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iTunes Music Store sells 275,000 Tracks in 18 Hours
physicsnerd writes "According to this article on Billboard.com, Apple's iTunes Music store sold 275,000 tracks in its first 18 hours of operation. The Register.com estimates that this netted Apple just under $100,000! Not too bad for a 99 cents store."
Impressive considering the connection problems people were having. Remains to be seen what usage will be after the hype settles down.
This is a good thing but I have a feeling that the numbers in 60 or 90 days will have a lot more to say about how viable this is.
They need to sort out international licensing too, This could be huge in the UK where albums frequently cost as much in pounds as they do in dollars here in the US.
Windows users (i.e. 95 %) continue to download stuff from kazaa.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Can't wait for no DRM? That is like saying you can't wait until Best Buy gets rid of those pesky cashiers. Why don't they just trust me to leave an appropriate amount of money for the goods that I walk out of the store with?? They are treating me like a criminal. Wah.
This should send (yet another) wake up call to the music industry. Online music trading is so pervasive only because it beats the hell out of paying $18US for a music cd. This is merely a step in the right direction - this is by no means perfect or even viable long term. I don't give this good chances over time - a pioneer is the guy (or gal) laying in the field with an arrow in their back. But, it's a start, and maybe it'll whack some of the riaa/mpaa execs with a cluebat.
Now all that needs to happen is for Apple to go out and get a massive catalog of Indy music they can represent, give profits to the artists and kill the big record labels.
this is funny AND true. ever stepped into the huge conglomerate music stores of late? same music they were selling last year, just with different band names, and song titles......
The state of music today would certainly allow Indy to take over, just because of creativity alone. Apple would be wise to catalog Indy music. (and those profits of 100,000 would be ten fold.)
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
I was very envious today when my friend with his ibook was able to log into iTunes and download 15 songs in minutes. Since it stores you credit card, it is perhaps TOO easy to download songs (Parents giving credit card numbers to kids may find a large bill next month).
I may now have to buy an Apple just to use the service. It's easy to use, has a wide selection, and is everything a music service should be. Only time will tell if they have the pricing right.
I don't know what took the music industry so long.
While I don't really like DRM, I can see where the music industry is coming from on the topic, and I suspect that they were the ones behind the whole thing.
What I'd like to see is a per-song DRM, where the artists or labels get to choose whether the song can be freely copied after purchase or not. Perhaps that, coupled with a price change for non-DRM-enforced songs, would push the rest of the industry in the direction we all want it to go. I'm sure the indie crowd would get behind the idea, as well as the brighter label execs and artists.
According to CNet, Apple appears to be looking for a developer to help create iTunes for Windows. Seems like a smart move to me -- the Windows user base is clearly vastly larger than Mac, and Apple will still be getting a slice of online music sales -- plus they give another reason for Windows users to buy an iPod.
I keep hearing great things about iTunes too, in that it's apparantly quite a bit better than most music database software. Personally I'm still looking for a good music db/organizing program for either Linux (preferred) or Windows (thank you samba) - I'm in the process of ripping ~1000 CDs to high bitrate MP3 for my TiVo and am in desperate need for some cataloging and playlist creation tools. From what little I've heard iTunes would fit the bill and do it well... but obviously I still need to find something until then (suggestions welcome).
Once they roll this out for Windows or Linux, I'll have a hard time fighting the impulses. It's only 99 cents, right? Cheap! 15 or 20 tracks later, I'll realize I just dropped $20.
Apple may very well succeed because of the low investment necessary... and because at only 99 cents, the instant gratification may get addictive. Smart move on their part.
For you PC users who haven't seen the store, let me tell you, that place is addictive as crack rock. The default settings are such that you click "buy song" and it starts downloading. With a cable modem, I was able to get an album of 9 Tracks in a few minutes. All without getting my lazy ass up and going to the store.
I expect that within a year, there will be MUG meets where the topic of discussion will be "Music Store Addiction:How I lost my wife and house downloading music".
Just wait till Apple releases iTunes for Windows, so you PC users can join in the fun.
Burn Hollywood Burn
According to Fortune: "The iTunes Music Store will initially offer 200,000 tunes, paying the record companies an average of 65 cents for each track it sells."
Apple gets $.99 for singles, but less for albums (I bought a 20 track album fo $9.99)... and I'm sure that they need to pay the credit card companies some percentage, and then pay Akamai for the servers, and Amazon for the one-click patents... so I doubt they make more that 15 cents per song on average... but that's still a good margin... but more like $40,000 than El Reg's $100,000 estimate
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
if you have a mac then you can use audio hijack with that little baby, anything that comes out your speakers you can record
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
...well, almost.
