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Apple Sells A Million Songs in Debut Week
Scrameustache writes "According to an Apple press release, the iTunes Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, and over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once.
Those new iPods are selling like hotcakes too..."
I think the model may work. Let's hope it torpedoes the RIAA completely.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58718,00. html
Offerings on P2P networks have almost tripled!
If this is Heaven I'm bailin out! I cant tolerate this ol tin-tub, so fulla trash and rats...
Well it seems to me that there's room for everything in this world. Room for people that want things the legal way and the whiners that love music for free that keep whining about not buying on the ITunes Music Store.
Let's see how this one keeps up for the next year!
Apple has found something to make it profitable. Quick sell the hardware side of the business.
Today I found a "New Music Tuesday" mailing in my inbox, from Apple, highlighting almost 20 recent (complete album) additions to the Music Store that are available as of today.
If they do that many every week, that is seriously gonna bolster their catalog.
~Philly
Most people aren't thieves. The merely want their content delivered the way they want it. It should be simple for a company to offer a better downloading experience then a decentralized p2p. I'd be willing to pay if the offer me more value then p2p programs. By that I mean easier searchs, high quality files, ability to find related music, and better availibility. RIAA has really been doing nothing but shooting itself it's foot and watching it bleed.
If they weren't restricting to credit cards with a US billing address. Like VISA isn't the same globally?
Ralf
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russel
I thought this iTunes thing was full of DRM gotchas, such as having to re-buy the songs if your computer died..? Are there really that many idiotic people around or am I just misinformed?
Daniel
Carpe Diem
How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?
I'm not trying to sideline the significance of the success, I'm just questioning why it is really successful. From what I have heard, this is not all that much different than approaches that others took earlier (Didn't eMusic, the popular word among those that don't like iTunes, originally sell per song?).
Alternatively still, maybe the market is just now ready for such a store model as this. Timing is, afterall, very important in delivery of a product to market. Too early can be as devastating as too late.
well if you read the articles you will see that Apple's music store sold more songs in a week than the others have in months. Ignore the little Apple icon if you must and see it as *somebody* has possibly finally figured out a way to sell music downloads that people like. The question is how will the sales be in a few months. The Apple policy is a lot more reasonable than anyone else. None of the other services let you put the songs on a portable MP3 player, let alone burning it to an audio CD (which strips the DRM).
won't it be a money raker when they expand it outside the US!
Korea already has America's Broadband Dream. Could we, outside the US, please buy some songs too before it's all sold out? Wait it's just bits we are paying for...
iTunes Music Store International is missing!
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
Not only is iChoons only available on OSX it is also only available in the US (Although there are plans to roll it out in Iraq early next month).
Here are a couple of very different stories about the service from the BBC and The Register.
I'm still not sure how this service is going to make a lot of money. While a million tracks may sound impressive, you need to keep in mind that it's quite unlikely that they can keep that rate up for very long.
If the tracks were all sold as singles (they weren't) and if Apple kept all the money from the sale (they don't) AND if they could keep up their one million songs per week rate (doubtful), then by the end of a year they've made $52 million. Take out administration costs (I have no idea what they are, but I'm guessing they must be fairly significant) and the RIAA's big cut, and I'm guessing Apple would be left with somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million after a year, and that's ONLY if they keep up the sales rate they had in their initial week every week of the year. Sure, $30 million in revenue is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not going to convince anyone that online music sales are worthwhile.
Remember, $30-50 million is equal to the revenue from a couple platinum albums, and isn't enough to finance nearly as many artists as the current model can (keep in mind that every "flop" gets subsidized by hit records). I would expect that if the recording industry were to switch to this model that MORE over-produced pop garbage would be pushed since the dramatically lower revenues would keep the companies from taking many risks with "alternative" artists. And you thought it was bad now...
How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?
The secret is in the direct tie to iTunes. It's difficult to overstate how convenient it is to be able to shop for music within your music player as opposed to fiddling with some web-based download service.
This is the kind of thing which Apple's control over hardware, software, and consumer applications together permits it to excel at. What is astonishing is that Microsoft has proved so poor at this kind of coordination.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
1 million songs at $0.99 is about $1 millions/week. Assuming that the demand stays constant--which is unlikely as there was probably pent-up demand, as well as let's give it a try users in the first week--the total revenue for the year will be about $52 million. Although this sounds like an astounding success, it is less than 0.2 percent of Dell's revenue (FY03 revenue $35.4 billion), and less than 0.02% of Walmart's revenue ($218 billion). And it will only account for 1% of Apple's revenue.
It blows my mind that Apple has been able to improve on the iPod. As if the original's form factor was too thick (not quite as thick as a deck of cards), they still somehow cut it almost in half.
I played around with the new music service this week. Super impressively done. Having said that, I don't think I'll order any music from it. The record companies have shown themselves to be complete bastards for decades now, in how they screw over the public and the artists. I hate to think that Apple's now riding to this industry's rescue, perhaps only a year or two before the entire industry would go down the crapper. If there was only some way I could use this service with the bulk of the money going straight to the artist, I'd be incredibly enthusiastic about this whole thing.
I'm always thrilled to see Apple succeed at something, since I think they tend to make beautifully designed products. I just hope that this success isn't the event that keeps the parasitic recording industry form withering away.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I am pretty sure the restriction was with having the rights to international distribution worked out yet. Either on the Apple site or in the press release it states that they are working that out. Since the technology should be the same, i am guessing it's a legal issue. Odds are they will not have international rights to EVERYTHING in the catalog, so they will have to modify the store to display songs by the user's location. Maybe they will get past it, but in general stores/distros are restricted to certain territories.
If only the RIAA would follow that example instead of trying to perpetuate the stone age...
Repeal the DMCA!
Is how well these things are selling in a proprietary format. This should wake up the music industry into possibly providing a new digital format that is standard, because it appears as though people want something different/in addition to CD.
My hat goes off to Mr. Jobs. Sometimes, it seems, you really do need to think differently.
Though this does beg the question of whether or not there are potential law suits to be filed in the coming months due to this development(read: proof of concept).
Hope the sales keep going strong with Apple's iTunes.
Winged Power Photography
I'm always thrilled to see Apple succeed at something, since I think they tend to make beautifully designed products. I just hope that this success isn't the event that keeps the parasitic recording industry form withering away.
Anything which encourages people to purchase music directly by cutting out the retail link can only help artists in the long run. If people get used to this kind of thing, they're much more likely to purchase music from independent artists someday - because independent artists will probably never be able to afford to get their CDs into record stores, but it won't be too much trouble for them to get onto download services.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Why so little RAM? Memory is dirt cheap these days; I'd consider 256MB the bare minimum that should be shipped with a new system.
Never mind. They could sell one song 1,000,000 times, or something like that.
It's not easy being a dork.
I think it might be closer to: somebody has possibly finally figured out that making products and services AVAILABLE to people who are proven to actually have the means and the inclination to ACTUALLY PAY FOR STUFF that they find valuable. Windows users buy their machines on price first, features second (and steal half their software from work third...), Linux users have moral objections to paying for stuff that's already been sold a million times, whereas Apple users understand that time pretty much equals money and would rather pay to take the hassle out of life and get on with the rest of theirs.
That was classic intercourse!
no.
It's sad that I even have to point this out:
they could have sold one song 1,000,000 times.
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli
emusic.com does not carry next year's Grammy nominations but if you're into Jazz or older alternative it is cheaper than Apple's offering, has been along longer, and is not DRM restricted.
but I suspect it's due to licensing arrangements. Often the same artist is represented by different labels in different territories - he might have been signed in the UK by a small Indie, but needs big-muscle distribution to break the states etc. Big distributer sells in the US, indie still sells in UK.
This causes problems online though as customers and territories are now now no longer tied together - you could buy from whichever territory offered the cheapest identical product. One big free market.....nope, couldn't have that, could we? so that's why you need a US Visa.
Apple has given the given the people what they wanted with this Gig. Will Apple be smart enough to capitalise on the market share?
Remains to be seen.
It's not like Apple went to Limewire and ripped off all of these songs. A portion of your $0.99 is going to the major labels that provided the material.
Still, a welcome step in the right direction. Now after I've checked out a song for free on Limewire (full length, not 30s sample...) and decided I really like the band, I can flow some cash through Apple to pay for the tunes.
I second that. Distribute a windows and a linux client and I bet the thing takes off 10x faster.
I do security
I don't know if I am off the deep end, but it seems to me Apple didn't figure they would make BILLIONS off of selling songs for 99 cents.
:) Either way, life is easier with an Apple.
I do think they figured they would be able to sell their iPods at an increasing rate (which they have a much better profit margin on; 110,000 new iPods ordered this last week). They also are opening their arms to a new customer base, music-lovers. Now music-lovers will buy an iPod because they are amazing, but then will think: "if this is so cool, I should try the new iBook or PowerBook". Then Apple makes more profit there too. Who agrees? This is where they make their money, and then they have an Apple customer for life. Not bad for starting with a 99 cent sale.
I am an Apple customer for life, but mine started with 2500 dollars for a PowerBook.
I think they should get a platinum record or something.
I don't want to buy ANY Apple products just to listen to music. I want CHOICE. Apple doesn't give me that.
If you want choice, you first need patience, and then you need to read. The Windows version of iTunes will be released by end of year. If demand is high, maybe for more platforms.
Quote from Fortune Mag: "Jobs, however, isn't targeting just Mac users. He plans to roll out a Windows version of iTunes by the end of the year. (Apple already sells a Windows-compatible version of the iPod, which accounts for about half of all units sold.) It is a dramatic departure for Steve, who has deliberately kept the Mac's best features off the screens of the much larger Microsoft-dominated world."
Are there any other aac compatible players besides the iPod?
They can't swap them amongst each other, because they're DRMed, which would require burning to CD and re-ripping (or using the Toast AIFF converter) to subjugate the rather weak protection. Yeah, it's possible, but it's more of a hassle than just everyone buying it.
Conglom-O: We Own You (TM).
Apple has this new product that seems to totally rock (literally and figuratively), except they won't have a Windows version till "late 2003". I wish I could try it.
Is it just me, or could Apple just hire a couple of half-decent Windows developers and have this ported in just a little less time (like weeks)? Of course, how many years did it take them to get QuickTime to work right (or roght-ish) on Windows?
That's plenty of time for Microsoft to roll out a half-assed product in 3 months with much stricter DRM features and completely destroy Apple because they instantly have 20 times as many potential customers.
Apple will once again have the superior product and single digit market share, whereas if iTunes were available today, they would get the jump on Microsoft (and others) and actually have a chance to do something successfully. People are dying for this product and if Microsoft rolls out something that is at least tolerable, if inferior, tomorrow, iTunes will never make it on Windows, where all the customers are! We're not talking about the Linux crowd, which is important but still relatively small, we're talking about 95% of computer users in the world!
Can they really be risking their whole business plan for lack of a few decent Windows people? Or am I missing something?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Apple charges way too much for their RAM. You're almost always better off buying an Apple system with whatever RAM it ships with, then buying more from someone else and installing it yourself.
Windows users don't LIKE Microsoft the way Mac users LOVE Apple. Additionally, Microsoft's model has been consumers pirate our stuff so business has to pay for it. As a result, most people aren't used to sending money to Microsoft. They buy a grey-box, Dell, Compaq, etc., and it runs Windows. The idea of buying stuff from Microsoft is a bit odd. (I think that AOL could make a real push here, but the other labels might not trust AOL Time Warner with the business).
Remember, most PC consumers buy a cheap machine, plug it in, and it sits. Maybe the neighbor's kid brings some software that they warezed over and installs it, but that's about it.
Apple hypes the new consumer products, and hypes them like mad. iTunes 4 was HEAVILY anticipated, the Rendezvous streaming was shown 4 or 5 months ago? As a result, we all upgraded in my office to listen to each other's music. The iTunes store was an added bonus. It's very cool.
Time to start backing up my iTunes folder onto DVDs...
Alex
um, it seems you're forgetting something: as yet iTMS is only available to US based Mac users, a teeny tiny proportion of global computer users.
