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Steve Jobs and the State of Legal Music Downloads
An anonymous reader writes "Rolling Stone has published an interview with Steve Jobs about the current state of the music industry. He is a smart man, that guy. 'When we first went to talk to these record companies -- about eighteen months ago -- we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."'"
Smart guys. If you can play it, you can copy it. Either someone breaks the copy protection (Jon J) or you plug a digital out into a digital in.
Trouble is the record companies know this but still keep trying which just makes it harder and more frustrating for the avarage guy/girl who wants to listen to ligit tracks on a mp3 player.
Actual current numbers for the sub services:
Rhapsody (from Real Networks): 250,000
MusicNet: 175,000
Napster (formerly pressplay): 80,000
MusicMatch MX: 150,000
Total here is over 600,000. These services tend to run about $10 per month, yielding a total revenue of over $6 million per month across all services. iTunes has sold 20 million songs in 7 months, or less than $3 million in revenue. Profit margins on subscriptions are higher as well.
I use Rhapsody and it kicks iTunes ass - there's just no comparison, given my listening habits (I'm almost always online). Looks like there are plenty of people who agree with me.
Also, don't forget that iTunes originally had no sharing limit. People were abusing this to copy music P2P-style, so it was removed.
here
of course you cant to most of that with cd's... but the labels at least have to try.
2 1337 4 u!
RealPlayer sucks, Real sucks as a company, and their RealOne subscription service is worthless. However Real had nothing to do with the development of Rhapsody. They acquired Listen.com, which developed Rhapsody, earlier this year and (so far) Real hasn't changed anything. I started using Rhapsody back when Listen was an independent company.
Thanks, Dr. Richard Paley. BTW, the iron core of the moon still reverberates with the original aramaic words that created the universe.
The key generation algorithm for Windows XP has been reverse engineered. That amounts to a 'crack' as far as I'm concerned.
He changed the computer industry. Now he's after the music business
By Jeff Goodell
When Steve Jobs cruises into the airy reception area on the Apple Computer campus in Cupertino, California, on a recent morning, nobody pays much attention to him, even though he's the company's CEO. He's wearing shorts, a black T-shirt and running shoes. Tall and a little gawky, Jobs has a fast, loping walk, like a wolf in a hurry. These days Jobs seems eager to distance himself from his barefoot youth -- who was that crazy kid who once called the computer "a bicycle for the mind"?-- and driven to prove himself as a clear-thinking Silicon Valley capitalist.
Jobs punches the elevator button to the fourth floor, where his small office is located. For a man who is as responsible as anyone for the wonder and chaos of Silicon Valley, Jobs' view of it all is surprisingly modest: shrubby treetops extending out toward San Francisco Bay, the distant whoosh of the freeway below.
There is nothing modest, however, about Apple's recent accomplishments. In the past few months, Jobs' company has rolled out the PowerMac G5, arguably the fastest desktop computer on the planet; has redesigned the Powerbook and iBook laptops; and introduced Panther, a significant upgrade of the OS X operating system. But Jobs' biggest move, and certainly the one closest to his heart, has been Apple's plunge into the digital-music revolution. It began two years ago, with the introduction of the iPod portable music player, which may be the only piece of Silicon Valley hardware that has ever come close to matching the lust factor of the original Macintosh. Then, in April of this year, Apple introduced its digital jukebox, the iTunes Music Store, first for the Mac, and then, in October, for Windows. The result: 20 million tracks downloaded, close to a million and a half iPods sold, aggressive deals with AOL and Pepsi, and lots of good PR for Apple as the savior of the desperately fucked-up music industry.
Still, Jobs' bet on digital music is a hugely risky move in many ways, not only because powerhouses such as Dell and Wal-Mart are gunning for Apple (and Microsoft will be soon, as well), but because success may depend on how well Jobs, a forty-eight-year-old billionaire, is able to understand and respond to the fickle music-listening habits of eighteen-year-olds in their college dorms.
Do you see any parallel between the music revolution today and the PC revolution in 1984?
