.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker's surprise play for Universal Music could alter the dynamics of the bidding for Vivendi's entertainment assets. The French giant, in a move to reduce debt, seeks to raise $7 billion this year by selling assets that probably would include some or all of its Universal film, television, theme park and music units.
Investor Marvin Davis has offered about $13 billion for 65% of the entertainment assets and has been the only known bidder to express serious interest in the music company. A separate sale of the music operation would appear to work in favor of Liberty Media Corp. and others that are focused on the company's other entertainment properties.
Jobs' pursuit of Universal comes at a time when Apple, with less than 3% of the desktop computing market, has been struggling to find its next wave of growth and the music industry has been buckling beneath the pressure of online piracy and falling sales.
Defying conventional wisdom, Jobs apparently is betting that music is finally on the verge of becoming a profitable presence on the Internet. Apple has been quietly testing a service that some music business insiders believe could pave the way for widespread online distribution of songs.
People who have tried the service, expected to debut by the end of April, say it makes downloading and purchasing music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com. It allows users to buy and download songs to their computers with a single click and to transfer the music automatically to their portable MP3 players.
The computer maker, known for its iMac desktop computer and other high-profile products, posted an $8-million loss on sales of $1.47 billion for its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 28 -- marking the company's first back-to-back quarterly losses since Jobs returned to the CEO post in 1997. Apple has annual sales of about $5.74 billion and had about $4.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments as of Dec. 28.
Jobs, who also is chairman of Pixar Animation Studios, helped found Apple in 1976, then stepped down as its chief nine years later to launch Next Inc. He returned to Apple when it acquired Next.
Universal Music Group, which saw operating profit slide 23% to $510 million last year, dominates the industry in 63 territories around the world and accounts for about one-quarter of all CD sales. Headquartered in New York, the record company boasts a deep roster of executive talent and music stars on such top labels as Interscope and Def Jam.
Vivendi first approached Jobs in December, sources said, not long after it
April 11 is not double April 1st!
Apparently they killed off the Newton and other loved technologies (Hypercard) to get back to the basics of being a computer company and making money..... And now rock star Steve is buying a damn record company?! I dont think this fits into the 'Digital Hub' or the 'Year of the Notebook' shtick they have been preaching. Just when I thought the death knells were over steve got a great idea: "Hey lets waste a ton of money while were barely profitable to buy into an industry that everyone _knows_ is dying...
Sounds like a plan right? Thanks again Apple for keeping me on my toes.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
...remember that Apple has been planning its own online music-buying service for a while now, having announced it just last month. Obviously this is a BIG step towards making that successful for themselves.
Wall Street doesn't appear to approve - Apple's stock is down about 2% on light volume.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm guessing the ability to preview music, download it, transfer it to the Ipod, burn a (Redbook) Audio CD, probably mix your own too. I somehow doubt the actual digital file will be 100% free though, expect to do a music -> CD -> mp3 conversion if you want that. Maybe I've read a bit too much about Microsoft, but I doubt even Apple will go that far.
But, if they can make it simple, userfriendly and reasonably priced, I think the Mac group is a good segment to go with... it's the same group that is willing to pay a premium for a machine that just works, they are probably also willing to pay for not wading through crappy P2P rips too.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...and clamor back into the desktop market. What if, all of a sudden, the killer app for digital music fans were Mac-only?
Does this mean all CDs released by Universal will come in a handful of flavorfully-named colors?
More importantly, would they actually release enhanced CDs by established musicians that only work on Macs to promote sales?
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
Where do I send my band's demo?
It would take a couple days and many pages to write up the details about why this could happen. Expect that they won't take Universal lock, stock and all the debt -- this will be done in a nasty way which screws a lot of creditors. Universal may be split into the more profitable bits and left with the debt-ridden bits, which would then be spun off and left to file Chapter 11 and later dissolved.
Just 'cause they're "cool" and not MS doesn't make Apple stupid in business. They've survived this long...
Could this be a step towards one record lable that won't be total asses about copyright and ripping your songs to mp3 format?
From the *one* company that has a controls an entire consumer hardware platform? Hell, no. If this isn't a hoax somehow, it'd be a play toward building a media playback system that the media companies will go for. And one *hell* of a lucrative positioning, if it works.
"Apple-compatible" audio. They have a portable player and the desktop already in place, and then they just need a home theater system. Apple is the sole company in the world that could build an entire *working* DRM system. MS doesn't have the hardware control.
Damn, in retrospect, Jobs actually had a cohesive plan these last few years. Who woulda thunk?
May we never see th
Imagine what would happen if an IMac computer gave one license to make personal copies of any material in Universal Music's catalog?
How fast would Microsoft buy up the remaining members of the RIAA? So that a Microsoft OS license gave one similar rights on those catalogs. Hey they could use that $40billion in the bank for something.
Imagine the lawsuits on unfair competition coming out of the remaining independent producers. Imagine the lawsuits. Is the future in high tech or the spin-off lawsuits?
Their stock price and wallstreet often spit in Apple's faces.
This is so stupid. What kind of business sense does it make for Apple to do this? The only thing that they have had to do with the music industry so far is the encourage people to rip CDs. They don't have the distribution realtionships needed. They don't have the retail relationships needed. In short there is no reason to think that Apple can run Universal any better than Vivendi can and if Vivendi was making good money on Universal they wouldn't sell it. I think Jobs has lost it or this is just another terrible rumor about Apple buying something or being bought.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I think Steve should buy Vivendis game section first. Should be a bargain compared to Universal Music :) Imagine Computergames first on the Mac... Ahh, the good ol' days of Myst or the amazing QuickDraw 3D stuff in "Alone in the Dark".
May this would finally put an end to the yearly analyst stories about Apple's demise.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I didn't think Apple had the umph, or the assets frankly, to pull it off. On the other hand, Jobs is a major entertainment industry player, certainly has the contacts, and Vivendi is in dire enough straights to actually consider something like this.
Apple as Record Company. It's gonna take a while to wrap my head around that one. Universal has the largest catalog of music too, I believe.
Damn.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
yay! Slashdotters finally have a reason to hate Apple!!
Maybe Vivendi will throw Blizzard in for free
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Who knew Apple even had that kind of cash?
um... anyone who's been paying attention. Apple's been pretty consistently reporting profit for years now, and remarkably little of that has gone out of the company.
Money goes in, but doesn't come out - simple math that one. They're sitting on some huge cash reserves.
Perhaps this is a sign of the shape of things to come from Cupertino? providing the 'spokes' to their own 'digital hub' might be the next phase of the company's revival... anyway it looks like good news for all (Mac-heads and non-Mac-heads) on the DRM front if Apple get their (affirmedly anti-DRM) mitts on a major record label.
Ok, this makes a certain odd amount of sense as far as why apple might want it. Gives them some freedom to push digital media in whatever direction suits them. (good, bad, or indifferent) It also diversifies the business a bit which given Apple's niche strategy cannot be entirely a bad idea. If they can't beat Dell/Microsoft head on, it might be best to try something else.
A big concern from a business standpoint to me would be focus. Apple has done pretty damn well by focusing on producing really great machines (and software) that appeal to a couple specific segments of the market. Their expertise really is in the "art" of computer design, both hardware and software and experience. This doesn't necessarily translate to running a music label which is a completely different business with completely different requirements.
Granted Jobs has some exposure to this world (via Pixar) but that doesn't make it a good fit for Apple. I expect the culture clash will be huge. Apple is a pretty unique company. I don't see an obvious fit here.
seems like just the guy to perhaps "think different" and turn around (and hopefully improve) another industry that "everyone _knows_ is dying".
Anyone remember his name? I think it was Steve something-or-other...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The Washington Post Story Your karma whoring friend... --T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
Heh, heh, heh ... as a long time /. reader, I know the old trick of replacing www with archive will get me around their free registration screen!
... D'OH! It's not NYT!
[clickity-click] there, and now to press the Enter key
Hence why their cash reserves make up most of their stock price. It's ridiculous. Apple is the bastard child of stocks, with a ridiculously low price-to-earnings/price-to-assets ratio because nobody actually invests in it but fanatics, while some people do pump-and-dump (they let others pump; they only dump) around MacWorlds.
---- My Design, Code, Ruby on Rails blog: http://www.slash7.com/
who's on Universal?
Manufactured crap band 1.
Manufactured crap band 2.
Manufactured crap band 3.
Manufactured crap band 4 (with one arm a pritty face a cup of coco but can't play for shit)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Actually, Jesus stole his ideas from Buddha. And when Buddha went to sue, it came to light from Jesus that Buddha stole his ideas too ... from Xenax. Xenax was this little known green dude that forsook the Enlightened Path (and all the royalty rich books that come with it) cause he thought he could make more money in the stick whittling business.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
Copy protected CDs from Universal Music will only play on BSD and Mac OS computers...
Seems unfair? That's what most CD companies are forcing us right about now...
May the source be with you!
is buy a CD online for a much reduced price (where is the golden rule that says music produces/artist have to be millionaires? I mean, noone else is..) but then rather than have to wait 2/3 days before it's delivered so I can listen to it, be given the oppotunity to download high bitrate ogg's of the album. That way I get the music on demand, and get the tangable album in a few days time too.
The dot com bubble burst, and techies took their pay cut.. I think it's about time the media bubble burst and the 'stars' take their pay cut too!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
But I like Apple and don't like Universal, won't this simply create a contradiction in the universe that will require the universe to implode and be replaced by a more confusing one?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Or the whole Google News cluster, featuring this very Slashdot story on top...
I wonder if Slashdot could automatically post not just the Google cache of a site it links to, but also the Google News cluster based on the story it's about to post? Or does that require wormholes?
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
free indipentant music
make your own copy of someone elses music
etc.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This whole concept is irrational.
Long before people started downloading or trying to make sure their songs were available on lots of media, we got used to listening and recording our favorite music for free. When you are used to that, it gets really hard to decide to download something and pay?
Why would Apple pay $6b to take sides with a single of the many record producers to buy a revenue stream that can only make sense by increasing revenue when the distribution costs and complexity are disappearing -- distributing can be done electronically -- so where are the big costs that existed when CDs were expensive. You don't need a label for distribution unless there is a oligopoly on distibution or radio play--no longer a big problem on the web. Also, aren't CDs increasingly unattractive compared to just turning on your radio (record as appropriate)-- the bulk of CD sales is only in the top 40 or so anyway. There is no inherent reason why this business is interesting even for the performers except for a few pop bands, there just is not a money to go around, and if you were to tour, even in big cities, smaller bands are lucky to have a hundred or so fans per city (a lot nationwide!) -- maybe they can pay the motel bill.
totally puzzling for apple. even more fights. at 3% market share?
where is the beef?