Once Apple rolls out the international, and Windows versions of the service (and you can bet they WILL be released in that order) takings look set to rocket.
It occurs to me that a pretty similar model to the iTunes Music Store would work for movies too. Sure, there's the bandwidth issue -- but that's going to decrease over time as compression gets better and broadband penetration increases.
They should expose their store through XML-RPC or SOAP, so that I can write my own iTunes. The money would still go to them.
(Never gonna happen, I know.)
-jfedor
There are ways out there to play AACs other than iTunes 4 or an iPod (like VideoLAN Client, for example).
...
BUT the AAC files you buy from Apple are "locked down" to your Macs (you can authorize up to three Macs to play your music), so sharing them is of "limited value", to say the least.
AND all the files you buy from Apple are watermarked with YOUR name/e-mail address -- not exactly the kind of thing that makes you eager to put them up on the public p2p networks.
Yes, you can burn the AACs as plain audio onto a blank CD-R, and then re-rip and re-encode them as MP3s and then manually re-tag them, but as a file-conversion technique, this process takes a lot of time. And uses up an awful lot of plastic, too.
Apple's done a pretty good job of making it "appropriately difficult" for you to share the music you've bought with the entire planet. Now if only I could play those AACs on my Archos Jukebox, or in my car, or
-Mark
I read on a swedish forum about a guy who owns (or at least works for) a rather small music label. He's a great Mac fan and of course wanted his label to be available on Apple's Music Store. He spent an entire day trying to talk to someone at Apple who could help him. No one had a clue (in Sweden or the US) what to do.
It seems as you gotta be Steve's buddy to get your label online.
Ciryon
Why the hell are we clinging to this model where things can be released on one side of the world, and then released on the other side of the world 6 months later? If it's a linguistic thing, I understand (i.e. They're waiting for the dubbed/subtitled version) but, judging by the quality of said versions, a wait of 5 or six hours should be fine.
They need to clue in. If you can't GET it legally, then you're going to steal it. That's just the way it is.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Another thing I find surprising is how many people are raving about the sound quality of AAC, when in my own tests it's significantly worse than MP3 encoded with LAME at the same average bitrate.
I don't mean subtly worse, either. I mean AAC is so awful you'd have to be deaf to not hear the distortion. If you want to verify for yourself, encode Fischerspooner's "Emerge", and listen to the section starting about 38 seconds in.
Yet loads of Mac users are deleting all their MP3s and re-ripping to AAC. Talk about a victory for Steve Jobs and Apple! Get everyone to put their music collection in MPEG-4 format, and you won't see them switching to Windows Media any time soon. I suspect this is a big part of the motivation behind the store, the iPod firmware update, and the new iTunes--get MPEG-4 out there before Microsoft can kill it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
So you sit at your Apple (tm) Computer, load up your Apple (tm) OS, load the Apple (tm) iTunes(tm) software, click on the button which goes to the Apple (tm) iTunes (tm) Music Stores, buy some DRM-ed music and then save it on your MP3 player, which can only be an Apple (tm) iPod (tm).
And everyone on slashdot applauds...
I've been wondering about the resale value of these downloads. I typically sell my old CDs (secondspin.com or uzed.com) when my musical tastes change, I get tired of a CD or I simply need some cash. What will I do with songs downloaded from Apple?
Those who want to steal will always steal. The students in your example would have never bought online to begin with...they would rather have want they want for free.
People wanted to be able to download a wide variety of "good" music, load it onto an MP3 player and burn their own CD from their purchase. By all accounts (except perhaps those of some vocal sixteen year olds who think the world owes them a record collection) Apple has delivered this, They did the research, developed the tech, made the difficult deals, took the risks, generated the buzz, and now I hope they profit handsomely from it.
The RIAA reps the companies that get the music into the download -- engineers, producers, designers, and, yes, lawyers -- all of whom need to be paid, and will get their slice. The size of that slice is spelled out in a contract which both parties sign. Is the size of that slice "fair?" I dunno. What percentage of the price of that soda finds its way back to the chemists and bottlers? How many pennies on the cigar dollar get back to the guy rolling the leaves? How many nickels on the Big Mac pricetag work their way back to the cattlerancher? Do we stop consuming these products (and a million others) until we "ger answers?"
Say I'm a small-town chemist who just developed a new flavor -- how do I get my soda bottled and onto the shelves at the 7-11? You mean -- it's not easy?? I can't just pull my truck up to the back of ths store and stock the shelves myself? I have to make a [shudder] DEAL?! Oh, the Injustice!
Is this new venture going to change the world, overthrow evil, and bring about a Glorious Workers' Revolution? No, silly, it's gonna let you download music easily and legally onto your computers and disks. No more or less than it was designed to do.
I've never had a use for Apple, Macs, or Steve Jobs, but my hat is off to them on this.
No, and the iTunes store doesn't use plain MPEG-4 AAC; it uses an undocumented proprietary variant with digital restrictions management built in.
That's the big problem with the iTunes store for me--I have an MP3 player, not an iPod. So I'd rather buy LAME-encoded MP3s from emusic.com. Better sound quality, and I can listen to them without dropping $300 on a new portable device or re-encoding.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Apple can say that some of the people who buy apple computers will buy DRM music.
A lot(SFAIK) of apple users are for-profit Media peoples, is it that surprising that Media peoples want to buy and download other peoples media. A lot of people wouldn't buy apple.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I fully agree that people by their very nature are not thieves. Itunes is providing a service that people are willing to pay for, and this I think is terrific?
.99
Metalica pointed out one valuable thing back in their napster argument, the fact that end users have the ability to make (almost) perfect digital copies of their music, why would they buy the CD.
Why indeed
Given that people are not thieves, and any old joe can copy a CD... Why not actually legalize the private trading of music, and people who want to actually *support* the respective bands can send in money to get the offical label to put on their CD-r, offical case, and perhaps even a bumper sticker or a t-shirt.
Ye' old record store could even distrubute and provide facilities to this end. It seems like the perfect way, to me, to merge the new and old business models.
What the track
Want the offical cd $15.00
Want a home brew solution but offical fly leaf and label? who knows?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The ACC format MUST be cracked already right? I don't actually know this, I'm just assuming. Aren't the music companies afraid that this will lead to nice high quality digitial copies? I mean, if I were havenco or some other entrepeneur (hint hint), I would be using apple as my source for good quality music, and then reselling! Of course, I honestly believe that this is still a dead end. In the long run, with people able to get music cheaply, $1.00 is way way WAY over priced. I think that about $0.10 is reasonable.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
This is what happens when you give a user a legitamate way to get music in digital form. My friends and I would pay a reasonable price for an MP3/OGG/? track if it was awailable (and NOT restricted, if I pay money, I better have the right to space shift it).
RAAA, get a clue!
Free speech is getting expensive...
Ahh, you're not seeing the big picture here. The iTunes music store isn't meant to be a self-sufficient profit-making business. It's merely a value-added service to sell more iPods (and more Macs).
So I'm looking at your post in reverse: How much does the iTunes music store cost to maintain? If it can stand alone with it's own sales outright without leeching profits from iPod sales, it's certainly a profitable product offering and should sell more iPods (and more Macs since it's Mac-proprietary). After all, Apple is a hardware company
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
Thanks for the tip, Steve!
All your base are belong to us!
iWin.
Well, it's a million songs in one week. If Apple plays their cards right, they could see similar business for an entire year, and that's where the money is.
Also, like you said, the Apple user base isn't the entirety of digital music enthusiasts. Once they get off their high horse and make a Windows/Linux/Whatever version, sales will skyrocket.
OMG! Wau!
Seems that the puny, marginal WebObjects server and development environment were able to serve within its first week:
1 million secure creditcard transactions
1 million downloads, at about 3MB each
untold millions of 30 second song preview streamings
a gazillion searches
megazillions of Music Store pageviews
You know, makes you wonder what these Apple guys are thinking, using such marginal, non-Microsoft-based enterprise server products!
Talk about taking risks. No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft or Dell, uh? Why go to the fringes and buy WebObjects with unlimited users/sessions for about $1000? Are you nuts?
(tongue in cheek, for the humor impaired)
Some good points, but you and I both know that Apple is smarter than you and I both. Has Apple ever surprised you? I think we will be surprised this time seeing a product out in the not so distant future. But who knows...
"Hi I'm your video DJ I always talk like I'm wigged out on Quaaludes I wear a stained baseball jacket everywhere I go!"-Dead Kennedys
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Apple users always have too much money to spend :)
"I'll bet most of those files sold were sold to Mac users."
:)
Good point...Seeing how the service is only available to Mac users running OS X.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine drawn beyond the lines of reason. Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
When does Windows Media Player 10 come out?
I post links to stuff here
Cupertino, CA - Apple's recent announcement that over 1 million songs had been purchased in the first week of its new music store's existence presents undeniable proof that Apple users will overpay for anything.
More at BBSpot
siener's youtube channel
Blah. I'll probably get modded down, but here goes...
"The recording industry is evil" mantra is like the "Big business is evil" mantra. It sounds real good and may be partially true, but artists still happily sign with labels without having a gun put to their head.
If a band is playing in some garage and a record exec comes in and puts down a contract, very few bands will say, "No, you're THE MAN! We want to stay independent! Sure, only the people in this area may ever hear us and we may only sell 100 albums a year and still have to work full time jobs, but at least we won't be working for someone evil like you!"
Record companies do put a lot of money into new artists before they even sell jack. That's one of the reasons they take so much on the back end. They take the risk of putting down hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to pay and promote a new artist that no one has heard of and just the year before was only singing in their church choir. If the artist sells lots of albums, I think the record company SHOULD make many times it's original investment because they're the ones that took the risk, not the artist.
It's easy to say "Oh, with the Internet any artist can distribute music on their own!" Yeah, that may be true but you still have to figure out some way to get people to your site. Record companies spend a lot of their money on promotion and marketing. If you put up a web site to sell your CD, MP3, ACC, whatever, but can't afford the money to promote it, aren't getting air play, have no video on MTV, no one knows who you are, your songs sound like they were produced in a garage, and you just hope you can just get by by having one fan tell another who tells another, you're probably not going to make a lot of money.
Some people talk about the record companies and their high prices like they're the Iraqi regime. They're keeping a tight grip on MUSIC, people! It's entertainment, not food and water. If you hate them, don't buy their music, don't steal their music. Just walk away and go read a book.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
Since the iTunes Music Store works only with iTunes... and iTunes is only available at present on the Macintosh...
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
There will never be a Linux client.
Hail to the king, baby!
Does the user ID of the person downloading the file get embedded in the AAC file in any way? Have AACs showed up on Kazaa yet?
Just curious, I don't own a Mac and I stopped using p2p nets.
there's no place like ~
I'd buy a million songs from myself as a PR stunt; while I was at it, I'd buy them as albums in order to make things look good to the music industry that I'm trying to woo.
Money can't buy everything, it's true, but it can buy a press release that may impress the idiots who run the music industry.
A million dollars a week is only 52 million dollars a year - that is CHUMP CHANGE. How much of that do you think went to the music industry? It's gonna take money, a whole lotta spendin' money, to make it worthwhile for the distribution oligopoly to embrace this.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Vindication.
And a bute rebuff against what the **AA's are trying to do; here is proff that they've been trying to defend an outdated bussines model.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Only a million dollars? From 5% of the market share, just in the US? You must be kidding. If this went cross-platform worldwide the money these people would make is astonomical. It's easy to use, and damn near addictive because you don't see the cost until you get your credit card bill a month later. Let's say, an average comsumer buys 2 CDs a month for approximately $30 (US). Now let's take the same user and give them access to all the same songs at $1 apiece. Plus when they download those songs let's just "suggest" they look at 5 more that are like each one. You have built in advertisement while the person is actually making the purchase, it is convenient, and they don't see any real tangible evidence that they've spent the money unless the go to the effort of burning CDs from the downloads. It's an ingenious system that has nowhere to go but up as far as profitibility is concerned. This week $1 million, next week 1.2 million. Next year, 100 million. 2 years from now, worldwide, the sky's the limit.
bkr
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Actually, every file sharing protocol except kazaa's is implemented on the mac.
