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Apple Announces 25 Million Song Downloads
Tweder writes "On Apple's iTunes site, Apple has announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over 25 Million songs from the iTunes Music Store. It seems the launch of the ITMS on the Windows platform has boosted sales tremendously." I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?" So, there you go.
I suppose this is where I should say something like, "The iTunes Music Store wouldn't exist without the cooperation of the recording industry, so even if the music companies had little to lose, they deserve some credit for having faith in Steve Jobs' business model."
Of course, Jobs already said as much himself.
Pudge, I've got several Macs. I use iTunes. I just bought an album off there about an hour ago. But let's not kid ourselves. So, there's been 25 million downloads off iTMS in the past, what nine months? There's probably been 2.5 billion downloads off kazaa in that time. Orders of magnitude, dude. Orders of magnitude.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Suppose there was a competitor that didn't give us the garbage x.99 cent "marketing price". In fact, the fee paid was variable! So the extra amount is equivalent to a tip. Some might say that tips make sense with digital goods, where the marginal cost is near zero. Cynics (plentiful and uncreative) at this point just walk out of the room after delivering a few loads of regurgitated garbage. So, the option is $5 to $18. Do you think $5 is the choice taken most? Look here.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I for one welcome our new download what you want for a buck overlords.
The real problem is that Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple isn't making any money on the iTunes venture; that they only see profit through the sales of iPods. I'd be interested in knowing what they plan on doing that will change this, as we've all seen too many neato tech ideas go belly up when the investors started wondering where their money went.
if you dont have anything to say...don't say it.
if you think the story isn't worth posting...dont' post it
seriously do we really need a story every time ITMS reaches a nice number? 10 million, 20 million, 25 million...
It's popular we get it.
The real question is how is this affecting sales of ipods since it has already been determined that Apple doesn't make much if any money off of ITMS.
meep
Chump change in the pockets of a multi-billion dollar industry. Besides, they'll somehow make it sound as if they actually lost money on this...
It was the subscription model that was doomed. iTunes works inarguably. Subscription services may have been decent theories, but I think we just saw their end, and know who was right all along.
Um, yeah. In case you didn't get that, the winner is Jobs.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
This is Slashdot. You don't need to put a slant on a story. No matter how unbiased the submission is, rest assured that we'll find a way to turn it into a Microsoft conspiracy of some sort.
Yah, 25 million songs is VERY good, which works out to be about 2.5 million albums, but is Apple making any profit yet? My understanding was that Itunes was designed to sell Ipods and is making very, very, little profit due to all of the fees it has to pay to the RIAA and the owners, etc.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Let me guess, you're one of those people who routinely blasts the media for their context-less use of figures as well.
I'd gladly have bought several songs from them if it was DRM-free. I want the freedom to use it on whatever device I want, with whatever software I choose.
How does DRM treat customers like criminals? I don't see how Apple's DRM infringes on my fair use. I have bought several albums from iTMS and have found their DRM very unintrusive. Copyright holders should be able to protect their copyright.
It treat's you like a prospective criminal. If you were an honest consumer, you wouldn't even think of playing that music on a non-apple product or sharing it with a friend. You'd just buy another copy!
I'd support Itunes if it were its own industry, with its own music, like mp3.com. The problem with Itunes is it takes the flawed recording industry and extends their monopoly. This would be like steve jobs releasing a version of Microsoft Windows for the Mac, and expecting us all to use that. Its bullshit.
If I wanted to support the RIAA I'd buy buying CD's right now. Take a hint!
Support Itunes(RIAA)> but not the artists?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I'd like to see this succeed as the next person but...
Apple is probably the largest seller of online music and 25 million doesn't sound like a lot compared to the billions that other formats like CD's make (sure they cost more to sell but the actual physical medium is worth a lot less then the $13+ amount they are sold for).
Note that I'm not discounting the ability of Apple to increase but this news story was not as amazing as the editorial seems to suggest. We all knew apple was doing well but so far $25 mil (25 million songs * 99cents) is not big in it self.
Hmmm... Pie...
No, but it does mean the consumer is slowly adapting to on-demand media, and if it is determined that DRM actually inhibits sales, then it will be taken away, but you'll still have the customers with their wallets in hand, standing in line to buy music online. That's what matters.
A blog like any other.
Well, history might tell us something. They didn't bow to the pressure of Microsoft when they came out with their Mac/GUI competitor, Windows, increasing the PC's viability and ease of use. But they didn't suddenly try to increase market share by allowing OEMs. Will things be different this time around if competition heats up?
I disagree.
Must people, like me, who were big buyers of retail(brick and mortar) music went to downloading music online for free because it was easier than heading down to the local music store.
It wasn't that I wouldn't pay for the music, it was just that it was easier to download it with a better selection of music. Now there are even easier ways to download music such as iTunes and other related services. I prefer to use them now than battling with file sharing systems. So now that it is the easiest meathod for me, that is what I use.