Unlikeley.
;-)
Evidence:
The iPod is available for Windows.
MP3s play on any computer.
OS X promotes open standards.
OS intentionally provides Windows and Linux interoperability.
Apple seems to has no interest in things that *lock* a user in. Sure, they have things that entice users to stay, like iTunes, but there's no lock-in there. I see the mentality being "well, you _could_ use something else, but why? Our stuff is SWEET!"
"I dont think this fits into the 'Digital Hub' or the 'Year of the Notebook' shtick they have been preaching."
Well, for a start, when it was announced music was one of the integral parts of the 'Digital Hub', and it only makes sense to make money off the content as well as the hardware its played on (whilst complicated, it is working for Sony).
Secondly, I didn't think at keynotes you have to announce every stratergy you are working on, especially the secret ones which might not pan out. Cut them a bit of slack :)
"Hey lets waste a ton of money while were barely profitable to buy into an industry that everyone _knows_ is dying..."
From the LA Times article - "People close to Jobs say he is convinced that the music industry is about to turn a corner in the copyright war." That "vision thing" is why Steve has tonnes of money, contacts and a private jet, whilst working for two kickass companies, again, cut him a bit of slack...
There is so much conflict of interest inside Sony right now... and its really held back Sony's electronics division, specifically its walkman/mp3 players which are all crippled by copyright protection mechanisms.
The Civil War Inside SonyDoes Apple really want to get itself in the same situation? I feel that Apple's relative unemcubrance is what allow it to dethrown Sony as the maker of the coolest portable music device you can buy.
LA times story is mirrored at the San Jose Mercury-News as well.
I don't know if they have $6 gig to spare...
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Who knew Apple even had that kind of cash?
Dude, even in Apple's darkest days (pre-reentrance of Steve Jobs) under the stewardship of John Scully and Gil Amelio when all the sign painters in Cuppertino were all geared to start posting "Out Of Business" signs all over Infinite Loop...even in their DARKEST hours...they were still worth over 30 Billion dollars. Only a mega-corp of their size could've weathered the 30 Megaton business blunders they themselves created. 6 Billion? Especially! now that Apple is profitable again is chump-money!
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
They also have an interesting article over on The Register.
"Who knew Apple even had that kind of cash?"
They don't, they are taking a loan from M$.
-Rob
P.S. Yes. I am joking.
"ribs, mix, burn" (from the goolge translation) - isn't that Apple's new slogan for it's chain of restaurants ?
1995 get bought by Seagrams, the liquor company.
;-)
2000 get bought by Vivendi, nee Compagnie Générale des Eaux, the water company
2003 get bought by Apple, the vapour company
???? profit?
Apple is bound to screw this up. Apple and Jobs have a long history of killing off great ideas. Not just the Newton, but also OS licensing, Open Doc, even the unceremonious dumping of the Apple II series was badly done. Why are they getting involved in music industry crap!!!!
Shut up about .ogg; shut up shut up shut up.
The creators of the (arrogantly, perversely, stupidly named) Ogg Vorbis format had their chance to innovate and create a format wildly better than .mp3, and they blew it. Rather than adding actual features music fans might find compelling enough to switch all their probably-already-ripped digital music to .ogg, they imitated rather than innovated. It's a fine quality audio compression format, but there's nothing interesting whatsoever about "Ogg" other than legal patent ideology, and that's simply not interesting whatsoever to 99.99% of the music-listening public.
Besides, you yourself admit that in the past year you've bought one single CD. Why should the music industry listen to the advice of an obviously cheap bastard?
~jeff
They just hit the '1' key twice by accident. ;-)
I am fairly much addicted to my iBook (a great X Server for using my Linux server) and I do hope that Apple stays in business. Really, Mac on the desktop and Linux on the servers - perfect :-)
I am dubiouss about this purchase however.
-Mark
I wonder if they'll change their name to iHole.
I, for one, hope that it does not; there is a real opportunity for Apple to show the recording industry how to make money in the modern marketplace.
-------------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Vivendi-Universal owns UMG and mp3/press-play/emusic.
Will Apple be ripping itself off with the Ipod now?
We have Internet music distribution that emulates radio and we have Internet music distribution that emulates retail. It would make sense for the record companies to combine them both, based on the way that radio and offline retail have traditionally worked together. In this model, you listen to the radio, hear something you like, go to the store and buy it. The radio is free but you buy the CD to play whenever you want to. So what might work is for record companies to allow anyone to stream their music free, if so long as the streamcasters link each track to the record company's one-click purchasing mechanism. A mutually beneficial arrangement and (possibly) happy listeners.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
The full quote is:
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move...
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly dissapear and be replaced by something even more bizzare and inexplicable.
"There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
This completely makes sense.
Everyone knows that the problem record companies face is an out-dated distribution system that fights, rather than takes advantage of the internet. They're charging $15 for a $.20 CD to pay for marketing and legal fees. Apple has distribution systems in place already for Quicktime, iTunes and even Software updates. They've been successfully selling stuff online for years.
And it fits in with the digital hub. It gives them content to sell in addition to playback and storage systems. It gives them leverage to make sure their hardware doesn't get caught out by DRM crap. And Jobs' other interests are in Pixar and the Gap. He's obviously in the world to influence and interact with Culture, more than he's interested in cashing in on some circuit design. Jobs' interest, and therefore Apple's, is in making things for people - to change the way people do things to make them easier and better (so that Apple and Jobs can make $$ on it, sure).
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a dumb rumor, but it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen either. Apple has been a Culture company a long time. They've been moving toward content for a long time.
First, there was the Profile4, the thing they tried to say was better than the iMac. Then, there was/is "RipMixRespect", strangely similar to Apple's "Rip. Mix. Burn."
/ 84 4767p-5933052c.html
... And EMagic, well, that's part of UMG.
;-)
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/technology/story
So did Apple just take a big, steaming dump all over Gateway?
It seems that Gateway includes music downloads with EMusic as a part of their promotions to get people to buy their boxes
That's kinda funny, when you think about it. I wonder what the Gateway higher-ups are thinking right now.
And really, what, if anything, does this mean for Gateway? Are they now advertising for Apple?
-/-
Mikey-San
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
But anyway who can predict what a stock quote does.
The absolutely most valuable asset any company can have is cash, no more, no less. Think about it, you can have whathever asset you want, but if at the end of the month you can't pay your employee, you're out of business in one week. If you can't pay for your stock, you're out of business. Haven't ever asked yourself why more and more business people looks into Cash.Flow statements instead of balance sheet?
Wall Street is looking for a huge outflow of cash, no matter what they buy, there will be precious cash goinig out. Stop. Whether they buy other stocks, or pure gold, cash is going out, that's why the AAPL is going down, it is discouting the Cash Outflow right now (THINK: Ever heard of discoutnted Cash FLow)?
B.
The Register has a better in depth look and some more speculation. Looks like the Beetles may have a say in this.
1) Apple announces iTools account holders immediately gain access to 5 Universal songs per month. Access to more will require a nominal fee.
2) With the release of their fifth film, Pixar announces their deal with Disney has been fulfilled and they have formed a new alliance with Apple as the distributor for future releases. Soundtracks will be available on Universal Records.
3) In a surprise move, Dell acquires Apple Records, only to discover afterwards that the entire Beatles catalog is owned by Michael Jackson. Begins ad campaign with interns explaining why Wings was better.
4) Bill Gates announces new behind-the-ear implant that will allow streaming music directly into a persons brain. Sharp-eyed consumers discover Terms-Of-Service includes clause allowing device to record thoughts that immediately become his property.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
There's a bug in the MP3 VBR playback. Basically, the iPod requires your MP3 to have a Xing header on it, not the newer Fraunhoffer VBR header. My encoder produces VBRs with Fraunhoffer headers not Xing, so I always have to post-process them. The bug manifests itself if you pause, fast forward or rewind - doing so causes the iPod to lose the correct track length and it usually cuts the track off early.
Fortunately, another Slashdotter pointed me to the (Windows-based) solution - a utility that adds a Xing header. It can be had from here, in the Downloads section.
Cheers,
Ian
Here's the scoop:
Apple gets Al Gore to join its board
Apple announces it is buying a major music label
Al Gore tells his wife Tipper that she can help censor music again like she did in the US Senator wives music hearings in the 1980s.
Al and Tipper begin their iron fisted rule of the music industry
The same way they do now?
Random is the New Order.
Let the actual music-store sales of CDs fade into oblivion where it belongs as it is grotesquely undercut by Apple's new music distribution service, which operates with only bandwidth as an expense - no worries about costly shipping, manufacturing and logistics.
The music distribution service has hooks into Apple's already attractive personal solutions (iTunes, iPod, .mac) making these products even more attractive to customers.
Universal benefits because it is first to jump on board and has a premier business relationship with Apple's new killer service, giving it a (slight) advantage over other labels who may have to pay a slightly higher premium to use the first ever legal on-line music distribution system that is effective and "just works".
If Apple/Universal does this properly (by playing the right cards at the right time), they will be laughing all the way to the bank.
To me anyway, is kiosks. Buy a new 30GB iPod (shipping soon), along with a monthly subscription (Part of .Mac perhaps?). We know that Target is in bed with Apple on the iPods, and Target is everywhere (at least in my area). Add wal-mart, etc. etc. to the mix, and throw a music kiosk in each one (kiosks are cheap).
Not only can you load your iPod at home, you can add new music while on the road across the country.
Just a thought.
From the Google translation:
"With such Deal jobs would be at one blow the most powerful figure in the international music business."
Pucker up, Steve.
GENERAL_SMILEY writes "Never posted a story before, so be gentle. This is a story(FRR) close to my heart though, I work with Universal regularly, and I hope it is true." The story says that Jobs is in talks with Vivendi to buy the music division of Universal for between 5 and 6 billion, making Apple the biggest player in the music business. In other news today, Disney is going to buy Apple and Apple is going to buy Palm. Take lots of grains of salt with this one.
Dig Deeper...
Rather than adding actual features music fans might find compelling enough to switch all their probably-already-ripped digital music to .ogg, they imitated rather than innovated. It's a fine quality audio compression format, but there's nothing interesting whatsoever about "Ogg" other than legal patent ideology, and that's simply not interesting whatsoever to 99.99% of the music-listening public.