And of course "most of those files sold were sold to Mac users" because iTMS is only available to iTunes-Users, and iTunes ist until now still mac-only.
I scanned the comments, the articles, the interviews, etc. I did not find an answer to the following question:
Given OSX's ties with linux, is there any chance for a stand alone ipod system that can be used with linux distros?
Are there any non-endorsed projects out there? Will Apple ever embrace the linux geeks? Right now it seems a bit pricy, but that will fall soon enough. I could see myself owning one if I could use it with my Red Hat system.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Because in the iTunes store (which I really like, BTW) what differentiates the indy from the mainstream artist? Nothing (except for the splash screen adverts). A user browses under genre which is probably alphabetical.
This levels the playing field - as much as we could probably hope for at this point.
I know this is completely offtopic but it deals with music at least. has anybody seen the xmms website? it says the site is offline while it is moving to a new location but the blinking and funky colors are hillarious. ;)
This page has detected stolen music on your harddrive - xmms.org conform to the standard RIAA-punishment of blinking webpages
LOL
Mental note: Must remove the +1 Karma boost for new posters ;)
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
What you need to remember, is that Apple is a HARDWARE company. Everything they do is to drive more hardware sales. Every product they make is going to come out first for the Mac to drive hardware sales. Why come out with a PC version immediately, and drive sales for your competitors?
They could have sold 1 million copies of one song. Unlikely, yes, but it explains why they might want to clarify.
I dunno
Paul Lenhart writes words!
iTunes Man
To the tune of "Piano Man" by Billy Joel
Filk by Scott Taylor
It's nine o' clock at the iTunes store,
A phenomenal crowd's logging on,
There's an old man on AOL
Finding music from ages bygone.
He says, "Steve can you play me a memory?"
"I'm not really sure how it goes"
"But I typed in a track and got album names back!"
"And I'm not even wearing my clothes!"
Oh la da da diddy da da, la da diddy da da da.
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Now Claude at Vivendi's a friend of mine
And his business is selling CDs.
And knows the solution for store distribution,
But he's worried about MP3s.
He says "Steve I believe this is killing us"
"All these pirates don't pay us a dime."
"Well I'm sure that you could be a billionaire"
"If you could sell music online."
Oh la da da diddy da da, la da diddy da da da.
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Now Paul is an iPod enthusiast
Who listens to Jazz with his wife
And he's chatting with Maxine, who's still in the rap scene
And probably will be for life.
And the waitress is downloading Dixie Chicks
As the dial-up man slowly gets Stones
Yes they're sharing the bandwidth from Akamai
But it's better than P2P clones.
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Its a pretty good crowd for just Macintosh
And the PC guys give me a smile
Cause they know that iTunes will be Windows-bound soon
If they just can hold out for a while.
And the AAC sounds like originals
And rights management isn't a pain,
And they sit at the screens of their iTunes machines
And say "Man, this is worse than cocaine!"
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Why should the RIAA worry that AAC might get cracked, since they're selling cds that can easily be ripped to mp3 format without any DRM whatsoever? If anything, the iTMS files put a small barrier in place, so if you really wanted to pirate, you're better off buying elsewhere. Oh, and the problem with $0.10 per song is that no one has been able to figure out a way to get the credit card companies on board for payments of this size.
I'll bet most of those files sold were sold to Mac users. Yeah especially since you can't run iTMS on anything other than Mac OS X
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
No, that's one million dollars in a week!
Now, I don't know if they are likely to keep it up at that rate, but if they did, that would translate to $52 Million in a year. Now do you see why people are taking notice of them?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"It's a good step in the US - here in the UK, we're paying £1500 (around $2100?) for the top-spec eMac. Taxes will account for 17.5% of that"
No it won't. 17.5% VAT is ADDED to the cost of the goods so the proportion that is tax is 14.89%. I really hope you don't calculate your own income tax...
That was classic intercourse!
Howdie y'all,
was wondering if anybody nows if they as well
improved the sound output quality of the ipods!
I read some reviews of other devices and
apparently some of them seem to sound way
better than the older ipods (at least according
to the reviewers)....
Don't think they sounded like shite to boot with,
but would be cool if they improved on that as
well...
Grub, my man, you must be the Slashdot master of one-liners. Your Karma-to-Words-Typed Ratio must be very impressive.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I've seen at least a dozen post in these Apple Music Store stories telling people that ask if they can download a song again to backup (complete with bold font to show their superior intellect).
Who has the time to do these constant backups of all the random crap on your computer. I try hard to keep copies of stuff like tax records, but I don't backup my music collection or other random junk.
Apple should allow people to download the songs again that they've already purchased. Live Phish allows you to do this. Maybe there is some DRM issue that makes this difficult, but, otherwise, I don't know why they wouldn't allow this.
-prator
There's a less invasive way to demonstrate that the m4p file contains the name/address of the purchaser: buy a song and e-mail the file to a friend who also has a Mac and iTunes4. When they double-click it open, they will be prompted to "authorize" their computer to play this song -- and the text of the prompt includes the e-mail address of the original purchaser, and prompts for their password. That the files contain the identity of the purchaser is not really a secret, especially given that it displays it prominently in the password challenge dialog box when m4p files are moved to a new computer. I found this the first time when my wife mailed me some songs she had bought, and I had to ask her to come over to my computer and enter her password.
But the easiest way to see that the songs contain the purchaser's name is this: open iTunes, click on a song you've purchased, and choose Get Info... and there's your name!
-Mark
Have you listened to an AAC at 128 bitrate? Albums of 20 songs only cost $9.99 A ten minute classical song costs only 0.99.
You can burn them to CD in straight audio format (aiff), no DRM included. After that you can do what you want, straight to mp3 and Kazaa if you feel the need... nearly as many times as you want (playlist has to change every ten burns). Every had your CD chewed up by a dog? scratched while moving? ever get a refund? isn't that what backups are all about?
Yes you are missing almost everything... you got the 0.99 a song part correct, everything else was just FUD. Insightful my arse.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Hold on. Once M$ will announce (I guess - very soon) same/similar service, that would be 1M/day, and only if M$ will limit it to USA as Apple does.
Less is more !
You have a CHOICE, your CHOOSING not to pay for their products.
Right- the m4p file contains your e-mail address (and other tidbits), but I don't think the AAC audio data itself is "watermarked".
We even have bitTorrent ;-p
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The new IPOD sounds great. I put my neo35 player that was in my truck in my stereo rack.
Now I take my collection of tunes to work.. this helps pass the time while I do Unix System Administration work. I have my own collection od
music that I ripped to my drive. I used a 320k bitrate and it sounds just as good as the neo35.
And there are tools available to backup your IPOD
to a hard drive, and then map that backup to ITUNES.
piece of cake. And linux copies too and from the IPOD without a problem.
I wonder if there will be a wireless transciever
for firewire, that would be cool, you could
make a nonwireless device wireless.
Anyway I was amazed that I could get 5GB of tunes
into the IPOD in 15 minutes!
Of all the file-format conversion processes I know of, this is the one that consumes the most plastic.
Just wanted to point out that the Global Music Industry is only 40 billion dollars large.
Has Apple ever surprised you?
Not recently.
IANAMBA but I expect Microsoft will be able to throw a lot of money at this problem and come out ahead. I'm rooting for Apple this time, but I'm not too sanguine... yet.
Time will tell.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
before people figure out how to circumvent the continent-locator widget and start ordering music from overseas or canada or mexico. there's a lot of smart people out there, and whether it'll be through spoofing their ip address or whatever, they'd better be on top of it before some heavy duty euro-riaa equivalent starts whining about apple cutting into their revenue.
i just want them to get their licensing act together so i can start ordering non-american music. i hate spending US30 on anime soudtracks or ayumi.
Actually, there are clients for the macintosh for all three networks.
And let's not forget the "dead" Hotline network. The first p2p app? Still going strong on mac.
I'm really sorry you have no argument. Maybe you can get one for your next post?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Do you really think Apple should be responsible for your computer's problems? If your computer "craps out", then you lose your data on there. Can you re-purchase your lost term paper, love letters, e-mail, or home photos?
Yes, you can! If you backed them up like you're supposed to. I'm not going to be holier than thou and say I always back up everything, but it's my own fault if I lose the data. No one else.
Apple lets users burn the tracks directly to CD. At that point, there is NO DRM on the CD. You have a format-agnostic backup for the life of the CD.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
How so? You can use a RW to record an album, if you want, then reuse the disc. Of course, the RW won't be playable in most drives, but you only need the CDRW that burned it to read it, because then you just reuse it.
On a side not, I have a CD/mp3 player that has no problem playing CDRW.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I showed a relatively geeky PeeCee user iTunes and the iTunes music store the other day. He'd kind of wondered why me (the person who goes into his company to administer their Sun/Sybase servers) carries a Powerbook G4.
;-)
He was pretty awe struck when he saw the iTunes store, and also pretty impressed with how slick iTunes was in general. Notably, he was impressed with the amount of initial content Apple had up there, the fact that it downloads (and displays) album cover art, and the fact that previewing songs is STREAMED and not downloaded, meaning you can preview quickly.
He was equally impressed with my transparent terminal windows too
I'm not joining the "Macs are better than PCs" camp, just an interesting observation on what a PC user thought...he liked the transparent windows and the iTunes music store...which are BOTH things that are quick and easy to demonstrate at the point of sale....so maybe Apple might be able to "switch" a few more PC users with the tightly integrated music store?
YMMV.
-psy
isn't gonna rescue the artists, but the recording industry. Neither the artists nor nusic lovers gain a cent out of DRM - it's only Apple and the recording chaps - so this is a step in the WRONG direction.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
This is a little something I wrote on HydrogenAudio last night...
... so that there is not one link to get saturated. BTW, the webpage says that a single XServe RAID will handle up to 2.52TB of data. About twice the size of their current collection.
First of all, Apple has around 250k songs in their collection right now... so...
5MB/song * 250,000 Songs = 1,250GB
Their collection is 1.25TeraBytes right now... you can build a server that handles that much for around $2,000 I think... anyway, moving along... they sold the million songs in a week... sooooo...
5MB/song * 1 Million Songs = 5TB = 40Tb
60Sec/Min * 60Min/Hr * 24Hr/Day * 7Day/Wk = 604,800Sec/Wk
40Tb/Wk = 66Mb/sec
Now remember... that 66Mbps is an average. Most likely they were sending down data much faster than that... to satisfy consumers with a quick download... hell... I'm sure a single XServe with its Gigabit interface can handle all the file downloading... after all, it is just dumbly sending bits down a pipe... the account systems will take a lot more horsepower tho. But I think apple uses the already-established Akamai network
Generally, I'm inclined to agree with you.
... not in most places, anyway.
However, what we (read: us consumers) need is for Apple to succeed, whether this is overpriced low-quality music or not. Based on my last trip to various CD-selling locations (just a few days ago), $12-$14 will not buy you the album from the record store
If Apple can make a success out of selling on-demand, relatively cheap music to individual consumers, and have some reasonable method to both allow those consumers to exercise their Fair Use rights while cutting down on piracy (even if it is only illusory), then the RIAA loses its most important argument: That online access to music, and swapping of music, costs the industry money. I mean, how true can it be if Apple is making money by lowering prices on music?
At the very least, it strengthens our (read: the anti-RIAA contingent) basic counter-argument to the RIAA: it is the exorbinant price of music, not piracy, that it costing the RIAA member companies money. Lower prices, and albums will sell better.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
an that is just to apple user and no one else. imagine if this had been world wide.
On the otherhand 1 million sales is a tiny drop in the record sales bucket. if there are 1 million songs sold that's less than 100,000 albums sold. which means over the course of a year that will mean about a million album sold if they can sustain this pace. that's trivial. how many times a year does a artist release an album that goes "platinum"? seems to me they are many every year, some from each record label. thus if apple sustains this pace it will only contribute a single platinum album. Of course there may be a large multiplier effect if the profit margins on this are higher/lower than normal album sales.
