Slashdot Mirror
Jobs Resists Music Industry Pressure
Drew writes "Steve Jobs is opposed to raising the price of online music sales, calling the music industry greedy, and
implying that price increases will bring about more piracy." From the article: "It may not seem like it, but it has been more than two years since the launch of the iTunes Music Store, and that alone has the music industry brimming with hopes for price-adjustments. They also don't buy Jobs' argument that a price increase will result in more piracy, but probably not for the reasons we might assume. I've long been of the conviction that piracy is not nearly as large of a problem as the RIAA makes it out to be." Also covered at Macworld.
Am I missing something? They're going increase the price of songs so you're paying pretty much the same price as a cd to have it in a proprietary, non-portable format with no artwork and nothing tangible? What benefit would people be getting from the iTunes music store at that point, exactly?
There needs to be a shift in paradigm. The simple fact of the matter is that older people have paid time and time again for the same music. They bought it on LP, Cassette, CD, DTS Disc, DVD Audio etc.
Sure, something fundamentally needs to change with the record companies and their formulaic approach to building bands, instead of finding real talent out there, but that is a different argument.
The fact of the matter is, I should be able to rip my CDs, and purchase music online for whatever price, then I am on record as purchaseing/owning the right to listen to those songs. If 5 years from now songs that I have purchased already have been re-mastered from studio recordings and are now available in lossless, DTS 5-channel, MPEG-2 10 channel, whatever... I SHOULD BE ABLE TO FREELY DOWNLOAD THE NEW VERSIONS as they represent a more accurate representation of the recording I purchased the rights to hear. The money I paid was for the recording the artist laid down in the studio. If there is a new means of transmission that more faithfully reproduces the listening experience of that recording, great, give it to me. If not, when I purchase that song, give me the reel-to-reel, or DAT tape, or whatever.
How come no one has ever brought this up?
Maybe they could cut costs..but, oh, I don't know.. hiring less lawyers to sue their customers.
Apple should partner w/ Google and the recently announced Google Wi-Fi service. Two power houses, major distribution and mind share, not to mention the pile of cash they're both sitting on. Oh and they'd be getting free advertisements w/ 2-3 combined posts per day here on /.
In fact, let's really show those greedy bastards and set the per song price of an iTunes download to twenty-five cents! That way, downloading an album would actually be cheaper than buying the jewel box.
You go, Steve!
Um, he is talking about lowering the prices, isn't he?
Oh.
Never mind.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
There actually was an issue that wasn't totally different with the SONY walkman. Back then the record industry was concerned about people taping albums and there is a story about it in the NY TIMES magazine around 1981, but it never mattered.
I couldn't agree more, and I'm sure most of the /. users agree as well. They are just plain greedy and there is nothing that will ever change that. Money makes every person on the planet greedy, it can make anyone evil. I hope Jobs succeeds at rejecting their pressure.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
The idea that the prices of music should go up is ludicrous. There is a site out there called AllOfMP3 that charges a nominal fee based on the file size, and it allows you to change the format and bitrate of files you download. It is, quite possibly, the most sophisticated online music store out there. I can get a full album for 1.10$. Since the site operates out of Russia, Russian copyright applies.
It's revolutionary, and it's a model that iTunes could stand to look at. Never will I pay 99 cents a song again.
As the price of reproduction drops, the price of the item should drop correspondingly. At least that's how the economic theory goes. Profit margins drop but profits are made through bulk sales, much like today's commodity ethernet cards and memory chips. It allows for many companies (or artists) to create a product, spurring competition, providing choice. All of this is good for the consumer.
Yeah, the RIAA is still trying to stick it to us.
I never bought a song on iTunes - I've gotten them all for free with Pepsi caps.
I don't usually drink Pepsi, but when I see those yellow caps, I tip the bottles, find a winner, then get a Pepsi (instead of the Coke I would buy otherwise) and get my free song.
So I think this is in response to pressure from Pepsi. If you pay more per song, you'll be more likely to buy a Pepsi for a chance to win a free download.
It's a conspiracy, I tell you!
Everytime I hear of music piracy, I always think of the quote that I believe Justin Frankel said in relationship between Napster and iTunes. The basic philosophy was that the music industry really screwed up by not catching Napster soon enough. By the time they offered the pay for download services, people already knew they could download free music. This meant that every time someone bought a song from iTunes, in the back of their head they were saying "I can definitely get this song for free somewhere." To this day, that's what really is driving the P2P downloaders, however many of them are left.
