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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!"
I gotta admit that when we started doing digital distribution two years ago, I thought it would be just a small income stream for the musicians - some extra income, maybe $5k/month combined.
But our checks from Apple et al have been over $300,000 a month so far this year! And that's just for our catalog of mostly-unknown all-independent music. (And hey for the record, 91% of all that income goes directly to the musician.)
NOTE: a lot of this discovery of independent music is thanks to cover songs - another twist I never expected.
Yes us alpha-geeks here on Slashdot may get our music from allofmp3.com or SoulSeek or whatever, but there's definitely millions paying that 99-cents-per song, or $20/month subscription out there. I get to see the detailed sales reports every month.
(Personally, I'm so impressed with Yahoo Music Unlimited, that it's making me want to use Windows again!)
WinMX will never be #1. They suck. Stay away. Only RIAA loops and FBI agents are on WinMX. Stay away from WinMX. You never heard of WinMX.
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
Coldplay's new single "speed of Sound" sold extremely well thru itunes, thats because it was released the day after the first airplay. I run a Coldplay fansite ( http://closingwealls.net/ - blatant plug) and following the news around the band, it seems that the single was one of the most downloaded songs ever on itunes, because of that fact. This has proven to be a very succesfull formula. Publish the single online the same day as it hits the airwaves, and people dont have to listen to the radio to hear it, for a tiny dollat they can lsiten it legally whenevewr they want. thats a huge incentive. Of all the legal downloadservices, iTunes gets it the best and is probably right that subscriptions dont work.
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.
Nobody shares. Not one. Take a look for yourself. Everything is hosted by Apple. At least on the other services, people share. I guess all the iTunes users are behind NAT firewalls.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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 think it's a pretty safe bet to assume that the quality of ripping sw and songs has improved since 1999. For the most part.
Me, I like the all you can eat for $/month model, but to each his own.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
You're assuming that the litigation and copy-protection has had no influence on the results we're seeing.
True, but the only way that the industry will move forward is by finding a way to work with the system as it exists today.
Even if they were to successfully destroy the current system, it will come back at some point in the future and the next person/company will make the money they should be making now.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The first lesson a band learns is that bookings come easier when you do covers.
according to slyk, p2p users are over 10 million, which is more than 5 times the number of people using iTunes. And p2p use is growing, not shrinking.
Vote for Pedro
Since you seem to work in the industry, an idea for you- I'd be more than happy to pay 10 or 20 a month for a Yahoo like deal. But not under the current conditions. I want to own the music, not rent it (meaning if I decide to quit paying, I can still play my files). And I want it in a no DRM format (MP3 is fine). Get that, and you'll have a lifelong customer. Until then, none of these sites will be seeing my money- I refuse to buy DRM, and I don't want to pay per song (or album).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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's a CD?
is it like the iPod thing I use in the car?
I like microcars
It's not BS. There are plenty of people using un-surveyable means of downloading entire albums, say, via IRC/Bit Torrent, anonymous FTP sites, straight IRC DCC's, etc. Personally, I don't like the way that Apple does business, so if I were to buy music online, it'd be through Yahoo.
I don't respond to AC's.
Nothing really lost, they weren't going to buy it anyways.
BUT, when they DO have money...they BUY their music, either on CD or via iTunes or some other vendor.
When your TIME becomes WORTH something you don't SPEND it all on P2P.
I don't know, that's what I see going on around me....
I like microcars
It's odd how journalists often refer to peer to peer networks as "sites", because normal people don't know that the internet != the web. But it's more than a semantic distinction, of course. Now people who see the term "p2p sites" will think that you go on to some website owned by someone, and you download all this copyrighted material from a single centralized source, which is completely wrong in most cases (allofmp3 aside).
I wish journalists were more informated about stuff they wrote about.
Personally I find .99 not too bad a price, and .50 about perfect for a song I really like.
As far as I am concerned a price less than that is really unfair to the artists and does act as a disincentive for others to produce music for a living.
That's why I do not think we'll see legit US sites ever offer what you are asking for. No artist would allow it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Intel switch:
x86 has DRM/Trusted Computing.
PPC does not.
I don't think this was so much a case of Steve Jobs playing hardball with IBM, as it is a case of Sony playing hardball with Steve Jobs.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
1)I refuse to pay for DRM on principle
2)I can't use it on my linux box anyway
3)I have better things to do with that kind of money.
4)I don't rent anything I intend to use long term. Not a house, not a car. Why the hell would I rent my music. If I can't buy it and keep it, I don't want it. The only things I rent are books fromt he library, and thats because they're free.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I've seen him post before long ago. He's around and has been for a while.
Beyond that I've bought things from CD baby over the past few years and they are a GREAT company that gives artists a good deal. You should be praising them, not burying them.
My favorite CD from them so far has been The Haight Gang. Great stuff.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I might be confused, but...
Limewire is simply a client for the gnutella network. Same story with Kazaa for the FastTrack network. The article doesn't seem to distringuish between a network, and an interface (client) to that network.
This doesn't mean their statistics are invalid, simply that they haven't grasped a fundamental distinction between a network and a client. It does make me question the credibility of the statistics.