:-)
It might make sense to consider something like a 17" iMac as purely a home-entertainment component. Sure, it's $1800, but you'll probably eventually spend more than that at the iMusic store
Anyone want to bet on how many days go by before someone has reverse-engineered the MaciMusic store protocol and written an app that masquerades as iTunes-on-a-Mac thus allowing Linux and Windows users to purchase music through Apple?
G.
Well, from what I've heard (I can't use the store since I'm stuck with Windows), you can recommend artists. So, go recomend all of your favorite independant bands. Hopefully, Apple will decide to pick some of them up.
If Apple starts selling Indy music, then they can either do it at a lower price, higher profit, or both. Without the record labels in the way, set Apple's cut at $.33, the musicians' cut at another $.33, and that makes for a $.66 song. Pretty good competition for the RIAA, really.
Of course, then they'd have $6.66 albums.
Anyone who has not used iTunes does not understand just how convenient the store is. It's an entry right in your playlist collection (with a different icon). One click on it, and you're at the intro/overview page (or the last page you visited without quitting iTunes). iTunes' built-in search box works on the online catalog in this mode, type something in and it pops right up. Or you can switch to the categorized column-view browse mode (same button to switch any other playlist to browse mode), which is indistinguishable from browsing your local library except for network lag and the Buy button. Find a song you like, and one more click makes it download directly into your library and start playing. It's seamlessly integrated and completely oriented around impulse buying. I'm sure (I *hope*) for most people, one dollar per song is worth the removal of the time and aggravation cost of using P2P (aside from the time spent downloading on my modem, I can find music in the store faster than it would take to find Limewire on my HD and wait for it to gather a server list).
> Can't wait for no DRM? That is like saying you can't wait until Best Buy gets
> rid of those pesky cashiers. Why don't they just trust me to leave an
> appropriate amount of money for the goods that I walk out of the store with??
> They are treating me like a criminal. Wah.
Sad part is, even thou the above was posted by an AC and modded down to -1 flamebait, he's 100% right and not flaming anything at all.
Those moderators should be ashamed.
The music industry doesnt give a shit.
Think about it.
Under the current system, they press and market the CDs. The retail chains sell them. The retail chains pay for the whole infrastructure for shipping and whatnot.
Aside from production and marketing, there is no overhead for the producers.
If the producers had to set up their own 'online retail' outlets, there would be a massive amount of overhead for servers, software, bandwidth and staff. It would cost them more to distribute the music this way.
Third parties would have to create the e-biz infrastructure, shoulder that overhead, and pay the producers their due royalties. This is what Apple did, and there's nothing stopping someone else from doing it except cash and lack of customer base.
The RIAA/MPAA dont give a shit either way, so long as they aren't losing money on the deal.
Here in Canada I can't buy squat from the iTunes Music Store, but I have been playing with it since it 'opened for business' - we can preview, but not actually buy anything outside of the U.S.
.Mac users can peddle their wares through the online store. I hope their selection grows quickly (yes there's a lot of stuff missing right now). I hope they increase their bitrate (I can hear the difference between the streamed previews and actual CD's). The DRM is not ideal, but in practice it's not imposing. Windows version is coming soon. ...And... dammit... bring it to Canada! iWant to go shopping!!!
If I was allowed to buy, I probably would have purchased 10-20 songs by now.
Yes I have Acquisition (a really sweet Mac Gnutella client), and I have the usual assortment of piracy^H^H^H^H^H^H file sharing tools for Windows, but in that sea of file searching it's easy to lose one's vision of a really nice way to download music.
For example: I figured I would try to find some old Tears For Fears music. In the search field I just typed "Tears For Fears". In less than 5 seconds I had a track listing of 6 different Tears For Fears albums, including tracks I never knew they had done (did you know they covered Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes'?)
Let me say this another way to better illustrate just how cool it is: it was EVERY ALBUM TRACK, listed only ONCE. I pick the song and I get it, really fast. With a file sharing app I pick from a list of thousands of different rips of the same songs, all of varying quality. I hit download, and maybe the host is slow. Maybe I get a "swarmed" download that won't be reconstructed properly when it gets here. Maybe it won't even really be the song I think I'm downloading. Maybe I get "remotely queued". Maybe it looked like a good bitrate before I downloaded it, but it turned out to be a crappy rip.
On the Apple service I hit "play" and I'm previewing the music in real time. I hit "download" and I've got the actual song I want, with no glitches.
