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iTMS Sells 100,000,000th Song
Macslacker writes "At 10:26 PM PDT on Sunday, July 11, Apple apparently sold its 100 millionth song at the iTunes Music Store. While the contest may now be over, congrats to Apple for a job well done."
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Good luck waiting for that track you want to appear at the quality you want from P2P.
Maybe someday you'll have a job and responsibilities and realize that time and convenience are worth something.
Just to pick one nit.
By definition, something that you've sold 100,000,000 of is not "too expensive". It might be too expensive for YOU (as indeed it's too expensive for me), it's obviously found a market and services that market satisfactorily.
Re: your other points, Apple couldn't very well change all the musicians' contracts with a wave of their hand. Now that they're players in the market, we'll see what happens.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's not perfect but it's a step in the right direction. By having a legal way to download music it makes the majority of people see that there is nothing wrong with downloading music. Also with more sites like itunes it would start to break the hold that the curent industry has on artists so that a new net-based music industry could be started that would pay the artists directly.
Really, downloading DVD quality movies is not something I ever see commercially happening until there are major infastructure upgrades in the internet. Pirates do it using lower quality rips, but if I am paying money for a movie then artifacts are just not an option. I am going to want DVD quality, if I don't get it I will just wait a month until the DVD goes on sale used at the local blockbuster.
Downloading a 2 GB DVD over a 1.5Mbit line, assuming *maximum* bandwidth (yeah right) is still going to take you over 3 hours. Why would I pay money to download a DVD, when it is faster for me to just go down to the local store and buy it?
The only way this will ever work is if
Actually, I can see exactly where Jobs is coming from WRT portable video.
With music, you are more likely to "play" it in a variety of contexts that are already well-established. I used my iPod a great deal this past week, both on a family vacation to Niagara Falls (about 10 hours each way) and on several short trips. The passengers in the back might have been interested in watching video, but those of us in the driver's seat aren't (or shouldn't be). For the backseat crowd, there are already solutions for playing DVDs that way.
WRT downloading movies, there's a different issue. Of all the movies that I really love, only a handful have been worth re-watching enough for me to buy the DVD. (This excludes my purchases of movies for the kids when they were younger, and would watch "The Lion King" or "Alladin" several times each week.) If push came to shove, and I had to rebuild my video collection from scratch, I'd probably only repurchase 5-10 movies. The rest are just not that important to me.
Now... why would I bother downloading/storing that number of videos to an iPod-like device? There are other products in the portable DVD space that accomplish the same basic functionality, and the times that I would actually watch a movie away from my home system (vacation or a REALLY long trip where I'm the passenger) are few and far between. Again, that need is quite nicely satisfied by a portable DVD & screen.
Demographically, I'm pretty much Joe-average (in consumer terms), so I think Jobs has hit the mark when he thinks that iPod video is a non-issue.
Tim
As usual, most /. ers here are using this announcement to a) complain about how Apple is being unfair to artists and b) complain about how the iTMS is too expensive.
When the store originally debuted, Jobs spoke on his justification for spending $1 on a song, which was, in fact, that it was marginally more convenient and valuable for a user to DL a song from the store than to spend time hunting on p2p sites for music and runing into cancelled downloads, poor quality music, mixtapes with DJs shouting over it, or viruses in some newer cases. In his words, to download off a p2p site and deal with the hassles is like working for under minimum wage. While we can all agree that there are some holes in Jobs' argument, especiually for those whose sharing avenues are quite advanced, what seems apparent is that with the sale of 100,000,000 songs, many users do find that convenience of the iTUMS to be valuable. Obviously, the store is far from perfect, but content like the motown collection and iTunes exclusives is exciting for users both young and old, and can persuade users from hardcore music fans to those who are discovering new music to broaden their horizons.
3. You can now re-MP3-ise these the traditional way
But doesn't the sound quality diminish that way?
