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iTMS Named Fortune's Product Of The Year
Demolition writes "To go along with Time Magazine calling the iTunes Music Store the Invention Of The Year, Fortune Magazine has come along and proclaimed iTunes Music Store as the Product Of The Year. As it says in the article, 'With the success of its iTunes Music Store, Apple is almost single-handedly dragging the music industry, kicking and screaming, toward a better future.'" Also, Fortune named the G5 one of the 25 Best Products of the Year for Design.
It's a damn fine product... spawned almost as many ripoffs as the iPod itself. Plus, it has the opportunity to make money if the RIAA is cut out. I mean, there's no reason that iTMS can't offer indie music as well, and then they'd be getting higher margins on the indie music, so Apple'd push it more than the RIAA tained sh**. In short, iTMS is a great product. Stable, visually attractive, functional, not DRM crippled (I'll accept iTMS's level of DRM), wide variety of music available... need I go on?
#define DRM chmod 000
Apparently some artists don't agree. Many are arguing that people will pay one or two dollars for only one or two songs from an album, instead of buying the whole thing. But then again, why should we go to a store and pay for an entire album when we only want a few?
You'll like this page =)
Bullshit. Napster didn't prove they weren't inclined to pay for it, even if people wanted to legitimately purchase music downloads, they couldn't.
Napster proved the demand for downloadable music exists. I like iTMS. I use iTMS. I give jobs credit for convincing the suits, not for a prodcust or invention of the year.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Why don't we invent Open Music, put it under a modified GPL, and remove the entire monetary component out of the industry?
Do you think SCO would then accuse the musicians of using some crappy old song they came up with a while ago as the basis of all the Open songs?
Well I'm willing to take that risk.
Esoteric reference.
"'With the success of its iTunes Music Store, Apple is almost single-handedly dragging the music industry, kicking and screaming, toward a better future.'""
Isn't that what Apple usually does? Dragging the rest of the world forward. e.g. firewire, usb.
Apple really got something good going here. We can argue all day about DRM and AAC sound-quality and how this format won't work on most players, but you really have to hand it to Apple. They were the pathsetters here.
Look at the people trying to follow in their path. BuyMusic.com?? This is probably the most pathetic attempt of all with their wacky buying schemes and crazy DRM. Even their commercials were dead-on rip-offs.
Now here comes MS and Wal-Mart to try their hand. Sure, they are going to sell songs through their shere retailing power (and monopoly in the case of MS) but do you think their store is going to be half as cool?
I am sure this is going to set off a flamewar about the problems with iTunes, but just give iTunes their due for once for their innovation. Everybody else is just trying to catch up and be half as cool. Who do you really want to buy songs from? iTunes with its coolness factor or from Wal-Mart where that stupid smiling face can show you around and shoot arrows at your song prices so that they go from 99 cents to 89 cents.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
I think Napster must be sinking. I received spams from them offering several free tracks if I were to sign back up with them.
...
I tried out napster for a few days. I felt it was a pathetic attempt at copying the iTMS. Things were sorted incorrectly and information was scattered around making it almost impossible to find anything I really wanted. And to top it off they're spamming me
Two Things:
1) What's "it"? Why do you, as a consumer, care where Apple gets its profits? Apple is in the business of making money. It so happens that iPod and iTMS are an unbeatable suite of products. iTMS is so good, it works very well on its own, without the iPod. You're not forced into buying _anything_.
2) Apple doesn't need to be worrying about getting more money into the hands of the artist -- that's the artist's and the label's fight. Apple barely nets anything on the music sold. Why should it fork over more to the artist?
If the artists hate their labels, they should leave them and form their own "artist-centric" label. Expecting Apple, a technology company, to whip the RIAA and artists into financially-fair shape, is unreasonable.
Use the tech because it's cool. Or don't. But don't expect technology companies to move mountains.
Time Warner is also a member of the RIAA.
I smell something good for business.
Somehow, this got posted on Slashdot...
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
People pay more, for an inferior product and give up most of their legal rights in the process, all for the "convienience" of downloading music ( which really doesn't take much less in terms of time overall than walking into a music store the next time you happen to be in the mall).
What's more Apple gives all of this money they collect to the music industry who themselves have to do virtually nothing for it but trade a bit of paper. Kicking and screaming. Yeah, right. In the back rooms the execs are shouting bloody Hosannas day and night. They can't get the public to pay for DRMed CDs but Apple has somehow gotten them to buy DRMed rips for a premium price.
I'll keep doing it the old fashioned way until I get a better deal, thank you very much.
KFG
Right now, like it or not, most popular artists are under contract with RIAA member companies. So they just can't say "see ya" and start producing and distributing music indepentently of the RIAA. It sucks, but of course the artists did sign the contract, so here we are now.