Seriously - with these advantages, plus the fact that it is actually legal, I can't see why people wouldn't shell out a buck a song.
Like everybody else I hope Apple creates an indy section, maybe even something iDisk-based so that
Sorry for the harsh subject line, but I find it difficult to believe that a person can make it more than a few years in life without noticing that virtually every consumer product is priced this way.
$9.99, $99.99, $17,995 (for say, a car). We've had this as long as I've been alive, and from looking into older catalogues it's been standard practice in the retail industry since at least the 60's. EVERYONE rounds their price down slightly, so it appears cheaper when you quickly look at it. In fact, in the past decade many stores have successfully gone to a '95 cents' model, where $9.95 somehow looks more appealing to the shopper than $9.99. A whopping 4 cents less profit, but an amazing increase in sales.
Psychologists have known about this for eons, and marketing types do this routinely. 99 cents just looks cheaper than an even buck, to most people. In fact, it's so bad that if I'm in a store with someone, see something for say $395, I'll comment "wow, four hundred dollars for that?". Almost invariably, the person I'm with will say "no, it's only three ninety five". People are so used to this that rounding up prices just seems wrong, somehow.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I mean, at 20Euro per CD with 10 songs, their offering is very competitive. DRM? Don't care too much: I can burn it on CD and it's usually from a CD that I listen to music. I also have a MiniDisc player/recorder and the DRM has only slapped me in the face once, when a musician friend of mine gave me a CD-R-Audio.
Good idea recommeniding the indy bands... I think I'm going to do that.
[Tracks drop to $0.49]
'Yea its cool and all but I want DRM free music for $0.19'
[Tracks drop to $0.19, DRM free]
'Sure, thats cool and all but I want to be able to buy multiple tracks with a complex pricing algorithm that determines how mcuh to charge be based on my average usage across a limited period of time, plus the moon phase'
[Tracks do the above]
'Ok ok, I give up, I am just shooting holes in anything that is out there because its easier then admitting that someone MAY have gotten something right.'
I can not even count how many people, WITHOUT EVEN SEEING THE SERVICE, have sat around bitching about it. Its hilarious. Now, days later, they are all using it quietly.
As someone who switch to Macs last year, I read about the announcement a little after it happened, downloaded iTunes4 and gave it a test run.
I don't know about the connection errors others were reporting, as I didn't have any. I already own an iPod, so the AAC/MP3 issue isn't one for me as it is for some others making posts here. I also had no problem setting up my account - I had an account when I bought my first Mac a year ago, and just used that.
The biggest thing I noticed when I started it up was the ability to finally buy the 1 song off of a track I wanted. Bob Dylan is OK, but I just wanted "Growing in the Wind". That's it. A buck later, and I had it. Another 2 or 3 minutes later, it was on.
From there, I wound up spending $20 on the service. No problems, except that it didn't have everything I wanted (I'm still trying to get Queen's Bohemien Rhapsody). But I spend more in 2 days than I've spent on music in 1 year.
Is is perfect? No, but you don't need an iPod - you can burn the music to a regular audio CD if you like, and either rerip this to MP3 (with a loss of quality), or just play the CD in a regular player.
But so far, it's 95% of what I've wanted with online music sales. Hopefully they'll get more music on there, maybe even some game/anime music (as that stuff is *way* more expensive than it needs to be), and more players out there will start support AAC. I'm not worried about the latter - since its part of the MPEG-4 standard, that should only be a matter of time and a firmware upgrade later.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
This is a good thing. Someone had to take the risk of trying something like this, and now that we have this initial success the record labels really have to reconsider some of their decisions regarding internet distribution.
Most of us may not agree with the use of DRM and AAC files, but progress is best made by a series of compromises. Considering what the music labels really want to shove down our throats, I think Apple has provided a pretty consumer-friendly compromise. Now that they have set this precedent, I think we can feel a little more secure that things can't get any worse, but hopefully better.
Now they just need to begin the slow process of removing the big evil record labels from the picture by offering independent artists that are self-produced or produced by small labels. Of course since becoming redundant is the real fear held by the RIAA and their ilk, this "compromise" may be harder to achieve.
I would be one of the people downloading a tune, but I don't own the hardware. I'd like to see the stats on what songs were downloaded.