What this really shows is how utterly insignificant all of the the other on line music sales were prior to this. they didn't even register: a single mega-record store in NY city could outsell all of the annual online music in a good day prior to apple's involvment. likewise selling CDs by mail also vastly exceeded this market.
heck AOL sent out more of their free trial disks than that!
on the otherhand, once this hits the rest of the world and once this hits the windows world. now were talking a large dent in the sales of music online. again remeber their may b eprofit margin mulitpiers too. this will be true in places that yearn for "pop" music but dont have such good access to music stores as in the US. likewise, world artists will be able to crack the US market if apple lets in lables that lack US distribution systems.
now lets talk about how intrusive the DRM is. its not bad compared to all previous efforts. you can keep your music on a CD so insome sense you own it. but re-ripping it is supposed to be not so good, and thus since digital music is the only way you will be using music in the future having an unrippable high quality CD is not as good as it seems. Apple's tech knowledge base warns you to deauthenticate your mac before you reformat the disk or sell it. its not clear but it seems to imply that you could lose one of your 3 authentications if you dont.
Apple warns you they are free to change how they authenticate your music when you install it on a new mac any time they wish.
This lack of clarity over the authentication protool has me worried but not hyperventilating.
legitmate questions include:
1)how do I authenticate my music on future macs or ipods if mac sells its music store to someone who either goes out of bussiness or starts charging fees to authenticate. (dont laugh mac switched its bussiness model from free to pay for mac.com and claris works)
2) Someday i'll want to keep my music on my phone, credit- card computer, ring, implant, etc....will future itunes allow me to move music to non-mac music players?
3) if my computer is lost, the mother board dies, my hard disk crashes, or a virus eats it, or my employer seizes it before deauthenticate have I lost one of my authentications?
4) what if I go bankrupt and cant get a visa card. how do I maintain a music store account so I can authenticate?
5) in the future, will legacy macs that cant run the latest OS also not be able to de-authenticate?
As I said I'm not hyperventilating, and like 8-tracks and vinyl I dont have the unreasonable expectation that I wont want to replace my music media in the future. but I dont want to be forced to because say apple goes out of the music bussniess.
and yes I realize I can make an audio CD but its not the same as having bought a CD in the store since the store bought CD will rip to higher audio quality for use in digital players (and I predict in the future all useful players are going to be digital-- there wont be many CD players except as ripping devices)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
whoops. I meant to say that's about 1 million album's per year if they can sustain their expected pace of 1 million songs per month. (obviously its 5 million albums per year if they can sustain their first week sales)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
and a few trashed tapes I'll be re-purchasing from them.
Did someone forget to tell you that you don't have to use the "I can download it cuz I own it on tape/vinyl" excuse with Apple's service?
If this is Heaven I'm bailin out! I cant tolerate this ol tin-tub, so fulla trash and rats...
Granted, the iPod is a great marketing extra, but it's not a requirement.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Cheers to Apple for doing nearly the obvious (and that which record companies thus far have been unable to do, perhaps due to lack of vision (heads in asses and such)).
Now someone tell my why RIAA's members have been so busy chasing the negative side of internet music distribution instead of implementing something like this. In fact, it's likely that MP3.com might have arrived at something similar to this, had they not been on the wrong end of pointy lawyers.
There's no magic in this formula. The only really creative aspect is perhaps the user interface presented by Apple. There's no good reason the record companies couldn't have done this themselves, with good developers.
Of course, there's a negative side to this. Apple is (inadvertently?) furthering the status quo in the music industry. I think the music industry had been heading for a major shakeup, where artists were going to gain some control back over their works (not to mention some real compensation).
So, *cheers* and *jeers* I guess :)
.sigs are for post^Hers.
People have try to figure out how to make money off of digital music distribution for some time. Looks like iTunes+iPod may be the answer.
Other Steve hits were the Apple II and the Mac+Laser printer. There were a few duds along the way like the Next cube.
While the per tune price is 99 cents - the usual per album price ( which might have 15 tunes or more - tusk, etc.) is $9.99. A few albums cost more, a few cost less.
The quality seems to be adequate - not audiophile but on a par with denser MP3 cuts. It is a quick and easy way to get decent quality music, no download drops, no cutouts, no madonna nonsense, etc.
And don't forget to add album art by visiting Amazon.com and drag and dropping the album image to iTunes.
Portable, burnable, minimal interference with your rights. But yes, your username is branded into the ACC file - that is probably easily removed or changed with minimal hassle and would disappear when ported into a burned CD.
Yeah, but M$ will put it in WMA format and the file sizes will be huge. AND you'll have to pay for a version that will burn to CD-R, AND again for another version that you can burn as an audio CD. AND you will have to pay for the version of Window's Media Player that will let you share it with others.But it will have the butterfly for free.
The Linux version will include a Tux that lipsynchs to the music, and will be a free download at Redhat.
TANSTAAFL
First, it's more convienent than going to a brick-and-mortar music store. I don't have to get in the car and go anywhere, I don't have to dig through the racks to maybe find what I'm looking for, and I don't have to stand in line to hand one of the pierced nation my money.
Second, Apple's pricing scheme is right on the money. Been looking for a couple of tracks? Buy just the ones you want. Want the whole album? OK then.
Third, the tie-in to the iPod is great. While I don't have an iPod yet, I can imagine how much simpler it will be to download songs from the store directly to the iPod without having to rip the CD.
I think the reason so many people steal music (and if you don't pay for it, it's stealing) is that convienence factor. I've used Kazaa on my wintel laptop and iSwipe on my iBook to grab tracks from things I used to own on tape (yes, I was probably stealing. I feel bad about it, really). It's always been a big hassle to find exactly the track I want, correctly ripped, on a site with enough bandwidth to support the download etc etc etc.
Apple has made it easy and cheap to find what I want. DRM? I don't care, because I'm not going to be reposting my songs to a P2P network. I'll be burning CD's for use in the car, and I can take a CD anywhere.
I don't forsee Apple being the big dog in the online music business forever, but, as usual, they've shown the rest of the computing world that it can be done, and the method works.
You can't have a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent.
Have you even listened to one of the AAC encoded tracks? You probably also feel that current Audio CD sound quality isn't good enough either.
The vast majority of the consumers are not audiophiles. The quality is **excellent**!!
Next, you CAN use them like CDs because there is limited protectection. You can burn them on to as many CDs as you want which strips away the DRM as well. Yes there is a loss in quality, but as I mentioned the sound quality is excellent by most useres standards. You can also sync it with as many iPods as you want and 3 computers and stream it to your whole network if you please via iTunes and Rendezvous.
And If your system crashes and you loose all your music that is your fault. You can back up your files to CD or DVD using.......iTunes. Yup, It's built right in there.
While you are entitled to your opinion about the quality of the sound files most of your other comments are just wrong.
A "Blue And White" G3 can run MacOS X and run it well if you give it enough RAM. There are B&W mini-towers being sold used/reconditioned for less than $500 now. 256MB sticks of PC100 or PC133 RAM are not super-cheap, but cheap enough to not sweat too much. A copy of MacOS X 10.2, aka "Jagwire" costs way less than a copy of Windows XP Professional, and only a wee bit more than the XP Home upgrade. Plus it won't implode if you don't "Authorize" your copy in 60 days, what a surprise! Lots of B&Ws have SCSI cards so you can use an external SCSI burner with them, the firewire, while weak on these machines, is still somewhat usable. Buy a Lite-On CD-RW, a firewire case with an Oxford 911 chipset, and you have a burner iTunes 4 will use happily. Firewire cards with the TI chipset are floating around cheaply if you want to be absolutely sure Firewire burning on your computer will work right.
(There are also iMacs floating around with Firewire that are going for even cheaper...the iMac DV is cheap used and has great Firewire circuitry. Any iMac from thereafter will also have very usable Firewire. However, iMacs are certainly not as expandable as Minitowers, and since we are on a hackish forum I brought up the B&W because it's so expandable.)
Yes this is going to be more money than buying a $200 Microtel Lindows pre-loaded crappy computer at Wal*Mart, but Macs are built way better than anything like that. Think BMW, Mercedes or Acura. Don't think Hyundai or Kia. Macs are built to last, just ask the people who collect vintage Macs and have a fully-working collection.
It will be great when Apple rolls out iTunes for Windows. But if you are really, totally itching to try it, a used new-world G3 is a spiffy way to do it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Or should they? Should they just live as paupers or record 'in their spare time'? Or just the take from playing live?
Until this question is answered - minus any socialist dogma - iTunes store remains a viable option atleast one of the many middlemen are cut out
Music ain't free... why can't u understand that?
Compared to the number of songs that are copied on the P2P networks, a million songs a week probably isn't that much.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
All the Pink Floyd stuff is more then 9.99 and album, and most albums are incompleate. It seems that any of the individual PF songs I want are the one in which you need to buy the whole album to get.
I understand why 'Echos' isn't 99, but I'd rather pay like $5 for it then $11.99 for the album.
Still Pink Floyd seems to be the only oddball I've found, I would assume it has something to do with licensing.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
...what's cheaper? (a) A dollar per AAC-encoded song, or (b) wilfull infringement of copyrighted materials carrying potential civil and *criminal* penalties. You tell me.
I completely agree. We've all seen our fair democracy at work when it comes to legislating fairness in the music industry. It fails miserably. Maybe it's time for music consumers to cast their REAL VOTE. With Their dollars. If this takes off, less people will buy the physical albums, and the music business model will be FORCED to adapt. And that's the only thing that's going to work: economic force.
------ What's sadder than realizing you've filtered out your own comments?
What a load of toss. Linux users don't have a "moral objection" to paying for things, far from it. Apple users are known for paying for goods with ridiculously high margins because they've convinced themselves that their kit is "higher quality" than what the proles use. Or something. Nobody uses Macs at work anyway so they don't get the opportunity to warez stuff.
I mean come on. It's pretty simple - Macs are only bought by an affluent section of the market that places a great deal of importance on "lifestyle tech". This is simple market dynamics - stupid stereotypes of what non-Mac users think or do just shows you to be a fully paid up drone.
There are three types of people posting on this thread.
1: The cheap bastards who at no price except for free, will music be cheap enough. These people are impossible to satisfy with a realistic business model.
2: The vast majority, who just care about price. DRM is acceptable as long as it's wussy and if the price is cheap enough, who cares. A little bit of inconvenience due to DRM is no big deal if the price is low enough (and mind you, the DRM on these AAC files is pretty wussy).
3: A loud minority for whom a purchase from the iTunes store is a political one, that feel supporting any DRM is supporting the powers that be, the music industry, the RIAA, etc. These are the types of people for whom any purchase can be a political statement. The types of people who berate you for shopping at WalMart or eating a hamburger because it supports the corrupt meat-packing industry. They have a point, but they are in the minority ... most people don't sit and go through a checklist trying to figure out which product is doing the most harm to which people before they go out to the grocery store and shop.
The money is at #2. #1 will never be satisfied and #3 will never shut up. Go get the money, Apple.
...I see your point, but I do recall an article (Time mag?) in which the head of Warner Bros. said the delay on including their catalog is purely technical, and that the business and legal terms are already agreed.
There will be soon when the independant artist is allowed to post his/her music via iTunes. This model could make bypassing marketing and most of the distribution chain a reality. Some money would still go to the credit card companies, but getting your music to the masses would require a lot less overhead.
(This post does not contain emoticons or l337.)
This doesn't cut out the retail link though. It simple eliminates your local record store and replaces it with Apple.
If people get used to this kind of thing, they're much more likely to purchase music from independent artists someday - because independent artists will probably never be able to afford to get their CDs into record stores, but it won't be too much trouble for them to get onto download services.
Sure, assuming Apple don't end up with a near monopoly. This kind of thing suffers a classic network effect - can you see people joining 20 or 30 different download services to get their music? No, they'll use the ones that are most convenient - ie the ones that are integrated with their computers. I don't know for sure but I'd bet a lot that Apple won't be allowing eMusic to plug into iTunes anytime soon.
