Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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
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?
download song > burn to CD > rip to DRM-free mp3 > enjoy
.wav from the CD with no loss. You compress to a higher-quality-than-you-ever-had-in-AAC bitrate MP3 with no loss. If you're already using 128kbps MP3s, you've already said you're willing to trade a little quality for bit savings...
Of course, I agree in practice, as this eats CD-Rs like mad, and adds at least $0.02 per track, not including time-costs.
Seems like that's all the copyright police are really demanding. Not that it be impossible to de-DRM stuff, or even hard to understand, just annoying. You can't even say that this is an analog hole attack, because that entire path starts digital and stays digital.
Quality loss? Nope... just byte bloat in that path. You could make a perfect copy to an uncompressed
So really, saying you're boycotting anything that has any DRM at all is throwing a baby out with the bathwater. This is DRM that's so easy to defeat you can't call it a respectable hack.
I want the freedom to use it on whatever device I want, with whatever software I choose.
God I hate all the moronic comments along these lines every time this topic comes up. YOU DO HAVE THAT FUCKING FREEDOM! At least as much as you do with a CD. Or are you one of those people who wants the freedom to use a CD on whatever device you want? News flash: a CD is also a form of DRM as well as a type of compression (called digitization). It's just that you're so familiar with it and the methods used to access the music that you don't think twice about that stuff. Apple has, by far, the least restrictive online music distribution scheme and all your bitching isn't producing anything better. I'd thank you to put up or shut up.
The problem with Itunes is it takes the flawed recording industry and extends their monopoly.
Guess what? The iTunes Music Store has hundreds of thousands of songs from independent labels. Labels that are not members of the RIAA. Including many labels that give their artists much better deals.
I'm a jazz fan, so one of my favorite labels is Concord Records, with such artists as Poncho Sanchez and Karrin Allyson. Go ahead, log on and listen to them, you might enjoy it. And supporting them doesn't support the RIAA!
RIAA Radar is a neat site that lets you search for your favorite artist or label and find out whether they're RIAA-free or not.
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!
I always bought music because I liked it and wanted to be able to listen to it when I wanted to, over and over again, not to support the RIAA.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
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.
#1. iTunes features many indie artists. hell, i just got the shaggs first record on it. #2. iTunes is showing the major labels that its a waste of money to record a whole album with a talentless artist when all anyone really wants to buy is a single. this will leave more money for acts that can put out albums worth of songs and develop over time. #3. if the music sucks, it still wont sell.
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.
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.
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!
Because RIAA music is what 98.5% of listeners want to hear. Why not offer everything and anything and let the consumer choose? Independent labels can compete just fine with or without the RIAA on iTunes.
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."
That option sounds like business suicide. One option they could have, though, is to sort by individual label (since they already have the labels stored for each album), so you can pick and choose which ones you want to have show up.
I'd really like to be able to customize the recently added albums and such in this manner. Of course, since this is a new service, I expect more features of the type will becoming (hopefully not for a monthly fee).
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.
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.
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();
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.
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."
Maybe, just maybe, you need to consider different analogies. ;)
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
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)
The only way independent labels can compete is with the RIAA's off the service
this can't be right. when you're on a service like that where you can pick and choose tunes, marketing dollars etc ought to be LESS powerful and it becomes a more even playing field for the independent labels? it doesnt take me any longer to click a link to a non-RIAA label song to one that is.
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.
--
Then get informed.
Stop expecting Apple to jeopardize business relationships solely so that you can continue to be an ignorant shopper.
I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but if the entire reason the iTMS exists and is commercially viable is because of the RIAA, what motivation is there for Apple feature a seach option that alows you to exclude publishing members of the RIAA from a music search?
With the consolidation going on in the music industry right now, I'd think a bright, web-using person like you could search for music then figure out whether it's published by members of a group you want to support.
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.
And all I wanted was my gap clothing, not to support slavery in africa by buying it. And I wanted to sit at home and eat steak without dealing with putting antibiotics and growth hormones into my body. I wanted to eat my steak rare but feedlots breed so much medicine resistant disease that by eating feedlot steak rare I risk catching a bug that can't be cured. I want to drink root beer without worrying about wigging out on my family becuase my head is so full of MSG that I get so irritated by their breathing I want to kill them, the same goes for about 60% of the food at the stores. I'd like to use the microwave to warm a cup of hot cocoa in the morning, but I don't want to take in carcinogens that'll make me get cancer. I'd like to goto the doctor for treatment of a bad flu and not be told to take antibiotics that don't work and make it worse, becuase the doctor thinks they are a miracle cure, but he can't tell me about the real cure; Vitamins, minerals, aromatheripy, rest, hot fluid, fruits, veggies, and time.
It boils down to this; we're all sluts to convienence. I chose not to use these conviences because I'd rather live healthily and be able to do what I want to do than live a drugged, unnatural, unhealthy and ultamatly controlled existance. I like some of the music the RIAA puts out, but because I'm supporting terrorism by buying it, I refuse to buy any of it. Money is power, and while we shouldn't have to worry about someone acquiring so much that they can break the law and do as they please. I shouldn't have to think about what the person I'm buying from is going to do with the money in our society, but unfortunatly you've got to or else things can get real ugly real fast.
So, you've got some choices. Do you buy from the RIAA and support terrorism? Do you buy from indie bands and support them? Do you go onto a p2p app and do whatever the hell you want and risk economic extortion at the hands of the RIAA or do you say "fsck it" and never listen to music again?
And for those of you who think my using the term terrorism is wrong, think again. The RIAA is a cartel who's entire economic basis for survival is extortion of it's customers in one form or another. Sure you say, it's just music. But that isn't the whole truth. It's most of the music in all of the stores and on all the radio's. Combined with Bertlsman, Disney, News Corp, AOL time warner, and the 2 others I can't remember, and you have an effective media monopoly. Views that the big wigs don't like get censored from all media, and americans become as unsuspecting as hindu cows and as blind to the fact that what they do is actually killing people in other countries and the information they are getting is designed to manipulate them. I consider that terrorism, not on par with 9/11 or the some of the slaughters that go on in africa, or what the chinese do to their people, but it is still terrorism and it's still wrong.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
All great art is made by starving artists? What a load of pompous crap. Michelangelo wasn't starving. In fact, he died rich. His work was very well subsidized. As was Leonardo Di Vinci's. The Beatles seem to have made pretty good work after they had some money in their pockets. As did Bob Dylan. Your opinions about what an artist should or shouldn't be are just that--opinions. And I think it's a fairly safe assumption that no artist would care one whit about what you think. Furthermore, given the choice, I would wager that almost all artists would rather get paid than starve. But hey, if it makes you feel better to come up with stupid rationalizations for why you don't want to pay for music, knock yourself out!
Well, you just described commercial radio circa 1965. The fact that you cant find radio like that today has almost zero to do with the RIAA and a lot more to do with the fact that local ownership in radio today is at it's lowest point in history. Almost every major market radio station in the country in owned by 3 media corporations: Clear Channel, Viacom, or Infinity Broadcasting.
These 3 corporations, backed by never ending radio "consultants" that do focus group research, play the same genre based formats in every city in the USA. Thats why a rock station in Fairbanks, Alaska plays and sounds the same as one in Key West, Florida.
The RIAA has a role to play, but they are not responsible for the sorry state of the radio business. Total domination of the entire business by 3 companies and their hired lackeys are.
Look, you may not like the RIAA, but please don't use the word terrorism where its not appropriate. We need a very strong word to describe 9/11 and some of the slaughters that go on in africa. Inappropriate use of the word devalues it's power.