It boils down even simpler for me. I'm a CONSUMER. I like, sometimes, to buy stuff that I want. I'm surfing the net and an old Genesis song comes on the Classic Rock station, and I think, "Hey, I love that song! I wish I had it." I CAN have it. Here are my choices: 1. Go to the store and buy the whole album. Too time consuming and pricey. 2. Go to the used CD place and buy the album used. IF they have it. Time consuming, costs maybe 5 or 6 bucks. Quality unknown until I play it the whole way through. 3. Buy it new or used online. Then I pay 5 to 15 bucks, and I have to WAIT for it to be delivered. This is an impulse buy situation, so that won't work. 4. Download it illegally. That's assuming I can FIND it. This is Genesis we're talking about, not Maroon 5. And if I do find it, odds are it's gonna be a 128 kbps mp3 file, and that file format is NOT high enough quality for me. It may be fine for the kiddies who listen to music over their $49 Dell plastic speakers, but I've got an actual real stereo. 5. Download it legally from an online music service for a buck. The easiest to use service being Apple's. I don't give a RAT'S ASS about big business, fair to artists, whatever. I just want the song. And #5 is the most logical solution here. I think people who are stealing music online because they want to "fight the power" should examine everything ELSE they purchase. Like their sneakers. Some poor 6 year old in China or Korea went home last night with bloody fingers so you could have those $90 sneakers. (cue violins.) Seriously, people shouldn't get all high and mighty about one issue and then conveniently ignore analyzing every other product they buy that might exploit someone. The whole argument is just to justify stealing music online. If you're going to steal music, be honest about it at least.
Music - www.richardmac.com
For a musician to be successful to the RIAA, they need to sell albums as well as touring. Brand new ones. If everybody did this, yes, the artist could dump the label, somehow breaking the contract, and live on to make great music. But we don't live in an ideal world. If enough people don't agree to do this, the label dumps them for being unsuccessful and has pocket change.
The RIAA gets most of the money. Apple, according to a few people, make almost no money on this. Not even making a profit. They supposedly make less than a dime, which is a lot less than %35 if a song costs a buck.
Wrong, they worked with the labels. Mostly. The indie groups are different. Some proxy through a label like cdbaby. You know how difficult it'd be to contract every single artist they had on there... individually?
Have you/him thought about it the other way around? Apple just made music more popular during a decline of cd sales. Yes, the RIAA is getting helped, but the arists are getting helped too. Being an artist is tough work. If artists could sell themselves due to easier money rolling in, I'm sure they wouldn't need the RIAA, but because they get trapped in their deals, they need a good way out. Not a bunch of people making life harder when the artists haven't even asked for a rebelion of this kind.
When the artists come forth, ala They Might Be Giants, and sell directly, sure. I'd rip a used copy and send them most of the cost. It'll prolly save them more money not dealing with me in the first place.
And mr poster, yes. Sometimes slashdot doesn't post all of the facts, and sometimes it posts crappy stories. But what you just posted is just plain wrong.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
These complaints all fail for obvious, factual reasons.
"It's too expensive"
Well, I don't have a PhD in Economics, but I'm pretty sure that when you're selling your product in a non-monopoly situation, and your sales are huge, that's a good indicator that your prices are not too expensive. If it's too expensive for you, then Apple simply has to decide if they can live without you as a customer. I think they've made that decision, and it's worked out pretty well for them.
"First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale."
In other news, gravity still pulls things down. There isn't another way to do it; this is how the world works right now. If Apple wants to sell the latest Britney Spears song, they can't just call Britney and say "Hey Brit, how does 20 cents per song sound? Does that work for you?" She doesn't have the power to sell them her songs; she gave that right away when she signed her record contract. If you think that's evil, then your beef is with the record companies, not Apple. Apple buys from the labels because they're the ones holding the songs. If they could pay artists 40 cents per song instead of paying the labels 65, they'd do so in a heartbeat. As for the "35 cents is a ripoff", ITMS is not a large profit source for Apple: that 35 cents barely exceeds their costs (servers, bandwidth, processing media, design, management overhead, etc...). They've said that the major thrust of ITMS is to sell iPods, not to generate vast profits from song sales.
"But when Apple supports and profits from an obviously unfair system, while telling customers that it's 'fair to the artists', they are just as guilty."