Right now the price Apple charges for getting a track onto this service is about 30-40 US cents, something around that figure. If they become a dominant middle man, who's to say that Apple won't start putting on the squeeze to up the margins just like the big bad old record companies did? They are all shareholder owned at the end of the day.
I see what you're getting at, but the topic is why Apple is allowed to integrate browser-like features into OS elements and bundled apps, while Microsoft gets slammed by the DOJ for the same thing. The answer, as stated above, is that Microsoft is a dominant in the relevant marketspaces, while Apple is not. The activity of integrating browser features is not illegal per se -- Doing so as a means to stifle competition when you are dominant in the market is illegal.
Let's see, I've heard of ONE of those artists...
That's what Punk was about, and it still has a following. So do the Beastie Boys, the Rolling Stones and the Greateful Dead, all of whom created their own labels. Doh!
The Apple Music Store is the new "label".
(This post does not contain emoticons or l337.)
Kind of.
;)
I guess you are referring to this
"Neo is a Cocoa shadow client for the Kazaa network, it is not a real Kazaa client. Neo scans through IP ranges looking for Kazaa hosts, indexes their file list, and stores them locally on your hard drive."
"Implementation" may be a bit over the top.
and it sucks
at least last time i tried
If it's crap, then why are you breaking the law to download it?
Either you like it, and want it, and recognize the value in its production and distribution, and should pay for it, or you find the music valueless and should not want to spend any of your time/effort/bandwidth downloading it.
If it's on your computer, and you put it there on purpose, you should pay for it.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's a funny joke on Mac whores, but, as a Mac whore myself, I want to let everyone know that Mac whores like me overpay for stuff because we are trying to convey positive reinforcement to Steve, so Steve will keep rocking the boat and pushing this fucking boatload of bozos (i.e., the 'technology industry') forward. Personally, I'm fucking sick of hearing about Bill G's nice house and bank accounts, and Larry Ellison's Samurai fixation. I'll put too much of my money in Steve's pocket just so he keeps lighting fires in Silicon Valley. Can I get a fucking WITNESS?!
They're 128k AAC files... not MP3. I've purchased a dozen or so songs and they sound way better than a comparably encoded MP3.
Pooty tweet
The great challenge of antitrust law (since the very beginning) has been proper definition of the subject market. This is something that white-haired, ivory-tower academics and judges have mulled over for centuries now, and you are entitled to your opinion as well. As a matter of fact, I disagree with certain antitrust jurisprudence on this point, but, like all other aspects of the law, the rules are evolving and (hopefully) self-refining.
I take your point, but I also understand why the law treats Apple's behavior differently in this instance than M$.
Name your own price for songs. I wonder which tunes would command the highest prices?
Well - we wrote an AAC decoder based on libfaad2
for the Zaurus. But I'm not sure whether one is
openly available.
However this won't help you a bit. Apples DRM will
likely make sure that files purchased from them
will only run on Apples hardware.
And I've burned to CD (obviously should be indistinguishable from the AAC) than reimported as mp3 (same quality as other CD->MP3 rips). I assume if I had ripped from CD->AAC, then I would have better quality, since I find an AAC sounds better than an MP3.
GPL Deconstructed
When I dropped by the Aple Store in Dallas last week to get my iBook serviced I was talking to the mac genius about the iTMS, iPod, and other stuff. He said that they have been getting calls literally all day from independent artists that want to get their music on the service.
I think it'd be great if that did happen: if people could get their music on the service by bypassing the record companies and the RIAA. It would practically make Apple into a music company without having to buyout Universal.
Well, consider this, if this service really took off, and apple follows through with getting the independants in there; what advantage would there be to going with one label over another? How long before you don't need a label of any kind? I know bands that produce their own music now, using software, that is completely professional in its mixing and sound quality. If they can get it up directly on a service like this, the only advantage a label can offer them is in physical shipment of goods or in advertising, which they won't get unless the label thinks they are going to be huge, right?
This could be the foot in the door for indie bands all over the world. Release online first to a large and willing market who can try you out for $1 a pop instead of $10 for a CD they've never heard, and when you've got some revenue and hype behind you THEN you can negotiate your deal with the labels to hit the physical product market. And/or go indie. Heck if you got "the buzz" smaller labels could bid aggressively to handle your music for the notoriety you might bring THEM... who knows?
Labels win now because it's practically the only way artists have had to get "ahead" (in quotes for obvious reasons), and get their music heard. This could very well change that over the next several years.
*claps*
You only pay $9.99 for albums on the iTunes Music Store - I understand this is a fairly reasonable discount from retail prices in the US.
Well, i128-bit AAC is not low-quality to me. I've actually listened to the songs and they sound just fine. YMMV. Have you purchased and listened to the music yet? If not, you might be surprised.
Secondly, the albums are priced at $10! How the hell can you people not know this yet? There are hundreds of posts pointing out that you can buy albums as a whole for less than the cost of buying all 10+ tracks individually! Learn the facts before you criticize!
The files are a copy of a copy? Actually, they're digitally remastered versions of the songs, specially made for ITunes MS. Besides, even if they were a copy of a copy, a digital copy is perfect and suffers no degradation in recopying, so I could have a 1000th generation copy that's as good as the first.
As far as the restrictions go, there are none that I actually notice. I can burn as many CDs as I want, listen to my collection on my computer, my ipod, and my girlfriend's computer and ipod. Since I think p2ping music is immoral, I don't care that these are useless to kazaa users.
My ideal is also cheaper and higher quality, but that doesn't make this a great service. It's worth it to me. The only thing I find really troublesome is that if you haven't backed up your computer and it crashes, you (apparently, I'm not sure on this) can't re-download purchased tracks for free.
So, you have 5000 songs on your iPod but you don't plan to pay for any music you put on it. Tell me again how the record companies are screwing over the artists?
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
"But the easiest way to see that the songs contain the purchaser's name is this: open iTunes, click on a song you've purchased, and choose Get Info... and there's your name!"
I do hope you're being facetious with this point. Your name appears not once but twice, in the file's path (your account directory's name) as well as the file's ownership and permissions information. Neither of that has anything to do with DRM.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
The one million songs they've sold in the first week of the service is testimony to the power of Apple's marketing and the popularity of their service.
The possibility that they can't get many albums on the service speaks something for their ability to get lots of albums up, and nothing more. Of course this IS relevent to the continued success of the service, since inventory will determine how much people will want to buy.
The appeal of the service to Joe and Jane Appleuser is indisputable.
D
(A happy Apple Music Store customer - $22 spent so far)
The .emp file you're referring to is a stub file (was XML format) that launches eMusic's proprietary downloader (Win, Mac, & Linux). They only allow downloading of tracks/albums via the downloader to prevent folks from scripting the retrieval of the catalog. The files download as VBR MP3s encoded with LAME 3.92.
Hmmmm...me thinks Principal Wood used the iTunes Music Store to buy that 19th Century English folk song to turn on Spike's rage last month. Principal Wood did use his iMac 17" Lampshade and iTunes to play that ditty... I guess the iTunes Store was available in Sunnydale before anywhere else in the world. Wow, Apple was really on the ball; they knew the end was coming for Sunnydale so they figured out the time was right to earn some profits ahead of time!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Steve Job's music collection increased dramatically the last week after he discovered that he could buy music off his own website.
You're testing the quality of the encoder, not the quality of the format, necessarily.
What program did you use to encode AAC? What program did you use to encode MP3?
On a Mac you'll find the average user uses iTunes for both, and with *that* metric, iTunes AAC does sound better than iTunes MP3. And in that case, it makes perfect sense that people would reencode. Higher quality, smaller file size, what's not to like?
Now, where can I get Fischerspooner's Emerge...?
GPL Deconstructed
See my post regarding emp files one thread up (that they are used to queue MP3 file downloads). Here is an edited .EMP file from my /tmp dir:
A EOL2KY.AgBcUQAAAAGAQa5g LRZutREtagivw--</TRACKID > ;/ 933/940/files/9339402.
A EKYHKsAQ4vYpj4CAFxRAAA ...etc...
<?xml version='1.0' encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<PACKAGE>
<TITLE>Classic Early Recordings, Volume 2 Disc A: Paris 1937</TITLE>
<ACTION>download</ACTION>
<TARGET>Classic Early Recordings, Volume 2 Disc A: Paris 1937</TARGET>
<EXP_DATE>10/20/2003 11:16</EXP_DATE>
<PROVIDER>
<AUTHOR>EMusic.com</AUTHOR>
<NAME>EMusic.com</NAME>
<URL>http://www.emusic.com</URL>
<COPYRIGHT>Portions Copyright (C) 2002 EMusic.com Inc; see http://www.emus
ic.com for more details</COPYRIGHT>
<CONTACT>support@emusic.com</CONTACT>
</PROVIDER>
<SERVER>
<NAME>EMusic.com</NAME>
<DESC>Emusic content server</DESC>
<NETNAME>downloads.mp3.com</NETNAME>
<LOCATION>/%fid/%f</LOCATION>
<KEY>Not used</KEY>
</SERVER>
<TRACKLIST>
<LISTID>0</LISTID>
<TRACK>
<TRACKID>AFqUBgAAR0f3ZipiHioAAF5sBAAAXWwEAABC2xyr
jbQPAA0JMVFMTAAAAY4EqLjjk
<TRACKNUM>1</TRACKNUM>
<TITLE>St. Louis Blues</TITLE>
<ALBUM>Classic Early Recordings, Volume 2 Disc A: Paris 1937</ALBUM>
<ARTIST>Django Reinhardt</ARTIST>
<GENRE>Jazz: Traditional</GENRE>
<FILENAME>St_Louis_Blues.mp3</FILENAME>
<FORMAT>.mp3</FORMAT>
<QUALITY>128000</QUALITY>
<CHANNELS>2</CHANNELS>
<DURATION>163</DURATION>
<ALBUMART>http://images.mp3.com/mp3s/89/resources
jpg</ALBUMART>
</TRACK>
<TRACK>
<TRACKID>AFqUBgAAR0f3ZipiHioAAF5sBAAAXWwEAABUAQAA
iTunes Music Store Not Available
.Mac account. If you don't have one, it's easy to sign-up
Looks availible to me, look it's right there, in my playlist list, right below the radio list.
The iTunes Music Store requires:
* A Macintosh computer (iBook, PowerBook, iMac, eMac or Power Mac)
God damn, you mean to use an Apple service I might need an Apple machine? Who woulda thunk it?
* Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later. (version 10.2.5 or later recommended)
Well seeing as System 9 and below are no longer supported (hell the new machines won't even boot to 9) I guess it makes sense doesn't it?
* iTunes 4 must be installed
Hmm, you mean I need to install a program that can access the store in order to use the store. Jeezuz, who doe they think they are?
* Internet connection (DSL, Cable or LAN connection recommended)
I won't even touch this one
* Apple ID or
An account at an online store, my god, what is this world comming to?
* The iTunes Music Store is only available in the U.S.
That might have to do with licensing issues you know.
I don't want to buy ANY Apple products just to listen to music.
emusic.com - no Apple required
CDs from online stores - no Apple required
Kazza - no Apple supported
CDs from local store - no Apple required
Radio - no Apple required
Live concert - no Apple required
oh, I get it, you meant you didn't want to have to buy an Apple product to use an Apple service. You want a company to just give you something because you feel entitled to it. Never mind that the customers of a company are more entitled to something from the company than you will ever be.
Oh, but wait a minute, Apple is releasing a windows version of iTunes, compatable with the music store? MY GOD IT"S A CHOICE!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS
I want CHOICE. Apple doesn't give me that.
Aside from your choice not to buy or use Apple services, nope, no choice at all. Someone is holding a gun to your head, forcing you to plunk down $500 for an old iMac, forcing you to hook it up, turn it on and use it to download music. No free will whatsoever. It's those god damned terrorists you know.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Being somebody who has been trying to legitimise a lot of music that I download in my student days itunes is perfect. Many tracks I have are single items from albums where I like that particular track but don't like the rest. The quality is also very poor, but I've kept onto them.
