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iTunes Music Store - 'Coolest Invention of 2003'
Pingsmoth writes "Time Magazine has just named the iTunes Music Store as their Top Coolest Invention of 2003. Also among this year's favorites are 'fish-skin bikinis, a new love drug, the car that parks itself, and the invisible man'."
Making some digital media available online is not new.
I remember having the possibility to purchase media online long before this.
Now, if, of course, having these integrated in iTunes is cool, I somehow doubt it is that "cutting edge" (even though I am a Mac enthusiast and I love OSX).
Trolling using another account since 2005.
iTunes integrates a music store with a music player. Ooh. Maybe I'm missing something because I'm only using it on Windows, but it doesn't exactly wow me the way I expected the 'Coolest Invention of 2003' to.
Frankly, I'm even disappointed with the Segway. They shouldn't be handing out this invention to anything that doesn't have wings at this point.
This counts as an "invention"?
Look, the absolutely coolest invention of 2003 is the USB wristwatch. My watch holds all the essential stuff I used to keep on a diskette. Nothing helps bonding like showing people that your watch can store porn. Or a PowerPoint presentation. Or your latest baby photos. Whatever they need: my watch has it.
But iTunes? I can't carry it on my wrist.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Much as I like iTunes... spot the AOL Time Warner and iTunes connection.
my favorite would have to be the snorkel fm radio. Of course, the wet babe in the bikini may be influencing my opinion.
* Especially if you've been facing imminent extinction for some 20-odd years.
A pocket nuclear fusion reactor is an invention, a biplane made out of recycled cheese is an invention, a new kind of breaking system for cars is an invention.
iTunes is a store. It happens to be on the internet. That's not an invention, no matter how well executed it is.
Beep beep.
Must have slept in longer this morning then I thought. Good thing 2003 is over. Those last 2 months went buy really quickly. Nothing significant must have been invented...
iTunes for Windows is my official new favorite MP3 player.
I am proceeding to rip all my 500+ CDs into iTunes. With one click.
Winamp has served me well for many, years, but it lacks the snazzy playlist/library editor, and the ability to transfer music from CD, to the hard drive, tag it, and add it to my playlist at the click of a button. Literally.
Sure, it's a little slow, but who cares. Its functionality is unmatched. The music store is snazzy, too.
Good move, Apple, with iTunes for Windows. You may see a future Mac / iPod customer soon...
Sorry, but something that gives you a longer erection is hardly the successor to MDMA.
Peace and love, y'all
Its only fault seems to be that it doesn't come in sizes for women that actually eat solid food.
While writing a little multithreaded print workflow app in AppleScript for the client, I struck upon an idea: what if I could expose the functions of iTunes using AppleScript in a client/server type arrangement, and then make those functions accessible across the network to a Debian system running a modified dselect iTunes browser? AppleScript is pretty powerful, as any seasoned Mac user will attest, so it was quick work to create a handy little mutithreaded fully re-entrant AppleScript based server for the core iTunes functions (load song, play song, browse playlist, buy song etc).
The next part was to patch dselect on the Linux side so it could connect to my AppleScript server/wrapper on the Mac. I'd previously extended dselect with a Scheme-scriptable plugin, so it only took me a day or two to modify dselect with some Scheme macros so that it emulated to look and feel of iTunes (using ASCII art of course!!), but accessing the actual iTMS functions though the network exposed AppleScript..errr..script.
It worked a treat!! It is now a simple matter of running dselect on my Debian box to browse the iTMS, as long as the Mac over in the corner running the AppleScript wrapper is turned on of course. I have actually implemented a direct USB->USB cross over connection to get around bottlenecking problems with our Ethernet so I don't have to put up with skipping in iTMS MP3 playback. Now it works great!!!
The final step will be to patch apt-get with iTMS interface functionality...then buying my favorite music legally will only be an apt-get install Justin-Timberlake away!
Which is nice.
Much as I think Apple have created an amazing proof of concept in the Apple Music Store I am not convinced it qualifies as an invention.. Downloading music off the internet is not new and paying for it is not new either...
It's not that they did it. It's that they did it RIGHT. It's an elegant solution which people actually enjoy throwing money at.
Now if they radically opened up the distribution to bypass the majors... now that would be rather revolutionary... but we'll have to see how far they take it..
Hello, we're Apple and we want to sell your music
Surely that is the coolest thing in the world, I've seen the adverts, its lets me do more with less, I can consolidate all my domains down to just 4. AND I can then slide.
Microsoft Server 2003 is the coolest invention of the year, and MacDonalds are a healthy food option.