Bullshit. And you're going to tell me that by using your computer to access the Internet and post on slashdot, you're supporting the agenda of the sweatshop owners who built your PC components, all of the communications companies who own circuits between you and the servers you visit, and the admins who run slashdot? Sorry, but I don't accept that philosophy. It's a big, complicated world, and everyone has to live in it. Apple looked at the world as it was, saw a way to make it a little bit better, and seems to have done a good job. You presume to blame them for the sorry state that existed before they got there, saying that they should have fixed everything or done nothing. Let me know how that works out for you.
And we do hear these complaints on slashdot, all the time. This isn't a haven for Apple fanboys, it's a haven for Linux fanboys. These complaints are neither original, nor well reasoned.
My point is that /.'s coverage of Apple is one-sided (both in the stories the editors select, and in the general trend of moderation). This doesn't imply that I necessarily advocate the other side, just that I would prefer a more balanced debate.
The world isn't so black and white. Have you thought about the RIAA, who has a large say in what apple can and can't do with what RIAA says, is their property?
Throats.
How does the old saying go? "First they ignore you; then they mock you; then they punish you; then you win." Are you on 2 or 3? Jobs did something that people wanted, granted the ability to buy a single song, by itself, with not uber-strict drm. Did you expect Apple to buy 100 million songs and give them away for free?
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Yet you get more rights with downloading itunes songs than with buying a cd?
Jonathanjk.com
No matter how many songs Apple sells, the music industry still holds the strings. At any time when Apple starts to gain too much power, those strings will be pulled. Apple will always be at the mercy of the industry, and that will never change.
The music industry is paranoid about services such as Apple's. If iTunes became dominate, Apple could sign artists directly. Those artists would make more money, Apple would make more money, and the music industry would be gone.
The music industry will ensure that will never happen. They will play the various internet music services against each other. Once Apple gets too big, they'll force price hikes on it.
The only service that could possibly stand up to the music industry is Wal-Mart. As I've written here before, because the music industry NEEDS Wal-Mart to sell its CDs, Wal-Mart currently holds the cards. I don't think the music industry has the guts to stand up to Wal-Mart.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
>On the other hand, when I try to describe DRM to people
don't describe it to them. most of them don't care and will not run into restrictive consequences anyway, at least under iTMS DRM.
Lets not forget, people who download the music from itunes have signed a license agreement, until it gets contested in court it still stands. It bring me back to my first post however. You get more rights than with a traditional cd. You can share the song between 5 computers, dump it on an iPod and burn it to cd. What more do you want?
Jonathanjk.com
You mean iTunes music files have DRM? I haven't noticed. I've been able to do everything I've wanted to with the music I've gotten from iTunes. I guess there is no pleasing some people.
I don't understand the question. I can't get through an article about Apple without a bunch of people who like whatever it is they've done today, and a bunch of people who would eat their grandmothers before using it.
You mean you actually pay attention to the blurbs? Wow.
Apple used to be a synonym for "shitty" around here. Your UID is low enough, you should remember. They've changed peoples' opinions by consistently releasing superior products.
Don't like 'em? Don't buy 'em.
I guess anybody who likes Apple products and thinks that, by and large, they do a good job must be in the reality distortion field.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Too expensive? In America? Uh, right. Here where I live, CD's have the normal price of about 20 euros, which is about 24 US dollars. Discount price is about 16 euros (20 dollars). Considering the average income rate in the US compared to the ones in Europe, I really don't see any reason for you to complain.
To be honest, I think the prices iTunes Music Store has are the most fair for everyone. You can't expect to get everything for free in your life.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
No, its not like that at all.$1 for a tune is a rip off. In the uk it is cheaper to buy albums in ASDA (Wal mart) than it is to download from ITMS. And I dont get the physical media from ITMS. Im afraid that as it stands the price is simply too high. I listen to my music on an Ipod, and yet any music from BMG cannot be put on an ipod without breaking the law. So I am being forced to break the law if I choose to listen to my music on an Ipod. I have always bought and paid for my music, and now I have to pay more. (Cost of downloading stuff with no DRM.).
I think its therefore fair that I now just download one BMG CD for every 2 I buy.
Your "Buy at a low price or dont buy at all" amounts to lying down and doing nothing while the music companies raid your bank account.
Let's start simple: the iTunes Music Store is not a good value for customers.