:-)
What Apple has done will allow to finish this work. I've pretty much cleared all the albums I had downloaded, buying the CD's for them.
I live in the UK. 60 pence for a track is not bad when you are paying £15 (about $24) for a CD. As soon as the music store makes it this side of the Atlantic theres going to be a very heavy Credit Card bill landing on my doorstep
There are about 5 billion burgers sold each year in the US -- Suggesting a subsidy of $55 Billion.
The total governement agriculture budget in 2002 was $18.6BB, which means the chicken, hog, wheat, and soy bean producers are being completely ripped off!
Heck, McDonalds and Wendy's together have about $4.5 BB in revenue (yahoo finanace), including international sales.
Bottomline: your statistic makes no sense.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
I've actually browsed eMusic after the iTMS debut....
It actually sucks in comparison. So how much of this success due to a significant advance in implementation?
I think a lot of it *is* implementation.
The iTunes Music Store implementation is an enhanced database, with the iTunes program acting as the database browser. You can search against all four ID3 tags (artist, album, genre, song), unlike eMusic where you can only search against one of them at a time, and then you can sort by all ID3 tags, like track length, name, album, artist, genre, composer, etc, again unlike eMusic. Then there's the ability to hyper-link browse in the iTunes store; every artist, album, composer, and genre is a hyperlink, which means you can easily go from a song to an artist, or an album, or other albums, or other songs, etc.
It's like the web, re-invented all over again, vs static and non interactive text pages.
The price is seductively attractive too. No subscription fees (which eMusc has), and no unorthodox usage rules. Burn to a CD no problem, unlimited file copy no problem, etc.
And Timing, too. Apple can take advantage of their iPod; 130,000 sold last week, with 700,000 in the wild. That's huge.
GPL Deconstructed
Does it allow entry for independant artists?
If your label represents independent artists, and you want to license your label's recordings to Apple Computer for use in the iTunes store, contact Apple Computer.
Will I retire or break 10K?
MS may put it in WMA format and make the file sizes tiny...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Still not interested in buying lossy formatted music. Let them offer it in 'intact' form, and I'll compress it as needed for my players....I want the lossless format for my home listening, though......
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But from my interaction with fellow Mac users, I really doubt it!
I think you'll see that the money will go *up*.
Right now only a small percentage of OS X users even know about the service, until Apple starts pushing the ads on TV. So as more people update to iTunes4 and Quicktime 6.2, you'll see many more sales.
Then you've got the people who are switching from OS 9 to OS X. They are still a large portion of the Mac community, and that should provide a huge customer base; and word of mouth will work, which is what the million songs is quickly becoming.
Then you have the fact that the user base is going to get *huge* when a Windows port comes out.
So 1 million songs in one week is a small seed; you have an established customer base that will grow, not shrink, as more albums and music is provided.
Even if 60% goes to the music industry, this isn't something to laugh at. We'll see if, in a month, Apple can maintain $1m a week (or greater). I would not be surprised if it could keep it up, or something higher.
GPL Deconstructed
Ok I didn't really make my point clearly in the first post.
Everyone is quick to claim this project is a success. I'm taking a wait and see attitude. Sure, it's nice to see people spending money on a legal on-line music distribution system, but I wouldn't call it a success until most of the people that use other systems illegally migrate to paid systems like Apple's.
I still have a hard time believing people that use the windows based file trading systems for free will stop that practice in favor of a system that costs money and distributes the music in a more restrictive format.
-ted
What do you use to measure what is reasonably priced? $.1 is just so freaking arbitrary a number. Must Apple work at a loss to satisfy you? Must the artists not get their royalties in order to satisfy your musical needs?
Think for a second. The music industry isn't going to change just to meet the demands of a very small segment of the market that are total cheapskates.
Pooty tweet
No one has mentioned several important things.
This only applies to the US. The global market will be huge too, if Apple can pull that off. Japan has a higher Mac rate than we do, for example.
This only applies to people who own Macs. 4% of the US market. The Windows side will be *huge*.
This only applies to people who have downloaded iTunes4 and Quicktime 6.2, and I believe as the month progresses, more Mac users will have downloaded both programs. Again, I think we'll see the customer base grow.
This only applies to people running OS X 10.1.5 or greater, and not anyone running 10.1 or OS 9. We're still in the process of seeing people switch from older versions of the Mac OS to the newer versions, and I wouldn't be surprised if the population of OS X users is something like 15%. That means, again, that the customer base can grow (triple, easily).
So the 1 millions songs is actually quite low, and if you're optimistic, quite easy to achieve as more people sign onto the store in the next month.
GPL Deconstructed
I think it would really suck to be Sony right now.
Think about it: The iPod is the walkman killer. If any other company already had all the infastructure to deliver this sort of solution, it's Sony. But who's doing it? Apple. I'm sure there are some very nervous executives at Sony right now.
That's not to say that Sony is going away. But when a major player like Sony can't offer an innovative solution, then companies like Apple can come in and eat away opportunies and market share. In the long term that can really hurt even a big company like Sony. I suppose that's what they get when their media business take precidence over their electronics.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
One thing that surprised business people was that people were willing to join and run 2 or 3 different instant messenger clients at the same time... even though you'd expect one to become dominant and push the others out because of the network effects. For whatever reason it didn't bother people.
Or, another analogy: *as long as there's no annual fee* people are perfectly willing to buy something from buy.com one day and amazon.com the next day. How else could something like MySimon exist? It's a pay-per-song service.
[Economics-speak: one firm may acquire dominance characteristics in this market, just like any other e-commerce market, and there are behavioral barriers to perfect competition, true monopoly simply isn't possible. Unless Apple gets exclusive contracts, in which case bollocks to everything I just said.]
1. The price of a complete album is $0.99/song or $9.99, whichever is cheaper.
2. Once you buy a song you can download it again at no additional cost
Please, get a clue before you post.
I think it's worth noting that this music store is exactly the sort of thing Apple does well, and which makes being an Apple denizen such a joy. Xerox makes the GUI, Apple turns it into a product. Airport was already around. Apple made it easy. And there were many many MP3 Players out there. Apple didn't even write iTunes. They just morphed Sound Jam into it. And here we are again. As a mac user, I've come to smile whenever I hear Apple will enter a new market. I know they'll get it right, or close enough. It took three versions for iTunes to win me over completely. Wait till the Music Store grows a bit. For now, it is a frighteningly easy to use system. Apple is a company that excels at packaging, and that has made all the difference.
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to do it by not dying." -Woody Allen
Obviously, it's rather unlikely they'll add support for other music selling services to iTunes, but nothing prevents those other businesses to come out with their own music player that superior to iTunes so that everyone would switch in droves.
Donate free food here
1)The average person can't tell the difference or DOESN'T CARE between even a 128k MP3 and the CD. I know if I'm in my car I could care less. --I care. That's why I won't support this project. I don't want my music to sound like I'm always in the car. 2)Get the facts straight, MOST full albums are $10 on iTunes --Hmmmmm, full album for 10bucks with DRM and lower quality. Same CD from Half.com, 7-8 bucks (including S&H) No DRM, higher quality. Your choice. You can burn ANY of the songs UNLIMITED to a CD 5)It has already been discovered that Toast can remove the DRM .. educate yourself ... knowledge is power!
--thru Apple, you need to use special SW to break the potection in order to use the music, which you paid for, according to fair use. I can do anything I want without needing special SW or having to break the law. Your choice Coward.
To begin, it was a mathematical analogy, so I agree with your fading fast statement. BTW, check out Half.com or your local reseller for prices well below your $10buck a CD. Yours comes with DRM and is a lower quality. Mine is still at 44.1 and no DRM. Your choice.
So I ran the output of the original and the re-ripped Cd through a signal analysis package. there as an 11% rms difference between the wave forms. that's pretty huge certainly well above a pyscho-accoustic threshold. (that's about the difference a carpeted room versus a hardwood fllow can make. and easily noticed on ear phones.
also the specta were slightly differently shaped. at the high end. you can hear that.
also the original ACC had no content above 15.5Khz. that's no CD quality though with my ears its hard to hear the difference. It does however mean that when you re-rip you will unvoidably erode the spectrum further, and into a range I can hear.
thus re-ripping a CD is NOT the answer. its not the same as buying something at the music store. so its critical that I be able to play the originals on various devices.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Nobody uses Macs at work anyway so they don't get the opportunity to warez stuff.
:)
You've obviously never worked at a major university.
I mean come on. It's pretty simple - Macs are only bought by an affluent section of the market that places a great deal of importance on "lifestyle tech".
Although this may be true in some cases, I also have to wonder why I haven't heard about too many OS X security vulnerabilities recently. Mac hardware may be less powerful than PCs, but they do seem to be the less troublesome as well. Less (no?) problems with iffy support of peripherals, a very powerful OS, from a major vendor who actually seems to be concerned with quality (Didn't Apple just offer to replace some users' power supplies, at their own cost, _because the fans were too loud_?)
I've got to say, I've been really impressed by Apple recently (I'm a Linux on PC user, incidentally). After some recent software (OS upgrades) and hardware (dead MB) problems, I'm seriously considering getting a lower-maintainence system. Although I don't claim to be extremely well informed, those Macs are starting to look good. No way I'm paying $400 for an mp3 player, though.
I'd like to put this on a web page I'm setting up, and I'd like to credit you with it. Is that okay?
Also, if you want me to include a link or an email address or something, that'd be fine too.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Yup and compared to a CD its not as good. BTW, you still need to remove the DRM. When I buy a CD I don't have to, nor do I start out with a lower quality. And since I shop at local resellers and Half.com, I pay less then you, get no DRM and get 44.1 quality. BTW, thank you for using your username. To finish, I thought I was alone in my opinion, but after reading the Register write up, I found I was not. Thanks for the reply.
LOL, AACs and almost all MP3s are 44.1.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
$.99 a song means you are spending the equivalent of $15-$20 a CD
No, CDs are $9.99.
Next, you can't use them like CDs because they are protected
Yes you can, because you can just burn CDs from iTunes
crash your system, lose all your music.
Not if you back it up. If your house burns down you lose all your CDs unless you have them insured.
You are paying top dollar for crap.
Wrong, you obviously haven't heard any of the music.
Sorry but I'm not buying anything from Apple or anyone else at these prices with these restrictions.
I'm guessing it's because you'd rather just continue stealing music from the artists.
I don't recall the DRM being proved wrong. Nor do I remember the lower quality files being disproved. I only saw excuses from anonymous cowards such as yourself(except foniksonic). Unless you crack the DRM, which is still illegal, you can only load the song onto a certain number of systems. When I purchase a CD, I get 44.1 quality, no DRM, and the ability to play the song anywhere. I'm awake, are you?
A cd is created at 44.1, you sample it at the rate of what ever you want. ie 128, 256, etc etc. How is this still pure 44.1??
It's a ripoff, like everything else in corporate america. If I pay a dollar a song, that's roughly the same price I'd pay to just buy a regular CD. I have to go to the store or buy it online, but I have the entire song, 320 kbps, and I can copy it, rip it burn it ad nauseum. These apple non-mp3s are about the same quality as an MP3, but I don't have nearly the flexibility of FAIR USE.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Sorry but to those of you who dont support Napster because it robs Musicians, how the hell can you support Apple? Its the same fcking thinng.
The Musicians are not the content owners. The Record Company are the content owners.
Musicians get robbed either way, so why not rob the RIAA.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It's only astroturfing if it's fake. If the posters genuinely like eMusic than it's grassroots. I use eMusic, and I really like it. And as other posters have noted a .emp file is a stub that directs the download manager to the mp3 files. Which of course have no DRM, and so you CAN play it in iTunes, put it on a iPod, and burn it to an audio CD. (or more importantly in my case, burn it to a data CD so that you I can listen to it in my car and my mp3 cd player.)
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
You haven't seen the explanations for how the industry really does this stuff, have you? Sure the exec will show up offering a "big fat contract" but the label recoups a lot of their costs.