Anyway, I got this in my email box this morning from Michael Robertson of Lindows and former CEO of MP3.COM. I find it coincidental after this Interview session, and I find his comments about Apple selling out intersting. The text of his (mass) email follows:
Most of you probably know that my former company was MP3.com, which was instrumental in bringing digital music to the masses. One of the things we stood for at MP3.com was the consumer's rights over their own music collection. Our belief was that consumers who purchase their music should have the ability to convert that music into a format they like and put the music on any device they desire. We even tried to get a law pushed through congress affirming this (we did not succeed in that attempt). The last five years have seen multiple attempts to limit consumers' rights via DRM (digital rights management) technology. These are schemes which add "big brother" restrictions to what you can do with your own music library.
It's no secret that the major record labels want to embed restrictions into music and force those restrictions onto customers, but recently they've been getting help from some surprising sources -- namely Microsoft and Apple. While I was the CEO of MP3.com, Microsoft repeatedly offered millions of dollars to us to convert the library of tunes at MP3.com from consumer friendly MP3 to Windows Media format. We always politely declined. Microsoft's strategy was that if they could get the whole world to convert to Windows Media, then they could get the record labels to pay them huge sums to limit how consumers could listen to their music. Thank goodness that hasn't happened yet, because having your music "expire", disappear, degrade in quality, not be able to burn to CD or load onto your devices is an awful consumer experience.
Microsoft is at it again though, trying to use their money and dominance in the OS to get a foothold in music by selling out consumers. Recently, news.com reported that Microsoft is cozzying up to the leading CD restriction company. This means we're one baby step away from all music CDs ONLY playing on Microsoft Windows XP. Imagine having to buy a copy of Microsoft Windows XP for every music device just so you can listen to your own music, and even then being restricted from making a compilation CD for your car!
Apple has understandably succumbed to pressure from the music labels to bolster their chances of securing music licenses for their iTunes music service by trampling music buyers rights. The 2.4% of the world which use Macs will find out that all the music in their newly announced service is wrapped in a digital padlock. This gives Apple (or the record labels) the ability to control what a buyer can do with the music they purchase. The user doesn't get to pick which computer they can listen to their music on (Macs only). Forget any device that isn't an iPod, like my current MP3 player (tiny, no cables, rechargeable battery - nice). Don't even think about burning a disc full of 100 MP3s to play in your DVD player. (Have you noticed virtually all new DVD players will play MP3 files?)
Straight ahead of us is a world where CDs will only play in Microsoft Windows XP computers. Digital songs you buy online will only work with Apple software or an Apple sanctioned portable player. You will not be able to burn any of the music you've purchased onto an MP3 CD to pop into your DVD player. That's a sad and expensive world for music fans because labels and large corporations will extort money from their users who just want to enjoy their own music.
When you pay for music, you should be able to enjoy that music in all the different and convenient ways available. I'm still a big believer in the value of MP3 because it ensures that the
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
The RIAA would first multiply the number based on the speed and number of your cd drives, and the barometric pressure in Thailand :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Because some of us actually want to reward the artists for their hard work. How would you feel if your employer just stopped paying you? Would you feel appreciated and want to continue with your work? Are you that much of a samaritan?
I didn't think so.
Pooty tweet
Someone else that we know has been getting behind the action of it all. Microsoft has been distributing content with their own DRM through ALTnet on Kazaa.
PressPlay is already on the same path using Microsoft DRM.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Not exactly, DRM affects me after I've paid for something, a cashier doesn't.
Evidently you've missed out on the self-checkout lanes which are starting to become popular.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Never underestimate the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field(TM).
'Sensible' is a curse word.
> How about 'an open format' ?
Concidering everyone else is still stuck on MP3, which is not open at all (and is even more expensive than AAC to use) you can hardly fault apple for this.
Their option is no worse than what anyone else is using.
Its amazing, apple offers many features that everyone conciders great, and on this one feature they do basically the same thing (use a closed format like everyone else), and thats the feature that gets bashed.
MP3 is closed, and requires licencing to make encoders or decoders.
redbook (audio CDs) are also closed format and requires licencing (Though i dont know about the costs for that one)
AAC is closed.
Seems to be you should be bitching at EVERYONE that isnt the 0.01% of the population that uses a computer and OGG, not just apple.
Apple states that the 128-kbps AAC "combines sound quality that rivals CDs with smaller files sizes (compared to MP3s)." Someone reported that Apple said during the original PR event that some of the tracks actually sound better than the original CD tracks because they went back to the original master recordings to encode. Ok, I'll buy all that. AAC offers better compression and higher quality at lower bitrates. Fine. If really true, I might even consider re-ripping my CDs to AAC and saving some disk space. IF it's really that good. But as I said, the proof is in whether I can hear a difference. All other technical mumbo jumbo is meaningless.