What's there to innovate? It's an audio codec. It sounds better at lower bitrates than mp3. What more do you need? What features are you talking about? The music-listening public doesn't care about features, they just want their songs, and they want to be able to burn them to CD, play them on their portable digital music players, they want to pay as little as possible for it, etc.
--Drunk as in Beer
Once you realize that /. is an infinite number of egotistical monkeys, then you realize why were not getting Shakespeare.
That mixed with the old Apple ][ game where you had to disconnect part of your brain to posess Tea and No Tea at the same time.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
MacOS X is already arguably light years behind Linux as a desktop OS??? Even GNU/Linux zealots like me would say you have that backwards.
I do not have a signature
...with Apple Records to not compete in the music industry (which they went to court over in 1989), but it appears that the two settled with a payoff to Apple Records. I hope that what a previous poster said is true and that they're hoping to have a vested interest in any future DRM technologies levied upon them by the rest of the industry.
Apple realizes what no-one in the record industry does - that if you open wide the full possibilities for selling music, the take will be enormous.
If Apple buys Universal, then they can continue to sell normal CD's - but also sell everything online. Even older unpublished stuff, which is currently languishing. Then you have not just CD buyers, but nostalgia buyers and people who just want one hit song and not a whole CD. That provides many more channels for revenue, unlike normal music companies which oddly seems to desire that only limited revenue channels be allowed to exist.
Furthermore, by staying away from copy protection they save money over the stupid record companies spending all sorts of cash trying to prevent the CD buyer from accessing their own music! While other companies are building up bad will with stupid formats for online music and CD's that don't play in all CD players, Universal could sweep the industry.
At the very least, the entry of a non-music company into the music business has got to have some interesting ramifications somewhere. Especially when you have a computer company that understands consumers better than most at the helm...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.synchexpress.com/
Huh???
I guess anything is "arguable" if you find at least one person willing to make the argument.
I have a hard time understanding how OS X is behind Linux on the desktop. Behind in terms of what?
Shame on Google.
See, the current business model for music (sell recorded music bound to physical objects such as CDs) is, if not dying, on shakey ground. The reason Sony hasn't moved to widespread DRM is that they make three times as much money selling MP3 players as they do selling CDs.
I think Jobs is trying to get Apple to that place as well. He wants to use Universal's content as a way to drive up demand for iPods and iMacs.
If that's it, this is good news. It means a big chunk of the music industry will be owned by someone who'll just laugh at the RIAA.
"Hell if I had the money I'd buy a PowerMac based on the PPC 970 rather than buy a very nice used car."
Huh?
The average Power Mac is about $2000. (not too far off a nicely upgraded (equivilent) name-brand PC.
Arguments about Apples being more expensive than PCs is no longer so... unless you consider stripped, under-equiped towers that you build yourself.
I think Steve Jobs already Kazaa'd all of their songs to his iBook and decided it was easier to buy the company than it would be to deal with a lawsuit brought by the RIAA.
Anyone else noticed how Universal's entire catalog is available for free on Kazaa, Soulseek, etc.?
There's been a paradigm shift in the music business lately. Universal is going to be obsolete in a 10 years. If I had 6 billion to spend, I wouldn't buy a record company.
Maybe because because Blizzard and Valve actually make money? Can't recall who else is under Vivendi Universal, but if Apple was trying to aquire those divisions too, this announcment would go from "Calafornia fell into the ocean" earth shattering to "Snowball fight in Hell! Hey look, a Snow-Saten"
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
via Reuters
Everyone seems to forget that Jobs is also the CEO of Pixar (makers of Monsters, Inc,, Toy Story, A Bug's Life...).
I still remember about a year ago the NYT had a big Tech vs. the Entertainment Industry with a picture of Eisner (Disney CEO) representing the Entertainment industry, Jobs representing the tech industry (hiliting Apple's Rip, Mix, Burn campaign) and a screen shot of Monster's Inc. representing "pirated" works. Although the article stated Monster's Inc. was created by Pixar (distributed by Disney), the reporter seemed completely unaware of Job's other job. It would have added a whole new twist to the significance of the "facts".
I watched something (on CSPAN I think) a week or two ago. It was some kind of state hearing (with congressmen and such) about DRM (primarily the concerns of the MPAA I believe) and an Apple rep was there. He said something along the lines of the MPAA/RIAA's concerns weren't that important because Apple had something in the works that would fix the whole situation. Maybe this is it?
Sorry about the ambiguity of my report, I was doing a couple other things at the same time I was "watching" this hearing. Hopefully someone will know what meeting I am referring to and maybe even be able to quote the Apple employee.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Nope, no technical differences other than a little tighter compression, being able to "slice" the layers in order to play at a lower bitrate instead of reconverting to a lower bitrate, and being free of patent or copyright issues.
Nope... might as well use MP3. (sarcasm)
Everything I have on my system is Ogg... and I run Windows and Linux.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
you're a loser!
;) ...well I concede I'm a loser too
even Apple is richer than you!!
I've been working in the music business for about 10 years now... I've run my own label, worked for other independents, spent some time with Sony Music (in their distribution arm) and now work with all of the majors via a marketing consulting company. If Apple is thinking along the right lines this could be very good news for consumers. Why?
... from an insider's perspective, everyone in the business already understands that digital distribution is the future. The key arguement is HOW and under what TERMS. This could be a very interesting step in the right direction. Certainly exciting.
1. Universal Music Group is the largest major label in the industry.
2. UMG already owns an incredible MP3 download service called emusic.com. Yes, there are ZERO DRM controls. Just great music from thousands of artists (mainly independent at this point, but still an important step).
3. Apple would want to leverage their hardware/software assets vs. the content UMG controls. This would clearly mean cross selling between the iPod [one of Apple's most success products in years], the Mac platform, Quicktime, and all of UMG music/video assets.
So that means I'd have to restrict myself to the music that would most appeal to the people most likely to use the service.... I smell a pleasant and profitable business opportunity. Anway, the DMCA doesn't concern me as I'd be beaming from the planet Metaluna via Interocitor.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
And you are arguably light years behind on your psychiatric medication.
I use Linux on the desktop at work and OSX at home. Other than supporting a better web browser (Galeon), Linux is a pale shadow of OSX in every single way when it comes to usability and GUI integration.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Ok, I'm still trying to figure out this anti-French sentiment. Could someone please tell me what gives? I mean, come on. If it weren't for the French, we'd still be a British colony paying through the nose for simple things like tea.
Pooty tweet
Even though the lawsuit IMHO was frivolous (Also IANAL) it was resolved. I believe because Apple Records went after Apple Computer like this it dissolved the previous agreement that Apple could not enter the music business because now "Apple is already in the music business and they paid the price for doing so."
Again, IANAL...
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Steve Jobs is a multi-billionaire in his own right. If he wanted to spend $6,000,000,000 on Universal Music then he - Steve Jobs - easily could. Aruably what we are seeing is Jobs setting Apple up to be a compeitor to Sony. He has always admired that company - I wouldn't be suprised if he has always wanted to emulate it.
Imagine an Apple/Pixar/Universal company. This isn't an ill-fitting puzzle like AOL Time Warner. This would be, very much, a calculated and very simple plan by Jobs to evolve Apple.
The last two things that Jobs would be missing in the plan would be a movie studio and a game console. Pixar could easily continue to work with the studios for distribution, thus the need for a studio goes down.
That leaves a game console. The GameCube is an excellent design, in my opinion, with digital hub aspirations of its own. "GameCube II" could prove to be a spectacular hit (especially if they have a Zelda and/or Metroid launch title)...and Apple could be heading that up. Would Nintendo sell itself to Jobs? They might...they just might.
The downside to this great (yet caffinated-induced-due-to-lack-of-sleep) fantasy is that we Mac users would almost be guaranteed of never seeing another version of MS Office past version 11.
But is that really a bad thing? ;)
Steve Jobs took Apple from 2 weeks from not being able to make payroll when he came back to having over 5 Billion in cash reserve. You can thank the iMac for that.
When the Macintosh II came out with greatly expanded sound capabilities built in (not as an add-on MIDI card), Apple performed one of the most famous corporate "jokes" of all time, naming one of the new, high-quality system alert sounds "Sosumi" (Pronounced "So, sue me"). I don't think Apple Records (if they are even still around) ever took them up on it.
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
I think it's safe to assume he meant, "MacOS X is already arguably light years beyond Linux as a desktop OS...".
That's a funny concept, given that Universal dropped their DVD-Audio production because they didn't feel that the DVD-A format had enough DRM protection.
Jory
Well, IIRC, the current owner of the Apple Records trademark (Beatles, among others) and litigated with Apple Computer over the trademark. It would be irony if UMG owns the trademark.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
a little tighter compression
Who cares?
being able to "slice" the layers in order to play at a lower bitrate instead of reconverting to a lower bitrate
Who cares?
and being free of patent or copyright issues.
Who cares?
Here's a clue: no-one except the ogg-loving no-lifers on Slashdot. The rest of the world is perfectly happy with mp3, thanks.
Probibly as much a reason as any for apple to pull this move is that Vivindi/Universal is in a cash crunch and needs to shed assets to stay afloat. Jobs knows that VUE must sell or thier gonna go bankrupt, so he can offer a relitivly low price for that unit. Remember when Vivindi bought seagrams (who owned universal) they payed 34 billion for it. 6 bil isnt really as hugh ammount for universal esp considering they make 500+ mil a year....
Who cares?
Obviously not you, but people/companies paying mp3 licensings fees obviously do.
I bet that Apple will sell downloadable music cheap, but think different about the CD cases and art so that people still buy CDS....
Reuters has picked up the LA Times story, and Yahoo! News has a reg-free version here.
--Mythos
Heh. Modded down in under 5 minutes. That's gotta be a new record.
If it wasn't for the floundering of AOL-Time Warner, the Vivendi-Universal merger would be the one everybody talks about. The CEO selling shares, then forced to step down, now revealing that they "fixed" their annual reports last year. Just a big cluster.
And remember that Universal Music is the number 1 music company in the world... by a lot. So with the downturn (whatever the root: music piracy, crappy music, overpriced cds) there is a desire to dump those assets right quick. I'd call it a disaster if mainstream music didn't suck.
What is music when you despise all sound?
I suspect that if this rumor is true, the iPod and iTunes (maybe iTunes for Windows?) will be key parts of Apple's media strategy, linked to a rights management system.
