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Apple Holding Back the Music Business?
conq writes "With average weekly download as of Nov. 27 sales down 0.44% vs. the third quart, BusinessWeek speculates that Apple might in fact be holding back the music industry." From the article: "As has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites. Now legal downloads may be losing their luster. According to Nielsen SoundScan, average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter. Says independent media analyst Richard Greenfield: 'We're not seeing the kind of dramatic growth we should given the surge in sales of iPods and other MP3 players.'"
And if you don't know why, search this site for "RIAA"
The Anti-Blog
My Ipod's full, I can't buy any more music!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I use my own CD collection - NOT illegal downloads
everyone buying Christmas gifts for others? I know that iTunes has a "give a gift" feature, but I don't think this is the main way of giving music as a gift.
Oh no! Downloads are down less than 1% since the third quarter!
Seriously, it's right before Christmas, as the article points out. Nobody's going nuts buying music because they're spending all their money on presents and other holiday shit. Apple says they're selling a crapload of gift cards, and I believe them, given that everything iPod seems to fly off the shelves, virtual or otherwise. Regardless, since you no longer have to buy the physical media songs come on, there's no reason to buy them when you're doing your normal Christmas shopping, so sales very well *should* be down.
iPod sales are nuts, as usual, but that doesn't mean that music has to be selling, either. How many people you know, out of those who have bought iPods recently, are buying their first one? I'm sure a large portion of whatever iPods they're selling are peoples' second or third such devices. They're not going to be re-buying songs just because they got a new player, at least for now...
All this amounts to is another chance for the music services that lost (and it was pretty much over before they even got started) to bash Apple in a futile attempt to gain some traction. It's pointless, though. There's no buzz about Napster or Rhapsody, it's all iPod, iPod, iPod, for better or worse.
Game... blouses.
could that be...hmm...for Christmas/Hanukkah gifts? nah...
Well, 0.44% is not too much to whine about (less than half of one percent?) It could be that maybe a lot of popular *new* music didn't come out during that time compared to the quarter before.
Not to mention a lot of the MP3 player sales they're basing their estimates on could have been bought as Christmas presents.
I think they just WANTED a big growth in sales and things just don't always work out that way. They should compare things year to year, not quarter to quarter...
That's my $0.02
For now.
That's all.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I am sure sales will pick up as soon as Apple starts charging "market price" for the music per the wishes of the music industry. :/
Has Apple ever held back anything?? Also, if they know that there are illegal file-sahring websites and programs, why don't they work harder toshut them down?
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Is that like, less than 1/2 of 1 percent? Hell, that's a rounding error. Imagine that in the runup to [insert winter holiday of your choosing] people are buying less individual music, and more big-ticket items. K
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
The second "critic" expert they decided to ask said this:
"The villain in the story is the iPod. You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that."
Who was this expert?
None other than Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster Inc.
Yeah, Chris, people are *real* bored. And by people, you mean you and your cronies, and by bored, you mean not making enough money for your tastes.
I would expect more out of BusinessWeek.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
How many of those IPods are sitting in boxes with bows on them? It may not make up all the numbers missing but I'm willing to bet there will be a crapload of legal downloads on XMas day and in the weeks and months to follow. I know for a fact that Napster has sold a ton of download credit gift cards that presumably will be used on or around Xmas day.
Critics say Apple's proprietary technology and its refusal to offer more ways to buy or to stray from its rigid 99 cents a song model is dampening legal sales of digital tunes.
If music industry is considering non-propietory technology and prices below 99 cents/song, there is nothing Apple can do to prevent that. All they have to do is put their stuff on mp3tunes.com
... we don't want to buy the same music *twice*?
0.44%? Oh no! The sky's falling in. Good job it wasn't 1% or we'd be back to the days of the Great Depression with music execs throwing themselves out of windows. Sheesh! 0.44% is within statistical variance.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Gosh! Such precision! I'd like to see some analysis of these numbers, as I suspect that the uncertainty in how they are gathered could very well be much greater than this devastating half of a percent.
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
FTFA: As has been true since the start..
What exactly is this generalization based on? It basically implies that all individuals owning an ipod/mp3 player are copyright infringers from the get go. Then, just because sales are down for a quarter, it's the sign of the Apocalypse! Are they not teaching logic in schools anymore?
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
When downloads start costing significantly less online than on CDs (just like CDs should cost significantly less than CDs) people will buy quite a bit more.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
"You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that."
That's simply not true. You can put music from other services on an iPod.
Bradley Holt
And despite this distressing news of sales dropping less than half a percent, you can bet the RIAA is still pushing to increase the price of "popular" songs...
1. There is CRAP out there. Nothing really new to listen to, so sales are down when the music out there sucks.......duh.
2. Many of those "ipod" and mp3 player sales are for christmas. Christmas Day and the week there after if sales are down then cry me a river.
jackasses.........
Yes, iPod sales are up, but those sales aren't going to transalte to iTMS purchases until AFTER the iPods have been opened. The story says that gift card sales are "off the charts". You can expect downloads to jump dramatically beginning December 24th.
"We're not seeing the kind of dramatic growth we should given the surge in sales of iPods and other MP3 players."
Hmmm... sales suck on CD, sales suck online... maybe it's time for the record industry to reconsider its current business model of pushing albums where the musicians lose almost all control to producers who churn out an album with three good songs and ten filler tracks.
Overanalyze much?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
The day the music industry stops selling us DRM crippled, low-quality merchandise over the internet is the day I stop loading my iPod the conventional way.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
You want to see phenomenal growth? How about making phenominal music, not phenominal marketing campaigns. Otherwise, the only music you're going to sell is people buying their favorites in the new format, like they did from vinyl -> tapes, tapes -> CDs, CDs -> mp3s.
Find some really talented artists, not hyper-hyped hot chicks, make it available only digitally and watch the dollars roll in.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
People like the RIAA are going to fight the internet as a distribution method to the hilt, and many other people will join them, because as it becomes more popular they will start losing their market. If I can buy a whole CD online and be listening to it in seconds, instead of going out and picking it up, I know which one I'd rather be doing, and it's the one that most people would.
Of course, the RIAA and other companies hate this because it means they can't control distrubution and it gives all artists an even playing board. Record companies aren't going to like it much either, when bands can sell their own music directly to a huge market without having to go through their process, and therefore cutting them out.
I can't see a lot of the companies involved going down without a fight, because it is big business. In regards to the music downloads falling, do they actually show comparison against CD sales for the same period? maybe it was a complete dip in the entire market.
Business Voyeur
The history of the CD, when the music industry was dragged, kicking and screaming, into that distribution medium, new releases came out on CD, old releases were on vinyl. Two years later, vinyl couldn;t be had, and the Beatles White Album was top of the (CD) charts, and R.E.M. or somebody was number two. Why do we feel that Internet distribution of music should be any different? I can get out my credit card, buy and download software today, or I can wait two weeks and get a printed CD with the software. Why should music be any different?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Jobs wants to lower the cost of songs, but the RIAA has insisted that they raise the cost of new songs in order to lower the cost of other ones. Many people are not willing to pay $.99/song muchless $1.xx for one. And the complaint from Napster in that article is pathetic... they are just upset that Apple dominates the marketplace. You want more sales... then lower the price!
http://religiousfreaks.com/Is 0.44% a statistically significant number?
I.E. So of an average of 1,000,000 downloads, that means last month there were only 995600?
Seems like someone is reading alot into it.
I believe in the laisez-faire free market with exception to monopolies. In Apple's case, they have created one and good for them, but being at the top with tech stuff especially self-fulfills itself and the greater your marketshare, the more helium you have underneath to lift you further. Because that is due to the nature of consumers in whose minds a brand's importance is overstated instead of exclusively creating superior technology (which may be true but I said exclusive), it is ultra hard for other companies to compete. So, just as free markets get stiffled by government over-interference, Apple's throne is protecting them too much from the heat of competition that would otherwise pressure Apple to lower prices and or make even smaller nanos.
How fair is it really to say that Apple is holding the music industry back when sales for one week (a small sample) are down (compared to the last quarter, a very large sample) a fraction of a percent?
"This even roots my computar, suckwit."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Electric Monkey Pants
Historically, how do you measure the projected sales of music in a given market? There's no hard and fast science to it, it's a best guess based on so many factors it's ridiculous.
Perhaps there simply isn't that much new/good music out there at all and people aren't buying... how is the iPod REALLY affecting sales?
I personally think that music had a severe downturn in the late 90s, and upswing (which is now over) in the early 2000s. This is my opinion, but where are the really cool alt-rock bands going where no band has gone before? All the labels have jumped on a given bandwagon, trying to recreate success instead of nurturing new talent and new ideas.... and new music!
Could it be that music just sucks 0.44% more than the previous quarter? :)
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
...is that some people buy iPods, but fill 'em up with pirated music instead of stuff they paid for at iTunes. I'm thinking about testing this theory soon.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Perhaps no good music has been released. I mean come on, how many rappers do you need with gold teeth rapping about riding on Dubs in their Escalade. After a while, it all sounds the same.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Why does the industry need to explain a negative loss of half a percent? It seems like the only time you AREN'T hearing from the industry is if they are in the green. What a bunch of cry babies.