Obviously, the biggest difference is that this time we're on Windows. Other than that, I'm not so sure. It's still very early in the music revolution. Remember, there are 10 billion songs that are distributed in the U.S. every year -- legally -- on CDs. So far on iTunes, we've distributed about 16 million [as of October]. So we're at the very beginning of this.
Bringing iTunes to Windows was obviously a bold move. Did you do much hand-wringing over it?
I don't know what hand-wringing is. We did a lot of thinking about it. The biggest risk was that we saw people buying Macs just to get their hands on iPods. Taking iPods to Windows - that was the big decision. We knew once we did that that we were going to go all the way. I'm sure we're losing some Mac sales, but half our sales of iPods are to the Windows world already.
How did the record companies react when you approached them about getting onboard with Apple?
There are a lot of smart people at the music companies. The problem is they're not technology people. The good music companies do an amazing thing. They have people who can pick the person who's gonna be successful out of 5,000 candidates. It's an intuitive process. And the best music companies know how to do that with a reasonably high success rate.
I think that's a good thing. The world needs more smart editorial these days. The problem is that that has nothing to do with technology. When the Internet came along and Napster came alo
Apple allows you to preview for 30 seconds most, if not all, songs before you buy.
>Add to that I live in canada, so I can't purchase music with these services (yes I tried).
Don't worry about it then. In Canada you can just copy your neighbours CD collection. Don't forget to let the RIAA know you're exercising your rights.
Have fun!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Ever heard about iRATE?
Free, legal music downloads... it's even tuned to your taste! And yes, it does run on linux (and on Windows, and on MacOSX).
OK, maybe the interface isn't so sexy as iTune's... but it's still worth a try, imho. It worked great for me :)
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
coloured vinyl. god i love coloured vinyl
It wasn't just coloured! The classic Bauhaus album "Burning From The Inside" had this incredible picture from its cover somehow "imprinted" (I have no idea how it was achieved from the techical point of view) on the whole surface of the 12" disc. It was an unforgettable experience, just just watching it rotating on the turntable while listening to "She's in parties".
atually, the vinyl industry is a good lead to follow. remember the home taping "debacle" of the late 70's/early 80's ("home taping is killing the recording industry!"). the labels responded with lots of added features to get you to buy the platter...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the tape industry killed the vinyl industry regardless.
The home taping industry didn't take off for several reasons - you had to know someone local with an original to make a dupe and the quality of the dupe was always far inferior to the original. With P2P, the ease of moving files around the world using the internet, and the relative high quality of mp3s, most of what held back the home taping industry has now been solved.
Adding addition content to CDs may work, but most of the people I know of who download music do so simply because they enjoy the music - they couldn't care less about the bands themselves, special promos or added artwork.
i have lots of kiddie picture discs with pinocchio and donald duck etc. on the entire surface of the disc.
i also have these really old acetate 78 10" records that had animations on the label that you could watch with a little mirror zoetrope that sat on top of the spinning record.
also there are weird ways of having two distinct grooves on a record so that depending on where you put the needle down a different song plays. tool did this as well as numerous underground resistance recordings.
clear vinyl is nifty too.
At least one big-name record producer and one musician will vehemently disagree with you on that point...
" Why not offer something for $20/month that lets you download all the music you want"
I'm doing that more or less right now. It's called Rhapsody. I'm paying $10 a month and I can play any of their 300,000 songs whenever I want. For $1, I can burn a song to disc.
There are a few cons to it, though:
- I can't keep the music I download. If I unsubscribe, I cannot play the music anymore.
- It uses a custom client. Linux users need not apply.
- Not every song is available for purchase, but on the plus side at least I can listen to it.
- I *must* be on-line to listen to the music.
- No uploading to your music player, unless ya burn the CD and re-encode it. Ouch.
Those negatives sound bad, right? So why do I do it?
- $10 a month is less than one-album a month. No more CD purchases for me.
- The search engine's great. I'm able to find just about any song that intrigues me, and have it playing within moments. It's pretty good at helping me find other music I might like as well. It has everything neatly cross-referenced. "If you like Prodigy, you might like Chemical Brothers", etc.
- The internet thing kind of sucks (no taking my music on the road), but most of my 16 waking hours are nearby a net connection. I have wireless set up at home so it is not often that I find myself unable to listen to the music.