Kazaa sure has a LOT of music out there. But it is not in a quick accessible format like the iTMS. I can search, sample, and buy hundreds of songs very quickly. Each and every song is complete and prefectly encoded to my satisfaction. I don't have to download entire songs just to see if I like them or even see what genre the songs fit in. I don't have to screw with too many people downloading from one person and sit "in a line" to get the song. I don't have to worry about only getting 10kbytes/s while my connection is 100kbytes/s.
With iTMS I can find things quickly, easily, without a hitch at the cost of only a few bucks a day. Thats cheaper then some people's smoking habbits. It's something I will have around with me always, sitting on my iPod, etc..
A quick comment on the iTMS vs Napster/Others. A feature that a lot of people overlook that I have found quite pleasing is the integration of your purchased iTMS songs with iMovie & iDVD. I don't believe Microsoft's WMA stuff is able to integrate into their "Movie Maker" program. With iMovie I can just drag purchased songs onto tracks, same with iDVD..
What's the big deal?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The P2P apps have come a long way since their inception but it is still a struggle for non-technical people to come to terms with centralised servers and clientids.
Apple has always enabled ordinary people to use computers. This does not mean that they "dumb down" the technology, rather they lower the learning curve to allow people to at least get on and and working before they need to start seriously learning.
iTunes provides that portal for easy access to online content and it allows people to pay for it. I am sure if Apple had a free peer-to-peer site, we would be talking bigger numbers. But the success of iTunes is part of the overall Apple strategy and design guidleines.
What amazes me is that Apple are not making any money from it and are using it simply to sell mp3 players. How much are the record companies raking in on this and yet still complaining about the death of the music industry?
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals, when the pirates will simply continue to use uncrippled formats?
Because they have to?
Do you seriously think the music companies would agree on letting a company distribute non-DRM'ed music?
But the option could of course be to not sell music. But maybe Apple wish to sell music.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
piracy will continue to run rampant until the industry offers a legal alternative which is free of DRM and hardware/software lock-in.
I love the tone of statements like these. They make you sound so sure that this will happen. We already have an endless stream of DRM-less music available at your local music store. It's not DRM that keeps people downloading from Kazaa, it's ease of use. This is why ITMS is working so well. One click and it's done. Just like Kazaa except that you don't have to try 45 downloads to get a good copy of Justin Timerlake singing a hip hop version of "Truckin'".
Of course, that doesn't address the primary users of Kazaa, kids with no damn money. It's not a coincidence that you hear of kids getting sued by RIAA. No matter what, DRM or no, these people will trade music because they can. It's too easy not to, and they can spend the $20 they save on fucking McDonalds.
next time give it a shot with popular bands
Someone did. And it's working very well. If you'd stop downloading from Kazaa for a couple of seconds (because you're protesting DRM, I know..) you'd see ITMS works very, very well, and is a good compromise between fans and the record companies. There is a reason why everyone and their damn brother is copying ITMS pretty much feature for feature. Because it works.
The more money labels make from the selling of music online, the more money they will be able to kick back to the artists in the end as new contracts are written up. Until the labels see big changes in the cash flow, things will stay the same.
I already posted this above, but it needs repeating.
Not all music labels are members of the RIAA. Just the big ones. Lots of great artists are signed with independent labels, many of those labels don't screw their artists, and many of those good independent labels are on iTunes.
Wondering whether your favorite band is RIAA-free or not? Click here...
s. For a $0.99 song apple gets $0.30 to cover bandwitdh and server charges, about $0.65 goes to the labels and $0.05 goes to the artists. Of course the last two things vary depending on the contracts signed for each artist.
Where do you get these figures? From what I've heard Apple doesnt make a penny. Artist's dont make a penny. Just the RIAA.
show me where on the Apple site this is stated, show some proof.
The more money labels make from the selling of music online, the more money they will be able to kick back to the artists in the end as new contracts are written up. Until the labels see big changes in the cash flow, things will stay the same.
Yeah but why would they kick anything back to artists? This is like saying "If we buy more music from the RIAA the prices of CDs will go down"
When has any of this ever been true?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
KaZaA Lite Announces 250,000,000 songs downloaded since Apple's I-Tunes has been open for business.....
Hi Adolph. No, I'm paying because I'm really, really busy, and I wanted to hear this album, but just don't have time to hunt around kazaa for all 15 songs off this album for an hour and half, only to find out that half of them were ripped by a 14 year old, so there's glitches in the file, and it ends 8 seconds too short. I'd rather spend $9.99 than an hour and a half of my time.
So, why do you spend an hour and a half to download an album off kazaa instead of $10 to buy it off iTMS? Are you so poor you just can't afford $10? Does your cardboard box need a new roof? By the way, Rufus says there's good eats in the dumpster behind Mickey D's tonight.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"Although it seems like more music companies are getting directly involved in the online music biz, I haven't seen any reports on what orgs like the RIAA really think about these commercial online music offerings."
RIAA on Napster/Penn State agreement
iTMS is a reseller, just like Amazon or Tower Records. And, a sale is a sale. Apple launched iTMS with the cooperation of the artists and record companies. I'm sure the record companies who've shared in Apple's good fortune are thrilled.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
That model hasn't worked. They're hardly making anything off iTunes.