When Apple added track counters to iTunes and the iPod, I wondered what use they would be for the end user. Does anybody really care how many times I've played any particular song? Not really. BUT... consider this model:
Apple could run a music portal geared specifically to iPod/iTunes users. (Content will drive further hardware sales... 'Only on an iPod')
Registered users would be able to download music freely, directly through the iTunes interface. No micropayments would be necessary. Each time you sync your iPod, the track count data could be uploaded and you get a monthly bill for your actual usage.
Billing and distribution of fees to artists would be administered in cooperation with ASCAP and other rights-management agencies.
This could be the new business model the music industry has been struggling to find since the days of Napster.
Another key point... Vivendi Universal owns MP3.com.
Think about it.
imagine how the complexion of the media industry would change if the computer companies started buying up the media giants.
it's a sure bet that if apple bought universal music, then microsoft would want their own media company, say, viacom or disney (microsoft has eight times the market value of disney and three times that of viacom). even aol/time warner is vulnerable as a takeover target.
if apple bought a major media company then, all or a sudden, consumer electronics companies would have to pay attention to apple. if microsoft owned a major studio then consumer electronics companies would have to include microsoft software in their gadgets. ostensibly, this is the reason why sony bought columbia years back, although sony is so balkanized, that they have never really taken advantage of their position. plus sony probably gives too much power and autonomy to the sony pictures studio executives anyway.
all it would take is for each media giant to enter into a cash squeeze like vivendi universal is in right now and the hardware and software companies could start buying them up, piece by piece. not that it would necessarily happen, but it's interesting to think about.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Now that part of Apple is part of the RIAA, could this make Apple evil? Or will it make them schizophrenic like Sony?
All I can say is that if Apple goes on with this, I think it will be awsome. I am not an Apple fan and all that, but from the way they do business, they are more for the customer then any other company around. And no, it will not be bad. Think of all the foes that said Apple will go out of business in the next 5 yrs, and all that. And you really think Apple only has 4.4 Bil in cash? Come on, for such a big company that is nothing. From what I have followed over the years, and my own calculations, that would be something like 24.3. Microsoft has around 60 bil cash reserves.
Another way to think about this is from Vivendis point of view. The French govt is pressuring them to reduce overseas holdings, their creditors are pressuring them to raise cash, their shareholders are pressuring them to come back towards their original role: a European utilities company. Since V listed on NYSE, their stock is down from 80 to 14. Management is shaken, Messier's books have been 'messier' than is acceptable in the post-Enron era, and they're losing 5% a year on assets.
DRM is a critical field in the entertainment industry's growth and they have no hope of competing with US/Japanese media giants, especially in the music industry. If they can get $6 bil to pay off high interest debt, it would take a lot of heat off their backs.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
So why is a killer-app needed? Didn't need a killer-app to see PNG files in my browser. People will listen to whatever format their music arrives in. It's the music distributors who decide on the codec and they are very much concerned about patent liability.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
HOLY xor!
isn't mp3.com and all it's artists owned by universal, now? especially considering it just takes artists and then does not let them apply for termination of contract[meaning Every Artist on Mp3.com is Owned by Universal, as is all their content unless otherwise owned by a label/copyrighted/etc before applying for mp3.com/upload?]...this means I am now owned by Apple!!! on the one hand, i've always been more or less a passive apple computers fan but...OMG! ownership rights it seems of my art is transferred to an even bigger company...-~ i don't know whether this is a good thing or not [large corporate entities buying eachother isn't necessarily a good thing]...on the one hand if Apple is pro-P2P technology, and anti-RIAA enough, mabye they may have enough backbone to start pulling things in some direction other than the one things are currently going..-~ of course...or they can become the next -big-brother-.
i personally hope that this is a good thing for musicians and artists...[empowering musicians with technology == a good thing]...but i'm not yet seeing how this would work...
Universal is bought out by Apple then : further integration between technology and content companies. you become part of the "art" system, you become part of the art system. but who would have thought the company that made this system would buy me and tens of thousands of other artists worldwide through universal...it boggles my mind... obligatory beep beep beep link
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
People always say "it is better at lower bitrates" but who wants to listen to audio at lower (read: poorer) bitrates? For digital backup, I can't imagine using anything less than --alt-preset standard/extreme whatever from LAME or MPC. And sure, "lower bitrates" might be suitable for Internet radio, but we are quickly moving to ubiquitous broadband world, making a 24kBps or whatever stream quite feasible, making the sacrifice in quality unjustified.
Apple doesn't have $6B in cash. Apple doesn't have $6B market cap. Market cap as of today is $4.7B. Cash is $1.16B.
So what is wrong here? Someone above posted an article that said Apple had "$4.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments as of Dec. 28" But that sounds like Market cap to me. Check their cash flow statement. Also, you'd never get a loan larger than your market cap, unless you have some big favors to call in.
Arguments about Apples being more expensive than PCs is no longer so...
There are no longer arguements about Apples being more expensive than PCs because it is a fact that Apples are more expensive than PCs. Especially if you consider a full featured tower with hand picked, quality parts that you assembled yourself.
Having used various Linux distros, BeOS, and OSX, I'd say you've got it backwards - OSX is the best (and by "best" I mean useable for average users) OS of the three.
If my apps ran on OSX, I'd switch instantly... but at the moment I'm stuck on Windows.
doesn't apple also have, i mean, _taste_ ? mabye we'll see an actual influx of talent into universal, as apples initial influence is felt. none of this "crap" music and art and movies that are just pointless to watch, propeganda, or just painfully badly done... we'll actually be seeing technology work in the cause of creating beautiful things. sure it's going to turn into a media monopoly, peice by peice, but initially at least i really think that a lot of talent that would otherwise not be known by anyone would suddenly get their chance - in this i say to artists everywhere, pick up an apple _now_...support this at least until they start screwing things up... as for myself i'm going to make the switch as soon as it's reasonable to do so :)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
So, will Apple support Ogg?
Actually I don't really care, I don't have any Apple products. I'm just trying to recover from a karma dip from my "MS really isn't that bad!" thread a couple of days ago.
There are many different ways to view Apple's interest in Universal Music. 1. By owning the world's largest music company, Apple would have huge leverage in getting Best Buy AND Circuit City to sell Macs in their stores again. 2. Buck the trend of these encrypted music CDs not working in Mac CD/DVD drives. 3. Strengthen the Mac platform in music production and post production from the record company level on down... 4. Boosting iPod sales. Imagine if Apple's subscription system allowed you to download copies of the songs for your Mac (or PC) and allow you to transfer/copy and use them to your iPod; whereas transferring files to other MP3 portables cost extra. 5. Leverage in settling future standards issues like the current SACD vs. DVD-A (DVD Audio not the Trey Parker/Matt Stone definition of *DVDA*)... or Dolby Digital vs. DTS. 6. Enough clout to get the other multimedia companies to actually support the Mac on their DVD-Rom features on their movie releases... (longshot)... 7. Ringtone revenue. We've all been expecting an iPhone for a long time... 8. Haven't we been expecting Microsoft to purchase a media company for a long time now? Apple beats them AGAIN....
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I am subsriber to the Vivendi/Universal eMusic service and I am quite happy with it. The ability to download albums at once is worth the $14.95 a month. The selection is limited to mostly 'indy' labels and the bitrate only 128kbps. 15 bucks is the cost of one CD (maybe) and allows me unlimited downloads from their catalog. Works on mac and linux and I get mp3s not WMAs. Being a mac user my options were quite limited when selecting a music service but it's actually a nice service and is getting better. Hopefully all these predictions of 99 cents a song from the Apple music service were jumping the gun a bit.
"Who knew Apple even had that kind of cash?"
Yeah, those Microsoft bail-outs are a wonderful thing, aren't they? I can here the troll mods even now. Truth hurts, huh?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I've been wondering how long it was going to take for the Tech companies, which are far huger then the music companies trying to ruin them to simply buy the music companies outright.
It'll be intresting to see what happens if Apple succeds in this. Hopefully they'll boot out all the old chronies and get rid of a lot of the exploitation. Not that I'm holding my breath...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
perhaps they will clue in to the market, release some extreemly high quality releases, with easthetic covers, perfume on the inside, the whole kit and kaboodle, let demos freely into the wild and embrace p2p as a way of distrobution...
killing the entire recording industry who refuses to leave intellectual property/content as the sole way of making money
at least until their competators who are not into hardware fade away in the competition, and then it can clamp down all it wants. but that's all way theoretical....and this only implies the death of the riaa amongst other things, which i figure would be well worth it.
alternatively, on a seperate topic...unfortunately if apple owns unviersal, and universal is one of teh big peices in the RIAA, then all you who are boycotting the RIAA, may have to consider boycotting a hardware company, which is much, much harder...
in effect this could either make apple a serious competitor or destroy it outright...imho
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Their P/E is over 200. This is more than YHOO, EBAY, and most other current "bubble" stocks. Once a P/E rises above 30 it is considered to be a bubble.
I knew apple had that kind of cash... thats why I always had a chuckle when people said apple was going out of business. Sure they where loosing TONs of cash in the mid 90's but they where said to have more money in the bank than MS. Before Apple started having problems I think they has something like 90 billion in the bank from all those ][ C's
How will this purchase effect the agreement between Apple (the music label) and Apple computers? This would give the property holders of Apple (the label) a mighty nice bit of bait for another round of lawsuits concerning Apple's (the computer company) copyright infringment upon their useage of the name "Apple".
An AC wrote:
;)
> There are no longer arguements about Apples being
> more expensive than PCs because it is a fact that Apples
> are more expensive than PCs. Especially if you consider a
> full featured tower with hand picked, quality parts that
> you assembled yourself.
Funny, I've seen do-it-yourself instructions in magazines for gamer's PCs that cost $3000 or more. I've also seen "Walmart Specials" for $200-300.
Now, Apple is way too classy to offer "Walmart Specials", and will happily let PCs have that price category to themselves. Otherwise, Macs and PCs cost the same: whatever you want to spend on them.
There is one case where Apple is a real bargain, and that is high end nonlinear video editing. It used to be a few years back that you had to spend half a million US dollars on software and hardware. Now you can buy a top of the line PowerMac with all the trimmings along with Apple's Pro line of video software (Final Cut Pro and its amazing friends), and pay less than $10,000(US). Doesn't $240,000(US) sound like a sweet discount?
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are."
Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
this is a very exciting time and the above post hit it right on the nail. it is evolution, and it's likely allready about to happen. my question is...what is the next step? where does it go next? are we going to see a new era of multimedia? of _technology_ ? is this going to drive us as hard and as far as war, porn[Imagine the Possibilities! the studios! the Universal owned Women!]...and the server/technology/infrasturcutre? arg i'm just so excited over this, for some reason....