- Fast fast fast. It's not streaming in the RealPlayer sense. It starts downloading into a cache, and once a few blocks are down it starts playing. Rhapsody, by default, sets up a 1 gig cache to store the music in. So unless you have a LOT of songs on your playlist, they don't disappear. So it's not like you have to have broadband to listen to the music. (Though it helps for the initial download.)
It sounds like this might be the service you're looking for. I can tell you I'm happy with it. If I unsubscribe, I'm really going to miss it. You may find yourself in the same situation. If you go to www.listen.com you can try it free for a week.
Cheers
"Derp de derp."
yes, everything gets taken out of the advance
It doesn't matter if it's Slashdot, CNN, Vogue, or the Weekly World News, every media outlet puts spin on every story, whether it's conscious or not. It is far easier to tell what that spin is here on slashdot than most other media outlets, because you can go look at their comments and stories and see what they've said in the past so trivially.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Personally I don't think this one works. Here's why:
The $1million dollar advance is the amount the company are willing to invest in breaking you into the market. This is recording costs, living costs, equipment costs, the manager's 20% and, by far the biggest of all, marketing costs. That;s what Jobs missed, I think. The marketing budget is included in the advance.
What a lot of artists don't realise is that most of the $1million they think they just got paid is already earmarked for someone else. The biggest rock band in the UK at the moment spent just 20,000 on their platinum selling No. 1 album. Even the bigger bands would have to sit around and think hard about ways to spend more than $100,000 on an album.
What a lot of artists also fail to appreciate fully is that the term is 'advance' and not payment. The whole way it works is that the artist will not see a penny in revenue from the company until their sales have paid back the advance.
I think a lot of the problem with records companies these days is that they're regularly chucking huge marketing budgets at mediocre acts that the the public wouldn't otherwise be interested in. They're selling music like movies.. hype it enough and enough people will buy the CD to make back the marketing budget. Pay-ola and all the rest don't help the bottom line much either.
With any luck the sea-change in music distribution & production that we're seeing now will help a few of the better bands and artists find audiences that the majors just wouldn't know how to pursuse and we'll have more choice as a result.
Here's a link to the text of The Manual - How to have a No.1 Record by a couple of guys who did just that a couple of times over here in the UK following this system. They also gained notoriety for allegedly burning 1million in a publicity stunt. Called the KLF... it's bit long in the tooth now but still very interesting and funny.
> This man Understands
One huge cut-and-paste, a one line comment, and +5 Insightful? Come on, guys. Save your mod points for something worthwhile.
They need the company because, unfortunately the company is in bed with all the current distribution systems. Distributors won't work with an artist because there is no guarantee of profit. And there isn't yet a internet recording star. I usually agree with Jobs, but his naivete about the music industry is showing. Yes, the studio pays for marketing, studio time, packaging, distribution, etc, but guess what, the artist has to pay all of that back. Plus the record company gets almost all of the profits. So in the end the record company pays for virtually nothing and line their pockets. Thats why most artist see touring as the only way to make a profit, because the record company is not involved in the selling of memorabilia. The problem with the music industry is they've historically made too much profit off the artist and their talent. Twenty cent on each dollar? Come on! The artist brings their talent (years of hard work) as an investment and the company brings marketing, packaging, studio time, etc (the easy part) as an investment. The spilt should be 50/50. But the business world has always ripped off artists, first it was the church and now its corporate America. Recording artist should not be too concerned about pirating when the real thieve is standing right beside them in a three piece suit.
Duplicating a song that you do not own a copy of is theft.
Incorrect.
It is copyright violation.
And if I'm in one of the jurisdictions around the world which is not a signatory to the Berne Convention, it's not any kind of a violation at all.
I've noticed that a few new CDs are being advertised on television bundled with a DVD. Yeah, you might be able to download the DVD content online, too, but this is perhaps a sign of the music industry trying to do more to entice CD purchases (although there are still those who clamor for them to increase the quality of the actual music first).