The music industry is just greedy and they're completely out of control. Someone needs to shut them down and quick. However, without their money many artists probably wouldn't get their albums published, so it's kind of a necessary evil that we have to deal with.
I remember when it didn't used to be a crime to listen to music.
Ok. First of all, I don't know exactly what they're talking about - online or Pressed CDS. But, selling a song for $.99 or $9.99 an album WITHOUT HAVING TO PRESS A CD, MAKE COVER ART, have a jewel case, and truck it to the stores, is pretty steep. I was part of a survey a couple of years ago asking "how much would you pay to download a song?" I answered, "$.25" Asked why, I answered, "Because the music publishers do not have any media costs other than bandwidth and royalties. Excluding the royalties (which are a constant), bandwidth is MUCH cheaper than jewel cases, CD, physical distribution costs (trucking of the CDs, etc...) and the artwork."
In short, I think Jobs is right on the money here.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
But why not cut out the middle-man? We don't need "the music industrie" for on-line music do we?
Artist -> Online shop -> Customer makes more sense to me.
The online shop (iTunes for instance) could take care of the marketing as well.
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
"It lays golden eggs."
"Do we own the goose?"
"No, but we get half the eggs as long as the goose uses our nest."
"We ain't got to do nuthin' and we still get half the eggs?"
"Yep."
"But we don't own the goose."
"Nope."
"I say we kill it!"
- Crow T. Trollbot
The seller of a product will usually set the price of a product to a level that he thinks the market is able bear without turning to alternatives (theft, competition, abstinence, etc.). If the good ole' boys over at the RIAA think that $9.99 for a downloadable album is not enough (and trust me - they do!) then they'll explore every nook and cranny if they can get away with charging a few bucks more! Businesses have no sense of 'fair', 'good', or 'evil' - they produce a product and will try to squeeze as much profit out of their customers as possible. If the profits are less than expected than they will try to 'instill demand' (think advertising and other types of brainstorming) to somehow part Joe Shmoe with part of his earnings.
At the end of the day, it's a voting game - they rise the prices, we go back to piracy. Trust me, economic consequence is the only language they understand. Companies are by default pathological entities that have no compassion, vision (in most cases at least), remorse, or concience. It will squeeze you for all you got - that's why it is a commercial entity! The democratic mediator is the consumer and obviously most of the responses on this thread (it just started and I'm an early poster, but let me just guess ;-) will be against a price hike. If nothing else the RIAA is looking in the wrong direction - as competition brews I believe that these prices should come down, not go up. After all, there is no physical media involved and selling bags of bites is a great business to be in...
And of course for non-chart music, you could probably pick up the actual CD for less just by scouring eBay, zShops or even a sale in a regular bricks & mortar store.
"calling the music industry greedy"
Shitheads from the end of that sentence...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
"Finally someone in a power position stands up against the RIAA. However, IMHO $1 is still too expensive. Anyone know how much artists get from that $1? "No more record company pimpin'" - Ice Cube"
Probably around 10 cents. The group that gets the largest cut (supposedly) from each song sold on iTunes at 99 cents is the RIAA. Reportedly, the RIAA gets 30 cents, which is even more than the actual music label.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I'll probably get modded as a troll for not saying "apple R0X0RZ", but whatever.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
I mean does the RIAA really HAVE to allow apple to sell music? What's to really stop them from dictating terms.
www.samuraidreams.com - My Blog
www.samuraifiles.com - Get Some Videos Here
Industry associations like the MPAA (and, I presume the RIAA), take a cut off the top from producers. About half of that cut goes, supposedly, to anti-piracy efforts.
So, they need to make it look like they're fighting piracy. What better way to get headlines proving you're fighing piracy then to go off suing a bunch of 13 year-olds??/
Then, of course, there's the fact that, if they can legally squash fair use, then they can ultimately charge and track people for each time they listen to a song. More money for less work. It's almost like printing the stuff.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
However, organized crime (particularly in Asia, former Soviet Union and now offshore on boats in international waters [read: no law], there is a very large problem. Anything that exists on disc (music, games, software, movies) is subject to theft and distribution. Traditional Organized Crime via physical goods is still more profitable than electronic business.
I believe the RIAA could make a great deal of headway in its piracy campaign if they would focus attention on the real problem. They would "pick up" the little guys they claim to be the problem and would sway public opinion (who dispise organized crime other than the Soprano's).
I'm hardly advocating for the RIAA here or suggesting that increasing levels of encryption is the way to go (this will never will work with any media that can be heard or seen imho) but don't ignore the fact that you can find any movie (including ones that have never been released to DVD) on the street in NYC. That guy with the blanket full of discs isn't a small businessman - he's working for organized crime.