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
You certainly got this argument off on the right foot...
I couldn't care less about the differences between ogg and mp3. I also couldn't name any features that mp3 or ogg doesn't offer now that I'd want in some other format. ogg is better from an ideological perpective because it has none of that patent bullshit to deal with. Yes, I think software patents suck massive cock. All I care about is if the damned thing plays on my equipment without my having to do some elabourate dance.
As for me, I've bought exactly... zero... CDs in the past year. Do you know why? It's because nothing worth buying has come out in the past year. It's also because I've been too lazy to get to a used CD store and get CDs of music that I really DO want.
In other words, I've been listening to all my old stuff that I bought 8yr ago or more. There's nothing wrong with that, and the record companies can't charge me a dime for the right of first sale I'm exercising by using my CDs in mp3 format. The iPod is great for hauling my 120-something CD collection around in... makes for great car listening.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Exactly, which is why we see so many products using Ogg instead of MP3.
Wait...
If everybody is to start buying music online (and, with songs as cheap as 10 cents per song, they'll have to sell TONS of song to acheive profitability) then everybody will need broadband/DSL lines.
:)
I don't know about the U.S., but here in Europe (and particularly in France) DSL is still the exception (not even mentionning that most of DSL users have "low-end" connections, such as 128kbps...)
So, well, I really hope Jobs & Co have a lot of reliable DATA to stand on...
But still, it's a cool idea if they allow the end user to share freely (non-DRM'd files, ability to burn on CD, put on iPod or any other device)
Yet the probability of this being a hoax is still quite high...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Anyone who can read a freakin' quarterly or annual summary of a company.
Every employee should know those sorts of figures about their employer. The self-employed know it.
If you work at a public company, that information is readily available for free.
If you work at a private company, they should be disclosing their cash position, debt, etc, on at least a quarterly basis. For many start-ups, this is reviewed on a WEEKLY basis.
If the data is verbal only, I suggest that you tape record it. That way, execs stand a better chance of being held criminally accountable should they lie.
If they tell you that your non-public stock has increased in value, GET IT IN WRITING.
Cash on hand, debt, margins, revenue, earnings, any impending dilution of equity (new shares being issued, etc), etc.
Until I can get a DSL or a cable modem on a farm in The Sticks, KS, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the "ubiquitous broadband" thing. It's been 4yr or so since I've had broadband (cable), and I still have to be very careful about where I choose to live.
BTW, my whole music collection is 128kbps CBR mp3. All of it. It sounds just like the CDs it came from, so that works for me.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
I'm sure that Apple will want to be careful with regards to Apple Corps
Somewhere in the dark back corner of my memory, I seemed to recall that Apple had some kind of trademark/copyright issue with the Macintosh name. Vaguely, I think there was some kind of agreement that Apple could use the "McIntosh" name as long as Apple was not in the music business...
Apple's real deal isn't to buy Universal, but to scare the other music companies into giving them better licensing deals for their upcoming music thing.
It's Jobs scamming the music companies.
"Better at lower bitrates" means for a given bitrate with mp3, you can get better quality at a lower bitrate with ogg. If you want a higher bitrate, go ahead, it will sound still better, but after a point you can no longer distinguish it from CD-quality audio (with ogg on my audio system, 128 kb/s is already indistinguishable from a CD to me; mp3 at that bitrate sucks, I need to go up to 256 kb/s to get acceptable quality.)
ha, I got an offer for a credit card with a limit of $7 billion the other day, I could of bought Universal Music... I just thought it was a poor choice... I'm going for the real deal."
All your six billion dollar are belong to jobs for universal. - reference anonymous sources
You guys never seem to get that Ogg Vorbis is *not* "patent free", and neither is anything else, and it doesn't matter if it is open source or gpl'd or given away for free.
Nothing protects you, anyone else, or Xiph.org itself from a patent threat from a third party. Xiph.org's license protects you from them only, and does not indemnify. Odds are, there is a patent out there - owned by a third party, not Xiph.org - that someone can argue applies to Vorbis compression, and that will be the basis of a threat if products adopting Vorbis compression make any money.
The only thing that is "patent free" is something that was specifically detailed in a patent that has already expired. Otherwise, it is always possible that someone out there might have another patent that they will argue applies - like jpeg-Forgent, Fraunhofer, etc., etc., etc. This crosses the line from possible to probable as the amount of money at stake increases.
It sucks, but that's the way it is.
this troll is funny no matter how many times i read it
keep up the good work!
Stores do NOT make that much per single CD. Never have, never will. When I worked in an independently-owned record store, we paid as much as $12.50 per copy of that chart-topping release. New releases rarely dropped much below $10 each. New releases were never more than $1-2 above our cost to stay competitive, and we could only afford another $1 on the bigger release margins. To continue in business (which ultimately didn't happen) we needed the extra money you think we would get. Selling tons of copies of Britney and N Sync and the like only made us $2 a copy. That's not much, whether looking short or long term. The most money we made on a single-CD album was those Sound Savers/etc that you see for $8-11 in stores. Those cost us, on average, $7.49 and we'd mark them up to $11.99. I logged countless hours on the phones with distributors, one-stops, importers, and the like trying to find best prices every time some release was expected to be huge. I spent a year being the purchase agent for a record store; I'm aware of what the business is like. Just because you worked retail somewhere doesn't make you an expert, please don't spout like you are.
Believe me, I was there for one or two of those meetings.
There are legitimate needs for DRM. Protecting music may or not be one of them, but making documents that are Very Hard for anyone who is not authorized to read and copy would be an extremely useful thing in a lot of industries... in fact, any industry where industrial espionage is a problem.
The meetings actually went more like this.
DRM SALES GUY
Hey, we have an unbreakable digital rights amangement system! It's 100% effective. You need to protect your... why are you looking at me like that?
APPLE GUY
100% effective, huh? Then why won't you tell us how it works? We ARE under a nondisclosure agreement. Also, incidentally, we cracked the protection on those two files you sent us last week, so I hope whatever you're plugging now is better.
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Or you can get a $700 PC, spend $400 on Vegas Video and have a high-end video editing workstation for $1100.
Being too old to enter the Mastercard Music Intern competition ... Free ... $4 Billion ... Priceless
Buying your own Label in2003
Producing Emimen in 2004
Lets face it. Jobs is just sprinting away from Gates in the coolness factor. Now, not only does he have the Oscars and Grammies tied up, he also gets the hot groupies he's long felt he deserved.
W.
The music industry is generally agreed to be in deep trouble. Their real problem isn't piracy - it's video. The music industry used to have their own channel - record stores. They now share their channel with Hollywood, since most stores that sell CDs now also sell DVDs, and even video games. A DVD looks just like an audio CD, and DVD players will play both. Yet the DVD has far more production value, more play time, and often costs less. Not unexpectedly, movie DVD sales are growing, music video sales are up, and audio CD sales are down. Total sales of "entertainment delivered on circular recording media" are way up. But the music industry's share of that market is down. (New figures on this were in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.)
The music industry has been in defensive mode for years now, frantically trying to keep retail prices up in the face of this competition. Few if any new ideas have emerged from the music industry in years. Their cash-cow genres have been mined out - rock, rap, house, classical, and country all peaked a long time ago. Broadcasting companies now have more clout than record companies. Congress is tired of all the RIAA's whining. The industry is sick.
Jobs can shake this up quite a bit. Especially since he can buy Universal at a bargain price, which means he can undercut the competition at retail. He's brighter than the current management in the music business. (That's not hard. The film industry has smart people, but top management in music is generally agreed to be dumb.) He might be able to find a way to pull the industry out of the tank. The Jobs "reality distortion field", an ongoing pain in the computer industry, would be an asset in the music industry.
I ask because I'm about to move to a new job where one of the primary sources of revenue is from Universal Music. (The other bigs labels are a factor as well but...)
The company deals with DRM and if Apple buys them I'd suspect that we'd loose that revenue as I'm sure Apple has their own DRM plans.
So here is what I would say is the definitive statement on Sosumi:
http://www.spies.com/~greg/resume.html
Do a search for the word, it's near the bottom of the page.
Plus, I believe Apple Records was eventually paid $30 million (not sure about the exact figure) by Apple Computers, in return for allowing Apple Computers free reign in the music business.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Ironically, the marriage of Apple and Universal could be relatively peaceful contrasted against the existing joining of Sony with itself. Look at the history of Sony's key divisions:
On the one hand, Sony Music set about promoting the artists and producing the music to the specifications of the producers and, probably more lawyers than you can shake a stick at. (Though they're lawyers. Why would you just shake that stick at them?)
On the other hand, Sony Technology set out to produce überkewl gadgets to sway the hearts and minds of consumers. Some things they make are trivial, and some are their own little universes (the PS2 for example), but some are quite plainly geared to the tastes of the people, like CD players, DVD players, etc.
Then Sony came to the fork in the road ...and tried to take it. Suddenly they found themselves in an ugly conflict of interests: the music division's profits lay up one way (pleasing the producers and lawyers, pushing hard DRM, etc.) and the technology division's profits lay up the other (not pissing off the consumers). When last seen, this ponderous beast was trying to dig its own path between the two forks.
About Apple and Universal, I have some reservations. Let's face it, everyone knows that Apple rumors taste even better cooked over a hickory fire than roast snipe. And I could see most sensible businessmen wanting to avoid the whole nasty business of music distribution (whose culture has moss growing on its underside). And even if they do somehow get the sale together, the actual division of power could be muddied beyond recognition between the power struggle of the tech company and the music company (see Sony's plight above).
However, if they do get together and have a merger, and Apple somehow comes out on top, then Steve Jobs would be in a perfect position to tell Universal, "No... we go this way. Quality and accessibility will take you much farther than unsatisfied, unwilling consumers will."
I could also see the whole music industry wanting to do things the new, more profitable way, but that would involve abuses of prescription medications beyond that which my body could handle. Apple changing the music industry? Unlikely, except in the way that Apple changes Microsoft -- by demonstrating neat UI widgets and not complaining bitterly every time one of them ends up in Windows' next release.
So... yeah, if it's not a joke, and if Steve Jobs wants to dirty his hands in that unsavory way, and he manages to browbeat down Universal, the transition could go smoother for them than Sony has it now.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
This doesn't seem very likely since Apple's assets total about 6 billion.
You sound like you haven't used Apple hardware or software in a while, so I thought I'd respond.