I've had my fair share of downloading this year but by this time there is nothing new that interests me. I'm waiting for the new stuff next year.
The music industry's latest antics combined with their rediculously high pricing schemes(and wanting to raise them even more) that is hurting them, not Apple. If anything, Apple has helped by keeping the music industry *in check*. If they hadn't then we'd all be paying $3 to $5 a song by now and legal filesharing would be totally dead.
This piece comes off more as a paid attempt by the music industry to weaken Apple's position and power. Anyone who has been following the news knows that there is a bit of a mini-power struggle going on between Apple, who wants to keep things affordable, and the music industry. While I certainly think Apple could do better than they have been, at least they are thinking ahead and pushing in the direction music and consumer tastes are moving towards instead of clinging to the past model like the RIAA has, which has done nothing but hurt them the last 10 years.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
"According to Nielsen SoundScan, average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter."
.44% is statistically insignificant, taken by itself?
Has it occured to anyone that
several of my relatives are getting ipods(or like) for xmas, and the edict from their parents is legal downloads only.
Not to play to the audience, but you'd think the industry types would be reading the writing on the wall. Better talent / selection / prices = higher units moving = higher profits.
It's very rare anymore I see / hear something I WANT to buy, let alone take a chance on via CD or download.
Is to let the RIAA have their way with tiered pricing.. Obviously, if new songs aren't being bought at $.99, they will be purchased in droves at $2.99 for that hit new single...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Or, heaven forbid, there might be some people buying multiple iPods...
For example, over the course of the product, I've owned 4 different iPods. Apparently this means that my online music buying should have quadrupled, which it did not.
Thus, the link between iPod sales and buying music online is not directly proportional.
Its just not fun to buy music as a gift when its just "the bits". The real question is what will purchases be like _after_ the holiday season when people are indeed filling up their new iPods.
"OHno, people are actually using the music they already own on CDs to put on their iPods!" ... "Surely it is because of music piracy because everyone needs new music ALL the time, plus we really have so many quality products out to choose from"
This has been an "Inside the 'brain' of a record company exec'-production.
This is such a load of crap. It was RIAA who insisted on DRM before Apple could offer music. So Apple developed FairPlay to make RIAA happy, and thus was able to get all of the music we see in iTunes Music Store. This is whining because of the monster that was created. Apple owns the only really successful online music store. Apple owns the only portable music player that works with FairPlay. Music labels can easily get around this by dropping the need for DRM.
This is exactly the lock-in future that DRM brings to the world. The music labels are crying bitter tears because they don't control the locks. Whaa whaa whaa. What would be different if Sony had succeeded instead of Apple? Do we think we'd be seeing Sony offering whatever they had to everyone? No. DRM simply sucks. It's anti-consumer, anti-competitive and restricts the growth of the marketplace. Reap what you've sown, you greedy bastards.
I thought the iPod would play unrestricted MP3s? What is stopping anyone from buying an MP3 from Rhapsody, MP3.com, AllofMP3.com or anywhere else from putting them on their iPod? How is this holding back the *music* industry?
I can see how it is holding back the portable music player industry, since they can't access iTunes, but they are direct competitors to Apple in the hardware arena. Apple made it easier to get to their service with their software, but that is the name of the game.
[For the unenlightened, the rules DO change if you are a convicted monopolist.]
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
In other news, the RIAA and major music industry conglomerates have announced new terms for customers purchasing and listening to their members' music.
"All people do with their CDs and iPods is listen to them. People think that they don't have to pay anything else beyond the initial purchase price. But what they don't understand is that they need to pay royalties every time they listen to them," said RIAA spokesman, Bob Degalhart. "Every song you play on your stereo or iPod should require some form of small micropayment to us for the right to even play that music. Everyone should realize that purchasing the music is only the first of many steps."
The RIAA and the industry plans to push legislation to require all stereo equipment, MP3 players, and hearing aids be fitted with special software that is capable of completing micropayment transaction per listen. Industry member Sony says that it has special software available for installation on home PCs for this purpose and plans to deploy it in the near future.
That there is one very compelling reason NOT to buy legal downloads. DRM. No, not for the tinfoil hat reasons, but for one very simple one: interoperability. I can't take my DRMed iTunes AAC file and play it with my MP3-CD car radio. I can't play it via HMO on my TiVo. I can't play it in any other portable device. While I do own an iPod, I also own other devices that I listen to music on. Those can't play AAC, let alone DRM AAC. And I'm not even going to get into WMA-DRM.
Burning it to CDA and re-ripping it doesn't count. It's annoying and drops all the metadata, in addition to the transcoding quality loss. If they want to sell me music, it MUST be in a non-DRM format that I can use on ALL of my devices, MP3 for example. If they refuse, I'll take my money/time elsewhere. Indy, filesharing, certain russian sites, etc.. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'd be happy to pay $1/song, for high-quality (LAME-Standard minimum) MP3 or FLAC audio files. Hell, let me pick the format and bitrate and charge me a little more for the bandwidth for the higher filesizes. Oh, wait, someone else allready does that.....
the value of music is less than coveted
If the #1 (by far) player uses a specific format to play DRM'ed songs, then wouldn't it be the music stores who don't use that format who are holding back sales? I don't see how everyone jumping on board the MS bandwagon (which doesn't work with iPods) is Apple holding back the music industry.
Fact is people buy iPods.
Fact is iPods won't play MS based DRM'ed music.
Fact is if you want to sell songs that play on iPods, it's open formats or AAC.
Unless you're dealing with #3 in a constructive manner, you're the ones holding back music sales.
Everything on my iPod is either 224 or 192kbps VBR mp3s ripped with LAME. I can even tell the difference between that and source and am considering reripping all my CDs to a lossless format, which I am NOT looking forward to, as I have over 1000 CDs.
The 128kbps AAC files from the ITMS don't do it for me. They sound highly compressed and you can occasionally here aural artifacts in the high-end, like flanging in the cymbal washes. It's a lot worse with 128kbps mp3s, for sure, but the quality just isn't high enough for me to even spend a dollar there.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
It couldn't have anything to do with the Music industry itself, huh?
Blame P2P.
Blame customers.
Blame industry partners.
Blame anyone but those truly responsible for the success of the music industry
Not like this is new behavior for the RIAA & Co.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Oh, wait. Was the parent article a troll? Never mind.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
...it's the Holiday season and CDs are ridiculously easy gifts to give?
How about comparing individual song sales to CD sales for the period?
The author is saying a) We predicted that we should be making X sales this week, and b) we are not. Therefore Apple is to blame, as are the people who keep choosing to not buy the overpriced "music".
Can you spot the logical flaw?
Last week I predicted the following:
a) I would immediately win a hundred bojillion dollars in the lottery.
b) The most beautiful women in the world would gather around me to sing my praises.
None of that has happened so far, and seeing as how b is dependent upon a (lets not kid ourselves, I'd have to buy plane tickets for all of them to fly here), we should focus on a. A requires me doing things like buying lottery tickets, and the lottery having that kind of money, neither of which is the case. Therefore there is only one inescapable explanation: It's all the lottery people's fault. They're 'holding me back'. They should have set the pot that high, given me a free ticket, and then changed the rules so that only I would win.
I love this game!
A competitor (I think it was Napster) put it well when they pointed out that using iTunes it would cost $10,000 to fill up a 10,000 song iPod. No one has ever expected the consumers to buy their music exclusively online. Apple debuted the iPod two years before the music store was online. They assumed that consumers would fill up their iPods with music extracted from their own CD collection and downloaded from P2P networks. Notice that there was not a significant price restructuring in the iPod line when the music store went live. In other words, the iPod is not a razor and the songs are not blades in Apple's business model, so dropping %.44 will probably not even make them balk.
"average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter"
Wow, a whopping ZERO point FOUR FOUR percent. That's gotta hurt. *snicker*
...Or maybe more people are buying CDs for Christmas since they're a lot easier to wrap up and give people instead of a disc full of downloaded data.
I always buy CDs and then rip them to mp3. I'll also never buy anything from an online music store if it comes bundled with DRM. I won't knowingly buy copy protected CDs either. I'm sure i'm not the only one.
Perhaps its about time the music companies realised that people want to be able to do as they like with the music they've bought and paid for.
It's not Apple thats holding back the music industry... its the music industry thats holding themselves back with their insane protection schemes.
0.44%!? That's less than 1%, hot damn the world's rebeling against music! That's like.. DOOMED!
Totally ignore the fact that Christmas is comming up and people stop spending money on what they want and start saving for others, very often presents arn't music so the money goes else where.
I like muppets.
I bet I only find about 40% of the stuff I'm looking for on iTunes Music Store. I want to get a lot of music I grew up listening to but is not available on CD or online. Why don't these dimwit music labels put all of their back catalogs online? They sit on piles and piles of music that, if made available, would earn them money. Unlike pressing and shipping CDs, getting them online is a one-time cost that will easily be made up in sales.
The music companies treat me like a criminal by adding copy protection to their CDs so that I can't listen to them as I want. They rip me off by charging $.99 / song for music that I can only listen to in limited ways. It is no wonder that my CD collection of about 500 CDs hasn't been growning recently, they have drivin me away...