The difference between Steve Jobs' wealth and the RIAA is that Steve grew his own business and continues to do so. The record companies want to raise prices for doing nothing. Being a billionaire is not necessarily a sign of being greedy if you work for it. The RIAA is a bunch of middlemen that lets others work for their wealth, so they are decidedly greedy.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
"And this come from the man that prevents ITunes music from running on anything other that an IPod and prevents Real from releasing DRMed music for the IPod."
The music industry does not pay the bandwidth cost of the iTunes Music Store. Apple pays for that from the profits generated from iPods sold.
Why are you championing Real? Did Real pioneer the concept of buying music online? No, they were the main force behind MusicNet, which was a music rental system. It was totally unsuccessful.
Real also went ahead and broke the Fairplay DRM, which arguably is a violation of the DMCA. So again, how is Real the good guy here?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Nothing by George Harrison
See "Apple Records vs. Apple Computer".
I am sure this is a casual comment by Jobs, because he is in the catbird seat and has no reason to worry. He has the power here.
What are the labels going to do if they don't like the terms of iTunes music store? Go to another store? No.
1. No other store has near the volume or reach of Apple's. No one else has the brand recognition or ease of use.
2. By far the number one music player is the iPod, and only the Apple music store can sell protected music files that work on that player. The labels could try and sell unprotected MP3 files but this seems unlikely.
So going above 99 cents per track means either convinving Jobs (not likely) or moving music off the Apple music store -- which means lost sales and possibly more piracy. Not going to happen. Jobs is in a great position.
At first, I laughed out loud at your preposterous comment, but then I remembered that they already already do.
Because iTunes isn't operating out of the ex-Soviet-Union.
Hey! None of that! Talk Like A Pirate Day was yesterday!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You're telling me that Jobs knows what a Demand Curve is?
Holy crap. Somebody who actually understands Basic Economics. Never thought I would see that.
Two Roommates and a Boyfriend, updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Jobs works for $1/year at Apple and gets some bonuses from Apple board of directors sometimes.
...) he lives in a normal house and sends his children to public schools. Gates lives in a bizzaro fun house and Ellison lives in a fake Japanese McMansion.
Most of his wealth is in the form of Pixar stock - and he doesn't give that up because he wants to retain control of the company.
Unlike a lot of rich people (Gates, Ellison,
Yes, he is not hurting for money. But he doesn't *live* like a greedy person. He could be getting paid more at Apple than he does if that was what he cared about. I think he cares more about retaining control at Apple than he does about money. He retains control by keeping Apple healthy, and also by keeping his "moral authority" by being the guy who works for $1/year.
Whatever you might say about Jobs, he's a person that I can have some respect for. He lives his life pretty modestly, works very hard, and cares a lot about quality.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
"I'm still waiting for the day that iTunes hosts *FREE* albums."
.99 each.
/ viewAlbum?playlistId=18294623
While not free, I've noticed several albums in iTunes that were around under a dollar...which is wierd when you realize that each song bought individually were
For instance:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa
This is $0.49 (I bought it a couple weeks ago thinking it was a mistake). Not a bad deal, considering someone has to pay for the bandwidth and storage fees.
I have a friend that sells exclusively through the iTMS these days (after getting dropped from his lable) and he mentioned that while you *HAVE* to charge $0.99 per song, you can charge what ever you want per the album (i.e., make the album $300 while the individual songs might only come to $9.99 if bought seperately).
Why not encourage people to use this loophole. Put up a lot of album only songs that are within the $1 range for the entire set. I'd be glad to drop that kind of money on unknowns...
First, iTunes exists purely at the discretion of the music industry. Without "hit" and popular songs from the RIAA dervived companies iTunes would essentially be worthless. The music industry could pull out anytime it wanted and could destroy iTunes.
Second, the music industry does NOT want iTunes to succeed. Let's assume that iTunes took 50% or greater of the total market of music sold. Why would an established artist re-sign to a label when he or she could simply hire a marketer and sell directly via iTunes and keep more of the money?! iTunes would BECOME the new music industry and the RIAA and its bosses would go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers.
Jobs and Apple is in a very lopsided relationship with the music industry, and I'm not sure whether either side knows it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The list goes on and on dude... all great musicians... all 100% American!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, it is - but not really. The issue is about control.
Right now, the RIAA can pretty much dictate terms to a new artist. You want to get into Wherehouse Music stores, Borders and the rest? Then you're going to have to sign a label with us. Sure, you won't get much money, but we're providing this big service for you, right? So you have to take the terms we give you!
