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iTunes More Popular Than Most P2P Sites
bonch writes "A study by NPD Group shows that iTunes ranks #2 in popularity of music downloads, rivaling services like Limewire, Kazaa, and iMesh. The #1 service was still WinMX, but NPD believes this proves to the music industry that legal downloads can work, and that iTunes provides an economically viable alternative." From the article: "According to NPD, about 4 percent of Internet-enabled households in the nation used a paid music download store in March."
Although there are still millions of people who will continue to trade on p2p, having legitimate outlets supplying digital copies of music, television, and movies will become a hugely profitable venture for the entertainment industry. They just haven't figured out how to do it and still capture the largest share of the market.
A radio program this morning on NPR discussed how the movie industry was losing money on opening day box office receipts at the same time they are making a killing with DVD sales ($17BUSD). That means that they are going to have to change not only their marketing (opening day receipts are generally a 16-24 year old market), but also their metric for gauging success.
Overall, once they stop focusing all of their energy on litigation and lobbying for worthless copy-protection standards, they will begin to create a market-driven system that people will gravitate to and embrace.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Stand by for a bunch of /.ers, pretending to be representitive of the average consumer, posting as anonymous coward to tell us all how many tracks they pirated versus bought in the last week, and how this proves the stats are wrong.
What will happen when Apple goes bankrupt? Or when the next generation of mini-players comes out with a new DRM?
People are paying for music, then being told how they can use it.
Fair use is simple. I can make as many copies for myself as I want. Many DRM's make it impossible to make even a back up copy. But what if I want one copy for my MP3 player, one on a CD for my car, and one for my wifes car? Does that mean I must buy three copies?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For me it comes down to one thing...iTunes subscription ensures I'll not end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. I can't afford the fines, and I'm not interested in trying to dodge getting caught. Not worth the risk for me.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
How do these people come to be in charge of multimillion dollar companies? This should really be obvious, folks.
Its funny that you made the same comment, in a different way, as the commenter on NPR. They said something to the effect that "these people [entertainment execs] are really smart and will eventtually figure this out".
Until now, of course, all they have shown is that they are frightened asswipes with souless lawyers at the ready.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I used to use Kazaa/Limewire to download my music before, but now I'm almost exclusively an iTunes man. I still use Kazaa for things I can't find on iTunes, but immediately buy it legally when they become available.
I can think of several factors. First, of course, the quality of the music is much better in AAC than the ripped mp3's you find online. Second, you don't get screwed by fake or misnamed files, truncated versions, or the whole other slew of crappy files you find through P2P. Third, the legality of it vs P2P is appealing, especially when you get older and you start worrying more about not making mistakes you'll regret later.
Fourth (and I think this one is very important, which is why I gave it its own paragraph) the interface to iTunes makes it so, so easy. Not only the iPod integration, but just the fact that making the actual purchase (after you login) is so smooth, you forget at the time you're actually spending $1 per song. You just click on the buy song button, the song is downloaded (and iTunes is still very useable while the song is being downloaded), and you don't even think that you will be billed for it later. The $1's add up, of course, but it took me a while to look at my collection and realize I had just spent $200 on music I could have gotten for free (had I really wanted to). On P2P it involves placing a search, looking through the hundreds of results you get back to find a version that looks legit and has the bitrate you want, hope that the file will still be available throughout the entire download, then wait while you're access to the song is limited by the slowest peer you're getting it from.
About the only reason, besides the cost savings, I can think of for still going to P2P for music is if you have a music player other than an iPod and don't want to go through the hassle of burning the song to a CD before you can rerip and transfer it to the player. Unless, of course, there are AAC to mp3/ogg/wmv converters out there than can convert Apple's DRMed version, and if there are, please tell me where, because I've looked and haven't been able to find any that work.
What will happen when Apple goes bankrupt? Or when the next generation of mini-players comes out with a new DRM?
You must be thinking of the OTHER music companies, that re-authorize every month or what have you.
If Apple went out of buisiness, you music would continue to play on your current Mac until the end of time.
However, like you say eventually you'd want to move the music. Two options then:
CD's - I can burn any ITMS song to CD as much as I like (limit of ten burns a playlist, but I can always make new playlists...)
Hymn - I can convert protected AAC files into unprotected AAC files, which I can then play on anything that undrestands AAC (most PC players, not many portables) or convert it from there.
So yeah I feel sorry for anyone buying music from anywhere other than ITMS or AllOfMP3.com. I still don't like to use AllOfMP3 though as I don't feel it gives artists as much as it should. Perhaps in the future I'll buy from ITMS, then buy the non-lossy version from AllOfMP3. Too much work though, so I probably wont...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As for an example, if I pay for all these songs and my computer would happen to crash, and it would just happen that I don't have a backup copy, I've essentially payed for something I don't have anymore.
And this is different from physical CD purchases how? Let's say you have a CD, and it gets damaged or lost. Same scenario here, you've paid for something you don't have anymore.
With both scenarios, you have two options - back up your music (whether by burning a data CD/DVD of iTMS purchases or ripping your CD to MP3), or risk losing your music.
You do have a valid point, and I do agree with you, that it would be nice if your Apple ID also facilitated in keeping a record of all music you've purchased in case you need to re-download them.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
...instead of pushing them around and spending all our efforts on advertising instead of actual, innovative, interesting products... Exactly, the US can do with more bonus in their products. Most of the audio CDs I bought in the US only has a cd and a front+back cover, nothing else.
Compare it to the Japanese audio CDs I buy all the time? a booklet thicker than the CD, complete with lyrics! (why do the western CDs usually lack them? afraid of "infringement"? the last Japanese piano CD album I bought even has the MUSICAL SHEET with it)
Seeing that both has the same price, I know its obvious to which one I would buy...