But hey, I'm preaching to the choir here aren't I? :D
I'm sorry, but I've stopped purchasing RIAA encumbered music. There's plenty out there, and I don't need to support greedy corporations who don't understand their customer wants or needs. It only took a few years, but I finally caught that the RIAA is not interested in making sure that I remain a customer, and I've complied by taking my business elsewhere. Magnatune, Positron Records, Metropolis Records... they all get it. Soon other companies will understand that the problem isn't their customers (who want to support them), but the marginalized trade group cartels that are holding them back. Until this happens, my cash goes elsewhere.
Sorry, RIAA... you had your chance.
I'm sure draconian cd prices and lousy pop music have nothing to do with a decrease in sales.
My lady and I have a tendency to purchase a LOT of music -- we've filled a few 400 disc changers in the past before going with a wholehouse MP3 distribution system.
Our reasons for buying less music is:
1. Dislike of Sony and the RIAA -- where we used to buy 3-4 CDs a week at Borders, we're lucky to buy even 1 a month because of their strongarm tactics. Until Borders starts carrying the popular indie bands in their area, we won't buy CDs. Some indie bands in our area have sold 2000+ CDs privately without record store support. If they expect to be part of my community, they better do more research.
2. Bigger support of the ma-and-pa brick and mortars. As our retail stores that we own lose business to the dotcoms and the super stores, we've found that by supporting other locally owned shops, we see more locally employed customers at our stores. It is the ultimate "outsourcing" to see your community spending money outside of the community to save on sales tax and maybe a 5% difference in price beyond that. 14% is still a huge savings, all from government coercion.
3. Income. Our income this year is about double the last 3, but our income in the last 6 months is down over 70%. I've been putting more of my income into real savings (gold, silver, property) to weather to storm ahead. I've also expanded my market from just-the-Midwest to the entire world, and I expect it will take a year or two to get back to my first half of 2005 income levels.
4. Quality. The quality of the mass produced records is terrible. I can't listen to the top 40 record stations at all -- every vocalist is enhanced, delay and reverb is worse than the 80s, and the compression destroys any fidelity that might have made it through the overproduction period. Garbage in, garbage out, garbage unbought.
5. Promotion. I don't feel any desire to pay $50 to see a concert of 3 bands I barely know. The indie scene is usually $6 to $12, I see 2 amazing bands and 3 new bands cutting their teeth. $2 beer, $4 calls instead of the big shows where we paid $14 for a drink recently ($110 per ticket). Without cheap promotion the records won't sell.
6. Collusion. Try to get tickets today to any popular show. The rules governing ticket scalping are created specifically to take care of the few scalpers who are licensed by the local government. It has made shows nearly impossible to attend to. One popular show we were willing to pay $60 per ticket for was sold almost entirely to 3 ticket scalpers.
7. No desire. There are so many new ways to be entertained (due to the web) that music-on-CD just won't cut it anymore. I've been talking to a local show producer who is finding better ways to stream live shows to the web in a high quality, high fidelity, well produced show. I can't wait for his work to come to fruition.
Some other services, but not all other services. In particular, you can't put on WMA-protected music, which is the next most popular format for legal music downloads after iTMS's own FairPlay/AAC format. (The article is something of a shill for Napster, which uses WMA).
You can get lots and lots of music from other services in other formats supported by the iPod, especially MP3s, but usually those are from less-well-known bands or from services of dubious legality, like allofmp3.com.
I think technically oriented people may prefer online downloads, but I still prefer to go down to the local record shop and buy a CD, along with the artwork, bonus DVD's etc. I can play that in my car stereo, and on my home stereo (without wireless links etc).
When it comes to my iPod, I'll rip the CD I have.
That, or the quality of the music being produced is slipping, or is being aimed at markets that don't have a propensity to buy iPods.
I get my music from AllOfMP3.com, I know its not the most legal business on the market but when I want music that good & works on any of my devices I can get it, even if i am only going to listen to it a few times.
Music is like the new fast food, its junk for our brains & ears & people want a lot of it, I don't get how the music industry doesn't realise that & where the hell do they get their market research from.
People want lots of music & they want it as cheaply as they can, when your competeing with a free market like the internet you can't try to restrict your competition you have to vigirously compete with it, even if your competition is illegal, its still competition.
It's mp3 this year but who knows what audio format is coming around next year? Are you going to be able to play your iTunes downloads 10 years from now?
I'm glad Apple is doing well with iTunes, but it's just not for me. I want a disk. I want a disk I can rip to the PC and portable device of my choosing whether it's on Windows, OSX or Linux. And I especially want to be able to find something that can still play that CD 10 years from now.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
In large part because the novelty has worn off, but I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that there don't seem to be any more promotions going on. When Pepsi was giving away iTunes downloads with their drinks, my brother got over 200 free songs (others gave him their caps, he didn't drink that much soda). Of course, you could only use 5 cap codes per day, so if he found a 6th song to download in one day, instead of waiting another day, he'd simply buy the last song. He got 200 free songs, and paid for about 20. Since the promotion is now over, he never even thinks to look at iTunes. The novelty is gone and so is the incentive. A lot of products go through huge sales initially, and once the novelty wears off, the successfull products are the ones that consumers actually want, not what they are told to want (since they're no longer being told to want it)
Free MacMini
Forgive me - the main quote for the start of this story comes from Apple's direct competitor, Napster, and is followed up by more in-partiality by one from Real!? It doesn't take long to decide exactly how much credibility to give this piece...
.44%. Half of 1 percent. And what is their margin of error? Somehow I doubt Nielsen SoundScan has THAT high a precision.
* We dance where angels fear to tread *
Simply put, record company execs are looking for entitlements.
Ultimately, they think they are intitled to make a profit every time someone listens to a song under their umbrella, or iron fist.
So if I own a lot of LP records, and want to listen to them in the car (car turntables are not very stable unless you drive really carefully) they cry "No Fair!" and get a tax put on casset tapes.
If this were really about piracy, that would be the only thing they would mention. The fact that they are complaining about people filling up their iPods with music that they already have a legal right to tells us what is really on their mind. They feel entitled for people to buy music all over again. And in another 10-20 years they will propose yet another format and expect it over again. Like a corrupt utility company, or a corrupt government, record companies want the right to tax us and then keep that money for themselves.
With any luck Artists will control their own music, and profit from it by then and the record companies will be dead.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Anyway I of course installed iTunes, since replaced by anapod, went to the store and found absolutely nothing. No tv shows, no rare music, no bubbly jpop. So my ipod is now loaded with crap jpop and all the weird live recordings I got ages ago in the good days of napster.
Frankly all that is on iTunes is the bog standard stuff I either already had on cd (and that is a long time since I bought those) or crap I just don't care about. My music tastes are offbeat to be sure but iTunes is not exactly deep either. I can find a better music selection in any good music store.
The iPod is an amazing device but iTunes is just like every mediocre music store that just sells the same generic stuff that everyone else sells.
Not that I am saying it is bad music, just that I am not buying it.
Oh and to show how bad my taste is, go find me a good copy of John Denvers Black Bird. This will probably get me banned for good.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The problem the music industry is facing right now isn't a decline in the sales of new music, it's just that their cash cow of back catalog replacement sales is withering. They had intended to salvage this buy going with DVD Audio and trying to get people to re-buy everything yet again.
The problem for them is that there's nothing compelling about new music formats other than MP3/AAC. DVD Audio may be wonderful, but to the average person who just wants to listen to some music in the car, or while working out, it doesn't matter. The high end audiophile types might get into it, but there's not enough of them to create the necessary economies of scale.
I would argue that Apple/ITunes is boosting new music sales because it makes it so incredibly easy. If I find a new artist, I can e-mail you a link, you click it, and 30 seconds later, you're downloading the new music. No trips to the store. No forgetting about that cool new album your friend recommended. Plus the IMixes give another way to find music you might not have bought before.
So it is good for the music industry in the long run, but they have to learn to accept the fact that the crack pipe of back catalogue music sales is running out of smoke. It's going to be hard times for them for a while because even with growing new album sales, they're likely to see an ongoing decline in revenue.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
God, the number of times I've thought this and told people this and it'd just be great to have it modded insightful or something.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
As has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections
Yeah I pretty much just buy CD's and rip them to the apple. Maybe I am being picky but if they took off the DRM and had lossless or higher than 192 bit rate music available for download then I would never buy a music CD.
It's 1980 and the new model "portable" tape cassettes have come out. Oddly enough, record sales have dropped by .0001%. This heinous drop in profits has bee attributed by music business pundets everywhere as directly due to "tape swapping". A practice where teens record each other's tape collections for personal use.
The music industry predicts that if tape cassette players are not completely banned, the industy could collapse in just a few years.
If they get to call me a crook without any proof, I should be allowed to do the same.
Another thing to consider is that as backcatalogue sales decline, the music industry's revenue is going to be increasingly erratic as it becomes more depdenent on individual releases throughout the year to make money. It's becoming more like the film industry where a couple bad bets on some summer stinkers can really hurt the bottom line of a company.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
My theory is that the timeline for purchasing an iPod & using iTunes goes something like this:
1) Buy iPod.