So Wonderboyband gets a signing bonus of $100,000, plus an advance of $500,000 for their first album. But the label charges them $200,000 for use of a studio, plus another $300,000 for a music video for MTV. That leaves the band with just $100,000, which gets eaten by touring to promote the albums. Royalties don't help much since they're usually a few cents per cd.
So its perfectly possible for bands to make millions of dollars for their label while being forced to declare bankruptsy. This happened to TLS and Toni Braxton, who each earned something like 150 million dollars, each, for their record company but ended up in chapter 11.
That is why the inustry is "evil".
They take the risk of putting down hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to pay and promote a new artist that no one has heard of and just the year before was only singing in their church choir.
Feh. Their system is broken, but rather than fix the flaws they use the resulting problems as justification those flaws. The industry needs to get some thearapy for its one hit wonder fetish, and start promoting long running acts with reasonable contracts. Stop spending millions of dollars on a quick, hard push for the new album from Wonderboyband X and let album sales build.
Nonetheless, these companies own the copyrights. And as much as that fact totally blows - barring social upheaval - it ain't gonna change.
;-)
Therefore, introducing a new distribution format can only HELP the artist, especially indy's.
A new artist will think..."hmmm I sign with Time-Warner I get 1 cent and get exposure via the radio and adds in stores. I sign with Nettwerk, I get 5 cent and my tunes are purchased via iTunes just like the big boys. In 2005, 70% of tunes are bought via iTunes". New artist chooses indy and another nail in the coffin of the big boys.
Atleast, that's what I HOPE will happen.
No one cares about you. Move along. Don't use the iTunes music store. Does it bother you that other people aren't audio snobs and would rather listen to musich then equipment?
Very few people have mentioned this, and I think it bears notice.
The sales so far only represent Mac owners in the United States.
How much larger is the Windows user base? We're going to have a Windows version later this year.
How much larger is the international market? Apple's going to start taking International sales soon.
On top of that, Fortune magazine reports that Apple is in talks with AOL to have iTunes be the official music player/music store of America Online. How many more sales will that be?
We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, folks.
Really, really cool!
Bravo!
A good parody is hard to write...
Yes, Apple charges for major OS updates. OS X updates (1.x/2.x/3.x???) have been $129 but they don't have stupid registration restrictions like XP and recently (X2.x) added a 5 user "family license" for $199 (<$50 for an upgrade isn't bad considering a boxed version of Linux is $40 - $50). But look at what you get for that $129 compared to XP for $99+ $40 for the Plus! pack. OS X gives you iTunes, iMovie, iCal, CD and DVD Burning, iPhoto, iDVD and a full application development suite. To get the same out of Windows you need to purchase Visual Studio (if you're into that) for $1000, Outlook for $100, CD Creator (or similar) for $100, plus a DVD/movie editor for ???
I'd say OS X is a better deal than Windows...
Sure, assuming Apple don't end up with a near monopoly. This kind of thing suffers a classic network effect - can you see people joining 20 or 30 different download services to get their music? No, they'll use the ones that are most convenient
Apple with a monopoly? That'll never happen. If Apple ever has any real success, they'll oust Steve Jobs and put in some Pepsi-peddler to mess things up again...
- Vincit qui patitur.
Sample rate is 44.1 kilo sample per second. (KHz)
Bitrate is 128, 256, etc kilo bit per second (kbps).
These two has absolutely nothing to do with each other. You can have MP3 files with 44 KHz sample rate and 96 kbps. Or you can have 11Khz with 320 kbps.
The only thing that you can definitely tell is if any of these numbers go down, the sound quality suffers. Example:
44.1kHz, 128Kbps is better than 22KHz, 128kbps
and
44.1kHz, 256kbps is better than 44.1KHz, 128 kbps.
Think about it this way:
The horsepower rating and the torque rating of an engine is not related (per say), but it is "stronger" if both of those numbers are high, right?
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
i'm a DJ and a mac-head so i browsed and bought some tracks on IMS the other day (in general, a very nice service). the AAC's sounded fine on my mac but i only have a mid-level three-speaker system. the real test was to get them on a PA in a venue. i have been ripping 192k mp3's in LAME and am not convinced they are gonna be good enough to go live with. some PA's they sound fine, some PA's they sound like mp3's. i've started to go for 256k LAME rips now, and those are perfectly fine for live gigging.
hearing that 128k AAC's supposedly sound like 192k mp3's got me worried. hearing that transcoding an AAC to AIFF and then MP3 degraded sound quality really had me worried (that was the only way i could get the tracks into my DJ software).
i burned the AAC files to cd and they sounded like crap in my car. the low end was horribly distorted. i then ripped the cd to 256k mp3 using LAME and spun a few tracks at a gig. i have to say that over that PA they sounded near CD quality! so go figure. over all it looks like the AAC format has some legs, but it appears to really depend on your system. why my car system completely choked on those files i don't know.
"stupid stereotypes of what non-Mac users think or do just shows you to be a fully paid up drone"
Hardly, it's not MY analysis that matters here, it's that of the marketers at Apple and the RIAA members who have determined - presumably through market research - that Linux users are a dead loss, Windows users are marginal and Mac users are MOST LIKELY to pay for their product. From my point of view the 'moral objection' to paying is a logical one, but then I managed to get replacement CDs from a few record companies after a fire by having receipts that proved I owned them, and insisting that the copyright deal cuts both ways. I'm a long time Mac user, but I don't have much time for the iTMS in it's current form - the DRM restrictions are completely unacceptable to me and I'm not convinced that compressed audio is worth uncompressed money.
That was classic intercourse!
from "7500 songs in your pocket" to "$7,500 bucks in ours"
Comparing one part of Apple's annual revenue to the entirety of Dell's or Wal*Mart's annual revenue hardly puts things into proper perspective...
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
What if your hard drive crashes in your IPOD or something, and you have 7500 (= $7500) songs in it? Future Microsoft Tunes2003 "switch" commercial: "And my ipod went like BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, and all my tunes were gone - it was like, a bummer"
Note to self: Don't comment on Slashdot for at least an hour after waking up.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
the idea behind bringing music out on Tuesday comes from the charts. when Billboard mag comes out on saturday, they set the type for the charts on tuesday morning. this means that what gets "charted" is only what is at the top on Monday.. so new music is (usually) released on tuesday, so they have the maximum amount of time to crawl up the charts until next monday..
in a (slightly) related note.. all those chart shows that you hear on radio (Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40, and Casey Kasem) are usually in the radio stations by thursday in CD format.. even if they seem to have call-ins and stuff.. its ALL done on CD.. i used to work for a radio station in sri lanka and some of my most boring memories are of babysitting a CD player on saturday morning as it played the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40
in fact thanks to time zones etc, sri lankans heard the top 40 WELL before the rest of the world.. (until those damned aussies started playing RDWT40).. 8-)
Suchetha
on the other more on-topic side, kudos to steve jobs for actually coming up with a realistic model for selling music online, this is probably not the end of the RIAA, it may be a dying dinosaur, but do you REALLY want to be under a dying dinosaur?... at worst youa re going to get ground into the topsoil during its death throes, at best you are going to get buried under a couple hudred tons of rotting dinosaur.. but lets face it.. this system is a realistic hope for the Industry to bow out gracefully.. whether they take it, or continue to fight a losing battle is entirely up to them..
OTOH i intend to keep downloading music off Kazaa Lite simply because i live in a country where almost the only way to get software/music is via bootleg CD's (you can get official game Cd's for some games but everything else is bootleg.. usually available within 1 week of release at about $0.75 per CD).. so no matter what my money goes to pirates
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Not much DRM on the CDs so far...at least here in the States. It's still coming.
If you want to hear high quality music unenbumbered by DRM, the best thing to do is to listen to some good old-fashioned analog live music.
Throw a dollar in the tip jar if you like what you hear.
We're sorry, the phone number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try your call again
How so? You can use a RW to record an album, if you want, then reuse the disc.
Really? I thought CD-RW discs developed uncorrectable errors at the C2 level after about 50 write cycles. The oft-quoted "1000 writes" figure apparently includes writes that contain errors corrected at the third level of error correction used only in CD-ROM that is not used for Red Book audio or VCD video, which use only C1 and C2 error correction. Slashdot did an article on that but I can't seem to find it because I forget which words the article used.
BTW, my family has four CD players, and not one has a problem with CD-RW discs. I use CD-RW for proofing mix CDs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'd like to see Apple run their own streaming services or contract out to people like radiostorm and integrate it better into itunes so if I am listening during work, I can click on a link during the song play, and add the song to my basket, and pay/download it when I get home.
And what a perfect marketing feedback to the effectiveness of streaming radio to drive record sales. You can, if done right, tell how well every song is doing by who buys it as a result of listening to the streaming stations based on the sales that they drive.
Then maybe this stupid idea of streaming stations having to PAY to get people exposed to new music will die a rightful death.
the ACC seems to be missing everything above 16Khz
Well so are most MP3s. If there's something significant going on in the treble, especially in 8000-12000 Hz, most people can't hear the difference between the original and the same thing with a low-pass filter at 16000 Hz. Things like this are part of the masking model that underlie lossy codecs such as Ogg, AAC, and MP3.
Will I retire or break 10K?
aka It's all about the Back Catalouge. This is not just a business model for an era when promotion aside the costs of recording and distributing music have dramatically shrunk. We are entering the _th decade of recorded music. With that much music out there and a global market it makes more sense to charge a dime a tune. Or at the very least charge this rate for the older music. It will encourage people to expand there musical boundaries. Copyright aside why pay the same for a 30 years old Door tune as the latest Dave Matthews song? Perpetual copyright doesn't encourage anything but sitting on your arse on a beach and collecting money for something you did eons go. My point is that not only will they sell more music with a lower price point,but as the body of recorded music grows you will have no choice but to sell for less.
But if you convert the file to an mp3 or burn it to a CD, your name won't appear.
I would moderate you up if you could go past a five. That is so hilarious and well-written... I'm very pleased to read it.
Please provide evidence of spyware or DRM in eMusic services. Running lsof in conjunction with the Linux download manager shows nothing out of the ordinary when retrieving MP3s from eMusic's web site. By out of the ordinary I mean there are no attempts at accessing parts of the filesystem outside of the tmp designated download directories. Also, please supply links to evidence of astro-turfing (sure you're not talking about Apple here?).
I still haven't figured out how any DRM measure can get around the issue of just hitting record in another application (not sure what Mac's have to offer), as long as you have a full duplex sound card, and saving the recording in any format you want.... Anyone care to clarify? I mean, it should be a near perfect reproduction of the original, DRM riddled song, since it never leaves the sound card, shouldn't it? Or are they just relying on "security through obscurity" to hide this method from the general public?
I was out of town and read an article in the newspaper on Friday about iTunes. It was either USA Today or the Washington Post (I can't find the article on-line). The author stated that even $0.99 is too much for music and did some calculations and came up with the ideal price for music, which, I believe was around $0.18.
But if you convert the file to an mp3 or burn it to a CD, your name won't appear.
::shrug::
So, take a digital sampling of analog electrical signals and lose some 'data' due to the A->D conversion. Compress this in a lossy manner to AAC. Sell to people online.
Now, you download this, and extract the compressed file to raw (or wav or whatever) and burn it to a cd to strip the DRM. This might still sound tolerable, you only lost info twice.
Now rip the raw bits from the CD, no loss for that, bits are bits. Encode in a lossy manner to mp3. That's three times you lost information.
How close are you to the original?
So much for audio fidelity going up over time, the push lately is to lower quality via lossy formats.
You should be able to fit around 120 uncompressed CD's on an 80gb drive now. Compared to the cost of the CDs, the drive's cost is almost negligable, and it only has to deliver 150K/second for cd audio.
For people who own less than 120 CDs, like myself and possibly a good portion of the population, why not just keep everything around uncompressed, or use a lossless compression algorithm? At least this way you could make *exact* duplicates of your CDs should your originals die.
That's around $1,200 worth of CDs, at a low $10 a pop, that will fit uncompressed on the 80gb drive.
This is pretty much what I do now. When I buy a new cd, I go home and rip to my hard drive, then throw the original in the car. If it gets all scratched up, I don't care and burn a new copy. No big deal, just as good as the orignal.