On topic, I'm still waiting for a legal site that offers DRM-less lossless (or Ogg, since that's the format I want to convert to) music. I'll pay them happily. I just want it all to work under Linux, for a bit cheaper than simply buying all the CDs and ripping them costs me in money and time. Oh, and I want to have permanent access to the music, without any of my fair use priveleges infringed upon. =) I use Magnatune, but something slightly more mainstream would be nice, as well.
The NPD report is bull----. Zeropaid sets the record straight.
I found out this week that a bookmark i had to some site that catalogged .torrent files was now stale - imagine my surprise when i went to that bookmark only to find the page covered with "sponsored links" and no torrents for me to peruse.
.torrents. I just stopped looking and did something else.
I didn't try and find other places for more
I haven't looked for any kind of music online in a few years because its too much work. I dont want to install crap, i dont want to uninstall spyware, i dont want to worry abou not getting all of a file, and i dont want to be sued over a couple of songs that aren't any good to begin with. Hell, when i see mp3 files with naming convenitions i disagree with, i get upset and dont want the work of making sure the ID3 data is right and what not.
iTunes is really, really convenient. I haven't bought anything from it, but my wife has when shes looking for some specific song for some reason or another.
I think the value proposition is that paying 99 cents for a known quantity is more convenient than wasting a bunch of time and perhaps needing multiple attempts to get the same thing.
Apparently this value proposition is working for alot of people.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Because I'm a paying Slashdot member which means I saw the story posted a full 20 minutes or so before the non-paying browsers see it.
So there. :-)
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.
linuxbaby - excellent post! Now, is there any way to know whether any given artist is supported through cdbaby when shopping at iTunes - frankly, I don't mind 99c when most goes to the band but will stick to allofmp3 for all other fat-ass artist ripoffs - alternatively, do you or can you post on your website lists of disributed bands?
You must be too young to remember 45 rpm vinyl "singles". They were called singles because they were produced to sell 1 song, with the bonus of having a b-side.
They have been selling single songs via reduced media since the earliest days. It morphed into the Cassingle (cassette tape with limited length) in the mid 80's and the maxi-single (mini-cd) in the 90's.
The record companies know whats up, they have been pushing "single" songs on us for years, even selling you entire bloated albums based off of one song, they are the masters of this. What's giving them fits, is that with todays digital downloads they cannot control the media anymore.
Just look at the media over the years; warpable, breakable vinyl. Unreliable, degradeable, magnetic tape. Discs that are rendered useless by a single scratch. They don't want us to abandon our tired fragile media in favor of something more robust that can be backedup with a mouse click.
Centralizaiton is not a feature.
All this means is that iTMS is the only *single* place left. All the real action is distributed throughout the Internet. The only reason most go to bittorrent.com is to download the software - not the content.
So, what fraction of Internet traffic does iTMS pull?
most popular, my ass...
Thats assuming they don't continue to put out new music that I like and want. If they do that, I need to continue my subscription. Gee, putting out new good music, what a concept. Of course it does seem to be one the record companies don't get lately.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
...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...
Parent: any chance you'll use that 300k a month to drop the price of these independent albums to sub $10 each?
Are you smoking the ganj, man? You demonstrated you read the post, but I think you missed this:
GP:91% of all that income goes directly to the musician.
300k - 91% = 27k left to pay hosting/bandwidth costs, advertising, any employees that need to be paid, any other costs of doing business, oh yea and 4) PROFIT!!.
I know the RIAA has left us gun shy of the words "music" and "profit" together; but he's paying the artists fairly and giving everyone the same fair shot. This guy isn't using any industry stranglehold on politicians & airwaves to artificially pump up the prices.
~Rebecca
Look at your Purchase History under your account in iTunes (click your e-mail address for your account options). You can find all the music you purchased before.
I called apple asking if I could restore music I purchased from itunes after my laptop got stolen and they let me do a one time re-download. Tell me that when your cd's got stolen from your car tower records let you have new cd's... I thought that was pretty cool. :)
???
I never said that so please don't "quote" me like that.
I represent the "casual downloader"
You are their representative? Do you have a card?
I don't think $0.99 is a fair price, with most of it going to the label.
I see, so downloading songs from P2P is better for the artist. According the Representative of the Casual Downloaders.
This may sound crass, but at least I'm being honest when I say that when I look for music I don't think at all about the Artist and how much money they make from my purchase.
I also don't think about the Record Companies.
I think about Me and how to make the process as easy for ME as possible so that I am Happy.
That's basically it.
I'm pretty sure most everyone I know approaches this in a similar manner and they choose a Delivery Method that is appropriate.
I like microcars
i'm really surprised at how much drm is defended here on /. well, not all drm, just apple the flavored stuff. then it becomes good drm (oxymoron?) i guess it's like getting kids to take their pills by putting it in apple sauce :)
Yet it continues to get more stringent. Compare the restrictions you have now with the restrictions you had a few versions ago. How many computers can play the same tracks per day? How many times?
Err, OK. Initially, you could play your music on up to three computers. Now it's five. And there's never been any limit to the number of times you can play a track.
A more important statistic would be "number of gnutella users: X; number of iTMS users: Y".
best college pickem site ever: pickem.terrbear.org