2) Rip CDs purchased way back when.
3) Buy music at iTunes to fill in the gaps in music collection.
4) Load everything on the iPod.
Now, everyone will have their own personalized timeline; you may already have ripped your CD music collection, or bought/downloaded mp3's from somewhere else, who knows? My main point here is that, for most people, buying an iPod is the first step, and buying music from iTunes (if they're going to do it at all) will come somewhere later, right?
Now, take into account that it is right before Christmas. People are buying iPods like mad (I know that in my city it's bloody impossible to find a 4GB Nano anywhere), and possibly iTunes gift certificates with them. Yet these iPods won't actually be opened until Christmas, and then people still have to install them and all that jazz (which, for the more technically savvy, is a piece of cake, but there are a lot of people out there who will have to wait for help from the family geek to get their iPod up and going). So the ratio of iPods sold over the last little while to people buying music from iTunes is of course going to be a little wonky.
Go ahead, iPod customers, prove my theory wrong. But I'd be curious to see what the rate of downloads is between Christmas and, say, the end of January. I'd predict that they'll be higher than the monthly average over the past year.
"The villain in the story is the iPod," says Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster Inc. (NAPS ), which sells both subscriptions and downloads. "You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that."
A couple things. One, I don't own an iPod, so my technical information might be a bit off track here so all you mac-a-holics can correct and berate me in replies. Two, I have a very, very large CD collection, about 50-70% of it being obscure enough to not be on iTunes and that's not including the 7" vinyl that I still have. Why would I pay 99 cents to download something mediocre when I already own quite a few CDs that I enjoy? Even if I could get them off of iTunes, for me it's easier to rip it myself - and I'm not paying for it twice.
Can you use other software to put music on your iPod? Like Napster, eMusic, or Rhapsody? Online music sales just seems like such a luxury, especially at 99 cents a song as compared to a subscription service. And I still like going into my dirty, dingy little local music store and shopping for "brown bag specials", talking to Doug the music trivia master, and shooting the shit for an hour or so. Net cost, probably a little cheaper than iTunes. But then again, I'm still talking to real people in the real world. That might be worth just a little bit more to me.
hi mom!
More people simply copy the music they bought on CD to their iPods, thus Apple's download service is holding the music industry back...
(how much did the RIAA pay the author)
Just sell me stuff that I cannot find in every damn local recordshop at cheaper prices. You know, the kind of weird stuff we used to pull of napster.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perhaps the reason Sony isn't seeing growth due to downloads is that Sony music is not available on the ITMS?
Tempatures are up .44% from last year. Analysts predict Global warming will toast us by the end of the week. Anyone else think maybe this is just an over reaction?
Does it suit people who spend a lot advertising with us? OR
Does the author have the ability to influence my career?
Its sad but true. Once upon a time there was a thing called statistics which you could use to determine whether something was significant or not. Now statistics is (are) deprecated. It all started with those two memes of the late 20th century: Perception is everything (so if you don't want to feel this stake through your heart, you won't?) and the accounting one: What is 2 + 2? What do you want it to be?
Pining for the fjords
It sounds to me like Napster is bemoaning the fact it isn't sitting where iTunes happens to be (read: on top). It seems to me that the market has spoken: They favor "buy it" or "subscription" based music systems. On the other hand the music industry continues to bemoan the fact too that they are overpricing their product. There is a giantic market for the $0.99 song market and yet they want to continue to produce that costs $1.29? Why is it this the consumer's fault? Maybe it is because consumers really don't think that very few songs are worth $1.29??
It seems to me that the companies who aren't in control of the market are bemoaning they don't have control of the market and can't dictate terms to Apple. They of course can continue to run their businesses in whatever manner they chose to but don't be surprised if they have to fold because they continue to ignore what consumers flock to buy.
This is nuts. I got a little half gig shuffle for Father's day. Of course, I immediately remembered the fact that I liked listening to music, and had to have more. Enter the 20G iPod about 2 months later (just about 2 weeks before the iPod video - Doh!).
Now, since then (about 3 months), I've spent more money at iTunes than I'd spent on CDs in general (including all the kiddy CDs for the little one) over the last 10 years. Period. Several times, I've gotten the free download, only to realize the artist was awesome, and of course, immediately bought more. Lately, the free downloads have been "not so much", but so what?
On top of that, I've spent more on actual CDs in this time than I spent at iTunes - there are just some albums you want in full, and in hardcopy. Don't ask me why.
So, Napster can bite me. Sony/BMG can bite me. From my POV, it looks like the iPod has drastically increased my music spending.
Am I the only one?
Of course just for one week is not very important, maybe something happened like a holiday?
But if it is the sign that the growth is already out of iTunes sales then it is significant. Especially since the iPods themselves still sell like hotcakes. Hotcakes without a HUGE PRICETAG even. Figures in this post are purely fictional and only used to illustrate how a half percent might be significant.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I invite the entire music business to go fuck themselves.
It might be Sony BMG's fault.
I think people are boycotting Sony because of the rookit fiasco. I know I skiped out on buying one CD from Sony. Not because I was boycotting on principle--more because I had just heard about the rootkit but didn't know what CDs the rookit was on.
well i guess people do prefer not having crappy music shoved down our throats! i swear the music industry will throw its full force against ANYTHING that it deems to be hurting its own business, even its own customers (RIAA lawsuits) and now they are bashing the companies that have revitalized their industry
people don't buy ipods because a new hit record comes out, seriously what good albums are coming out right now? these idiots don't seem to realize that the ipod and music businesses are separate. people buy ipods and other MP3 players because they have a large collection of music, pictures, and videos that they'd like to make portable. expanding that collection is the only role of the recording industry, and without good album releases, people still get ipods to put their old music on.
You're giving them ideas !!!!
:-D
Even though that was funny
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
What he doesn't say is "But we've encrypted our files, to stop our subscribers from doing that."
"You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that."
Which is a lie. You can play any normal mp3 or AAC file on an iPod, as well as rip CDs etc. The only thing which can make it impossible to use your music with an iPod is if you deliberately make it impossible, by encrypting it so people can't get at it.
Maybe your customers are starting to see the pitfalls in paying for encrypted files which they can't decrypt.
has the sales fallen because of the obvious oppressive behavior of the record companies and the RIAA? people dont want to buy music becasue once we buy it we are not allowed to listen to it with out specific permission from the RIAA the record company and the artist and have all the paperwork noterized, and thats for each song on the album! the "consumer" is irritated with this horse shit, so might as well stick it to the "man" and download or rip your friend's CDs to your Ipod/zen.
if they throw everyone in jail, wont we end up with an overpopulated and generally useless burden on society prison system?
-Boycot shampoo! demand real poo!
The problem is with iTunes wich is just another music site. The hot name brand item is the iPod and that one is selling. It is also the item where Apple makes it money, not iTunes. No I am afraid that even in the fifth generation the iPod is still a license for Apple to print money. If anything they can raise prices to take some of the pressure of their production lines. Although they probably end up selling even more.
The competition is just non-existant especially for the nano. You try to get a 4gb flash player for that price from anyone else. Only "lowpoint" for nerds like me is that the iPod does not support ogg. But then very few do, certainly non of the "big" names. iRiver was the only one I saw in local shops.
And it seems that Apple would happily lower prices on iTunes. The music labels however only want to lower song prices if they are allowed to sell new songs at even higher prices. Wich Jobs seems to think might put consumers off. Since he is the one selling overpriced mp3 players at premium prices I think we listen to him when it comes to figuring out how much you can screw the customer for eh?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
0.44%!? Good god man! Run for the hills! The end is near! Repent now you music pirating fools!
.. how every time there is a decrease, it's because of P2P.
I didn't know that the music industry expected the EXACT same sales every quarter, regardless
of which artists published records and the quantity and quality published.
They are treating Music like a commodity like natural gas or water, which it obviously isn't.
"You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that." (from article)
Huh? so apparantly "Hit Me Baby One More Time" is a better song on the MSN music store than it is on Apple's music store.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
I know dozens of talented musicians in active local bands, but I don't know anyone - not even a friend of a friend - who makes a living from their band.
The solution? Let go of those cherished dreams about getting "discovered" and give your music to the world for free. If you don't like the record industry, that's the best way to screw them. Do it for the recognition. Do it for the chicks. Do it because you enjoy it. But if you're doing it for the money, you'd be better off buying lottery tickets.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
As has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites.
Well, hot DAMN! That was hard to figure out.
Frankly I don't DL tunage from file sharing sites - it's too slow and a pain in the ass. What I do is every few months I go to a LAN party and trade multiple Gigabytes of mp3 files at a go. My friends and I have similar tastes (eclectic, but uncompromising, with some few guilty pleasures...like my friend Ryan who has this bizarre affection for James Taylor, even though lately his collection favours Death Metal and Industrial... I honestly don't get it...) so we all get to throw music at each other (Maaaaan - this record is AWESOME - you GOTTA listen to this... etc.) while we eat excellent food and drink enough likker to stun an ox. And all the files move at an order of magnitude or three faster than DLing them over my crappy DSL line.
I don't own an iPod - I listen to music in my head all the time, or just make up my own stuff, so I have no need for a personal music system.