.. Velvet Revolver, chart topper with DRM. Hmm. Sounds like restrictions to me. What, more to come .. how interesting! You keep buying those CDs .. I'm sure those "experiments" won't make your ripping difficult at all.
.. until now there has been NO alternative. Its not a great deal for artists by and means, but at least they get something. Before people who wanted internet delivered music, had no choice but to turn to Kazza and others of the same ilk.
Right. So do tell me what is the best 'value for money' solution that allows you to from your armchair instantly download songs from a range of bands and burn your own custom CD. Or put it seamelessly on a superb digital device.
That's less than the $16 store price, but used CDs at Amazon or ebay cost $5
You complain about artists not getting any money then advocate buying used CDs. WTF? Buying a used CD means the artist gets no extra money. At least with iTMS they are getting something.
And you don't have to deal with restrictions on how you use it.
Sorry what was that
Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do.
Clearly your not a developer as I am sure most people would appreciate there is some cost in delivering a high quality, high availability, high traffic web infrastructure. Costs that come to mind include salaries, importing of CDs/cover art, creation of 30-second previews, big iron servers, networking. Oh and the odd 400 TB of traffic (100 mil songs x approx 4 MB each)
Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing.
And this is Apple's fault why ? It is the fault of the musician if they signed a contract with a music label and didn't like the terms. That was their choice.
In Australia right now we have a great band, John Butler Trio who has the number one CD released under their own, independant label. They get to keep the full 65%. Remember being with a label doesn't guarentee success and vice versa.
Because it's the exact same deal that artists have always gotten from the big five record companies.
Why would you think it would be otherwise ? Oh wait you thought just because its Apple, the labels would offer new contracts with bigger cuts to all of their artists. What world are you living in ?
But when Apple supports and profits from an obviously unfair system, while telling customers that it's "fair to the artists", they are just as guilty.
Of course its "fair"
Thanks to peer to peer filesharing, we finally have a chance to break the major record label system
On one hand you talk about the rights of the artists on the other you talk up pirating songs. Which side of the fence ARE you on ? Or at the end of the day do all you really care about is justifying your pirating ways. Now that's something to feel guilty about.
In the end, there's 100 million reasons why you are full of shit and blaming Apple for what is so clearly an issue between the label and the artist is just being disingenious.
Funtage Factor: Purple
If the payment is made in accordance with the contract the artist signed with the record company, then of course it is fair. The artist wasn't forced to sign a contract. The artist is quite free to promote their own music in their own way. But I suspect you won't many artists that got richer that way.
Interestingly enough, the track he downloaded [Somersault (DangerMouse Remix) by Zero7] isn't copyright protected, sine it's a remix.
Wouldn't a remix be considered a derivative work of a copyrighted piece of art, and thus be copyrighted itself (quite probably with royalty payments or at least permission from the original author, with the exception of true parody).
Even if the original work was in the public domain, a derivative work based off of it (like a Disney movie from an old storytale) is still copyrighted.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Just because an artist wants something to be freely available doesn't make it part of the public domain, it just means he or she hasn't "reserved all rights".
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Ok, let's deal with reality. If you want the entire album, it's cheaper to get the real CD. Whether you go through a music club, a used music store, or even WalMart, you can find the entire album cheaper. Shoot, at even money or slightly more, if I want the entire album I go and buy the CD.
The music store is good for 2 things. Buying a couple of songs off the album because the rest of the album sucks, and listening to blurbs of the entire album to see if it sucks. Would you rather spend $13 (or $10, or whatever) for a single song you want, or just to buy that one song and not have to deal with the rest of the crap on there?
What's lossless to you though?
CD is a lossy method of recording sound. It's just that for nearly everyone the losses aren't audible.
Maybe we could double the CD quality from 44.1KHz to 88.2KHz and the losses might be inaudible to anyone. But then again, even CDs take a long time to download, eat up more storage space on servers and take up more bandwidth.
Maybe true lossless audio is done through Fourier analysis, recreating the exact waveforms and sending the waveform data as mathematical constructs. Even then, these are approximations.
The only truly lossless audio format is to be there, in person and with good ears. Anything else is losing quality. Don't strive for perfection on this - you cannot win.