I previewed a number of songs the first night it was operational and was fairly impressed. Definitely much better than 128 kbps MP3. Then I put my headphones on and started to notice possible compression artifacts. I wasn't sure if I was imagining these or whether I was really hearing something, so I started listening to the previews of tracks I already have, ripped from original CDs. I compared the preview tracks to my MP3 copies, which are high quality VBR averaging a little over 200 kbps. I went back and forth between the store preview and my copy numerous times, and always felt like I heard compression artifacts in the previews. I wanted to setup a true blind test to make absolutely sure I wasn't being biased by knowing which sample was which, but I haven't had time this week.
Apple's Discussion board for iTunes has numerous topics debating the quality of the AACs. Some people swear that the previews are lower quality, and what you get when you buy is perfect. Others say just the opposite. Apple itself says of the previews, "You'll hear a 30-second sample that rivals CD quality sound." Doesn't exactly say that the preview is the same quality as the purchased track, but kind of implies it too. MacInTouch has tons of reader reports that are interesting as well.
I suppose ultimately I'll have to spend $0.99 and see for myself what happens. I'll try to choose a track that I have, and whose preview sounds pretty bad. If the purchased track is indistinguishable from the CD, I'll be a happy camper. But if it's the same as the preview, I'll be severely disappointed. I'd so love for this to take off, as it is the future of music buying. I think Apple has done a good job of balancing consumers' fair use rights with the rights of the copyright holders. If this flops, it'll be more fodder for the RIAA to push legislation through that protects their dying business model. (sorry, had to get political for a second there)
But mainly I'm excited about the prospect of buying music this way. Hopefully in the near future, they'll have liner notes, etc available as a PDF when you buy. And lots more artists, including any that are out of print. That would so rock. So many CDs on my wishlist now are so hard to find, and I'd buy them in a heartbeat if they were available this way now. So please, Apple, don't let us down on quality! And if the quality really is subpar, let's all send them feedback (link at the music store main page) until they listen!
Say hello to zMac.
The other big news yesterday was that Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple is going to start putting up independent music once they get all of the big label music they negotiated for uploaded:
from: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,4 48048,00.html
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
That analogy is flawed. DRM is more like Best Buy sending a security guard home with you to make sure you don't use the products you buy in any way they don't approve of. For instance, I can play CD's I purchase in any number of players, copy them to my various computers, enjoy them on my portable player, and so forth. My music server is a Linux box, though; I cannot use it to play DRM-encumbered music, because Apple has not chosen to make Linux software available for their protection scheme. That's their prerogative, but it means that their music isn't terribly useful to me.
I applaud Apple's effort to be reasonable, but DRM is still unacceptable. I wrote a short essay on why I believe this; it's on my site.
Furthermore, sharing is a fundamental part of experiencing music. I believe that noncommercial song swapping should be fully protected under copyright law.
-John
Here's something that I'd like to know (I don't have a Mac and can't use the store) - does the ASM track which music you've bought in the past so that if your hard drive blows up/gets stolen/damaged/or anything else which causes your music that you bought and downloaded to be lost you can download the songs again?
$45 per U Colocation Special
I think this is going to be a major "stye in the eye" of all those who claim that Napster et al are nothing more than common theves. When people are clammoring to buy a product that can be stolen fairly safely, I think that's saying something (read; most people don't mind anteing up for what they use).
Interestingly enough, this could VERY easily be viewed as a Very Good Thing by all the IP-based companies. Proof-positive that people will climb over each other to buy your product if you just let them but they'll obtain it by other means if you don't.
But will the RIAA & company view it as such? No. Why? Because what they want more than revenue is control. Because control, in their current model, is equivalent to a sustainable business. When they start loosing control of how the product can get to market, when they lose their status as the so-called gatekeepers of IP whose ass you must lick to be heard, they're screwed. You can't abuse people when you aren't the only game in town.
Then it becomes a buyer's market. Which, trust me, is the last thing these people want.
My
Limekiller
I notice a lot of people who haven't used it are complaining about the low bitrate .aac's. Well, I actually bought a Live Phish track today that I have also ripped at 192k mp3 and level 6 ogg. I listened to all three with my MDR-EX70 neodymium driver earbuds, and guess what? They all sounded pretty much the same.
And evidently you've missed out on the shocking revelation that those self-checkout lanes have been something of a disaster, as they facilitate theft (gee, who'd have thought?).
...of this conflict with the Kazster crowd.
Somehow, if people don't make purchasing something as convenient and cheap as you expect it to be, you have the right to take it.
In the case of utilities with true monopoly on the electric power coming into your home doubling their price in a two month period, I could see the justification in say altering your meter to cut the price back down to where it was. This wouldn't seem unjust to me.