It's all of the iPods Apple is selling as a result that is what's making it work for them.
Arguing that the model isn't working because Apple isn't making any money off iTunes is like arguing that the DVD model isn't working because Best Buy isn't making anything off DVD sales (which may be true considering how much they discount).
Guess what? The model works. In the latter case, Best Buy makes money because as long as you're in the store to buy the $9.99 DVD on sale, you pick up some blank CDs, a new pair of headphones, a monster cable, or something else with much higher markup. But the movie company still makes plenty of money off the DVD. Everybody wins.
Same with iTunes. The model works. Apple attracts customers with the music store, and makes a profit by selling iPods. They don't lose money on everyone else, they just don't make a lot of profit. But the recording companies and artists make plenty of money. And remember, they're not all evil - just the RIAA. Apple has hundreds of thousands of songs from non-RIAA labels now.
The RIAA may be doomed, but legal online music downloading is here to stay.
The success of ITMS is that it shows that Jobs understands two things the RIAA does not: microeconomics and marketing. Think about it: iTunes Music Service isn't competing with the PressPlay, Napster 2, Real, or any of the other turkeys who assumed that people would simply want to buy their unfriendly, ad-crippled, bloated services out of a sense of duty, or just because they were feeling guilty.
No, I believe Apple intended all along to compete with a different class of "competitor:" Kazaa, LimeWire, AIMster and the others. Apple, in essence, pretended it was competing in a commoditized market, by which I mean a market in which the price of goods are in free-fall (or in this case, actually free). How does one compete in a commoditized market? By differentiating the brand with things the other commodity players can't provide: quality ("CD-quality" tracks), convenience (reliable, near-instant downloads), ease-of-use (easy searching and browsing), and bundling (integration with iTunes). This is something the other (albeit "illegal") competitors cannot match.
Folks can -- and undoubtedly will -- argue until the cows come home about whether ITMS is simply perpetuating the RIAA's cartel. (I personally feel that the RIAA's destruction is as pre-ordained as the setting sun, but that's a thread for another discussion). But you have to give Jobs credit for outside-the-box thinking, and for a willingness to take on an unconventional class of competitor.
If you'd stop downloading from Kazaa for a couple of seconds (because you're protesting DRM, I know..) you'd see ITMS works very, very well, and is a good compromise between fans and the record companies.
iTMS doesn't carry the type of artists that I like to listen to. Do a search on iTMS for "Dirt Bomb" "Z-Ro" or "Devin the Dude" then search for them on Kazaa. You'll be amazed at the difference.
Come on now, the iTMS featured artists right now are Toby Keith, and Yo Yo Ma. Maybe their selection will improve, when it does I'll reevaluate my decision to not use it.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"Unfortunately what the industry will probably say is "Look using the RIAA to sue everyone because we don't know how to adjust our business model, has really paid off!"
They have adjusted their business model. For example, they've embraced online distribution through sites like iTMS, and it's paid off very well. The record companies are learning that online distribution can work. If by adjusting the business model you mean to stop asking that people pay for music, that is not going to happen.
A friend who works for one of the legitimate download services (not iTMS) states that they are thrilled with the lawsuits. The theory goes that the lawsuits will scare people away from pirating their music, at which point they'll either buy CDs the old-fashioned way, or try one of the legitimate online services. They don't need to stop all piracy; just enough to give the online distribution market the velocity it needs. The RIAA and the download services have a symbiotic relationship here.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Let me clue you in on something, outside of Slashdot, very few people know what DRM is. They simply don't care unless it gets in their way. That's where Apple has succeeded the most. It's hard to get to the limits of what they let you do with the music unless you're trying to mass-duplicate CDs.
I have a shitty sig!
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals?
Stores and businesses have been doing that for years and years. Any store that doesn't just put a box of their goods out on card tables in a vacant lot with a drop box to put payment in is 'treating their paying customers like (prospective) criminals', no matter how different the rhetoric sounds the way you put it.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Let's see. iTunes has been a hit on the Macintosh. Folks were clamoring for awhile to see it on Windows, too. Now that it's on Windows, even more folks are using it. So far, so good. 25 million songs (I'm probably responsible for around 40 of them) is a lot of songs, no doubt. But we tend to forget what Steve Jobs clearly says in light of all this hype:
The iTunes Music Store makes little if no profit. At all.
Why, pray tell, is this not a problem for Apple? Because Apple uses the iTMS as a Trojan Horse to sell more iPods. And they make a bundle on every iPod. Between the iTMS and iTunes for Windows, there's a lot more iPods being sold nowadays than there were when the iPod was just a Mac novelty (OK, a Windows version came out with the first refresh, but it was Firewire-only and used MusicMatch).
Sure, iTunes locks you into buying songs in AAC format. At least it's an open spec. Most of the Windows jukeboxes lock you into buying Windows Media songs, 'nuff said. And nobody of any significance offers downloadable unencumbered MP3 files. If you buy, you get DRM. Apple's is at least fairly transparent.