$1 a song w/ DRM is too much? Perhaps, but for years it's cost $.25 (or more) just to play a song just once from a jukebox; now, for the cost of just three or four jukebox plays, one can have a permanent copy of the song, to play as often as one likes, on one's own gear, wherever one wants, that can be copied to other media, etc. If anything, I'd say the price arguably went down, at least compared to what we've been getting from jukeboxes for decades and what we've been paying for it.
Don't get me wrong; I do think it'd be fantastic if the music could be even cheaper, and if it were unencumbered by DRM (that's why I dig eMusic at least as much as the iTMS), but realistically, there's just no way in hell we'll ever get everything from the major label catalogs released for legal downloads anytime soon without some form of DRM.
Except Apple isn't saying iTMS is more fair than the original contract, they're saying that it's more fair than just downloading whatever from Kazza
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I remember when it was about being reasonable. That we would accept some minor limitations as long as the artists got paid. Now, given that I can take any song from the iTMS and with little more effort than it takes to rip a CD play it on any device I want. That's a damn reasonable restriction I'd say.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Technically the only thing wrong with palladium is the "remote attestation" issue, if that were removed palladium would be a pretty cool (and darned useful) thing. Also, palladium is coming regardless of whether or not Apple uses DRM on iTMS. The two are only slightly related in that they both rely on bastardized PKI to work. I don't buy that iTMS is in any way part of the "process" of taking the internet away.
So even if palladium comes out and enforses the remote attestation issue like they say it will, so what. The content distributors (and ISPs, etc) may decide to use it to set up draconian policies such as "only IE may connect to this webserver" or "only windows media player can connect to this stream" or "only windows may dial into this isp" but that doesn't even scare me.
(1) We have seen (with DIVX and other technologies) that the public rejects stuff that it finds too draconian and affects it directly. Most people do not care about iTMS DRM because it does not affect them.
(2) To quote starwars: "the more you tighten your fingers the more star systems will slip through your reach". Let them have their DRM fun. Once it gets painful for people they will turn away. The only ones who can defeat the RIAA and MPAA and the scam of a business model they operate under is themselves. We really should let them. In the mean time there is no shortage of good music and other entertainment out there, which will thrive.
(3) The internet ain't going anywhere. As long as there are people willing to pay for internet access, there will be isps willing to provide it. The direction the world seems to be going in is MORE open and standards complient, not less. Open is the buzzword of the day and attempting to lock people in a single platform or client has clearly not worked. Websites that previously only allowed IE are removing that restriction, Linux is gaining respectability (and market share which bring with it newly ported applications), and Macs are invading higher education like mad. I don't see that all going away with palladium. It would be suicide to try to pull that kind of crap now, imagine how things will look in 2006 (assuming Longhorn actually is released then).
So all I'm saying is lighten up. You seem to be taking this arguement to an illogical conclusion. It does NOT stand to reason that if iTMS succeeds then the world becomes a DRM hell. There are many battles to be fought before that happens which are completely independant Apple's little music store. I'll be ready and willing to fight those battles but I'm not taking a hardline stance against iTMS because the DRM there simply does not affect me in any way. Frankly I don't know anyone that it affects. Unlimited burning to CD pretty much renders it impotent.
Finkployd
"That's like saying, "Boy, I love these new TV's, but several thousand dollars is just too much. I'll go steal mine from the storage truck behind the store."
Except the store doesn't lose a TV, yadda yadda yadda.
I propose an end to all analogies to the real world when discussing the sharing of files. Nobody's gotten it right, and now it's just plain nauseating.
"Derp de derp."
...that all the music on the iTunes music store is the 'popular' music that the majority of people listen too Electronic (no, not DANCE, TRANCE, RAVE etc)all the way!
Out of their $.35 they have to pay for bandwidth, servers, admins, advertising, and most importantly credit card transaction fees.
This is how brilliant Apple is. They've convinced you that they're losing money on iTMS.. thus you feel like you're getting a great deal.
The fact is, they're making money on iTMS.. not a lot of money, but none-the-less they're in the black.
Just to compare, look at www.apple.com/trailers
This site is free, and costs Apple much much more than iTMS costs to run.