In the case of charging too much for music (not food, not power, not water, CDs), and not making it available online with massive bandwidth and high-bit rates for cheap, I can't really see how this entitles you to buy one copy and distribute it to 400 people, any more than waiting five minutes at the QuickMart entitles you to a free magazine.
How does this work?
If you haven't noticed, you can burn the AAC files to CD. Then, pop the CD back in and rip the MP3s off.
AAC sounds fantastic. I usually rip MP3s at 160-192 kbps, using VBR. This makes very nice sounding MP3 files, and I can't tell the difference between the MP3 and the CD. The only draw back, is that they are kinda large, but with a 20 Gig iPod, I'm not too worried.
AAC actually sounds as good, as far as I can tell, as my MP3s do. So all this talk of "low bit-rate" and "DRM-sUckS!" is ridiculous. If you don't like the DRM, burn a CD (or 10 before changing the playlist), and re-import it as MP3s and never think about AAC again.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
Do you think Apple could make a physical presence in music stores a possibility?
Much like the Software-2-Go kiosks in stores, there could be a Music-2-Go kiosk. You would create or sign into your AMS account and purchase music. An extra $2.50 or so for the on-site burning, cover art, etc. I don't think it could do the booklets, but maybe...
Of course, you would also be able to burn music you already own. You fly across the country, stop into a music store, burn a CD for $2.50, and pop it into your rental car's CD player.
It's an interesting thought.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
4 tracks a second means 120 million tracks a year or roughly about 3% of all retail tracks sold by the music companies which have licenses with apple. my guess is that for every 1 apple owner, there are 100 CD player owners. So an average Apple owners are buying three times more tracks than an average CD player owner is buying in retail market! Indeed amazing if the trend continues.
Does anyone here recall when Apple released the iPod? The story here on slashdot contained two sentences after the submission. One of which simply read (and I quote): "Lame."
I think it's fair to say that "Slashdot wisdom" concerning these things isn't exactly a great indicator of success or failure. Everyone here on slashdot either has an iPod or wants one. Yeah, even if it doesn't run Linux.
Slashdot readership as a whole may contain a lot of knowledge and wisdom. That's why I come here. But it certainly doesn't have a finger on the pulse of consumer-oriented technology.
And for the record, I think Apple has gotten this thing about 95% right straight out of the gate. Clearly it is going to be the model for how this is done for everyone else. Kudos to them. They deserve it.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Even aside from your odd sentence structure, the word "quickly" must mean something really different to you than it does to the rest of us. Maybe it means "slow and frustrating"?
You mention P2P stuff, but you don't seem to have looked for anything less common than Britney's latest hit... I had a little Limewire phase, but dang it if I have the time to hassle with that.
But I agree, the parent was a Pollyanna post. I also gotta notice that a lot of people bought music on this service fast. Maybe you should be wondering why instead of flaming away, you know? Hint: the answer is not "Those Mac people will believe anything 'cause they're zealots." Maybe it has something to do with Apple seriously thinking about how to hit the sweet spot so they could satisfy the customers and the labels. You think?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Apparently Michael Robertson hasn't yet been informed that iTunes will burn regular audio CDs that you can play in pretty much any CD or DVD player in the world.
I am sure he will issue a correction and an apology as soon as this fact reaches him.
Is that the 30 second song "sample" is just viral enough to infect co-workers.
Someone in your office you don't like? Give them 30 seconds of Air Supply. They'll be humming "Making Love out of Nothing At All" ALL DAY LONG!!!
Tee-Hee
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
99 cents is the right price. I feel totally comfortable blowing 99 cents multiple times for music. 99 cents is the cost of a cheap hamburger at McDonald's. And, most pop music today is about as disposable and meaningful as a hamburger at McDonalds. And as for quality, this is unimportant to me as well. We're talking about pop music here, not the Taj Mahal or the Mona Lisa. It's disposable, useless fluff. Of course I would want better quality if it were offered, but will hearing Whitesnake or New Kids on The Block in better quality improve the music any?
Next I notice one great benefit of buying music this way is you don't get a jewel case or liner notes. That's right, you heard me correct. I actually don't use either. Pretty much every CD I've bought in the past year has been immediately ripped into iTunes, the CD with liner notes stuffed in an envelope and the jewel case tossed. The CD essentially only exists for me as a backup medium. I can't remember the last time I even felt the need to look at the disc jacket. Saving the time of me chucking the box and the materials is easily worth 99 cents, and the 9.99 for an album is a steal. I hope to never set foot in a record store again, nor pay Amazon to ship me a bunch of crap I will never use, including the CD.