The idea of Apple locking people into overpriced hardware is extremely outdated.
Look inside a Mac, most of the components are standard. Apple has been vigilantly following open hardware standards, and integrating low-cost, high-quality hardware into their systems for years now. Apple has been making any Apple created standards (like Firewire) open.
The only hardware "lock" that's on a Mac right now is the PPC processor. But that's a relative statement since the PPC is a much better choice in many ways than it's x86 counterpart. (In spite of Motorola just messing up.)
On the software side, Apple has done everything it can in OS X to allow Apple users to have as many choices as possible, and be able to integrate Apple hardware as many places as possible. Out-of-the-box integration of Samba allows users to easily integrate their Mac into a Windows network. Out of the box integration of CUPS allows users to integrate their Mac into a UNIX network. On either Windows or Linux, you don't have this kind of easy cross-platform integration.
Right now, even though the Macintosh is my platform of choice, there is nothing that locks me into an expensive hardware upgrade. Though I could never see myself going back to the days of, "it's supposed to work, but it doesn't" on Windows, or, "it works now that I've spent two hours learning more than I needed to know about it" on my Linux/BSD laptops. Apple has been good about letting me control what I want to do with my data and my computer.
I find it quite ironic that people are still talking about Apple locking people into expensive hardware upgrades when prices for comparably equipped computers on the PC side are pretty much the same. Don't get me wrong, I know you can buy the components and build it for less, heck, I used to do that myself. The fact is, the quality of the end-product is not as good as the hardware that was--from start to finish--designed to work together.
I guess at one point, when I had more time than money, I would have thought the same. When you're looking at PC components, and trying to buy the cheapest piece of equipment that you can find, I guess that makes sense. But from a user standpoint, a piecemeal machine is a recipe for disaster. Since I purchased my Mac, my PC friends have gone through 3 or 4 different incarnations of their computers. They're constantly working on trying to fix whatever the problem is today. They just aren't satisfied with the performance of their machine--no matter how fast the processor is supposed to be. I'm still quite happy with my Powerbook, and will be for years to come.
Apple has provided a platform that is ubiquitous--I don't mean in herd numbers, but in its ability to go anywhere, and do anything. Apple is relying on the quality of its user experience as an incentive to upgrade the hardware later on. You're not locked into buying another Apple, because the ubiquity provided by Apple means that if you want to, you can change to a different platform.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
BTW, my whole music collection is 128kbps CBR mp3. All of it. It sounds just like the CDs it came from, so that works for me.
Ok, tinear. 128kb/s sounds like ass. 256 is minimum for acceptable audio quality, and if you have a respectable monitoring system, you can hear artifacts on virtually any bitrate mp3.
Chris
Reuters story
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Billionaire oilman Marvin Davis would drop his bid to acquire the entertainment assets of Franco-American conglomerate Vivendi Universal if Vivendi sells Universal Music to Apple Computer Inc., a source familiar with the situation said Friday.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Davis was uninterested in pursuing his $15 billion bid for Vivendi Universal Entertainment if Vivendi either sold its music group to Apple, which sources have confirmed it is in talks to do, or pulls the unit off the market entirely.
"The Davis proposal from the beginning has always been for all the entertainment assets, and the music group is essential," the source said. "The transaction doesn't make sense without it."
The source then added, "If this (the Apple deal) were to happen or if Vivendi was to decide they would keep the music group, the Davis proposal would be withdrawn." This would seem to throw a wrench in the works.
Remember that the dispute was over the "Apple" trademark, not over any competitiveness issues. Although the terms of the last settlement (in the '90s) were never disclosed, it's inconceivable that AAPL's lawyers would concede that AAPL couldn't compete with Apple Corps under any circumstance.
In the original agreement between the two companies, AAPL agreed that it wouldn't use its logo or name in connection with any musical product, including but not limited to software used to record or distribute music. I suspect that the last settlement was kinder to Apple's interests, since otherwise neither iTunes nor the iPod could use the AAPL brand.
Bearing this theory out, the AAPL trademark guidelines include a "music software exception," which contains, inter alia, this requirement:
Under the Exception, "music software" includes "'end user' directed * * * media whose intended purpose and prerecorded content is (or is about) primarily music" (e.g., any music CD). As I read the definition, it seems to be strictly limited to software involving recorded music, not music-recording software.Admittedly, these guidlines apply to third-party software, but I suspect AAPL could issue its own products under roughly equivalent strictures.
Nonetheless, this only applies to the use of AAPL's name and logo, not any activities of the company itself. (Again, if AAPL couldn't compete at all, then iTunes and iPod would probably be verboten.) In the current instance, you'll never see AAPL's logo on a single music product, but they can arguably still compete under the Universal Music name and remain faithful to the first agreement, to say nothing of whatever later deal was brokered.
Of course, Apple Corps could still conceivably sue for injunctive relief under the trademark dilution statute, but as long as AAPL is careful about where its logo lands, I think they'll be okay. I'd still seek either an agreement with Apple Corps or declarative relief if I were AAPL, though.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
These are short runs, and therefore VERY expensive. Most of this cost is in making the Glass Master, the "stamper", to make the CD's. After this is made, the costs per unit fall precipitously. On huge 100,000+ runs of Bleatles CD's, or AOL-branded coasters, the unit cost is negligible. The most expensive part is the jewel case, which is where Digipaks came in.
Please feel free to mod me down for 'BS', as usual :-)
Hands up everyone who refuses to obey orders.
"Who know Apple had that kind ($6B)?"
Um... I thought it was popular knowledge that Apple had over $4B in cash sitting around. That means they'd only need to do $2B of that in stock swap.
I guess the answer to "who knew", is anyone who keeps occasional tabs on the financial health of their favorite computer company.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Well.. don't worry son. You DO have a point, but opinion such strong as yours will never be allowed in Slashdot, that's why you should have posted it as Anonymous Coward.
People always say "it is better at lower bitrates" but who wants to listen to audio at lower (read: poorer) bitrates?
Well, think about it this way: Who doesn't want better audio quality for the bitrate they are currently using? So if you're already using 128kbps, would you rather have that be ogg or mp3? Personally, I use low bitrates a lot, as I've got a lot of my own recordings that I share or access from a remote location and compress when it's taking up too much space locally, and there's no reason for high bitrates on low quality scratch recordings. For music that I listen to I don't use lossy compression at all, so I'm not arguing for the use of low bitrates or even any compression at all of music. If I had a portable digital music player with a small amount of space on it (like 32MB-128MB), I can see myself using 96kbps ogg on it if it supported it (whereas 96kbps mp3 just wouldn't do).
And sure, "lower bitrates" might be suitable for Internet radio, but we are quickly moving to ubiquitous broadband world
Broadband doesn't change anything for Internet radio, the server still has to be able to deliver it (to all people listening to the stream), and I don't see this problem going away just by throwing more bandwidth at it, since the load on the server can only be expected to increase. Even for us with broadband, outbound bandwidth is still quite small (~30kB), so compression is still pretty handy.
Anyways, the only real point I made with the original post was that ogg doesn't need any extra features over mp3, it already has everything it needs. If people want to use it, fine. If they don't want to use it, fine. It's just a codec, it's there for anyone to use. I'll use it for my purposes. If everyone else is using and supporting mp3, well, sucks for them.
--Drunk as in Beer
I don't think this could possibly happen.
Back in 1981, Apple landed in legal trouble with "Apple Corps", the Beatles' record label. In November 1981, they agreed that Apple Computer could continue to do business under that name, so long as they didn't make any attempt to enter the music business.
Later, I believe around when System 7 came along, the Apple Corps lawyers got pissed off again because of the OS' new sound capabilities; the story (or maybe urban legend) goes that an Apple engineer renamed one of the alert sounds Sosumi, and told them it meant "lack of any musical qualities whatsoever" in Japanese.
So if the Apple Corps was upset about some cheesy System 7 alert sounds, imagine how they'd feel about Apple buying a record label. That is, if they're still around and if their agreement with Apple is still in effect.
If Apple Corps and their legal agreement are still potent, one would think that this would have prevented them from manufacturing the iPod and from developing their alleged music service as well. So it's likely that the Apple Corps stuff no longer matters. Still, interesting to think about.
Ubi dubium, ibi libertas.
Yes, I can download lots of stuff online for free - or at least all the popular stuff. When you start to reach the fringes, it gets trickier... and often even the popular stuff you have messed up files, or low bitrates.
:-)
If there was a place I could go and listen to 56k versions of songs all I liked, then let me buy a quality version for a buck - I'd go for that. And if I liked the CD enough I'd buy the whole thing. That's mostly what I use free services for right now, to try out all of the songs on a CD before I buy it (but again, I can't always find all the songs - usually just the best tracks).
There's a lot of people that would love to buy older stuff that's out of print and hard to find. And where there is love, there is money not far behind...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's a free clue - if it has "Vegas" in the title, it's not high-end...
10 bucks a month? For unlimited downloads? That wouldn't even cover the bandwidth used for 20 tracks, much less even begin to compensate the IP owner, STILL less the artist.
And, of course, $10 won't even buy you 5 seconds of studio time so let's not get into the "there's no packaging/manufacturing costs" issue. Making professional quality music costs money. People who've never analyzed the industry don't realize how low the margins actually are for normal artists (AND the labels, as concerns those artists)... it's all funded by the few hundred acts that go mega platinum.
Lets face it, for music downloads to work, it's gonna have to be an album neutral (i.e. you're not required to buy the album whole), previewable, and pay-per-song-minute, or per meg if you prefer. At 15 cents per minute, a one hour record is 9 bucks. I'd pay at least that for music i like, assuming it's unrestricted in terms of where/when/how i can enjoy it. Plus, with this scheme i can get any single song i like without putting up with an album of filler.
I guess i've exceeded my two cent mark, but anyway, this is the only way i see online distribution working.
Just imagine this baby. A Tivo Series2 *enhanced* by Apple. It would have Firewire, the wireless options, and a customized "Home Media Option" built in to work directly with the user's OS X Mac elsewhere in the house; to work better with the iLife "suite"... Apple would probably allow it to stream movies on the Mac made with iMovie as well... They could charge the premium Sony currently is on their Series2 model, but in this case it would be worth it...and it would obviously work with Apple's upcoming music service... Incidentally, the music company TiVo is working with to promote the benefits of the "Home Media Option" is Universal Music...hmmm
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
That's missing the point. The obvious conclusion everyone is supposed to make is this, now said aloud in case you can't come to it yourself: "If it sounds Truly Bold on bitrates that make mp3 encoders sputter, it sounds Rather Majestic on higher bitrates."