Now along comes the music stores, and the RIAA is hoping for the same thing. Between Napster and WalMart Music and MSN Music (whenever that opens) and Rhapsody and iTunes, if you want your music on their, you're going to have to go through the RIAA who will do the cheerleading, spend the money on advertising, and make you a star!
Except there's a problem; only iTunes is being used. Oh, sure, there's *some* people using Napster like my Dad (until he got a free Shuffle at a CIO conference and switched to Apple, then all of his music to MP3 format from WMV by reripping the CDs and now he's just buying music from the iTunes store) - but far and away, iTunes is the #1 player, not with monopoly power, but certainly with a huge level of influence.
Which means that, as more people have portable MP3 players and less have CD players, the shift of power goes from "If you want your music in 5000 stores across the United States and worldwide markets, you have to talk to a big record label", to "Want your music on the iTunes store? Sure - it costs this much, and we get X amount of every CD sold". Apple, for example, could charge people $100 - $200 to get a new band onto the iTunes store (currently, I'm not sure how their deals with Indie bands are), and give them 50% of the profit per song sold after that point. A new band could pretty cheaply get their music distributed across the nation without having a single major publisher help them out - and if they get popular, they can, like the Lascivious Biddies, do their own thing and be profitable, and if they get famous, then even better.
Which scares the RIAA major publishers to death. As with any major shift in technology (sheet music to player pianos, player pianos to radio, radio to cassette, cassette to CD), sometimes the old winners vanish and are replaced with the new winners. In this case, the RIAA members are hoping to have the same situation as they have now in the future: several online stores that carry their music, with the RIAA as the gatekeepers for getting new artists in.
But if iTunes is practically the only game in town - a situation that Jobs is helping along with the DRM only working with iPods, and there's nothing on the horizon that's going to replace iPods for the next 2 - 4 years (barring some incredible technological advancement), that puts Apple in a huge position in power. RIAA members can huff and puff about taking their ball and going home and not being on the iTunes store anymore if Jobs doesn't do what they want.
Except they don't dare. Remember when the iTunes Music Store finally opened up in Japan just a few months ago? You had artists who's publishers weren't putting them onto the iTunes store doing an end-around and doing it themselves. Granted, most artists aren't technologically savvy, but how long would it take for Artist X to hear his label is pulling him off the iTunes store (and all of those iPod potential sales) before they get pissed and threaten to change labels or some such? Maybe one or two isn't a problem - but it could add up.
So the RIAA is hoping by jacking up the price they can make online music unpopular enough that CD's will be more popular for awhile, until a good iPod competitor can kick Jobs off the top of the heap and make the market more even and they can keep playing the game.
Granted, this is all my opinion, so I could be wrong. Either way, I'll probably work to listen to Podcasts (which is where I'm hearing new music from thanks to shows like "Coverville" (which got me turned onto a new Tori Amos CD I didn't know I wanted, a Will Shatner singing "Common People" that kicks ass, and a few other tracks), "Insomnia Radio", and a few others), or just support artists directly (like buying songs from thier website instead of a store).
John Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Because the music publishers do not have any media costs other than bandwidth and royalties.
I'm not going to defend high prices, but it's a straw man argument to say that the marginal cost of delivering songs via the web is just bandwidth. I'm not the only one here who knows first hand how much work goes into building and maintaining web applications.
Yes, you can have amateur musicians upload their songs to a volunteer-created site and download them for free. iTunes, ITMS and the iPod are successful because a lot of design time was invested so that everything works smoothly.
The myth that everything on the web should be free because you're not getting any "stuff" from the content provider is hurting the adoption of high-quality pay-for-service sites. Not everything valuable comes wrapped in plastic.
What?! Are you smoking crack? There are 6 or 7 Queen albums there. And they didn't just get there. I bought a few of their albums over a year and half ago. How did I find these Queen songs? Well, I typed in "Queen" into the search field, and there they were!
hmmmmm, I wonder if iTunes Canada (which is what I'm using) has a different availability in this case.
-- the cake is a lie
Oh, please! Piracy and the "n word" are two completely different things and topics altogether. The "n word" (I don't feel like typing it here) isn't just a descriptive adjective, it is a racial slur. Piracy is a term used for infringing on the copyrights of software and music by copying it without the owner's permission. Please never compare "piracy" to a racial slur (especially the "n word"); it makes you look immature and ignorant.