Secondly, one thing that is awesome about the new version of iTunes is the Rendevous capability. I crack open my iBook, and the entire library of mp3s on my main Mac appears. Holy cow ... now I can have one copy of my entire library and serve it up without lifting a finger.
Then, I read you can do the same thing, over the net. Meaning, I can be at work on my mac and have access to my entire mp3 library. Holy cow again.
I can hardly wait until they slap Airport on an iPod and do the same thing. Can you imagine just walking down the street and a new playlist shows up on your iPod from some guy walking buy you... arrrgh I'm foaming at the mouth.
The Apple Music Store: I'ts cool.
In the past 18 hours, 275,000 new AAC encoded songs appears on Kazaa.
Apple's AAC (m4p) format uses security to protect the track from being played on more than 3 computers. Yet, you can copy the AAC file to as many iPod's as you desire. Do the iPods have a global key, or is the data in the AAC not encrypted and the iPod simply ignores the security feature? Has anyone dug around on their iPod to see how the songs are stored on the iPod disk once copied to the iPod from iTunes? I need to do that when I go home today. Hmmmmm, seems like that could be a possible loop hole in the security, which makes the tracks vulnerable to showing up on Kaaza for the world to copy.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
OK, so unless something has really changed, the RIAA gets nothing. Some music companies get something. And this, I think, is the key point: the labels that have the most to gain from this are the small ones that you are less likely to find on your local store's shelves. And, moving beyond that, a viable buy-online system *not* run by a label will make it far more likely that unsigned acts can get a better deal.
And I really do think this will help bands in a major way. While you're listening to the song you'll probably buy, you can't help look at the box on the right that says "people who bought 'Ana Ng' also bought 'Funky Périphérique' by Les Sans Culottes". [Disclaimer: neither song is currently available at the site although they certainly should be.] To be completely honest, a working online music buying system will really be the end of the big labels as we know them.
Babar
The arguement against OGG for compatibility can be used against ACC too. The only player that is compatible with the new service is the ipod, the ipod is perfectly capable of playing OGG, so there is no reason why Apple couldn't use OGG from a customer perspective. The real reason why they didn't use OGG is because it didn't have a DRM layer built in.
once people will realize they have to pay 7425$ to fill their new iPod
;)
Note, what follows is merely wild speculation.
Wasn't the recording industry sued (successfully) for price fixing? What were the prices being fixed at? $20 or so? Now CDs are, say, $13 for 13 songs, so they're still about a dollar per song.
Let's think about this dollar per song ($1/song) for a moment.
I'm sure most readers are familiar those infomercials at 1 AM offering all sorts of products, whether it be CD sets, pasta makers, car wax, etc. Notice how they're always $19.95 or $24.99 or $29.97 etc. This has the obvious advantage of allowing the marketing slogan "under $30" etc (before tax, of course). And really, $24.99 really isn't that much... you probably have as much in your wallet.
So now let's think about the $0.99/song offer. We definitely have the "under a dollar" bit, and again, it's only a dollar... "don't buy that candy bar, instead buy some music." But a dollar adds up quickly. Considering the size of some music collections, going "digital" will be outrageously expensive.
Where I am going with this? I think that the record companies told Apple what the price would be. $0.99 probably has a healthy profit for both parties, so neither side is complaining. Apple can market the songs as "cheap" (cheaper than what?).
What is the marginal cost of another downloaded song? Much, much less than the marginal cost of another CD/CD single. I think that the record companies need the price of downloadable songs rediculously high because otherwise it will be apparent that CDs are priced too high. If a song was, say, $0.10 to download, why wouldn't a CD with 13 of those songs be $1.30? Why is it ten times the price of downloading? Does it offer ten times the value? Does it cost ten times the amount (per song) to produce?
I've heard people say CDs cost pennies to make. Maybe CDRs, but it costs money to get the CDs pressed, and the jackets made, etc. So let's say it costs $1 to make the CD. Now we add on the cost of the songs, so we're up to $2.30. Now let's add some profit (note that the cost of the songs, whatever it is, will cover costs of paying the artists, marketing, etc), and we get $2.75. Maybe the record stores will mark it up a bit more.
Here's the point: downloadable songs will never be pennies per song because that will make it very, very clear that the songs themselves are only worth pennies per track (market value == sale price). While you can sell the same product for different prices, it will be very hard convincing the average consumer why they should (currently, or previously) pay for a CD at $13 -- the tracks on the CD are not "worth" that much. CDs in general are thus overpriced. Think of how angered consumers will be when they figure this out.