Are you serious??? For digital backup, I can't imagine using anything less than -8 or whatever from FLAC. Or better yet, burn it on audio CD as an uncompressed .wav or a redbook audio track.
For my casual music listening, oggenc -q 6 is far more than adequate.
It's always easy to get hidebound and get stuck to using one thing that you know to work, rather than finding out what's actually best. I too thought MP3s were pretty good until I a) noted one rather high-bitrate MP3 sounded like crap compared to the CD, and b) a medium-bitrate Ogg Vorbis of same version sounded damn good still. Just my experiences, again...
Oh yeah, broadband world all right. Internet radio clients get faster lines. ISPs still charge the same per gigabyte from the radio server, as they have from the beginning of the time. Right?
Hell, I just tried downloading stuff from archive.org (an etree.org distributor). Had to leave the thing downloading the song for several minutes (didn't check, I went to sleep), and I have a "broadband" connection. It was a .shn file, which is a lossless, True Quality-Freak Format like FLAC. This is the quality we're aiming, streaming losslessly compressed stuff - by your logic, anything else is futile. Sure, maybe in future it's possible to stream this stuff. Right now, it's quite ridiculous to even try.
I think it's pretty clear that Sony's been hedging their bets against MS's operating system hegemony for a long time by shipping their PDAs with Palm's OS. They didn't go with Palm just because it's a superior handheld OS (though it is in some ways). They went with it because it's not Microsoft, and I suspect they already saw Microsoft as their chief competitor years before the Xbox came to try to wreck their most profitable division. Forbes has been following the increasing rivalry between MS and Sony for years
What's interesting about the main story in this thread is that if Apple buys Universal, they will be throwing themselves into the same battle, and will essentially be challenging the Microsoft/Sony duopoly on their own turf (integrated hardware/software/Intellectual property publishing). The guys running these companies see the future, and it is integrated entertainment.
This is an extraordinarily ambitious project, if Apple is serious about it. But I suspect Jobs doesn't think Apple will survive if it doesn't get ambitious.
\
Valve is not owned by Vivendi. Sierra, which is owned by Vivendi, merely publishes Valve's game. (Come to think of it, they really only have one.)
Jobs isn't interested in entering the TV market unless it's HDTV.
Plans have been underway for some time but the US HDTV market
hasn't come up to speed as quickly as hoped.
interesting, but that hasn't stopped Apple from pioneering the ability for people to make their own DVDs and those definitely aren't HDTV quality. Apple sold iPods before creating their subscription based distribution plan. Seems rather fickle to try to wait until HDTV takes off, sometime in the NEXT decade at the rate they are going... :)
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
on this very news.
This
sony music and sony hardware don't talk to each other and are i legal battles with each other. apple does revolutionary things with hardware and software, i forsee them doing great things with the purchase of universal. hopefully steve can buy himself a bigger airplane this year.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a settlement between Apple and the Beatles over the Apple logo (eerily similar to the Apple Records logo). One of the settlements out of that case was that Apple would never get into the music business. Could Apple be facing another lawsuit sometime soon?
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
I know a lot of people at Universal Music, and they're a pretty unique company within their industry too -- a tightly run corporation with vision and discipline, run by multitalented, renaissance-man business professionals. They're not the loose network of vaudevillian hucksters, drug-addled sleazebags, and pseudo-mob family empires that pass for other music labels, and especially distribution companies. They're a lot more like Apple. I think the fit is better than you mght imagine. In fact they're too forward thinking for the old French foggybottoms at Vivendi, an ex public utility, which is why they're being unloaded. Now *there's* a culture clash, soon to be no more...
ooh ooh .... im karma whoring to can i get a +5 please ?
(this was a joke)
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
SALES != PROFITS
I can't believe this was posted. I am floored.
OK, sony has a consumer electronics devision and a music devision, and look what's happened, with say Minidisks and "OpenMG". So far, Apple have been relatively DRM-free, but what's gonna happen now?
----------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Thanks, dude, I learned my lesson. No point in posting something "controversial" while logged in, because the mods will just push it down to the nothing zone anyway.
Nobody wants to think for themselves anymore, or question what they are being told. Nobody wants to research. Nobody wants to dig for the truth. Nobody wants to fight the powers that be, especially if they offer a simple, three-point plan for world salvation. Why settle for a world of complexity and colour when a beautiful imaginary world of black and white, absolute good vs absolute evil, waits for you - if only you surrender your will and your mind to the shamans, thieves, and bullies who demand your obedience and complacency.
America is so beautiful - if you don't look too close. And if do you look close enough to find the truth, keep quiet about what you find - this is no longer a free country. Shhhhh. "Don't ask, don't tell". "Loose lips sink ships". "The truth is out there" - just make sure to lock the doors so the truth can't sneak back *in* and wreck this fascist New World Order we're creating under the noses of the sleeping citizens of America. Spin Control leads to Mind Control leads to Total Control. Wake up if you can, but it's probably too late already.
--Anonymous Patriot
Actually, in a perfect world, the poster is actually correct: the free-market produces goods at cost. That's why economists love it: it gives you the most efficient way of production and the lowest prices.
The cost here, however, is not just the cost of packaging: it includes the costs of labor, of marketing, of the risk that the record won't sell, the market interest rate (nobody would sell CD's if they could make more money from a savings account), and just enough profit on top to allow the marginal firm to enter the market. These costs are presumably different for CD's and cassettes - or else there's price fixing.
As a tech company buying into an entertainment company, Apple could share the fate of AOL Time Warner and Sony-Columbia: its music and hardware departments may end up fighting eachother over piracy. How does Apple plan to make these departments work together, rather than against eachother?
When they bought Nothing Real, Apple ported shake to Mac OSX. They charge $4995 for it. They still sell the Linux and Irix versions that most people use, but they charge $9995 for it, and for a while offered 2-for-1 OSX licenses to switch.
Shake for Windows has been discontinued entirely.
This, to me, sounds a bit like a lock in.
Can anyone prove me wrong by telling what a shake license used to cost before Apple?
You see, the problem with that is that a $700 PC with $400 software is not high-end. That hardly even counts as middle of the road. I'd say that's actually closer to upper low-end. Absolutely no one in their right mind would use a rig like that for professional video production. That would probably suffice if you wanted to put a show on public access.
Final Cut Pro actually has become an industry standard. You'd be surprised how much stuff on TV nowadays is put together using some DV cameras and a G4.
High quality analog recordings recored digitally and parsed through some audio filters will most probably be indistiguishable to mp3 from the originals. What is the point, it makes piracy a little less difficult but does nothing to stop it. Pirates really do not care about quality, hell they are using MP3s.
While this might be a cool thing if it goes through, I imediatly remembered upon reading this 2 things. 1.)Al Gore is now on Apple's board, and 2.) Tipper Gore (Al's wife) is very very very big on censoring music. So I'm not really sure if I trust Apple, whom I love the products of with the ownership of the music I love.
I found this: article about Tipper for those of you with no background here.
-sonic
I never listen to anything recordered to a lesser standard than 48bit five channel 23Mbps PCM. Anything less is just choc-full of artifacts. You just don't get full dynamic range with the crappy 14-16bit stereo 48kbps standards you get on CDs, and as for MP3, gah. DELIBERATELY removing quieter frequencies for god's sake?! It's that stuff that makes the music, it's there that the subtlety lies.
Still, this is a world where subwoofers are installed in cars hooked up to KENWOOD car stereos (KENWOOD!) with COPPER cables. Tin ears indeed!
Wired readers out there will recall a recent profile of Barry Diller documenting the potential strength of Universal Music for the right investor. They might also remember a recent article about how schizophrenic Sony has become (they actually sued themselves- the music division sued an investment of the hardware division) in its CEO's quest to bring the music and hardware parts of the company together. Sony's CEO believes that the future of that company lies in hardware (this is the company that finally set a standard for DVDs) but the only portion of the company that made any money last year was the music division. So there are no changing things at Sony right now. Both the head of Sony and the head of Apple (two of the most innovative technology powerhouses ever) believe that bringing music and technology together is the future. I am inclined to defer to their judgment. If they are right and if Apple can score this deal before Sony can sort out its internal disputes. Soon Apple may take Sony's place in the market. They are already selling more music players than Sony.
cogito ergo oro
...the menu in iTunes for purchasing iTunes stuf? I doubt Apple is simply looking to jumpstart the fan-boy t-shirt market...this menu has been there since v1.0, and it seems clear it is a direct link to a future music mall.
128kb/s sounds like ass. 256 is minimum for acceptable audio quality
Chris, you ignorant slut! Why the fuck would you be using CBR in the first place? Because you want your ears to tear themselves from your head in disgust and start gnawing on your tiny, tiny, nads?
and if you have a respectable monitoring system, you can hear artifacts on virtually any bitrate mp3.
You loathsome, corpulent, fool! Nobody with a respectable monitoring system would be listening to MP3s in the first place! To do such would be balderdash to the point of poppycockery!
-The Good Doctor
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You see, the problem with that is that a $700 PC with $400 software is not high-end. That hardly even counts as middle of the road. I'd say that's actually closer to upper low-end. Absolutely no one in their right mind would use a rig like that for professional video production.
Ok, by that reasoning, absolutely no one would use a $10,000 Mac for professional production either.
You may be right that the outfit in question is not suitable for the task, but simply saying that it won't work because it's only $1100 isn't a very good argument. So, since you are presumably famililar with both packages (you are, right? I can't imagine you'd be putting down a package that you haven't used yourself), why is Final Cut Pro so much better then the proposed PC software?
People who have tried the service, expected to debut by the end of April, say it makes downloading and purchasing music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com. It allows users to buy and download songs to their computers with a single click and to transfer the music automatically to their portable MP3 players.
I remember joking with a friend about how Apple was the only company to license Amazon's "1-Click" (patent gripes go in another thread) -- as it's a rare person indeed who can afford to impulse-buy Apple products. But now it all makes sense.
I just know that this is what they were thinking when they licensed 1-Click. In Amazon's case, it it works because they sell everything, and it helps squash competitors. In Apple's case, it will work for completely different reasons -- because it will be cheap enough for impulse buying, nearly instant delivery, and if this deal works out, they'll be selling their own products (Universal Music), via their own products (Macs), to play on their own products (iTunes and the iPod).
I bet they'll find a way to tie it into Rendevous somehow, too. So that, perhaps, you'll be able to listen to music you purchased on one computer on another, whilst preserving the DRM which will most likely be included.