What iTMS does prove is that there is a demand for buying one-off songs and permanent downloads. It proves that the subscription model the publishers wanted to force down the buyers' throats was a stillborn idea. It also proves that most of the other music stores that are springing up right now are doomed - because unless there's a secret cabal lined up to screw Apple out of extra money, the only way any of these companies can compete is if they use their stores to help sell high-margin peripherals. Like their own MP3 players.
Now, if some other company comes up with a player that's a far better unit than the iPod, attaches it to a store, and manages to wrestle the lead from Apple, then Apple might have problems justifying staying in the music biz at zero profit. But this kind of thing is right up Steve's alley, and I doubt he'll let this lead slip away without a fight. You know, it wouldn't be the first time Dell walked away from a market with a bloody nose. It doesn't happen often, though.
Plus, as formats go, once you buy into a DRM format they've got you for good. Every iTunes for Windows user is one that'll probably never go to Windows Media.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
You're also paying the artist and the producer for their work. I'm not willing to face fines or go to jail to get music for free. If I'm not willing to face up to the penalties, I'm not going to do something, whether I'm going to get caught or not.
Eleven cents or whatever it is going to the artist is better than nothing, and I'd rather support a Large, Evil Corporation (TM) than steal.
The Internet is full of people who will tell you that they are boycotting the RIAA and send money to the artist for all the songs that they download. If you're one of them, the more power to you. However, if you're one of the majority that never quite gets around to sending out that ten-spot, then congratulations on your ability to sleep at night.
40% of the purchase goes to iTunes, 30% goes to the label (which may or may not be an RIAA member), 10% goes to an intermediary middleman (if one exists) such as Amazon.com or AOL, 8% goes to the publisher (I think this is ASCAP, but I'm not really sure), and the remaining 12% goes to the artist. According to the article on Business 2.0 entitled The MP3 Economy: How labels and artists divvy up your MP3 dollar that these statistics were taken from, "twelve percent is average, but successful bands often hammer out better contracts. In many major-label contracts, charges for 'packaging' and promotional copies are subtracted from the artist's cut, leaving the talent with a measly 8 percent. BMG, Universal, and Warner have announced plans to do away with such deductions for digital downloads."
-Matt
Duke '05
I am making the big prediction. Along with the Pepsi giveaway, music downloads are going to be paid for in large majority with things other than cash. You will get them with boxtops, bottle caps, affinity points (frequent flyer miles, credit card points, gas receipts, time share points, disney products etc....), rewards for school fundraisers, anything you can think of will become a replacement for direct cash payment. They will become the ultimate giveaway item. This will become important, because anything to overcome the friction of the credit card purchase on a sub-dollar item will be a major driver for the distribution sites.
This will have the side affect of creating an even larger hit based marketplace. Hits will generate the vast majority of downloads, and the most amount of money for the artists. The return of the single as the product of choice. For most artists and most songs this will generate very little money.
It will be very hard on the CD distribution system as more people get most of their music online. This will also have the side affect of making the used CD industry more difficult as there will be less content available. Which will probably be good for the music industry in the long run.
Legal music, free for the consumer, is going to be the most disruptive force in the industry.
Well I'm glad business is going great but do you really think that condoning Kazaa usage ("eMusic was a nice try - next time give it a shot with popular bands - they're all on Kazaa anyway, so what do you have to lose?) as you did in your original post is wise?
One day, you may well have to deal with someone who looks at Kazaa as a tool built specifically for copyright infringement (which it was; P2P may have legal uses but, be honest folks, 99.9999 percent of the traffic is in copyrighted material) and who screws you over because of your implicit support for P2P applications.
If and when that happens, it might not be fair - business rarely is - but it'll definitely be bad news for your customers.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Not too busy to post on slashdot though, I see ;)
Guess some things ARE worth spending time on.
I tried to get this as a story, but it will do as a comment...
The music industry is looking for additional ways to profit off the downloading scene...
As reported by the LA Times, Apple and Time Warner have started offering specially designed Lord of the Rings CD-Rs.
These limited edition blank CDs are specifically designed for users purchasing the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrackfrom Apple's iTunes Music Store.
What I am going to do is wait until they provide "pre-burned" CDR's like RedHat does... That would be cool.
How do we know most people don't like indy artists? They usually don't even get played on the radio, so how does anyone know if they like them or not??
All you're paying for is convenience
Nope. You are also paying for
1. Quality - You can be sure that the song you just downloaded doesn't go like "What the f*ck do you think you're doing!"
2. Peace of mind - Nobody is going to come to your home and sue you for copyright infringement.
3. Moral Satisfaction - You actually PAID for it, rather than copying the art work of someone else without permission.
and more...
getSexySig();
Well, at least you didn't make any pretenses towards morality or the unethical practices of the RIAA, which instantly puts you head and shoulders above the people who justify downloading songs to themselves as some personal crusade against oppression.