I import quite a bit of Japan (yes, I watch too much anime), but the Japanese pack their initial releases with tons of goodies that definitely entice people to buy the actual products. Silkscreens, postcards, DVDs, other kinds of knick-knacks. Looks like the US market might be following suit a bit?
And for the record, I think despite these rewards, the Japanese also have a problem with piracy, partially due to the fact that their distribution is loaded with so many middlemen that their prices are even more outrageous than in the US.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
Monty Python's _Matching Tie and Handkerchief_ had the double groove on one side. 33-1/3 rpm LP with two distinct programs on one side and one program on the other.
what?
Whereas your entire premise is based on the fallacy of overprecision.
For reference, this is the fallacy of overprecision (I couldn't find it on most of the general lists of fallacies on the Web, but a direct Google search turned it up):
Overprecision: rejecting a concept as unusable because it has borderline cases or because the definition, phrasing, syntax, grammar, or structure of the proposition or argument is not perfect.
Note that the fallacy refers to rejecting entire CONCEPTS, not arguments; for instance, "we can't agree on whether this is theft; therefore, the concept of theft should be discarded."
We all know that it's theft.
On the other hand, this is a classic example of argumentum ad populum , also known as "appeal to popularity". For instance,
"Everyone knows that the Earth is flat, so why do you persist in your outlandish claims?".
You simply don't like the word because you can't hide from what it says about what you are doing, so you sanitize it away until you are comfortable.
Whereas this is the fallacy of ad hominem , or "attacking the person". This particular form is known as "poisoning the well"; for instance,
"Of course you'd argue that positive discrimination is a bad thing. You're white."
-- Daniel "Logic Cop"
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
"almost ran Apple and Kodak out of business"???
What are you talking about?
Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley (then current CEO of Pepsi-Co) in 1983 to join Apple. Sculley was not a good fit in the technology industry and so in 1985 Jobs tried to regain control of the company in an ill conceived "coup" attempt. It backfired and Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple by the Board of Directors.
Under Sculley's "rule" Apple posted its first quarterly loss and was forced to lay-off over 1000 employees.
Things went kinda down hill from there...
Until around 1997 when Apple bought Jobs new company (NeXT) and Jobs became CEO again. Apple has had somewhat of a revival since then -- with their fair share of ups and downs -- but overall quite a lot of success. I could hardly qualify any of these "downs" as almost running the company out of business.
So, one could, indirectly say that by Jobs hiring Sculley he drove the company into the ground... but that seems like a "blame the parents" mentality. Responsible for the initial mistake: Yes.
Jobs is by no means perfect (apparently he makes a lousy micro manager, but than so do most of us) -- and he has promoted his share of flops (Apple Lisa for example, which by the way eventually turned into the Macintosh, perhaps you've heard of that?) -- but overall he seems like a pretty visionary leader to me.
As for Kodak... huh?
Somewhat of a nitpick, but AAC is not a DRM scheme. AAC is the codec that Apple uses, and they wrap it with their own propietary DRM scheme (Fairplay). They could just as easily wrap MP3 or AIFF, and AAC could be wrapped using Intertrust or some other DRM scheme.
Jobs' comment that "a legal alternative to stealing music hadn't been invented until six months ago" takes "arguable" to new heights. When you quote someone, you might want to ensure that it is something they actually said. It might not fit your argument as well, but it will greatly increase your credibility. If you read the whole interview, you will see Jobs' is talking about a legal alternative that offers the same benefits as illegally downloading music. In fact, he says he is talking about (and this is a quote from the article) "a legal alternative that offers those same benefits [of illegal downloads]." He doesn't say instant gratification is a right, he simply points out it is something people want in digital music and something that can be provided legally. I don't see the problem, but maybe I am missing something.
> Panther Fast User Switching was borrowed from Microsoft (Jobs even said it at WWDC).
Truth.
> Also, guess where Panther's Finder got Image previews from?
Falsehood. QuickTime for Copeland had image previews built into the finder years before Windows did. However, it'd be tough to prove that MS stole it from Apple, either, since Apple wasn't exactly giving out free tech demos right and left. However, a couple of the books about Copeland that were published did mention it, so maybe it was stolen at that.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.