And you condone piracy? Hey, I can't stand the RIAA's practices as much as the next Slashdotter, but shouldn't the artists get fair compensation from their works? If we don't buy music from the artists, then the artists won't get compensated for their performances. Piracy, to me, is selfish and doesn't reward the artist at all. Now, do I believe that the RIAA should be suing 13 year olds left and right? No. However, I believe that piracy is wrong and shouldn't be condoned.
Just NEVER compare piracy to the "n word" ever again!
How can the record companies tell Apple how much to sell their songs for without being guilty of price fixing? The FTC investigated and fined record companies in the past for imposing a minimim pricing system on CDs on such retailers as HMV, I believe.
Am I wrong?
He's charging you for the development and maintenance of the iTMS interface, as well as for the not insignificant cost of negotiating deals with the labels for distribution and sale. I'll gladly pay him--what is it, 5 cents a song?--to do all that dirty work for me.
..kinda. iTunes lets anyone who makes music submit their music to iTunes database now. This really cuts out any kind of middleman, and the people who want to hear music, get the music they want.
Of course, becoming an actual record label might not be a good idea. First of all you have legal issues with Apple (I doubt Apple could afford to buy Apple Records), then you have the "expected" crap that artists get; the cars and the image and all of that junk. Then you have to fight with MTV and the RIAA to get any playtime. And by the time you've gone through the whole cycle, you're just as bad as the record companies that exist now.
iTunes is allowing the model of music to change. Instead of skimming as much as possible, and giving it back in the way of highly-discounted cars, album deals, etc, Apple can just let the consumers consume. And the artist gets the big part of the money made. Win-Win if you ask me.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Japan? Cheap? Are you talking about popular music? Because last time I went to Japan, a popular new release could run anywhere from $20-30, which is much more expensive here. Most of the cheap CD's I found were used.
Uhm, let's break that list down a bit
Not to just post 'me too', but... me too.
Out of all the arguements i can make against the music industry today, the 'i only like one song on the whole CD' thing is not one of them. Never applies. Maybe there are occasionally two or three songs on an album that i actually don't like, but i have never bought an album where i only liked one or two songs.
Maybe if you guys didn't listen to such shitty untalented artists you would like more of their songs.
CDBaby
:D
These guys are exactly what you're talking about. They stock your CD, process transactions, and send the CDs out for a small fee per disc. They also sign you up for digital distribution. My band's only sold 20 CDs but we're on iTunes.
vk.
Right. When you take into account the miniscule cost of his operation... why, it's like he's positively robbing us blind, right?
Rapacious bastard. Making a profit off the iPod - the nerve!
Yes! One has to wonder what will happen to his "you must buy an iPod to listen to the music we sell!" tactic when people figure out that they can listen to the songs right on their computers, or even burn them to CDs.
For the sake of Apple, and all the poor children in Cupertino, we can only help that the secret never gets out.
Check out our music store then. We are an independent music store, where the artist sets the price for their music. We have free downloads, as well as music for sale. We provide free software and codecs for your computer system.
Our files are in the Ogg Vorbis format as well. Check us out.
http://ind-music.com/
I have nothing clever to put here...
He wouldn't be able to buy an iTunes song on what he makes if the price goes up!
Although I am morally opposed to DRM, I have to give Jobs his props. Not only did he pioneer a successful music store, but now he's refusing to bow to the man's demands. The RIAA is a bunch of whiny white-collar assholes who know nothing about music or the consumer. They think that "IP" entitles one to rule the frigging world. Jobs had to put the DRM in there just for them. And now he refuses to raise the price. I'm glad that he is standing up for us (at least somewhat) and I am glad Apple is taking a different stand than Microsoft, who basically jumped unerneath the covers with the RIAA. I think we'd all agree that musicians should be paid for their work. I think we'd all agree that the ideas of "royalties" and "licenses" are out of date. Finally, I think we'd agree that artists aren't getting the fair share of their money. My question is how do we have music that doesn't violate Constitutional rights (DRM, namely), and is fair to artists as well? The last concept is that derivative works MUST be allowed. That restriction is completely biased toward the artist. The Constitution clearly states that copyrights can be levied by congress for the progress of the sciences and useful arts. The RIAA has this attitude that by copying music, "pirates" are taking something from the musicians. The musicians either have talent or they don't. You can't take talent from someone who has it just like you can't give it to someone who doesn't. The RIAA tries, but WYSIWYG...GIGO. I've thought a lot about the "perfect" model for musicians, but I can't seem to determine how to compel people to pay artists for copied music. I figure they can still sell albums and such. Once someone owns the CD (in a personal property sense) then he or she owns the atoms of that CD. Therefore, he or she should be extended the same property rights he or she would be if he or she owned a chair or a desk or any other object. The RIAA has said, however, that music is "licensed" to buyers and therefore they don't own the CD. I never read or signed nor agreed to any license when I bought any CDs. Their rights end where mine begin, and vice versa. I can't tell them what music to make, so they can't tell me how to use my music. Imagine if when you bought a chair, you were required simply by buying the chair to use it only in a specific way, such as a dinner-table chair. What if you needed to use a chair in your living room for some reason? Too bad, a new chair would have to be bought.