But I'd wager a good majority of the 60+ million Americans, or however many download copyrighted MP3s, have managed to delude themselves into thinking that they're fighting the good war against evil corporations instead of simply stealing to save a couple bucks. And yes, I know it's not technically stealing.
Whereupon she decided it sounded way too complicated to deal with, and decided she didn't want to bother with it. The fact is the public is bothered by DRM, they just aren't bothered by in a moral or philisophical sense, more in a convenience sense. The thing is that while iTunes wins out right now in convenience, they still aren't anywhere near as convenient as getting plain old unencumbered MP3s, which are the industry standard and supported by all the hardware we've already invested in.
The value of online music purchasing is fast easy downloads and very low search costs (you know you're not going to waste time downloading a bad rip, an RIAA fake, etc.). You waste much less time - paying a buck a song for this service is a good deal, and you get warm fuzzies knowing at least some tiny fraction of the money goes to the artists. These value propositions wouldn't be decreased by using unencumbered MP3s - the people whose time has no value will keep using Kazaa etc. and searching for the good copies among the shit.
Actually, you can burn the tracks to CD as audio.
Then you can do what you want.
The 3 different PC restriction is actually for sharing via iTunes sharing.
This offers more than your CD store. It means that I'm finally able to download the 12 tracks I want to put on _my_ CD compilation without having to buy 5 CDs worth of music.
There is no such thing.
"Hey... don't be mean." --Buckaroo Banzai
iTunes is currently having 1.5 million tracks downloaded from it's store each week. This # will rise even more right after the holidays due to everyone claiming their iTunes Music Store Gift Certificates. That doesn't even include all the iPods they have sold thus far. Most places like CompUSA are already out of stock of the 20-30GB iPods. So this to me is sign that iTunes Music sales will probably spike right after Christmas. Right now the big rumor about the 4th Gen iPods which are coming in Jan. will not just include the normal bigger storage compacity but a ePod line in the $100-200 range. Apple is already said next yr they will open a Japan, Australia, European, and Canada music store for next yr. I and alot of people think that some these stores will open in Jan. while the rest will open about 3-4 months down the road. This would cause very large influx of downloads per week. Also starting in Feb. Pepsi will be doing it's 100 million iTunes give away which will definitely make Apples overall #'s go up and up. Right now it's been rumored that Pepsi will also be giving away 600 iPods with Pepsi logo iSkins and each will be #'ed. I believe Apple will hit 100 million by Jan. and if the McDonalds promo iTunes deal goes through those #'s will just continue to increase. So no I don't see it slowing down. On a side note it's nice to see Winamp 5 guys went with AAC from Dolby. Which just goes to show the AAC std is catching on.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
I think you're:
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Right now, iTMS is building marketshare and mindshare, and then I mean primarily by the total market (online music sales) increasing. They have a cash cow (iPod) that's already benefitting from it. Long term, they can start pushing for higher margins, since bands would *want* to get on iTMS, particularly smaller bands.
iTMS is kinda like where amazon.com was, building itself up. The difference is, iTMS is going at near zero and is feeding the iPod cashcow, amazon.com was burning VC money faster than lightning. iTunes is even a migration app - get people to use that, and there's one app less they'll miss if going to a Mac.
Overall, you should rather ask yourself if anybody else can make money on it without relying on stuff like the iPod - if not, iTMS can keep the prices so low they that competitors won't enter the market, and yet high enough to make a nice profit. Right now the competition is big, and so the prices are slashed as low as they can go. iTMS will keep it there until they've established themselves as *the* place to go for music online, or maybe *the* place overall.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
He said/meant they make no profit, he didn't say they made no income/revenue. Read his more complete statement ...Jobs has one more reason not to be concerned about the competition. "The dirty little secret of all this is there's no way to make money on these stores," he says. For every 99 Apple gets from your credit card, 65 goes straight to the music label. Another quarter or so gets eaten up by distribution costs... at Time magazine
People say there is no cost to digital ditribution, but bandwidth, servers, backup systems, facilities, disaster recovery plans, and personell all cost money.
The 30 or so cents that Apple collects from each sale just about covers those costs. At some point economies of scale will allow Apple to start eeking out a profit from their share.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
You want to really change the digital landscape? Go after the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
It's unlikely you'll get the law overturned without the work of your local Congresspeople, so go to them. If anything, politicians are easier to move by means of protest and petition than big business. The RIAA will always make the connection of lower sales with piracy, not protest, and as long as they also work hand-in-hand with the media machine, the tide will take forever to turn.
Politicians though are terribly practical - they have to renew their existence constantly so they live on the balance of popular issues. Right now, without proper organization, your identity is being defined by the RIAA 500lb gorilla. We're a speck by comparison. We need to jump, en masse, onto these scales to at least show some popular volume, to garner attention. Grass-roots activism is always where the greatest power lies. You have to be active and pressure your local and state representatives to change the law. Make it uncomfortable in their home-states and they won't take you for granted.