If I did have an iPod (or similar device) I would simply put my fave tunes on it from my Truly Massive CD collection or use it to audition the tracks that were recommended to me at the LAN party. Tens of thousands of CDs come out every year, and if one out of a thousand is good, that makes for A LOT of music to hear. And if it is challenging and intelligent, it oftens takes several listenings to properly appreciate. Conversely, as a consequence, there isn't enough time to rummage through it all, so I end up deleting more than I keep, and even what I keep from a LAN party usually doesn't get enough rotation and I end up deleting that.
I have a 160 gig drive that has 135 gigs of (mostly) 192 audio, and I have it in continuous random play mode in iTunes. (The size of my collection is another reason I don't have an iPod...) It's the only way I am guaranteed to hear new music....
It is all madness. Madness I tell. Madness.
Oh look - pretty lights...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think a big reason music downloads aren't on par with MP3 player sales is because a large part of the player marker are teenagers and children. We all know loads of younger people asking for an iPod this Christmas, but how many of them have credit cards of their own to pay for these legal downloads? I'm sure plenty of them have some money to spend, but unless they have that plastic, it's easier to go down to the record shop and buy the latest CD, rip it to MP3 and upload. Better yet, pirate the latest CD and spend that cash on other things.
First a drop of 0.44% is not something to stop the presses about. It might be the beginging of a trend but I would be suprised if it is outside of any statistical error.
Second, they do not give any information of mp3 purchases and usage. I just bought a nano because of its size. I am not getting rid of my 40GB ipod because of its storage capacity and I still have the first ipod player I bought years ago (TDK mojo) that I keep around just in case (for what I dont know). Most of my friends have upgraded players as well and intend to keep their original. They are not going to repurchase music.
Third, in all the music sales itunes only makes up 4% of music sales. They do not mention if CD proces are driving people to pirate music. Personally, I would rather own a CD but I cannot justify $15. Especially if I am only buying it for a few songs. I stopped file shareing music a while ago but I do understand why some people continue.
Why didnt the author point out that CD prices rarely come down. Sometime a title will show up in a bargin bin but a customer cannot consistently wait for the price to come down. More that often the case is the price is reduced when it comes out and then you can only pay regular after a few months (which can be $18 or more).
Also, why didnt the author point out the pricing of music is almost a mystery for all media. Try to find out how music execs plan to price a cd for its lifetime, how much are production costs and who gets the proceeds at various stages over time (please, try--I would love to know). It is not public knowledge for a reason.
My impression it this guy is either grossly uninformed or a shill.
I have secretly hidden some mispelled words in this post. Can you find them?
so the music industry expects people to go buy loads of new music because they got a shiny new ipod? It's obvious that people would rip their own music collection from their cd's because they want to listen to their own music. It's ridiculous to think that people are supposed to buy more music because they can make it more portable. The music industry needs to take a hard look at it's sales model instead of blaming their down sized profits on other people and companies. Get a clue.
Dear Industry,
In case you haven't noticed, iPods are nearly 500USD. This places them out of the range of the impulse buy, at least for most kids. I'm 30 years old, and can afford one. I also have a music collection I wanted to carry around with me. I did not have any desire, in any way, shape, or form, to purchase new music to populate my iPod. Truth be said, I haven't heard any new music from the industry that I would be willing to purchase.
So here it is in digestable chunks, that even the ??IA members can follow
1) People buy iPods to carry around music collections. People do not buy music collections to populate iPods. People without existing music collections have no need for a 500USD mp3 player with a large hard drive.
2)lack luster sales of music are entirely explainable by the industry having a lack of artistic talent on the store shelves. It doesn't matter if that store shelve is a database entry for the iTMS, ameoba, or wal*mart.
Downloadable music is about "disposable" music - it's about getting a "quick fix" of music when you need it, it's about being "fashionable" and it's targeted at the 18-25 year olds who need one more thing to brag to their friends about other than the latest mobile phone or most expensive designer jeans.
As such, downloadable music creates (in general) disposable artists who have each song thrust into their hands by a record company backroom ballad writer when their time comes again to churn out some plastic, sterile tune for the pop charts.
Yes, there are still good artists out there, mainly in the indie scene, and it's all the more satisfying for someone like me when you push aside the majority of music bilge and come across a great piece of music by a relatively unknown artist.
However, as time progresses, if downloadable music becomes more dominant, so will the plastic music. This means that the album will be a thing of the past because a popular artist's career will just consist of a series of singles that are released on a regular basis. In turn, the artists won't have enough material for reasonable-length live performance, thus the live concert will be in jeopardy.
Give me a CD any day that I can rip for my player for when I go to the gym - other than that, if music downloading dies a death then I say good riddance to it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Maybe it's just me, but people spend gobs of cash on presents and appealing to fear and living in culture of fear can be powerful (especially with heating your house vs. getting that iTune you really want) so I gotta go with #1 on this.
Now legal downloads may be losing their luster.
I'm not sure exactly how you go from a 0.44% drop (not even taken from Q3->Q4 of one year to Q3->Q4 of the next year nor quarter to quarter but quarter to mid-quarter) to stating such a bold thing, but there are such things as idiot journalists....
But it sure makes hot stories when you make sensationalistic claims (iPods are a Bad Thing) about something very trendy (iPods).
:wq
Yes, a little lock-in scheme. They sell a music player, throw in an on-line service as a sales gimmick. Consumers have alternatives to an iPod, and music distributers have alternatives to iTunes. For some bizzarre reason, consumers opted for the Pod enmass. Go figure.
Naturally, "Napster" is pissed. It may be that they'll stay pissed. Every seller's favorate business model is subscription, for the continuing income stream. A consumer's favorate model is (usually) to buy something once, so that they don't piss away money on goods and services they aren't always using. Most folks are already Washington and Franklin'ed to death by rent/mortgage, insurance, utilitities, cable, phone, cell phone, isp, and transportation. And now some bozos want to add music to our monthly.
Yeah, I'll get right on board with that. Sorry Chris, I already did a snail mail version of Napster with the Columbia Frickin' Music Club back in the day. A pain in the ass, having to turn back the crap they were pushing, once you had your fill of your favorates, and got down to the long haul of sorting out a few grains of one's personal wheat from the chaff.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Did CD sales skyrocket when discman's were first launched?
Doesn't make sense to me.
I won't...
Let em' know what you think!
Eschew Obfuscation
A quick trip to Wikipedia told me just who Nielsen SoundScan is...
Nielsen SoundScan is an information system created by Nielsen Media Research that tracks sales data for singles, albums, and music video products in Canada and the United States for Billboard and other music industry companies. MTV, VH1, and many other north American cable music channels use Nielsen SoundScan data as well.
They also had this little gem...
In 2005, single sales have fared better than they have in years since Billboard started tracking digital downloads from online music stores such as iTunes, Rhapsody, and Musicmatch. Sales of digital downloads have increased more than 200% from last year; however, sales of CD singles are down about 60% from last year.
Nielsen Soundscan says average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter, but, according to Billboard, who uses Soundscan's data, digital downloads have increased more than 200% from last year!
Am I interpreting this wrong? Why the hell are they so worried about less than 1/2% weekly drop when they have a 200% yearly increase?
" With MP3 formated files, I can move from any one player to any other player."
Nobody will sell those MP3 files on-line. So you have to jump through extra hoops to get to them. I'm sorry, but I'm not accepting MP3 as a non-lock-in example.
"Buying an iPod does not force me to buy from iTMS."
Okay, maybe I'm being ignorant here. What other services can you buy iPod compatible music for? I'm dead serious, I'll back down if you can name one or two. Part of my reaction here is that I CAN'T use my existing music service with an iPod, but with other players I can. You'd be doing me a huge favor if you could suggest an alternative music service with a subscription model that I could use an iPod with.
"Derp de derp."
Or perhaps you have never used iTunes, or even an iPod. Live and learn, I guess.
http://www.emusic.com/
There's an iPod wrapped up under my Holiday Tree, I just *know* there is!
If people knew they they could use Linux to add their mp3s to Ipods, then that would hurt iTunes and music industry.
\
I don't download music from iTunes, because it's not available for my country (one of the "new" EU members). But even if it were available, I prefer CDs. For me, the "unit" in music is an album, not a separate song. And an album comes with a sleeve and everything. Frankly, I would prefer CDs in vinyl sleeves.
Consumers are clearly demonstrating that the $0.99/song model doesn't work. Educated by **AA's anti-piracy campaigns, consumers realize that Apple's business model is unfair to the artists who create the songs they listen to. This is clearly a groundswell of public opinion whereby customers are telling Apple "If you continue to release Ms. Spears' latest single for $0.99, you are robbing her of her compensation as an artist, and we won't stand for it anymore."
I don't think Apple has any choice: in the face of this consumer backlash against affordable music, they'll have talk the labels into allowing them to raise prices on the most artistic material (that which is in the highest demand, that is). If they charge, say, $2.99 for the latest Britney Spears single, consumers will once again be able to purchase from iTunes with a clear conscience, and not worry that they're contributing to a young artist being taken advantage of by a huge corporation.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
I dont believe that DRM has made much of a dent in non sales but I know that for me I stopped purchasing music after I got one of the sony DRM cd's. I would like to think that some impact has been made on the negative side for the DRM fiasco, but I dont think its made much of a diffrence in overall sales unfortunately.