Seeing as how the labels still own the catalog and can distribute through anybody they please, Apple is no more likely to become a monopoly source of downloads than Wal-Mart is of CD's.
Apple is essentially in the position of being a huge music reseller, like any record store. That's a very different thing from becoming a music label.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Uh huh. Stevie boy is a good old guy with no ego. Just a normal guy you can respect. And Bill Gates he's the devil incarnate. Well, the billionaire philanthropist devil incarnate, who's donated 7 billion dollars to various causes as diverse as AIDs research and the United Negro College Foundation.
Oh but that's just good press for Microsoft you say. So what? Running the largest charitable foundation in the world is an excellent way to get good press, and it benefits people all over the world.
So Jobs gets a $1 salary. Wheee. And a Lear jet, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in reimbursements from Apple.
I'm not trying to say Jobs is the evil one. Hell, both of them are business men, both have used nasty business tactics (if you think Jobs is a saint, read some of what Woz has said happened at Apple), both of them are rich and can afford a fancy house or personal jet plane. There is no reason to deify or demonize either of them. But buying into Apple's PR image of Jobs is just silly.
(Larry Ellison however, IS the devil incarnate)
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I don't believe parent is talking about the end-user machines the content is delivered to.
If you don't think there are real costs associated with distributing music, you are mistaken. The server space, the CPU, and the bandwidth needed to store, process, and deliver the ~5mb/each songs to the end user, are not free. Apple pays royalties on the songs and pays for the above, so their profit, while significant, is not 100% of the money they get.
I, for one, applaud Jobs - instead of succumbing to pressure and using the price increase to increase his profit margins, he's doing something decent by resisting the record companies' pressure. Granted, his motives may not be entirely altruistic, but nevertheless, Apple is setting a superb example that, no doubt, many companies will follow. If Jobs keeps prices at 99c a song, competing services will hardly be able to raise prices without losing customers to Apple - something they decidedly do not want to do. So in this case, Jobs is keeping the market stable in the face of significant pressure from the record companies.
The age of free legal (or even semi-legal) mainstream music has come and passed. You still have advertisement-supported radio, but to legally get ad-free, high-quality music, you can no longer go to a source like KaZaa and BitTorrent and expect the transaction to be risk-free (although I haven't heard of anyone being nabbed for getting MP3s from newsgroups, IRC, or various FTPs.) Not to say that there is significant risk - about 15 of the ~1200 tracks on my iPod were obtained through "good" sources, and I've yet to hear a word from anyone - but it is no longer as convenient or as safe to download them illegally as it is to buy them. This creates a balancing act between the difficulty of obtaining music freely/morality/risk factor and the price of legal music, and Jobs realizes that disrupting that balancing act by raising prices could create a trend of dissatisfied customers that decide to switch to illegal methods.
What puzzles me, though, is how blindly record companies are pressuring the distribution networks that are, in a way, their safety net for the tech-savvy majority of the highly appealing 18-25 demographic. While I've stopped expecting intelligent decisions from them long ago, the RIAA are now crossing the boundary between pure greed and pure stupidity. I believe that this will, eventually, kill them, and I, for one, have no objections to that.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Obviously, there is a battle going on for digital content ownership, involving artists and record labels. Some artists (like Switchfoot...as mentioned previously) take the side of consumers while others do not. As some have mentioned, iTunes can allow artists to quite possibly bypass record labels in the long term. For example, on Apple's New Music Tuesday (loads in iTunes), Switchfoot was featured with an exclusive track only to be found in iTunes. If they do it right, this could be used to drive sales for them, possibly even without Sony grabbing a cut. At some point, iTunes will be (or already is) a bigger driver of sales than MTV or other traditional outlets (like stores) for some alternative artists. And this is the point at which artists and consumers will win, and of course Apple will be happy...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
I've long been of the conviction that piracy is not nearly as large of a problem as the RIAA makes it out to be.