But I believe that we have to do it in a way they can grasp - protesting at rallies, marches, actual mail. As much as I like email, I get results more often with a physical letter - if one morning your rep received 500 or 1000 letters about the law, they would take notice. If the next day they find a few hundred people protesting at their re-election rally, and at every rally, then the pressure mounts. Think Flash mobs, but with a political point.
I really don't think we'll ever displace the gorilla sitting on our asses and jotting off emails or crashing servers. We need to get in their faces and make them know we're real and we're really pissed off.
WMA does integrate into Movie Maker just like that, actually.
This comment in particular strikes me as a bit odd. Not only can you use the protected WMA files in things like Windows Media, but any other program that uses DirectShow or DirectSound, like Winamp. You're not limited to iTunes and the iPod like you are with iTMS.
That, I believe, is a feature commonly overlooked. Windows Media codecs (including support for DRM) is built into the entire OS, so any program using OS APIs that use the OS' codecs (I can't think of any that don't, aside from iTunes) has access to them and can use them.
You might have heard that in some countries (Canada and Spain come to mind, I'm sure they're not the only ones) the big record labels have put a levy on blank media because of supposed losses over piracy. They no longer bitch about it because, want it or not, they're already getting your money without your knowledge.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Not for long. And not because the recording industry hasn't tried to impose DRM on CDs (there have been many other
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
It's interesting, I have a friend who works for one of the major music labels here in Australia, and very strongly advocates that the only real reason the label's are against the whole mp3/online thing is becuase it removes both revenue and the gross ability to influence the market from those major labels. It's difficult to setup a distribution chain, advertising and marketing model, instantly, to compete with the existing companies. However with the advent of the internet, competition is more likely, and that same competition could well be motivated to do a better job.
It's understandable....only time will tell if it happens, and that will be directly influenced by the attitudes of major artists towards record labels in securing contracts.
One can only presume that there will similarly be successful online mp3 sites, who have the ability to see musical ability in artists that identifies with the markets taste, and have power in the music industry. Will it be Sony/Universal/EMI/....or will it be the new tech startups......
In the mean time, the argument is still valid that many people will still copy mp3's when they haven't paid for them, even if they were 10c a song. Argument is also valid that whilst those people exist, they will usually put more effort into finding a way to crack protection than actually spending what should hopefully become, a fair price for music online.
Note to industry: bloody hell music is over priced!
I'm sorry if that offends you. I know I should just leave the car open, because anything else is simply assuming that all the people walking the streets are criminals.
I guess I'm just disrespectfull of my fellow man.
Check out this discussion in slashdot, 1999 about custom CDs - some of the comments actually suggest creation of an online store and make the (dire) prediction that the RIAA would not like it, and that it would take an exceptional salesperson to talk to them about it.
Here's the article
Looks like the 'exceptional salesperson' was Steve Jobs. Wonder if anyone imagined back then that the RIAA would turn out to be so vindictive!
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
I think we all know what's happening here: the same computer users who put up with windows are content with the 30 second song previews.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Yeah, you've got a new switcher right here, and I followed exactly this chain. First got iTunes/Win, then got an iPod (nearly the same week) and quickly started looking at iBooks. This from someone who has been using PCs for 10+ years, and used to layer scorn on Macs :)
I'm very happy with my OSX now, and considering one of those shiny dual 1.8 G5s...
The Mac actually works just like Windows in this respect. Replace "DirectShow or DirectSound" with "the QT APIs" and you have the Mac way of doing this.
.m4p, will allow ANY program to play an m4p file (assuming of course that your computer has rights to play that file)...
And amazingly, the QT API calls to play sound files, including
And I think there's a plugin for Winamp now to allow it to use the QT API on Windows to play these files.
To add to your list, patience has a dollar price tag too.
If I spend 20 minutes downloading a song on Kazaa then four songs cost me an 1 hour and 20 minutes of my life. If I spend 5 min per song on iTunes then those same four songs cost me 20 minutes of my life.
That's an hour difference for four songs. I'm saving $4.00 over that hour. That's "working" for far less than minimum wage to the get the song "free" on Kazaa. Unless you're unemployed, iTunes is a much better monitary value too.
TW
Actually, I have this feeling that you just explained way too much. All you really needed to tell her was "If you want to play files bought from the iTMS, you need an iPod." You didn't need to add "or download the files from (insert p2p), or burn them to CD and rip them back"...
:)
When she asked "why not?" you could have simply said "because they don't sell it in MP3 format, they sell it in a format that only the iPod plays."
One thing I've learned through years of being a geek: NOT EVERYONE WANTS AS MUCH INFORMATION AS WE DO. When they ask us a question they want the SIMPLEST RESPONSE POSSIBLE. If you had answered her questions in these ways she probably would have said "Oh", bought a few songs from the iTMS and went out and bought an iPod. It's not like the thing is bad or something.
It's worse than it looks. In the first two weeks Apple sold two million songs. It's been seven months and they've only sold 25 million? That's a million a week the first two weeks, and then only 23 million in the next 28 weeks. If current trends continue, we're looking at a significant dropoff of song downloads. The writing is on the wall, folks; Apple is dying!