Happily, over time, it is possible for people to sell their product without the RIAA. It will take both time and sales to make it happen.
The best way to encourage that model is to buy music on-line from your favorite independent artist! But remember, don't blame the artists who aren't independent - they're likely just as depressed with their contractual obligations as you are!
Since all the other players dont have anything to sell after the fact, they probably are gonna lose money with the suits taking such a huge chunk of it.
10 years from now when Apple gets the iVMS (Internet Video & Music Store) going over everyone's new FTTH 100MB and you can have tens of thousands of films on yer desktop for 99 cents ( or whatever )on top of the music you have now, thank Apple. They made it possible.
And I have no doubt that if S. Jobs is still running Apple, they'll be the only ones to get it right, just like ITMS.
Every other label would get 80 cents off the same dollar. It's not Apple's fault that an artist signed with the RIAA which might give them pennies out of that dollar, instead of an independent label which might give them 70 cents off of that dollar.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I don't think Apple's cut is as big as you think it is.
I've seen figures stating the RIAA cut is 60-80 cents/song, leaving 40-20 cents per song to Apple.
I do consulting for several clients that take CCs over the net. A typical example of CC/gateway costs is 2.25% + .30 per transaction. So a .32 of a $1.00 charge is immediately taken by the CC company. The numbers vary a bit, and are lower with larger volumes, but at a minimum they're problably paying 1.25% + .20/transaction.
I suspect very few people buy songs 1 at a time -- gift certificates are $20. I personally buy about 5 songs at a time, but friends of mine might buy 1-2 albums at a time, which minimizes the bite of the transaction fees.
After that they still have to pay for bandwidth, development costs, probably a FTE or 2 for maintainence, etc.
I don't think Apple is growing rich off iTMS, and I don't think BuyMusic, Napster, HPMusic, etc. will either.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The one valid point I've seen on that site is that iTMS is helping the major record labels stay alive, and without it, the labels might have a harder time of doing so. Lots of hypothetical there, and considering that iTMS's 20 million songs sold is still nothing more than a tiny blip in the overall annual U.S. music market of some billions of songs, it warrants skepticism.
As far as the artists not getting much money out of the deal... exactly how is that any worse than what they already had? The labels were screwing them before, and they're contractually obligated to the labels, so it's not like they can just sell direct to iTMS (or anyone else) and make an "end run" around the labels. If artists sign contracts that suck, that may be their fault, it may be the label's fault, but it's certainly not Apple's or anyone else's fault.
And of course it almost completely ignores indie labels that are now getting people's music on iTMS. People who go through those labels are taking home as much as 55-60% of that 99 cents a song. That's a pretty damn good cut of the money.
Basically, it strikes me as the same sort of shrill our minds are made up, don't bother us with mitigating facts rant as that put forth by those guys who decided that just because their iPod battery wore out, all iPod batteries must suck, and it was perfectly okay to go commit acts of vandalism as a result. :)
You can rant all you like about how it's not the same...
1) They are clear, up front, about what they are offering, how it works, and what the technical restrictions are.
2) If you aren't a normal mac user, it's not as appealing to you.. realize that mac users tend to already use itunes, and use it a lot, and the store is just THERE.. in the same interface you use to organize ALL your music. You can browse the store the same way, listen to samples the same way, and once you set up your account, which is very, very easy, you can purchase songs with a click.
So.. if you feel it violates your rights, great... don't use it.
what you fail to realize is that not every consumer is concerned with owning everything.. on a tight budget, sure, iTMS is not a great deal, necessarily.... but it IS the first big, working example of how this can work. The fact that the record labels are getting all the cash is simply because all the artists signed with those labels.. did you know any artist can submit stuff to the iTMS to be sold? Those that do aren't under the grip of big labels.. their deal is with Apple.
If you were sitting in front of a Mac, in your office, with a disposable income to spend on "entertainment", you might find that making a couple clicks in the morning to get a couple new tracks to listen to suits you just fine... I mean, what does it matter to you where you can copy it if you are going to do all your listening in one place?
there is just something about iTMS, that i like.
it's seems very integrated, easy and hassle-free!
sure, i haven't actually purchased a song through it, since it is currently not available in canada.
but, i have browsed though it and taken advantage of the preview feature a few times.
i hope the doors open in canada for iTMS soon... before i have to pay a levy on my digital media too!! see
Cant wait to see how they will deal with international expansion of this great "invention". After all, if 99c per track is a good deal in the US, it is a lousy deal in countries with a weak currency and lower income, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc...
In general recorded audio and video material will be price adjusted to reflect differences in local purchasing power. For example, the Lion King Special Edition VHS goes for US$ 20.99 in the US. In Brazil the same *legit* product goes for about one third of that price (R$ 24.60 which is worth US$ 8.40 in today's exchange rate).