Clever or not, I got nothing...
I kepp my iPod full, and I have never bought anything from iTunes. I buy CDs online and at B&M stores and import them into iTunes.
It is easy enough, I expect even you could do it.
Only major label releases. Anything on an independent, self-released, or through smaller digital distributors is not being reported.
As an independant digital music distributor, sales have definitely been on the rise through the last two quarters.
You might want to look into a Korean company called iAudio if you're interested in a Digital Audio Player. The X5, for instance, supports FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) so you can have CD quality music; it functions as a UMD (USB Mass-storage Device) so you can just plug it in and drop the music files into it regardless of your operating system; and it has an excellent soundboard to boot. Oh, did I mention that it also plays video (before the iPod video came out)? Simply put, the X5 kicks ass. I can't believe that people would choose an iPod over an X5.
I'm glad that at least some parts of the world can produce things that actually have functionality to support a high price.
Perhaps their product is shitty? That may be why sales are down. ....that cannot be it though, it must be the ipod!
In addition to the music industry apparently being staffed by reactionary, entitlement-oriented morons, as others have pointed out, I've got one more theory to add based on my experience: flexibility adds value to existing collections.
When I ripped all my CD's to MP3, I found I was less anxious to buy new CD's because it was easier to achieve a seamless variety. Just click random mode on Winamp (still v2.91 for me) and any song from my collection could be next. I wouldn't necessarily be listening to one artist for an entire album or constantly swapping CD's to keep the flavor changing. As a result, I get more satisfaction from the same number of CD's and don't feel a need to add to my collection as often.
As far as the money lost due to reduced sales, as soon as they start selling the songs I want DRM-free, I'll start buying music online to fill in the holes in my collection where I don't want the whole album.
Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster Inc. (NAPS ), which sells both subscriptions and downloads. "You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that."
Chris,
I know this is hard to wrap your head around. The iPod is a media player with a built in hard drive. There is no vendor lock in. I've been able to downlaod music from napster, kazaa, soundclick, and a variety of vendors. Amazingly, they all work fine. AIFF, WAV, MP3, ACC, all work fine on my iPod. Should your's behave differently, RTFM.
What the iPod doesn't do, is support every god damned DRM scheme on the planet that lets you and your corporate cronies "lease" your DRM infected music to iPod owners. Quite frankly I'm not interested in DRM laden crap from napster, real, or anyone else including iTMS. I bought my iPod to carry around the large collection of music I already have, not to populate it with new music that has been approved by some industry suit.
So, in conclusion, the iPod is a hard drive. I can get files of any type onto it with ease. The iPod is a media player. I can play a fair variety of widely available media types without problems. The problem is in the DRM schemes that lock content to specific devices.
The iPod did not lock me into anything, your DRM infected business plan locked me out of your customer base. I am not interested, and it has nothing to do with my iPod.
I have not, nor will I ever "lease" digital music for my device. If I am paying with real cash, I want real bits I can twiddle as I see fit.
I listen to more music from other nations, Japan mostly, and the RIAA isn't encouraging me to buy native.
Besides money being tighter, maybe people are waiting to see if they get music ***for Christmas***.
What moron came up with this article? Clearly they were either desperate for a story, or too ignorant to realize the story they got wasn't the real story ata ll.
Generally, stats like this are compared with similar stats from other years, to adjust for seasonal effects. So, does anybody know if iTMS sales dipped last year before xmas?
You can import files that are on your computer or on CDs or DVDs in many music/audio formats (such as wav and aiff) into iTunes. Once the music is in iTunes, it can go onto your iPod. Except for ogg, the problem mostly isn't other music formats, but that other DRM schemes aren't supported and Apple won't share or license their fairplay DRM scheme. IMHO, Apple wouldn't have implemented any DRM if the music labels hadn't insisted.
- - -
In a world without walls and fences,
who needs windows or gates?
"I buy CDs online and at B&M stores and import them into iTunes."
So, you bought a bunch of songs you didn't want, spent all that time ripping and synching them, and you're 'informative' about it.
Who can't? I don't see Big Steve's goons running around saying, "nice music store you got there. It would suck if something happened to it."
Oh, you mean you dislike Apple not letting people piggyback on Apple's engineering and marketing investment. I understand. I'm pissed that Bank of America won't let me offer loans in their branch offices, too.
I forget what 8 was for.
"Certainly it makes more sense to sell some tunes for different prices, just as movies tend to sell for more at first and then end up in the discount bin when they're old hat."
That just means there are fewer downloads per period. The space occupied on the server's disk system is damn near free. Its not like they have to remainder it to make room for newer stuff that has to take up shelf space.
You're argument is specious and superfluous.
Apple has the right idea: There's only ONE price required.
The content doesn't care about which media its bits are sent to and the store doesn't either.
Pricing by 'value'implies placing a value on the content, but its total cost is negligible, regardless of whether its a video of "Mars Attacks" or the original book "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells.
Only one price is necessary. The revenue stream is utterly dependant on popularity, a temporary measure and cyclical in nature.(Ask an old and rare book seller.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
As has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections
... growth ... we should"... hmmm.. I think its time to hire new analysts, right? Just because someone came up with some numbers doesn't mean its a bonafide, set in stone, destined fact. If this commentary is referring just to the current quarter, then they should REALLY give themselves a kick in the pants - sure iPods and other MP3 players are flying off the shelves: people are buying them for christmas gifts. They aren't even being used yet! They're probably wrapped up and under a tree, or being shipped, etc.
I'm not sure why they are surprised with this? Did they honestly think people would only put newly-purchased music on their iPods (apparently so)? Why wouldn't I want to put all the music I already listen to on it? When the iPods first came out, it seemed like the biggest buyers were people with too much money on their hands that bought every CD that ever appealed to them, and were tired of shopping for n-disc changers for their cars and jukebox systems for their homes. The whole POINT is that they can hold albums and albums and albums of music without carrying around all the accompanying cruft (CD organizers, anyone?). iTMS was just icing on the cake, a way to explore new music and purchase a track or two without buying the whole album. If I had to make a guess, I'd say iTMS completely revitalized the 'singles' market.
We're not seeing the kind of dramatic growth we should given the surge in sales of iPods and other MP3 players
"the
PAH. I give up. Someone needs to get the music industry to grow up and stop whining that someone played with their toy: it's time for them to eat their vegetables and wear regular underwear instead of diapers. This should be accompanied by a talk about how life doesn't play by the rules you make up for yourself. Sheesh.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
I'll bet a lot of owners have used Napster (circa 1998) to load their iPods. About 20% of the music in my collection is from this previous version of Napster. Most of that is crappy 128k, misnamed, and ID3tag-less. 60% of the rest of it is from legally ripped CDs. The final 20% is legitimate free music - from archive.org, fingertips, The Hype Machine, other blogs, live torrents, etc.
Perhaps the RIAA should reconsider the free ride they expected from iPod users. When I purchased my Nano, the sole purpose was to haul around some of the 120GB of music I own. I never planned on using Apple's Music Store, and I probably never will. Similarly, I will never purchase DRM encrusted music. The music industry should really consider anything they've sold through iTunes as frosting.
And while we're on it, the RIAA will never see me re-purchasing music I already bought. I've downloaded and feel fully entitled to albums I've previously bought on cassette & LP. I could go through the work of encoding it in realtime, but the same thing is available online for free. The same goes for lost or damaged CDs. I've been emailing the RIAA regularly for several years to see if they have a problem with this policy - with no reply to date.
"You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple."
- Is Gorog willfully ignorant of free music, or just plain stupid? Has he ever even used an iPod?
Perhaps if the music/media industry were not acting the way that they have been lately, more people would be willing to buy. With all of the restrictions placed on legally downloaded music or legally purchased music, more and more people are in fact now downloading illegally.
I personally do not download music illegally (refused to buy an iPod and can listen to my CD's when I want), but I know a lot of people who do. Some of these people used to be against illegal downloads, but due to the restrictions placed on their music when they download (number of times it can be transferred, illegal to move from this device to that device, cannot be read at all on specific device, etc.) these people have found it easier to download the illegal copies, which have no problems.
Copyright infringement is wrong, but the legal system has made it not even worth owning the legal copies. When the common person doesn't clearly understand their rights on the media that they purchased without needing to be a lawyer to listen to it, you kill the desire to buy it.
iPod did the right thing by encouraging legal downloads to begin with and quickly found a market that was previously (almost) untapped. If they keep on that path and make music downloads simple to use and simple to own, they will remain strong. If Sony and the other companies win out by making it more difficult to transfer music/media from one media to another, the industry will dwindle. I used to purchase Sony items, but why in the world would I want to do this now, if I know that they are hiding trash on their media and are willing to accept vulnerabilities on my machine, and not tell me about the code? What stops them from creating hardware restrictions in their players that will fail to perform correctly as well? No more Sony...