Wha' da' ya mean dominated by advertising ? Me and Mary Beth were only on Jerry Springer twice.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
One unknown record label that seems to be a refuge for bands that aren't good enough for the big time isn't gonna cut it. Imagine a grocery store that only carried generic house-brand items. Wouldn't be very popular or successful, would it.
iTMS is successful because they've made the proper deals with the right product sources, much like any other successful retailer has to do.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
From the article:
"At most, Jobs is left with a dime per track, so even $500 million in annual sales would add up to a paltry $50 million profit. Why even bother?"
Excuse me? A paltry $50 MILLION dollar profit?!?
'Paltry' and '$50 million dollar profit' don't belong in the same sentence.
This mentality is what's screwing the entire downloadable music process. It's not about whether it's profitable, it's about whether it's profitable enough.
Just for them saying that, I'm going to download some MP3s tonight. WTF...
Tal
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
I can see people having trouble with Time's use of the word "invention". It's their language, not Apple's. So many have used patents in an abusive way, it's easy to get into a defensive posture on even hearing the word invention. In the context of the Time article, "creative consumer offering" would better fit what they are talking about.
A product is more than a list of features. It's also about philosophy. Fairness, paying attention to the overall experience, and caring about behind the scenes detail is all part of this. Most consumers aren't likely to know that Apple is paying for the high-quality Fraunhofer IIS MP3 codec to let them use it for free in iTunes. Don't expeect to see things like that from MS/Napster. As any Linux user can tell you, beauty is more than skin deep.
Ah, those shameless Europeans. :-)
And now, with fish-leather thongs, I can see millions of women saying "no, honestly honey, the smell's from my bikini."
Start a happiness pandemic
Actually, record contracts are geographically specific. Contractually, a record label gets the rights to sell recordings on behalf an artist in one specific country or group of countries. For example, the rapper Dizzee Rascal is on XL Records in the UK, but will be on Matador in the US. Since labels are responsible for promoting and manufacturing records, they usually limit themselves to a certain region. It makes sense in terms of physical recordings being sold through shops. I have to agree that such a system doesn't make sense online. However, you run into the same issues with books and electronics as well.
This doesn't make the U.S. the hub for all music. In fact, there is a considerable amount of international music that never makes it to the States. There are even bands from Canada that don't make it to the U.S.
"It's a disarmingly simple concept: sell songs in digital format for less than a buck and let buyers play them whenever and wherever they like--as long as it's on an Apple iPod."
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Again, wrong.
You can tell the author of this article never actally used iTunes or the iTunes music store. The iPod is completely optional.
I don't have an iPod and I've been using iTunes for years. I will probably never get an iPod. Still, I'm a daily user of iTunes.
It was my fault for reading this silly article. I mean, this is Time magazine. What do they know about technology? Just enough to write some copy. The harm here is that it really short-sells iTunes AND the iTunes Music Store by harping on an optional component.
--Richard
So...
> 1. It's hardware dependant.
If by that you mean that it runs on hardware, then yes. It is dependent on you having a computer. It supports Windows on any supported platform. AMD or Intel. It supports any Mac capable of running OS X. Meaning, G3, G4 or G5.
If you mean iPod dependent then you are full of crap. Perhaps you haven't actually tried it?
> 2. Until recently it was Mac OS dependent too.
This is my favorite complaint. "They did it wrong cause it USED TO have a problem." Jesus, son.
> 3. Terms of licensing are high with the music
> labels...recent articles suggest iMusic is a
> loss-run enterprise intended to drive iPod sales
> (see #1).
And your final complaint is based on an unfounded rumor...
Congratulations! You win!
Justin Dubs
using this to sell iPods isn't exactly the greatest idea, IMO
I'd trust Steve Job's business sense over yours any day unless you've managed to start a company as successful as Apple and then managed to save it from the administrative blunders of the next few CEOs.
The iPod is now Apple's highest margin product. If they sell $2000 of computer or $2000 of iPods, they make more money on the iPods. The iPod is the most popular portable mp3 player on the planet, so Apple must be doing something right with their sales strategies.
The majority of your 99 cents goes to the RIAA. I highly doubt that the RIAA trickles any of that money down to the labels who will spread it out amongst their artists.
The RIAA's cut is exactly $0.00. The money goes to the label, whose job it is to pay the artists. If an artist doesn't want to deal with a big label, they can always use CDBaby and put their music on the iTMS and get a very large cut of the profits.
t'nera semordnilap
Just because some of you prefer to use lower quality software and non-intuitive buggy crap does't mean that us Mac users are retards. I know fellow mac users that could run circles in unix knowledge and/or programming knowledges and I also know mac users who know nothing beyond clicking their icon in the dock. Truth is..you can go any way you want in the Mac world, even if you just want something that 'just works'.