This difference in pricing has to be done in order to "milk" different local markets, each with a different pricing point requirement. This is, after all, the motivation behing the DVD region coding scheme (not realease dates, mind you).
Now, it will be interesting to see an internet site selling buckets of bits for different prices depending on where (it thinks) you physically are, won't it. Of course they could leave the third world to be served solely by that most efficient institution, the pirate market.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
A new device, method, or process developed from study and experimentation: the phonograph, an invention attributed to Thomas Edison.
- Dictionary.com
iTMS seems to fit the bill as a new process for buying music.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Then how did I buy Rhapsody In Blue (13:44 long) individually?
I'm posting this anonymously, sorry.
I got a band I will not mention listed in Itunes. The parent poster is morose for the wrong reasons.
Try it. Apple, surprisingly, is not all that horrible to deal with. Only moderately horrible.
But you don't get it.
ITunes is the opportunity for artists to sell straight through Apple. Think about the opportunity for the artist. If your song is a winner, write a deal with Apple and watch your self win a windfall.........
The reason music is so expensive is that the stupid Record Companies pay potential winner groups big bucks to sign exclusive deals. One out of ten of those groups actually sell any records. So the 1 out of 10 pay for the other nines up front money.
With ITunes, you can potentially move the Record company out of the picture. More for the artist and more for Apple.
But crap, Apple is a dumb computer company. What do they know.
Yes, I love downhillbattle's logic towards iTMS.
You know, I think Wal-Mart is horrible for this country (price fixing, anti-competitive behaviour, etc). This justifies the $20,000 or so worth of merchandise I've shoplifted so far this year.
The big banks are just as bad. They are paying out lower and lower interest rates on savings and money market accounts, and filling their own coffers even more as a result. So that makes it okay that I robbed a Bank of America last month.
And of course, the middlemen in the music industry make buying a CD futile, or at least downloading one from iTMS. I think I'll open up Kazaa again.
The second rule at least can be broken by major label artists. For instance, Talk Talk's great experimental album "Spirit of Eden" is 6 tracks long and costs $13.99. You can't buy track one, except as part of the album, so that's how they get you to pay more than 99 cents per song. While that album-only song IS longer than 7 minutes, I am not sure all of them are.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
Artists haven't got the money? Bullshit! Madonna could start one herself (and this is not an endoresment of the bitch, just pointing out that she's got a lot of money).
MC Hammer (associating this name with the word "artist" is admittedly a reach) could have done it easily except his dumb ass felt that he needed an "entourage", several houses, enough jewelry to tip the planet out of it's orbit, and a car collection first.
They're just two of many who've had the chance to start something like this but instead they get the bucks and say (mostly) "fuck the ones that didn't". Their stories can be seen weekly on VH1's "Behind the Music".
Many successful artists could do this and should do this long before it becomes Apple's responsibility. Let the relative handful who actually made more bank than they can spend start an artist friendly label that gets more money to the person who created the work. Apple will be doing fine to sell the product and get it's (more than fair) share.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I've set up two of these in a very quiet conference room. When running normally, they barely make a peep. When the monitor is asleep, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was on without the power light on the front panel.
When the G5 is in target disk mode, however, the fan control software does not load. The fans start faster than normal and rather quickly ramp up to full speed-- presumably that is a fail-safe in the hardware. When those fans are going full blast, you can feel the air moving for quite an impressive distance behind the G5.
As for whether that many fans is overkill or not, look at it this way: Apple's previous Power Mac case form factor was in use since 1999 (about 4.5 years). With the G5 enclosure, I think it appears overengineered to us now but was designed with an eye toward housing future CPUs in years to come-- CPUs that will really need all that cooling capability.
~Philly
Actually, Steve Jobs himself said that Apple doesn't make a dime per song with ITMS.
The service pays for itself, but any money Apple gets out of it pays for maintenance, infrastructure and bandwidth.
Where Apple gains, with ITMS, is in iPod sales that ITMS generates, and the increased mindshare of Win users that have started to look more at the Apple brand for what it can offer, other than QuickTime.
If you've been on a corporate network with just a few Macs like I have, the sudden explosion of iTunes software running on Windows in the subnet appearing in music sharing list is amazing. Suddenly, 5 times as many people on the subnet are using--every day-- Apple branded software and (in some case) hardware.
ITMS and the iPod have been labeled the best marketing trojan horses any company could have thought of to increase it's mindshare.
I own a powerbook and all of my music is in iTunes. However, none of it came from the iTMS. I still buy CDs and rip them in because i prefer my mp3s at a higher encoding rate. If Apple changed their 'tune' in that regard and offered higher quality mp3s, I might be persuaded. Until then, I'm very content to use it as a music jukebox. It does that job very well.
An invention of the year? Nah. A really handy piece of software with flexibility and room to grow? Sure.