Piracy isn't the big problem. Educated music listeners are the problem now. The music industry can no longer sell 10+ million copies of Britney Spears/N'Sync type garbage, because people have access to many more types of music. Music buying appetities are now fragmented and specialized, which means instead of a label selling a gazillion records of one artist, chart topping artists many not even sell a half-million. The labels have to do more research and advertising than ever and as a result, profit margins are smaller.
Besides, albums with only one or two good tracks won't sell like before. The music buying public samples the music beforehand and the RIAA hates that!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Wrong -- at least two of his three children do attend a public elementary school in a SF Bay Area city. Technically it is a public school, but when the average housing price is >$1 million in the school district, you're hardly talking about your average neighborhood elementary school; the parents pay property taxes instead of tuition.
I don't think you got the point at all.
It's not about the cost of his house. Its respect for his taste.
I don't have a problem with Bill Gates having a mansion - its that I think his mansion is tacky.
I also respect Steve Jobs for being able to save Apple when everyone counted him and Apple as both being irrelevant to our industry. I respect him for the fact that he has great taste and an intolerance for poor quality.
I am not under any illusions that Steve Jobs is a "nice guy", or "morally better" than anyone else. I don't personally know him and I'm not entitled to an opinion about it.
And I'm not saying that I don't also respect Bill Gates for his philanthropy.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Who else misses real honest to god albums? Yes, of the vinyl record variety. You get some incredible artwork (sometimes the best, sometimes the worst), plus a full listing of lyrics, and often a story or two about the meaning of a track or how it was created. Moreover, you got analog sound at its best. Don't get me wrong, digital is fantastic, and I surely cant tell the difference between good analog and good digital any longer. But try this today. Crank up that old turntable, grab a your favorite vinyl out of storage, and remember how music used to be.
No, the message is muddied by the cobranding of F/OSS software and propoganda throughout the site.
e nseFAQ.html
And the idea that Ogg isn't supported natively on either Mac nor the PC is a perfect example of why this is a bad idea.
Do I know how much licensing for MP3 usage is? Sure -- if you are making less than $100k a year, its absolutely free. Its not worth Fraunhofer / Thompson's time for anything less.
If you are making over this amount, then we are talking a royalty rate of 2%. Thats right, if you are bringing in over $100k, you might have to pay a small token amount in royalties. I don't know about you, but I pay a *LOT* more than that for my licensing / taxes / software for my online business (I have worked for the music industry in the past, and still do consulting within this area...$2k ain't much if you want to be taken seriously).
So $10k? Where did you get that number? Obviously not from folks that license the product:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html
If you are worried about royalities (and want to stay unencumbered by DRM), take a serious look at AAC. The only charge there are for encoders / decoders. It looks as though your site is already encouraging an assbackward software package to encode into OGG on the client side...so why not just use iTunes to do the conversion -- that too is free. I know there are several free encoders on the Linux side as well (because I had to batch transcode several gigs of waves over to this and it was faster to just use a spare linux box and let it do this in the background).
But if you want to see the royalty rates on AAC, take a look at Dolby's site:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/lic
As for being able to play music -- I can't play it without a wierd format that isn't supported by my hardware. At least all my current hardware can play WAV / MP3 / AIF / AAC all without having to transcode it. So, yes, it matters, because I can't hear it. I didn't buy from the iTMS either until it was supported by a large (more than 10%) of the players sold.
But yeah, its part of my job to know this stuff. Again, I agree with your commitment to open source, but don't take it as a religion. Use the best tool for the purpose. Otherwise, it looks at those you are more about promoting F/OSS than you are promoting another means to an end for musicians -- which again is a noble cause. Why don't you do an experiment? Set your store up to sell both Ogg and MP3 (or AAC) and tell the end use they have to pick which format before buying (give them the choice to download all 3 if they want once the experiment is over) and stop the experiment just before $99999 in sales (or whatever you hit for the year) and see what sold the most. You might be surprised...hell, if ya published it, *I* might be surprised.
Sorry if my last post seemed antagonistic in any way -- I didn't mean it that way, but the "Since you seem to know everything about online music though" comment seems as though I was. No, I understand the marketting of musicians and this is one of the reasons the big industry is starting to fail -- they are more about marketting themselves and promoting what is good for the industry but not necessarily what is good for the artist. And this is exactly what I see when I visited the site.
Focus on the musicians and nothing more....