Hollywood is slowly drowning themselves with their current copyright war. If the media can be transferred with 1's and 0's, there is no definite way to stop the illegal copy from being made. A hacker will go out of his way to copy something if he is told it cannot be done. Even if the movie/music isn't worth the cost of the burnable DVD/CD.
Bottom line for Hollywood...Look to your consumers and make them happy. Price things reasonable, make it easy to use for the vast majority, and don't make owning a CD a legal battle. YOU need the consumer, not the other way around. People will eventually stop listening or watching if you inconvenience them too much. I cannot think of a single successful company that did not begin by believing that if they won the consumer's confidence, that they would go far. I can think of MANY that lost sight of that and have long since circled the drain, or have begun to. The ball is in your court now...
That's a far cry from cause, and some guy's expectation is a far cry from proof.
0.44%. But for an android, that's like an eternity
Seriously, 0.44%? Is that honestly an issue?
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Get out thar and consume, damn you!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
were to forgo the DRM requirement, then Napster could sell plain-old mp3's that would work great on the ipod. So it begs the question as to why Napster is complaining about apple when they should complain to the RIAA. Why don't they say the truth, DRM causes the platform compatibilty problem, not the devices that play the music.
In other news, every sale of a Ford 'holds back' sales of a Chevy.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
...for the most part. From what I recall most musicians (with exception of super stars) tend not to taste much of the profit their songs generate. Most musicians still, to this day, end up signing away a lot of their future royalties from the songs as well. This is one of the major reasons why artists still go on tour, as that's their primary source of income.
I'd imagine it's the label that gets at least 60 of those cents, 30 to Apple, and the 9 cents left to the artist.
Why I don't use legal music downloads? Because they quite frankly suck!
Honestly, I can get most CDs that are maybe a year old (and face it, 95% of good music is probably not totally brand-new) for no more than $10. And that includes a backup, in case my computer dies. It includes a booklet, a copy of my music to listen to in the car (if I had one, that is). It includes the ability to re-rip the music in better quality, or in another format (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, you name it), should another cellphone or music player come along for me. It's convenient, since I can buy not only the mainstream stuff available on iTunes, but CDs from any band I could wish for. Oh, did I mention it's 44kHz sampling and no lossy encoding? And no DRM at all, so I may actually listen to my paid-for music on whatever music player I like to use?
It's called competition, baby. Embrace it or fall!
But iTMS is killing the industry! Legal music downloads were down a whopping zero-point-four-four per cent since the previous quarter! (For anyone who can't tell.. that's sarcasm!)
The reason there is a dig (.44%) is because right now there' crap out there. There isn't enough great new music that people want to buy. Screw the RIAA. .44% can easily be attributed to things like natural disaster, like hurricanes. Why the hell is that even a story? Fucking retard papers don't know how to report any more.
BusinessWeek is BoomerWeek. they're filled with crap, honestly, when will they just all retire?
Yes, you are Correct Sir! Its always about the money, greed, I wish there was some kind of watch dog organization to keep the RIAA in check. What the RIAA really wants is to control how we listen to music. Its beginning to be like 1984 soon there will be ministry of music and people will be taken off the streets for indiscrete listening. I don't download music (legal that is) for a few reasons. The main reason is that vinyl and CD's contain information, tidbits about the artists, lyrics etc (speaking of which the RIAA wants to limit access to lyric sites). Sure all that info is somewhere on the web but I'd rather read that on the couch then in front of a monitor. I grew up around the end of vinyl, 8 track, into cassettes and then to CD's. Enough already!! I am not going to pay more for music I own in another media format, well with some exceptions. It has become really easy to convert tapes and albums into CD. I still collect vinyl and why people throw out perfectly good vinyl is just stupid.
...the iPod will play any standard MP3, and WMA file that isn't encrypted (well, 'play', in the sense that iTunes will convert it). The other funny thing is, Napster does the whole WMA DRM crap, which *can't* go onto the ipod, because iTunes (assuming you use it, which most iPod users do - at least any of the thousands of people that i talk to in the run of a month) can't convert Mr. Gorog's encrypted WMA files. So who exactly is locking in\out who?
And of course, the micropayment should be $1 per song, per listening.
--LWM
The music industry is upset because Apple created a better way to hear music, as the music industry was not attempting to make better music to hear in the first place. I have always said, if the music industry really wanted to make money, they should be selling cheap hard drives, and give away the music. Make the media free or damn-near-free, and sell the nifty hardware that goes with it. How can they not see this?
Could it just be that people are slowly starting to catch on to the fact that most "commercial" music backed by the big labels sucks and are going the indie route to find tunes that cater to their listening tastes? If this is the case, paid "legal" downloads would surely decrease since a strong number of indie artists either sell their music off their own sites or -gasp- offer it up for download for free. Yes, I know iTunes and their ilk promote indie music but most people who bother to listen are IMHO more likely to go direct to the source if they have to pay so _ALL_ the money goes to the artist. I for one have all but stopped listening to mainstream music ever since the industry told me it thought I was a lying, theiving idiot willing to put any pice of DRM'd shit on my computer or portable player just so they can continue to spoonfeed me their tripe. And I'm happy to say that the quality of indie music has far exceeded my expectations. Sure, there is a lot of chaff to sort out before you get to the wheat but that wheat is far better than the processed algorithmic junkband music the labels have been putting out as of late. I'd suggest to all the Slashdot users who haven't ditched mainstream media yet to do so, you'll never regret it!
In my opinion, the top three items to kill of iTunes and the rest of the legal download sites are - insuffiecent quantity of music, lack of quality, and separate nationalized stores with differing content.
Despite what started off as a strong stream of content has now become a weak trickle. To compete with the filesharers the stores need to ramp up production and add more content. Once customers have bought the content they know they like, they will be waiting for more content (possibly even jumping providers to get it).
I really like iTunes, but 128 kbps is too low for some music. I have bought music that clips due to the low rate, and this has left me with a cautious attitude regarding further purchases. Stores should never let customers have bad experiences regarding purchases. Raise the bit rate even if it requires a multiple tier price scheme.
Nationality of internet based business really burns my britches. If you have a store on the internet why in hell would you limit yourself to only selling to customers in one country. If a customer is willing to pay the currency conversion factor, there is no reason why the customer should have any problem. iTunes has many separate 'stores' available and all have different content, so why can't I purchase music from the UK store? Or the Germany store? Or (damit) the Canadian store? This makes absolutely no sense to me as a ready-and-willing-to-pay customer. Lose the national stores with separate & different content and business will climb.
These aren't the be-all end-all for enhancements to the legal music download stores, but would be a good start.
0.44%
for one week.
oh no its the end of the market.
Really, its only 0.44%. Now if the download per week steadily decreased contiunally for an extended period of time (like 6-8 months) then it would be valid. But then the issue could be that people have gone out and bought all the cd's they wanted and had already downloaded all the music they wanted. It would only make sense that people will only download (and ideally purchase) what they want. This is the problem with retail, they think that a small decrease in sales means that someone on their side is doing something wrong instead of the consumer not wanting to purchase anything for that week. This decrease could also be attributed to the christmas season around the corner and thus people want to spend the money on gifts instead of music for themselves. I would put money on it that even though the purchases of download music would be declining, the purchases of gift certificates for iTunes or the number of CDs bought will be increasing, thus this absurd conclusion that there is any problem with the music industry is just related to the pricing issue that occurred earlier in the year. The RIAA needs to come into the real world (as the rest of the retail industry should, and the economy as well), a place where just because sales are not sky rocketing or staying even does not mean you are not selling you product. What if everyone in the world has your product already, I'm pretty sure that you would see that much as far as sales for the next month, thank you very much.
why are people freaking out about not even half a percent drop in sales? half a percent!!!! and you are holding back? WTF! everybody spent their money getting the latest xbox and other xmas gifts... lets see... more music, or a game system?
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
So Microsoft gains effective control of the OS market and leverages that to restrict end-user choice by blocking competitors' products. Conclusion: Microsoft=Evil
Apple gains effective control of the portable digital music market and leverages that to restrict end-user choice by blocking competitors' products. Conclusion: Apple=Good
I'm missing something here.
Michael
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
Software, movies, music, ebooks, whatever. . Pay by the megabyte, a penny or two (whatever). Once every vendor of e-content started doing it, it would get accepted, adopted and become the norm. They could be done with it, and get back to normal business and stop this adversarial conflict with the customers.. That would work for all these various companies, they would get money, people would get their stuff, piracy would drop down severely.
Holding on to last centurys business model is insane*bonkers*nuts.
It's ludicrous, crazy, there's no need for all this BS about copying and piracy. Making copies of anything digital is so freekin cheap now, they should sell it cheap and be done with it. These greedy goons want a monopoly on technology, that's the only real crime being committed now.
Want to sell more of anything? If you can get it cheaper, or make it cheaper-like they can-, then sell it cheaper, much cheaper if that is what it takes. This works for every other product on earth now BUT this digitized stuff. Even 99 cents a track is a rip. Double digits folding money multiple dollars for stuff on a cheap plastic disk is a rip.
Digital content producers of the world-tear down those high price walls and you will see billions of happy customers on the other side!
Does netcraft confirm it?
The RIAA would want you not to not be able to load your computer with your own ripped CD music, but to buy the whole load online (again).