-dr.badass
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
It's because when I buy Kleenex, I can be reasonably sure I'm getting quality tissue. If I open my box of Kleenex and find sandpaper, the Kleenex brand is ruined for me -- I'll be unlikely to buy Kleenex again in the future. Clearly, then, Kimberly-Clark has an interest in making sure "Kleenex" brand tissue is as soft and fluffy as I expect it to be.
Furthermore, the fact that K-C is willing to invest mondo bucks on seemingly throwaway advertising indicates to me, Joe Consumer, that K-C doesn't plan on ruining the value of that investment by selling me sandpaper.
The point is, the popularity of brand-name commodity items isn't just because consumers are easily brainwashed by advertising dollars. A brand can serve as a guarantee of quality.
As for Heinz, I actually don't buy that stuff, because I fucking hate ketchup. Down with condiments.
yours
Steve said consumers have not been given the choice, a real choice, to purchase music. Right now your options are to steal the music or to put up $15 for a cd. Given another choice, of downloading the music for a small fee (a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a dollar--who knows, but licensing the music won't give Apple the option of pricing it according to what the market will bear), Steve is betting that you'll put up your nickel. Aside from the moral dilemmas of stealing, one also has economic factors involved, such as, how long will the download take, will the spyware trash my system, etc. So paying pocket change for a song may be even more economically feasible than downloading it.
I think it makes perfect sense. Steve is practicing what he preaches, he's thinking different. No one in the record industry is willing to consider it. Go Steve, Go!
subscription-free link to LA Times story
Vegas has video tools equal to Final Cut Pro, and audio tools that are far superior -- its parameter envelopes and other features revolutionized the audio workstation UI a few years back, lending much to programs like Nuendo and SONAR. Vegas doesn't have OMF support, which means it doesn't play well with Avid, but it's a pro tool.
The Ps2, manufactured by Sony, will operate as a general purpose linux box, OR a proprietary media+rom DRM restricted game platform where the OS is the hardware low-level libraries under game software and UI. Sony makes their own games in-house and licenses the right to independant content developers, then manufactures the final media for all titles.
Assuming the figures are right, your analysis is dead-on providing you make one very big assumption: that the assets are utilized in the best interests of shareholders. Wall Street values Apple as it does because they don't believe Apple will manage their assets in the best interests of shareholders.
Your analysis is correct if you were planning to buy Apple at its current valuation and sell off the liquid and intangible assets. You'd probably make a handsome return, for the reasons you point out. But Apple wouldn't sell for the prevailing valuation, because they know -- just as you and I do -- that they are worth more.
What most analysts expect is that Apple will continue to putter along and eventually squander their cash reserves. If they are right, then rushing out to buy the stock now doesn't look too bright.
As an Apple stockholder, I think using their cash reserves to buy into an industry with a less-than-rosy future is a potentially wonderful way to destroy shareholder value. In short, your analysis is correct provided there's an asset liquidation or if Apple spends its cash hoard wisely. Otherwise, it's not such a great investment.
As another poster mentioned, a company with negative earnings is said to have a P/E ratio that is "not meaningful." Given that Apple has had such negative earnings in some recent quarters, their P/E ratio could also be considered not particularly meaningful.
P/E ratios are just a guide. For companies in volatile markets such as computer manufacture, wild earnings swings are to be expected; the resulting P/E can paint a confusing, muddy picture of a company's value. That's why professionals usually use valuations based on projected earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) instead of P/E ratios.
OK, so I'm a little late to this debate, but last week I wrote this piece about the future of Apple. However, I think that buying the content is the wrong thing to do -- they should stick to the hardware side of things.
First main menu...top left....'iTunes' - drop that down and it says "Shop For iTunes Products"...third item listed, along with About and Preferences.
:)
Man, are they going to have a hard time selling to you
How can people be talking about a GameCube][ when Nitendo have not yet released a MarioKarts for the GameCube! I mean it's only the greatest game ever made. I still have a banged up old N64 just for MK, and will buy a GC in a flash when Mk is finally if ever released.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Really now, I want to know. What "feature" could be added to an mp3 codec beside patent unencumberance?
"Better at lower bitrates" means, uhh, "It works better." You know, at doing the thing you actually want it to do -- compress audio media. Exactly what is preventing you taking advantage of even better sound quality by using ogg at it's maximum bitrate (or for that matter flac)? Do you understand that ogg's greater sound fidelity / bitrate ratio (compared to mp3) scales from low bitrates to high bitrates?
Oh hell I laughed at that. Double Vaginal, Double Anal.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
How Apple Will Pay for Universal Muisc
Ignorance is the Agent of Fear; Fear Is the Agent of Violence - >1
Really, who is more greedy? The entertainment industry for charging what most people are obviously willing to pay for a product (free market economy, etc.) or the people who insist on pirating copyrighted material, acting as if there is some basic human right being infringed upon because they can't afford, or are unwilling to pay for, the latest (and coolest, if that is a quantifiable value, which it surely is, in the entertainment industry) entertainment.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Hmmm, thats not as good as a -1 Insightful, and it sure isnt a +5 Troll... Ill have to do better.
True, but I don't think the topic will ever come up, at least not until the body's cold, so to speak.
But yeah, stuff that's offtopic is offtopic, even if it's next week's winning lottery numbers.
Apparently, there is an "Apple Music" at www.applemusic.com. Steve Jobs may have to pay them off too.
I know I missed this post last Friday, so now probably no one will read my question here, but....
Apple Computer was sued by Apple Records many years ago. I thought the result of that was that Apple Computer could continue to use the name Apple so long as they didn't do anything related to music.
Doesn't this mean Apple Computer faces a significant legal hurdle in considering this Universal deal?
While i think your tone is flaimbait, i agree that ogg isn't all that its made out to be. Two big problems with it is VBR only, this means you can't use make AVI's out of it easily as VFW (Video for windows) is CBR. The other is its lack of support for different bitrates and the generally low algorithm performance (it relies on large MDCTS).
-Jon
this is my sig.
who wants to listen to audio at lower (read: poorer) bitrates
No, for 'lower', don't read 'poorer'. That was the entire point of the post to which you were replying. Getting it yet?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
See this reply to a similar question asked on Friday.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
Thanks, Mr./Ms. B_O. -
I did some web searching myself and came up pretty empty handed with info about the current status of this. Many references to the old suit (like the reply you pointed to), but no one claiming to know why Apple Computer thinks they can get away with going into the music business now when they were legally barred from it previously.
I suppose if this deal starts to look more likely, we'll be hearing the opinions of many armchair lawyers on this.
Thanks again.
OK. How 'bout this one then.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
well....
if u really wan to go down that road...
it's just funny to me hoe vegas video is not taught anywhere and that it is no industry standard whatsoever
THAT being said i HAVE worked with both systems and find the G4/final cut system FAR superior to vegas video, as far as its audio tools "Soundtrack" (apples new plug in program to final cut) is "light years" beyond anything vegas video can bring to bear.
If Apple takes the $6 billion plunge it could be the second greatest mistake in business history. That is for right here and now.
Lets face it... Apple's products OS, hardware/software are becoming increasingly less and less relevant in a market dominated by INTEL, Microsoft.
Apple and more importantly Steven Jobs must get over the fact that Apple lost the race to the mainstream and while they may be the BETA machines of the PC industry the consumer has chosen the INTEL/MS VHS PC and that is that. But it doesn't mean that Apple cannot compete let alone thrive in a market such as we have today.
But they will only thrive by sticking to their most core business and music is NOT one of them.
I truly hope that Steven Jobs hasn't mistake the success of the iPOD for some sort of HUGE emerging market...it has the potential and I repeat potential to evolve into a HUGE market but the consumer and more importantly the music industry has not jumped on the bandwagon (sorry) yet and it is doubtful that Univeral has enough market elbow grease to somehow expedite this change.
Apple's takeover plans sound frightenly similar to the` gamble that AOL/Time Warner took and lost with Vivendi's originial vision of that thing Jean called "digital convergence".
Apple should first release an Apple/Unix OS that runs on current INTEL chipsets. Really offer Apple innovation to the mass market instead of the chic sub-culture that exists as an Apple market today. Test the market with what it knows not what it supposes...about the music industry and move even so gently into waters that have clearly sunk other, much larger corporate ships!
Music may sell iPODs but MS and others have already proven music, video and the like do not sell a whole lot more computers.
Just remember... you read it here first...
From the mind, mouth and finger tips of M@
The tighter compression is just a pretty little add-on I will admit. With the harddisk space reaching 160 gig on IDE, a 1 meg savings isn't squat. So your right, who cares about compression.. but it's there, so deal.
As far as who cares about slicing the layers to play at a lower bitrate? I'd say anyone who does webcasting, or even the future when you multicast to a variable number of people, each with different regions of bandwidth. Look further than your computer...
who cares about patent and copyright issues? Obviously anyone other than you. Not to mention that you can produce a player without licensing a codec, making it a great add-on to a DVD player or other electronic device.
To add icing to the cake, OGG takes less CPU to playback than MP3 (most of the CPU time is in the creation) which makes it great for embedded systems.
Here's a clue: no-one except the ogg-loving no-lifers on Slashdot. The rest of the world is perfectly happy with mp3, thanks.
That line makes me laugh...
It was only merely a few years ago when I was playing MP3 and everyone was saying, "no one except computer-loving no-lifers care about MP3. The rest of the world is perfectly happy with tapes/cd, thanks".
MP3 was a great bouncepoint into the digital realm, and it will go the same route as VOC, and MIDI. Sure, both still exist, and have their places, but technology advances. Stay with the times, my anonymous friend. Try not to let the waves wash you away...
And just FYI, the time it actually takes to use OGG is the same it takes for MP3. Well, it takes 30 seconds longer to encode, but I usually encode at CD quality.
Wow, all of that, and I have a family/job/pets and a semi-active lifestyle... I must be some immortal. (rolls eyes) No-lifers.. talk about a stereotype.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Not quite socialist. In fact the reason the Baath party attracted such support from the US in the early days was that they were killing socialists and communists by the truckload. They are a classically fascist party. That being said, it struck many visitors to Saddam's home as decidedly odd that the second in charge of a viciously anti-socialist party, should have his bookselves devoted almost entirely to books by and about Stalin. Now that should have sent some alarm bells ringing!
But yes, the Baathists did effectively suppress Islamic fundamentalism, and specifically they repressed Shia Islam (the Baathists were draw from the minority Suni elite.)
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