And some other thoughts:
How is this really any better than buying a CD? Oh, that's right, I don't have to buy the rest of the crap on the album. So are we going to see CDs with 30 songs on them to compete with this new downloadable music? Or will the rest of the CD need to include quality music from now on? Somehow, we're made to think it's a better "deal" when we're really paying the same price.
Another interesting tidbit is that Apple is giving you rights to the song as long as you live. OK, but I can will my CDs to my son/daughter/friend/sister/etc. Or I can give it to them (transfer ownership). Can I do this with an electronic song? Obviously after I transfer ownership I couldn't listen to it anymore under my name. As far as I can tell, though, it seems like this is the "subscription" model for music. Yay.
And an idea that I'll express here, so I can refer to my Slashdot post as prior art...
Here's an idea that I think would work well with regards to downloadable music.
New releases of any and all songs should be very inexpensive. As a song becomes popular, the price goes up (not instantaneously, but, say, every day or so t
DRM is not sensible if ties you to one vendor or platform. You can only play purchased files on Apple computers and Apple players, unless you want to burn CD's. This is only a sensible approach if you live in a world where all your computing products and mp3 devices are made by Apple, for most of us this is not the case.
Hey! I get it! When you wrote "Store" you replaced the S with a dollar sign, indicating money! Wait, wait... don't tell me... you were trying to associate the iTunes Music Store and the Apple Store with money, right?
That makes sense, I guess, seeing as how both the iTunes Music Store and the Apple Store sell things.
Kind of a lame joke, I suppose. But I can see how it will come in handy. Like, for example, I can write this:
¥ou're £ame!
See? It's fun to use punctuation as words!
If you want to sell songs, you need to put in the extra work to grab the part of the clip that is most likely to get the listener's interest.
How on earth are they supposed to do that when they have 200,000 songs? Not to mention the fact that there are going to be lots of different opinions as to what the best part of the song it.
I can imagine being the customer service rep who has the job of sifting through emails like that.
"Dear Apple, I am very angry. My favorite song is 'Silver Squeeze' by the Banana Peppers. But you only have 'Toxic Shock Syndrome' and 'Gaetulian Iarbas' by them, and both of those are off a different and lame album! Also, they cut off 'Toxic Shock' right before the awesome vibraphone solo, and really the sample should be between 0:47 and 1:17 for the best effect. This is NOT FAIR to my favorite band. I DEMAND that you fix this IMMEDIATELY or I won't spend my $0.99 on you!!1!"
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
18 hours nets $100,000, after a year that's around $46 million (US).
Of course it probably won't stay at that rate, but it's even money if it goes up or down.
I'd call that a big success, and a big bullet in the back of the head of the argument "people won't download music and pay for it".
Screw you RIAA. Get going on your server farm, we're waiting to DL from you too.
Then I bought about 184 songs and albums (combo number, I think it was about 6 albums and various singles). All I've got to say is I've spent more on music since this store came into being than I have in YEARS. I don't mind the DRM nonsense. I've got nothing to hide anymore, this just adds to my big ass collection of music. I've burned a few compliation albums for my brother, but otherwise I just use my Ipod and FM transmitter for music. I think it's a great service. Personally, I'm glad I don't HAVE to steal the singles anymore from the P2P places. I dig being able to click, download and be happy real fast. Without a virus being attached (Kazaa), broken songs (all the P2Ps), wrong songs (All), etc.. They've got one happy customer here in NY peace
As a test, I downloaded a song in AAC format from the iTunes store that I already had ripped at 192 VBR MP3.
At first comparison, I thought the AAC file was good - until I listened on my "mastering headphones" (Grado SR325s, which rock, by the way - http://www.gradolabs.com ). Lots of bizzare compression artifacts.
So there I am, thinking AAC is garbage, until I remembered something about an "Enhancer" feature in iTunes. Sure enough, I look in preferences and there it is. I turned it off, and many / most / all? of the compression artifacts I heard went away.
So, before you try to asses whether you think AAC @ 128 is better than MP3s at 192, turn this "Enhancer" feature off, then judge.
In my opinion, AAC is living up to the hype.
The practice originally started in retail stores with cash registers. Clerks tended to ignore the new-fangled machines for purchases in whole numbers, so the numbers were changed to persuade the clerks to use the cash register to get the penny change. It didn't become popular in other forms of retail, such as catalog purchases, until about 50 years later.
This was pointed out by Bill Bryson in one of his books; I think it was Made in America.