If artists sign contracts that suck, that may be their fault, it may be the label's fault, but it's certainly not Apple's or anyone else's fault.
Lots of people get screwed into crappy contracts everyday because there really aren't any viable alternatives. Read your cell phone service agreement, or your ISP's terms and conditions, or anyone of the many click-through agreements for software you've installed. You'll be appalled at the things you have signed away. And really you have little choice.**
It's not really any different for musicians. Yeah, they can give the major labels the finger and go sign with an indie label or if they're really adventurous start their own label. But the reality is that their chances for success in going that route are almost zero. If you think the success rate for bands signed to major labels is pretty low, you should see the success rate for indie artists. Even if you assume and allow for indie artists being "less talented" (which I would argue is untrue), the difference is huge. So really, if you want a chance at being able to make a good living or even striking it rich, you're only choice is to sign with the majors, and get stuck with a bad deal.
---
**Yeah, you can argue that "well you don't have to use the software", but this is pretty bogus. You're only real option is you don't want to agree to the terms is to use a computer or not, or to get a cellphone or not, since almost all software and almost every cell company use the exact same "give us your first-born" terms in their agreement.
fuck you.
Because Apple sells itself as being about more than just the bottom line. Their whole branding is based on this illusion that they are revolutionizing the world, "thinking differently", etc. The reality is far different. They are sugarcoating life for us. They took the same old plantation system from the pre-digital era and created a well designed, easy to use, flashy system for carrying it online with the iTMS. If Apple really wanted to be revolutionary they would have done it differently. Instead it's just co-opting the appearance of revolutionary while neglecting the actual substance.
Apple does do something different. They treat every one the same. Big lable indie lable, it doesn't matter, you all get the same deal from Apple. Big lables get just as much exposure on iTMS as the indies.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The design of the G5 is to use two fans in each zone, one gently blowing, one gently sucking. The result is that you're never slamming air against a wall, which is actually where a lot of the fan noise come from.
The 2.0ghz G5 chip consumes97 watts of power
From a cursory investigation, a Pentium IV seems to take between 60 and 100 watts
As to whether its revolutionary, I doubt it - its just solid engineering without concern with having to fit old form factor bits into the box. (PeeCees have much more homogenous designs, since Macs always come from a single vendor.)
how are you finding the noise level? Do you find that the fans ramp up very often, and if they do, do you notice a big difference in volume?
The G5 is dramatically less noisy than the G4 (mirrored doors). The fans on my single-processor 1.8GHz model almost never run fast enough to notice, or even hear, during use. When the machine wakes from sleep, the fans do spin up for a moment to the point that they sound like, well, fans. But then they slow down again and get plenty quiet. And the fans also run quite a lot when the machine is in FireWire disk mode (for those that don't know, most Macs can start up in a mode where they function as external FireWire disk drives). In disk mode, the fans start off fairly quiet and eventually increase to what must be their maximum speed (and noise level). Other than waking from sleep and disk mode, though, I hardly hear the G5. Same goes for my buddy's dual processor 2.0GHz G5.
Are we likely to see the "multiple zone" principle copied into cheap Wintel enclosures?
The three zone cooling system seems to work really well. As described above, the fans don't seem to need to spin very fast to move enough air through the machine to cool the processor(s) withouth making much noise. I'd guess that the G5 processor produces less heat than a Pentium, as I've always understood that the Pentium is a significantly larger chip than any of the PPC chips. But I could be wrong. Take a look at the power consumption figures for each to get a better idea.
As for whether you'll see this sort of cooling system in Wintel machines, I'd say it's a definite maybe. As soon as you pop the side panel off a G5, you realize that machine is one very carefully designed unit. The entire front and rear panels serve as air intake and exhaust panels, respectively, and the processors and their very large heat sinks are placed at the constriction in the middle, so that air flows quickly over them. To make this work, a manufacturer has to be able to control the case design, placement of components, heat sink design, fans, etc. You can't just design a case with mesh front and back panels and slap in any motherboard. I don't think most Wintel buyers are willing to pay for that much design. A few desktop makers like maybe Sony could probably pull it off. More likely, I think you might see this sort of design appear in higher end machines like servers.
There's a lot more about the G5 design that's elegant than just the case. For example, the top hard disk drive mounts up inside the case in a position where it can't slide straight out. It looks at first like it could be a problem to get that drive out, but in fact the guide rails that hold the drive just drop the drive down, and it pops out with no problem. You can remove most of the components without tools. The side panel makes an incredibly satisfying 'click' when you press it into place. The case can be locked closed with a padlock, but the hasp for the lock folds down under the latch when you're not using it, so that it doesn't spoil the clean, flat look of the back. The power button is significantly improved over the G4.
In short, the G5 is probably the best designed machine Apple has produced in years, maybe ever. I wish Apple would get the G5 design team to build a car!