Certainly as drives always get bigger and cheaper, this will be even more viable.
I guess do whatever suits you best.
man tunefs | grep fish
at least, if you sing it out loud like i did.
are welcome according to Jobs. The only reason why there weren't any at the time of launch were due to time constraints. I am sure Apple won't have a problem getting more artists and labels to join the service.
I can't speak for data in files that you rip yourself, but there's nothing stopping people from putting these up on the p2p networks and everyone else playing them. It's only the purchased songs that have any DRM in them.
That said, I'm sure that there are some identifiers in the the songs you rip that will help whoever track down who they "belong" too. Of course, there's always going to be a tool to hack this out or replace it wif something less personal.
Just another note, the iPod doesn't do any authentication, so I'm thinking the data isn't scambled in any fashion. Just iTunes will restrict transferring files to the iPod. I haven't played too much with things, but I'm sure there's plenty of little backdoors. You could get songs from your friend, authenticate your computer, transfer them to your iPod, and then deauthenticate your computer. The songs are worthless anywhere outside of your iPod (and if you lost them, you probably couldn't get them back on without a hack or two), but probably still playable.
You can burn them to CD in straight audio format (aiff), no DRM included. After that you can do what you want, straight to mp3...
Straight to terrible sounding music files, you mean. You do not want to ever transcode a file from lossy format to lossy format. It makes it sound really bad.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
I should perhaps clarify: For me I can't see spending money when I can download free original music of comparable quality on mp3.com or some local band's site. I might pay $.10 for a song if I really really liked it...that's just it's value to me. Although honestly, I can;t think of many songs that are worth that much to me...If I were to consider my entire music collection, I don't think EVERY song I have is worth $.10 The Music industry won't change to the value being in the performance and not the digital media? I think they will have to...you'll see "Rock Stars" start to get paid like classical musicians. The money is mostly in performances. It's silly to argue the point...When it's necessary, someone will build a device that intercepts the signals going to the wireless speakers, and convert THAT back to a compressed digital format. And that will be impossible to stop. The music industry isn't going to change just to meet the demands of a very small segment of the market that are total cheapskates. Hmmm, ask Red Hat what thye think about that.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
I think there may be a fourth type who still likes to purchase authentic albums complete with the liner notes, artwork, and uncompressed audio. For some reason downloaded music feels like a cheap knockoff to me, even if it is rightly paid for. It's just not the real thing. Sure, I'll rip the songs right away to mp3 for convenience, mostly for playing on my computer, but I like having the "real" copy. But, this is coming from someone who still buys vinyl records (yes they still make them... mostly indie labels). Maybe the real problem here is that at 35 I'm already an old fart.
Then there will never be a gyorg downloading from them.
I do security
In my view, this is the most significant innovation in the iTMS concept -- and it will have deep consequences too. If Apple manages to bring iTMS to PCs, it will create a market that is a direct competitor to the good old music distribution channels, including online stores.
My guess is that it will not take long until the street price for CDs gets lowered too. Then, I predict, the crisis of the music industry will evaporate.
For people who own less than 120 CDs, like myself and possibly a good portion of the population, why not just keep everything around uncompressed, or use a lossless compression algorithm? At least this way you could make *exact* duplicates of your CDs should your originals die.
Or, even better, why not store high bitrate lossily-compressed files (say ~200kbps vorbis files) on your hard drive so you can fit more on it, or use the space to store other stuff? You might not be able to make bit-for-bit duplicates, but you can certainly make duplicates that are close enough that you'll never be able to hear the difference. For the fidelity-paranoiacs there's also FLAC.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Nice FUD job.
.Mac that it gave the whole community the cramps.
What's FUD about wondering whether Apple policy will change? In case you hadn't noticed, there's a reason for all the 'reserves the right to change...' clauses in legal documents. Try guaranteeing someone something in perpituity and you'll soon find out what I mean.
You ignored the main point, though. Everything you buy from ITMS should be turned into an ordinary audio CD within minutes of downloading it. To do anything else is to be careless with your purchases. At that point, who cares if Apple blows up?
You obviously don't have an iPod, otherwise you wouldn't be going on about how any music you've bought 'should' (who says 'should', exactly, apart from you?!) be burned to a cumbersome and rapidly-becoming-outdated format.
Yes, we should make backups. No, those backups should not be in Red Book format on low-capacity media.
Um. Actually, you've got that totally wrong. There were a few IDIOTS who assumed that iTools would be free forever, and they made such a stink about
Unless you've got hard numbers to demonstrate your position, I think it's reasonable to think that most people assume continuation of the status quo by default. Don't forget, assumptions are often passive: if people had *thought* about whether or not the service would remain free, in full knowledge of how the economics of free services work, they might have thought differently; but if they didn't think it would change, they assumed it would remain the same.
No, it IS a fuckin absurd question, because the answer DOES NOT MATTER. If Apple goes away TODAY I'll still have perpetual fair use of all the music I bought from them, because it's all on CD.
No, it's not. The Apple music store does not sell CDs.
If you choose to handle your music differently, then it's YOUR problem if you get caught with your pants down. It's not Apple's fault at all.
As previously explained, it's you who chooses to handle his music differently.
Let me draw an analogy so that even someone as stupid as yourself might be able to understand. Would you play a game of Russian Roulette with me, if you had to hold the gun to your head on your turn, but I was able to point it at the sky on my turn? No? Why not? If you don't want to die, that's YOUR problem. You just need to re-adjust your spiritual outlook so that death isn't such a big deal.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
I'm surprised your post got past the Slashdot lameness filter.
"You shouldn't do business with Apple because X might happen"
Point me to anywhere in my post which said, "You shouldn't do business with Apple". I was simply wondering about the implications of Apple's DRM, just like the previous poster.
I've got two of them, both first-generation 5 GB models. I bought one for myself and one for my girlfriend.
Aha... now we're getting to the root of the problem. Your girlfriend dumped you (hence you have two iPods, rather than one).
Oh, great.
Oh, great?! What on earth does that mean? "Oh, great... someone who thinks I have to explain when I say, 'You should', rather than just simply stating it."?
There's nothing cumbersome or outdated about CD's. Nothing at all.
Really? Show me the portable CD player which can fit into pockets as small as the iPod can. Now show me the number of CDs I have to carry for the equivalent number of hours of music on an iPod. Now eat your hat and shut up, you poor fool.
NO, I will NOT use the OBVIOUSLY CORRECT way to protect my audio investment, because that way is CUMBERSOME and RAPIDLY becoming OUTDATED!" Whatever, idiot.
That it is obviously correct to you is more a reflection of your idiocy than mine. See below.
If you buy music from ITMS, burn that music to CD. If you don't, you're just a fucking moron, first of all, and more importantly you have no right to complain if your hard drive goes poof or whatever and you can't get your tunes back. Okay?
Oh, dear. What you have failed to understand is that burning the music to CD is not a backup. Or at least, not in the way that you mean. Burning the AAC files to an ISO9660 CD constitutes some sort of backup, but that's not what you're talking about, because all the DRM issues still remain. But burning an audio CD is not a backup, because if I lose the originals, re-making them from the CD will cause a lot of degredation in the audio.
Do you get it yet? Or do you need a brain transplant?
In the absence of hard numbers, it's wrong to assume ANYTHING, particularly when what you're assuming serves no purpose other than to back up your FUCKING STUPID argument.
If you want to hear something really dumb, look within yourself. It's wrong to assume anything?! Yes, you idiot, but that doesn't mean to say we don't make assumptions. Go and look up the word 'passive' if you still don't get it.
FUCKING DICKHEAD!!!!! CHRIST! 1. Buy music. 2. Download music. 3. Burn music to FUCKING CD GODDAMNIT!
"The Apple music store does not sell CDs," he said with a slight lisp and an unmistakable air of superiority.
FUCK YOU!
Eloquently put. But I don't think you'd need to swear so much if you were right and I were wrong.
Okay... what the FUCK is your "analogy" and I use that word VERY FUCKING LOOSELY supposed to have to DO WITH ANYTHING?
You're right, it was a bit optimistic to expect it to make anything clearer to someone such as yourself.
The pertinent part of the analogy was not bullets, or games. It was the absurdness of the assertion that if you choose not to burn your music to CD, that's YOUR problem. Similarly if you don't want to die, that's YOUR problem.
When something bad happens--you drop your hard drive, or Apple goes out of business, or whatthefuckever else you cocksuckers are whining about--you will have no one to blame but yourself.
When you drop your hard drive, and you make MP3s of the CDs you burned from AACs, and those MP3s sound terrible, you will have no-one to blame but yourself.
I, on the other hand, burned my music to CD. I got it (1) cheap, (2) fast, (3) conveniently, and (4) permanently. Anything else is just YOU being an IDIOT.
Heal thyself! Allow me to point out the obvious:
1. Cheap. Not buying blank CDs is cheaper than buy
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
$0.18? Why that number? Do you remember any of the justification for it? If not, it sounds just as impotent as the argument that music should be free.
There are royalties to be paid, encoding costs, labor, recording costs, bandwidth, database maintenance, etc. The cost of printed materials and shipping (and all labor costs associated with that) have been removed. So yeah, an entire album should cost less than a store-bought $18.00 album. So you're saying a 10 song album should cost $1.80? I realize the price of store bought albums is ridiculous, but I don't think reducing price to 10% of where it was is quite realistic. I don't think that price takes into account all of the factors that go into pricing music.
Remember, there are A LOT of people involved in the production of an album. Not just the artists, producers and record executives. There are secretaries, janitors, print production people... etc, etc. They have salaries and hourly wages that need to be paid and these songs contribute to that.
Pooty tweet
Unfortunately, I don't remember the justification for it. It was something about royalties being fairly low (12 cents maybe?) and the extra giving enough of a profit to labels and Apple. I'll try to dig up the article at my library. I am positive that it was Friday's USA Today or Washington Post, because those were the only newspapers I read during my trip.
I still seriously think the article didn't take into consideration all of the costs that go into producing an album. Building leases, salaries, utilities, insurance, etc. All of these things are built into the price of music.
That said, I'm sure Apple will lower the prices eventually. They usually get a pretty penny from early adopters and then lower prices once demand starts slipping.
Pooty tweet
This is Apple Computer selling music, isn't it? Not Apple Corp...
I think I understand a little more now than I did when I last replied to you. Previously I was under the impression that you weren't fucking your own mother, now I see that I was wrong.
Have you actually DONE this? Have you actually burned an M4P to CD and then re-ripped it?
Yes. The re-rip sounds about as good as a 160Mbps MP3 - so, on a decent system, pure vocals have slightly metallic formants, and instruments like cymbals suffer clearly audible degradation.
ANYBODY who would keep data that he BOUGHT AND PAID FOR in a MAGNETIC FORMAT ONLY is a FUCKING IDIOT.
You must never have heard of tapestreamers? Or perhaps you are unaware of how they work? Actually I keep virtually all of my backups in a magnetic format, not on tape, but on multiple hard drives.
Yeah, and THROWING YOUR MONEY AWAY is cheaper than spending TWENTY FIVE FUCKING CENTS and FIVE FUCKING MINUTES to back up an album of M4P's. But that doesn't mean it's smart, or even acceptable. It's just fucking STUPID.
Oh, good point, well made. I see you either have less than twenty five cents to your name, or you can't do basic arithmetic. And you are obviously the king of keeping careful backups, I must be mad if I'd prefer to keep them on a hard drive rather than on 25 cent CDs, which never, ever fail.
Fuck off and die.
You'll be dead way before me. I take life a little more easily than you do.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Going directly to the artists? Who is going to pay for the studio time? If the artists found a way to cut out the record companies all together and record their own music, that may work but who has that kind of time/money/initiative? These is a reason the record companies have this hold on the market, they control the flow of what we want. , and rightfully so. In reality, unless bands start their own labels, there is no way to cut them out of the deal. Alot of mainstream bands began such an undertaking and some have been quite successfull. But the majority who try this, end up being bought out.
You cant cut out the guy who rightfully has a stake at the revenues.