Why, I bought some the other day! I have a record player right beside my monitor here, and I have records released in the oh-so-distant year of 2005 . . . in other words, don't lament the death of vinyl yet! For exactly some of the same reasons parent notes, vinyl is enjoying a bit of a comeback. Two of my newer ones (Sloan's 2003 "Action Pact" and ...Trail of Dead's 2005 "Worlds Apart" have some nicely on-par-with-oldskool artwork throughout, and at least, they're far beyond what I would have gotten with purchasing the CDs of each.
Okay, admittedly, it depends where you live. I actually spend most of my time in Edmonton, MiddleofnowhereAlberta, and here it's damn impossible to find new vinyl. Most of what I currently have I picked up from Zulu Records last time I was in Vancouver; every record store I went to there, though, had actual records, so I'd go as far as to say that in major cities across North America you'll be able to buy new vinyl with at most a small amount of hassle (the ones I picked up at Zulu Records were little pricier, if at all, than the CD version would be; and to be able to find an unopened copy of "Surfer Rosa" for less than a new CD of the album would be is just wonderous).
On a more topical sidenote; it does get a bit tricky when speaking of modern recordings, as to the sound quality. I was tempted to pick up a copy of "With Teeth" recently, but I resisted; true, the track order is even different and includes a song not on the "normal" version (Trent Reznor notably recently railed against the terrible lack of options for packaging nowadays with CDs, and so like he often does, the vinyl release of his latest album gives a big thumbs-up to vinyl collectors), but I had to admit that I already had the dualdisc version . . .
See, older albums would have been recorded with analog means, but anything relatively recent is going to have been recorded at least in a large part digitally, and mixed thusly and so forth. So often analog won't give you nearly the theoretical audio-quality increase that it used to with older releases. Furthermore, as is the case with the aforementioned dualdisc version of "With Teeth", the album might come in higher-than-CD quality digital, with characteristics that vinyl can't reproduce (in this example, having been recorded and engineered, by someone who really knows how to do this, in 5.1).
So, alas, vinyl has its strong suits and its weaknesses. But it certainly beats iTMS quality, for more than just the cover art question, and I could never give up the ability to flip on Side B of "Surfer Rosa" and here that "whooooooooo-stop" as Where Is My Mind begins with those slight, slight crackles audible clearly at the insane volume I've turned it up to . . .
So, parent, props to you, I mostly agree, but I'm going to paraphrase: Break out the old turntable, grab a favorite vinyl from a store, and remember how music still can be!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
If you believe what this guy is saying. $0.30 a song. Labels take 53 cents and musicians get 11.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Call me a spoil-sport. I remember dust. I had the best dust sweeper brush I could buy, used it before and after every play, but even so, snap, crackle, dust. Someone walking past the turntable, ski-preeeck!! And warps. Brand new disks, even, and the tone arm bobbing for apples. At the crest of a wave it shimmies, then ski-preeeeck!!
Yeah, those were the good old days.
The biggest obstacle to good sound is good engineering. Good sound is a rare find in the industry, regardless of media. I am pleasently surprised by the clean sound on the Dave Matthews Band Live From Chicago CD. My ears tell me a talented team did a great mix live, went direct to disk bypassing compression and other tricks, and that is what shipped. Raw, clean sound. It can be done.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
$0.30 is about right. It costs about $0.15 minimum (even with Apple lumping the songs into one payment) for the credit card...so they end up with $0.15 to split between development of the store, the Akami distribution (which is why they have to send unencrypted files -- and let iTunes do the encryptions upon download -- it can only parse out static content -- and its STILL f'n expensive)...and from what I hear, they end up with about $0.03 for pure profit.
As for Labels and Musicians...depends on your contract. I know a lot of musicians that make a lot more than that. As I said in another post (though this will make no sense now that I decided to hit anonymous), I have a close friend that left the labels and after trying to find a new contract set up shop himself...he makes $0.66 a song. He claims its far more money than if he left a stack of CDs at the local Tower records. Other friends that didn't sign restrictive contracts thinking they were going to be rich overnight (some musicians actually read contracts -- though the guys at Downhill Battle like to pretend we are all a bunch of fucking dumbasses -- its not hard to get a better deal just by asking for specific clauses stricken) -- well, I know others that are making around $0.25 a song...and others that each download is COSTING them a nickle.
But the Downhill Battle site is a bit deceptive...it exposes the worst that can happen (and in some ways, it does a music a favor by getting them to ask questions...but mostly its there to convince people that piracy is good...I've been on one of the DH's blog torrent mailing list since day one -- good guys...but they are VERY full of themselves and don't even realize they are just throwing out just as much propoganda as the industry they oppose).
Not lying...just putting out the worst case scenario.