Exactly. The music industry's original reason for existance was lowering the barrier to access to music. Before records became commonplace the only way to listen to music was to see a live performance. In short, you had to dedicate either a lot of time or a lot of money if you wanted to enjoy music. Then the record industry came along and suddenly people could affordably listen to their favourite music whenever they wanted, as often as they wanted. It led to the decline of live music (live music used to be EVERYWHERE), but it made music more popular.
The inherent problem with the music industry is that they have forgotten they should be making it easier to listen to music. Obtaining music nowadays is no easier than it was 30 years ago, and in fact, it's become slightly harder due to raised pricing (more than inflation), the reduction of music sampling opportunities (less music on the radio, no in-store sampling), and the introduction of technologies which make it more difficult to listen to bought music the way you want (the various copy protection systems). This is why itunes is so successful. It makes sampling and obtaining music dramatically easier, while at the same time lowering prices.
If I was a music industry exec I'd be spending all my time finding ways to make it easier for customers to buy my product. But then, that's just crazy talk.
Every day, the selection of music on iTunes expands in all kinds of directions. For me, I was elated a few months ago when it seemed every great jazz artist ever recorded was "suddenly" they appeared on iTunes--in volume. Try the iTunes Link Maker and run a search to see if your artists are there. Everybody has to make their own choices, but I personally have faith that Apple's clout (and excellent design) will continue to increase the diversity of musical offerings on iTunes.
But we tend to forget what Steve Jobs clearly says in light of all this hype:
Why, pray tell, is this not a problem for Apple? Because Apple uses the iTMS as a Trojan Horse to sell more iPods.
I only partially believe what Jobs has to say on the matter because he certainly is playing this up for effect (the effect of not alienating the free-downloads-or-die-and-kill-music-middlemen crowd). Once the infrastructure for iTMS is in place and paid for, every additional download HAS to be pure profit for Apple. There is no way that every single cent of the forty Apple makes on each and every download goes to administrating the label/artist payout once the infrastructure has been built and paid for.
Watching people uncritically repeat Jobs' statement that iTMS makes little or no profit reminds me of Ben Kenobi and the stormtroopers: "These are not the droids you're looking for," except here it's "iTMS makes no money for Apple. We are not an evil music disbtributor." If Apple is not making money off iTMS, they will be soon. At some point the hefty profit on iPod sales will be accompanied by a smaller profit on iTMS sales. The real question is how many iTunes downloads does it take to equal or beat the profit on an iPod sale.
blog
Once you've done that, drop a letter to the record company of the artist you want has signed with. Let them know you want them to distribute their music on iTunes. Apple is very good about getting new content, you just have to let them know what you want.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
No. 128kb/s isn't that good.
I love it when people forget we're talking about AAC, not MP3. 128 kb/s AAC far surpasses most 192 kb/s VBR MP3s.
Option-Shift-K.
"Must people, like me, who were big buyers of retail(brick and mortar) music went to downloading music online for free because it was easier than heading down to the local music store... It wasn't that I wouldn't pay for the music, it was just that it was easier to download it with a better selection of music."
More than that, I find it's a lot easier to find music you like when you can listen to it, rather than staring at a CD cover and wondering what it sounds like.
Yes I know you can play CDs in some stores, but try asking them to listen to 65 different albums before buying one. If you want to find music (and it's taken for granted that the radio is no use) then you either need a friend with a very large music collection, or a copy of Kazaa-lite.
My mother asked me about the new iTunes service, and whether she could get songs and put them on an MP3 player to use when working out, instead of her old tape player. She played with iTunes and found all sorts of music she liked on their store. When I had to explain that she would have to get an iPod because you can't download real MP3s, only Apple's own format from iTunes, she asked "Why not?" I explained that the files are protected against "copying" with restrictions that make it difficult to get MP3s from them, so you have to burn the songs to CD, then rip the MP3s
.99c goes to the music company, the internet company, and a small small piece to pay some apple staff. .99c music is just feeding the music pigs.
Why don't you tell your mom the truth?
1. The
2. The only profit Apple makes is off the iPods. Tell mom buying an iPod is how to thank Apple for going out on a limb for us. Downloading
This space intentionally left blank.
Of course if it's your computer that breaks, you'll need that backup mantioned in the parent.
I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?"
And you would be assuming that the people who are paying for iTunes songs are people who would otherwise have downloaded the songs for free. I've seen no evidence that shows this. For all we know, the people buying iTunes songs are completely the same group of people who would also buy the CDs. Personally, I doubt that iTunes has had much of an impact at all on pirated music. Those who download for free already have no problem with downloading music for free, so why would they change and start paying?
Also, don't forget that iTunes is not supposed to make money in and of itself. It's meant to sell iPods. Jobs has already stated many times that iTunes is not supposed to (and won't) make money, at least for Apple.
