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U2 iPod: Any Color You Want, As Long As It's Black
dave writes "Forbes is carrying the story that U2 and Apple will be releasing a custom black iPod that comes preloaded with the band's new album as well as portions of the band's 25-year back catalog. The custom iPod will be made available the same week as the new album, which is slated for release in the U.S. November 23rd. The article also talks about the larger deal which included the advertisement for iPod/iTunes and exclusive rights for iTunes to sell the album online for the first few weeks of release." skyshock21 adds a link to this article in Revolution Magazine.
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You can have my Achtung Baby album when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!
black iPod that comes preloaded with the band's new album as well as portions of the band's 25-year back catalo
Sure, it's cool that the iPod is black (although, I can't seem to find any pictures of said iPod. I'd love to see what it looks like), but I think the real question is how much of the band's catalog is preloaded onto it? If you are a U2 fan, and the device contains, say, even 50% of the catalog, that's pretty significant value added. Of course, if you're a U2 fan, you probably own those albums anyway, so maybe not.
Still, I guess it's a nice marketing gimmick by Apple. Exclusive rights to seel the music (online, and for a little while at least), some ads out of a pretty popular group, and a million trillion news outlets covering the story and producing even more press. Kudos, Apple.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
I'm curious to see what the Beatles'/Apple Records' lawyers will say about this.
Well, Apple Computers has continued to do what they agreed not to do, time after time, and continues to give money to Apple Corps, LTD because of it. All I can figure is that it's considered a "cost of doing business" and is factored in already. I can't personally see why U2 of all groups would be what they'd do this with - why not work _with_ The Beatles and release an iPod with the Beatles catalog on it? Now _that_, I would buy, and pay a premium for even (since I own the whole thing in several formats already). Hell, the Beatles collectors would probably buy a ton of these, leave 'em unopened, and so on. What better than a sale with no support costs post-sale? Seems like a natural to me...
Maybe this is just nitpicking, but the word "custom" usually means "built to custom specifications for a particular customer." Customer. This is really just a special promotional edition iPod that is being mass-produced. Kind of misleading to call it "custom."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Unless you know the price of the U2 Edition perhaps you should do #3? What part of "Will the price be higher?" do you not understand?
The meme police, They live inside of my head
- Those who don't like the whiteness
- Those who are fad-driven, since this will be the "latest cool thing"
- Those pondering an iPod purchase, but who were undecided might see extra value in the preloaded songs, and be pushed to buy
- U2 fan{boy|girl}s: they will buy because the black iPod screams "I'm a U2 fan".
I expect that this promotion will be rather effective, and we'll see Apple running similar promos in the future. Also, the poster who predicted changeable iPod covers (a la cellphone faceplates) is, IMO, right on the money.We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Forbes says "Vertigo has topped the iTunes download charts since its debut three weeks ago". The itunes chart..
Is this the new metric on song popularity? It would seem to very accurate because you can track who would be willing to pay for a song rather than on an album by album basis..
...or C) Apple has realized that there is a large segment of the population that wants to carry around mp3s, etc., of music that they've ALREADY BOUGHT and have THEMSELVES RIPPED so that they can listen to all of their OWN music wherever they go.
...or maybe D) each song averages 110k each, and Apple thinks that people want to carry around enough music to occupy the rest of their lives, and in fact are planning a subcutaneous model for 2006?
That's still legal here in the US.
When *I* rip songs, they average about 8 MB each. That's about 7500 songs, or (calculated by compression ratio) about 7.5 full discs per gig. Call it 10 discs to account for stuff that's not 72 minutes. Hmm, 600 CDs. I don't have that many, no - but I've got more than 200. And having more than 400 is not that hard to imagine.
Maybe Apple aren't out to contribute to music piracy. Maybe they really want to help people to listen to THEIR music the way THEY want to.
Myself, I'm betting on A) or C). Don't forget that the iPod can be used as storage, too...
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
> Or TiVo with 10 seasons of Friends?
That's a good idea.. I recently got an HD Tivo, and it had 250GB of empty space that could have been used for sample content.
It could allow for a better user experience, otherwise you have to wait several days for the Tivo to build up a list of programs captured. It could also kickstart the Tivo learning process by providing many programs for the user to rate. If they threw in a couple of more valuable items, like pay-per-view movies, or HBO movies, it would be even more effective.
They could probably even get companies to pay them for the privilege.. I'm sure the networks would love the opportunity to pre-load the pilot episode of their programs on Tivos to make it easy for people to greatly increase the chance that viewers give it a chance.
Even a couple sample HDTV programs would be nice to show off the 1080i video and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio capabilities of the unit..
Why is that?
Its the label taking the risk, not the artist.
Remember the key word is ARTist. They make art. Art is not something that should be liked by all and viewed at as a consumable, but to be relevant it must be liked by a certain percentage of the population.
A true artist would simply give the art away as long as he could afford to sustain himself.
Instead, the artist goes to a label that knows 9 times out of 10 the artist is not going to be a profit center for it, and signs them anyways. These labels bank on the law of averages that says that if they cover enough bases, they will eventually hit gold (and hopefully platinum).
Past that, guys like me like to get paid. I work in the back grounds for artists and someone has to pay me and folks like me. I've done it both ways -- I've been paid from the artist and I've been paid by the label. Wanna know who's screwed me less? The labels. When working on points (or mere fractions of points in my case), the label will lay out all the figures and statistics. The artist will always claim they haven't sold enough to pay any of us, even right after bragging to the girl next to you that they sold billions.
If you actually had a clue as to what it took to put out a commercial grade album these days, you wouldn't be so harsh on the labels. Then again, if I was recording on my own again (i.e., not in a backing capacity), I too would be bitching about not getting paid enough...thats the nature of capitalism...we all think we deserve more.