Given how popular iTunes is, at this point in time if you were an artist looking to sign a deal it seems like it would be very smart to look for the label that gave you the best deal for songs distributed online - which would be independant labels. If good artists make this choice, then fewer people will buy RIAA stuff - and that's how they will finally fall, if at all. It's all about an artist going for a more limited sucess in music but possibly ending up a lot better because the cut is better, so they could make more money on fewer sales.
In short, it all comes down to how logical musicians are and will be... or how many major sucesses from independant labels will draw others that way.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A friend of mine gave me a mix tape many years ago. Sadly, I lost the actual tape but still have the case. Not only is it some beautiful artwork, but she was kind enough to include a track list. With iTMS, I've finally been able to reacquire that lost tape (save one or two tracks) and download them with little fuss. I tried a couple of times using P2P, but it took too damn long to find shit so I gave up. ...hell. I sound like a freakin' commercial. Well, that's my 2
fs
I wish Slashdot would stop setting up the recording industry with these straw men arguments. I don't think the recording industry ever thought (or said) that it would never sell mp3s online. It said that it was unrealistic to sell mp3s online if they could be easily pirated by anyone the next day. And you know what? They were right.
My interest in using iTMS is very high now - the only reason I don't use any of the online music stores is because I don't want to be locked into one store/one mp3 player (software)/one mp3 player (hardware). But once a standard is defined, I'll be there to buy.
But I wouldn't use iTMS, or any music store, if the old Napster were still around, or if Kazaa were any good for finding the music I am interested in. Back when Napster was king, I could find any song I wanted for free. As a result, I didn't buy a CD for a couple years (file sharing over the college network helped too). Now Napster is gone, and Kazaa has a ton of phony files that have made it a hassle to use. As a result, I'm willing to pay so that I don't have to waste a lot of time finding the free version on Kazaa - since time, after all, is money.
My friends who can still find what they want on Kazaa have no interest in using music stores. Those who can't, do.
I'm not saying it's all or nothing. There are some users who always would have paid for their music, and some who never will. But there are also a HUGE number of users - and they're not just computer geeks, remember Newsweek had a cover story on Napster - who will pirate the music if it's easy, and pay for it it's hard to pirate.
It used to be really, really freaking easy to pirate music. Let's stop pretending that the music industry was saying that it would never sell mp3s online. It was saying it wouldn't sell mp3s online as long as doing so just made it incredibly easy to pirate them.
The all-time best example of failed Apple predictions is of course this one:
"Folks, the Mac platform is through..." - John C. Dvorak, 1998
Then there's this recent gem:
"Stick a fork in 'em -- this Apple is cooked." Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/03
But my current favorite is this example of damning with faint praise:
"While praising Apple's service, analysts caution that its success won't necessarily transfer completely to the Windows environment. " - John Borland, c|net news, 7/28/03
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Argh.
/Hans Gunnarsson
And betamax is better than vhs.
And linux is better than Windows
You see? Sometimes it's not so much as what technology is the best, it's sometimes which is most convenient. Right now mp3's are the most convenient, and good enough, just like vhs.
I don't have one
What about something that faked iTMS into thinking it was burning to a virtual burner, and then that program took all the raw data it just grabbed from iTMS and made mp3 files out of them?
Would be an interested idea, at least.
I have several questions. With music downloads becoming the predominant method of getting music these days, why invest so much money in 24 Bit 96 KHz music production? Or even 16 Bit 44.1 KHz for that matter?
The problem is compression. We are now sacrificing music quality for quantity. Can I download the real 16 Bit PCM tracks from ITunes? No? Then why does Pat Metheny need to think about recording the next album with pro gear? Who cares about all those quiet subtleties and nuances if the compression just throws them out?
What I'm saying is that yea, I'm paying less for music these days with ITunes and the like, but I'm also getting less quality that before. Many people don't take that into account. So while we enjoy the grand number of titles available to us, the corporates are quietly creating a class system to the music we enjoy.
It started with 45s vs. LPs. Then cassettes vs. CDs. Now it's 1 dollar downloads for singles, $12.99 for real CD's, or $20 for 24 Bit SACDs.
My point is that the quality of the music is less, but the price we pay for the real thing hasn't changed like we originally wanted it to. So we've quietly made a subconsious sacrifice that we are somehow getting what we wanted all along. I say no, this is wrong. What I wanted in reality was a cheaper CD or SACD, not some cheap knock-off that stands in their place.
The music industry is more than happy to sell you cheap quality music so that you'll eventually go out an buy the real thing...FOR THE SAME OLD PRICES! How have we ended up doing better?
Let me download the real 16 Bit PCM tracks from ITunes and I might change my tune. Until then, stop all this glorifying the download services. They all suck.
Just my opinion.
+1
While this is certainly a great thing, for some reason iTunes is having a lot of difficulty getting completely independent musicians (musicians without a label). I sell cd's on CDbaby.com, a big site for indie music, and while Apple and CDbaby have been negotiating since this summer, and with no disagreements on rates, this process is pretty much stuck. I have no idea why this is taking so long... or maybe this is fast for the music biz and I need to be more patient.