And then one more time to load your iPod with the music.
I'd rather pirate music from any RIAA label than pay for it. Not that I do pirate their music, since they're trying to push utter shite onto us and calling it music.
the reason for the lack of iTunes sales probably has a lot to do with the christmas season. most people are worrying about buying gifts to give to others intead of spending it on music. to explain the lack of iTunes sale hike that is expected to occur after the sale of many new iPods is because most of the iPods being bought right now are to be given as presents on christmas! so, im sure that if you watch the sales of iTunes music following christmas day, it probably go through the roof! not to mention that a .44% sales difference is really not that much.
Because they see a dip in their profits, doesn't really mean that they're losing money.
They're just making less. There's a difference.
This greed is pathetic. If you've ever felt a tinge of sympathy, or even empathy for these people you oughtta be ashamed. Who gives a damn, shut them up and tell them to stop bitching. If they decide to pull Britney Spears or My Chemical Romance off of iTunes, will anyone really shed a tear?
Buying brand new music has gotten to be such a hassle that I've decided to be content with the music in my current collection. Occasionally I'll check something out of the library, but that's as far as I'll go in acquiring new music.
If the music industry provided any sounds other than that of pure prefabricated suckage, though, I might just reconsider.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
As a musician signed to an independent label, I can tell you what is killing music. It's easy, major labels just suck the life out of artists. Find a local band you like, and support the hell out of them. Most of them can be found on iTunes (through a deal with CDBaby), MySpace, or you can order CD's directly from their sites or at shows. Stick it to the labels by supporting indie artists who have the freedom to be more creative and artistic. Not to try to self pimp here, but check out http://www.myspace.com/soundside . Check out our stuff or the music of of the bands we're friends with. I guarantee you will find some music you want to listen to.
If the Artists got a decent cut, I think many more people would be willing to pay for legal downloads. Instead you have creepy, sleazy, coccaine-sniffing, whore-sluffing scumbags at the record companies installing Malware on your PC. Why should we pay for their excessive lifestyles? (Excessive lifestyles of artists ("My Dog should fly first Class" says Mariah Carey) is another matter, but hey, at least they've done some work.)
"With any luck Artists will control their own music, and profit from it by then and the record companies will be dead."
If ignorance is bliss, you must be very happy every time you contemplate the music industry, or economics or business in general.
Vote for Pedro
MP3 w/o DRM. It's possible to circumvent the drm and get MP3s to work with ipod. I won't go into details, but it involves recording sound card output. As long as recording devices are legal DRM is breakable.
Why is the music industry scared of apple? Now is the time if ever they should pounce on apple and make a fair playing field among online music. Apple can't sell songs if the music industry won't let them. People would be pissed at apple if the music industry shut down the store just because apple wouldn't let the ipod play an extra format. Although I think this should have been done 2 years ago, because today the apple store is popular. But the recording company is at an all time low in the PR department, so now is the time to do something people might not like. Honestly if something like that worked and the ipod supported wmv and other formats, people would be much more happy and the music industry could take the credit for freeing everyone's beloved device from the evil control of apple. If apple's control continues, we will probably see them become a music industry of their own signing bands and promoting them through itunes and growing to the point of mtv.
"RIAA sucks! Apple rules! iPods rule!" et cetera. It's getting old.
:)
To fill a 60 gig iPod with songs from itunes costs roughly $15 grand. And yet they still sell very well... hmmm. I suppose a lot of folks with 1250 disc CD collections (the stack of CD cases would only be about 30 feet high) will come out of the woodwork to talk about how much they love having each bootleg Phish show they own on their iPod, but the fact is that most people who have 60 gigs of music stole a lot of it. (Other anticipated responses: I use my ipod to store 8 million digital pictures of my girlfriend; I keep 60 gigs of [not copywritten] porn on it; I back up every Linux distribution ever created; etc. You're a hero, and this post isn't about you, so go have a Jolt to reward yourself!)
If quarter-over-quarter iPod sales are way up (discounted for seasonality - lots of those iPods will be Xmas gifts, after all) but quarter-over-quarter music sales aren't, record executives are right to be skeptical about iPods driving their sales. They've pretty much figured out that Apple screwed them over - the iTMS is basically an advertisement for iPods. The fact that it generates some revenue is an ancillary benefit, nothing more.
Now, I'm all for music labels as they are generally constituted now shrivelling up and dying. I couldn't care less. But for the longest time, people b**ched and moaned about how they wouldn't steal if there was a better alternative; if only some genius company would sell tracks for $1 each, so you wouldn't have to buy the whole crummy album for the 3 songs you wanted! I think I read that same post about 6 million times in 1999. Now that it's here, people are discovering that actually, free is still a lot better than $1, and so file-sharing and allofmp3 downloads keep setting all-time records.
This is bad, because the mean record industry is going to call up their cronies in congress and pass more stupid laws that will piss off everyone here. They are going to do something, because the availability of cheap, legal music isn't enough to stop the flood of illegal music being shared. So stop whining and go buy some indie records off itunes
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
n/t
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
First off to pay a Dollar a song which is compressed is the biggest scam possible. Compressed music sounds like shit, end of story. Buy yourself a real stereo system or a older CD player and you will hear the difference. Second I would be more then happy to purchase music if it was in a lossless format, and if the average price was 20 cents per song. Other then that keep your shitty simple technologies. Music is supposed to soothe the beast not piss it off.
That's why the statistic is quarter over quarter. Every sales statistic in existance uses quarter over quarter sales to account for the routine seasonal fluctuation, since after all, it was almost Christmas this time last year as well.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
This reminds me of the "Apple is dying" hogwash. iTMS sales are down a bit so now Apple is holding back the music industry? Give me a break. It if wasn't for iTMS, the music industry's main mode of doing business with the internet would be the same as it was in 1998-9 -- suing the hell out of Napster, Gnutella, etc. users, and extorting money from anyone forward-thinking enough to invest in such endeavors. Apple came along and showed the industry that there was a way to make money selling legal downloads, and now they are bitching that it's not enough. They want the price raised; they want more DRM; they want more restrictions and more costs added until we are paying full album sticker price every time we listen to a song, and they're still complaining that sales are going down. Even then it won't be enough for these greedy corrupt egotistical blowhards. Given their attitude they should be happy anyone buys any music from them at all.
LOL Apple is making a living off the DMCA thanks to the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry was so sure they could use this law to control the market with an iron fist and reap huge financial rewards. Little did they realize that the same iron fist they so willing hammered the people with could be used so well against them. Now any group with a lot of money and a good business plan only needs to get their product and/or a distribution method dominant in the market just once because when they do so they can then use DRM and the DMCA to make it impossible to build an inter-operable products to try to compete even if the new products would otherwise have been superior because the dominant company will not release its DRM and even though the DMCA supposedly says you can bypass DRM for interoperability it contradictorily also says you cannot legally posses, discuss, or use th tools you would need to bypass DRM in the first place so there is not way to get started. Worse still for the entertainment industry, since these types of products are a vast source of revenue, they must pony up their content at a low cost or face huge financial losses and the possibility that they might even be replaced. Google studios anyone? Nor would they win if they themselves created the DRM. Nothing would have stopped Apple from taking a DRM'd track and then wrapping it in their own DRM as well. They might try forcing companies to share DRM information like they are trying to do in France but this is recipe for disaster as DRM depends on secrecy. How many companies will get to know the secret before someone screws up also in such a scenario how can they legally deny one company but not another and what about open source companies? Basically it is a no win situation for them. DRM cannot work, it harms competition, the growth of new markets, and offends the user. They are only now starting to realize what they have done. Well I say they deserve to reap what they have sown.
You got a vendor on one side of the street selling apples for $.99 but across the street a vendor is giving them away. Doesn't take long for most people to say to hell with it and walk across the street for the free apples. The bad part is the guy giving them away isn't paying the farmer for the apples.
Switch to OS X already. Rhapsody is way out of date.
Has it occured to the almightly number-crunchers that most of the recently purchased ipods are probably destined to be christmas/haunakka/kwanzaa/etc. presents? Maybe they should check music sales after the 'end-user' actually recieves their device... The other number-twisting fact is that many people are just upgrading their mp3 player and not needing to download much more music (how much legal music does one need???)... Just some thoughts for food. Please. I'm hungry.
The default encoding in iTunes is not mp3. A large majority of the iPod owners will rip their entire collection into the AAC format and from that point will be tied to Apple hardware. When they go to upgrade to another device, they will ask if it can play their existing media. And Apple get another sale as the user finds they have to get another iPod. And as they are very nice, they will have no real issue with that.
Sure, I know you can re-rip your music, but who wants to do that? People being people, they will have lent or sold the original media by then and it won't be an option for many. And sure, with iTunes music, you can burn to CD and re-rip, but we are talking about normal people here, not the "tech elite". Many of them struggle to get the music on in the first place (I've personally helped three clueless users with iPods [ + some other folks with other devices]), so that idea will be beyond them.
Trust me here: Apples outstanding success with the iPod will hold them in the number one slot for a very long time. Provided they don't fsck it all up and pull a Sony or something.
I'm with you up until here: "It's all the lottery people's fault." You're not following the author's logic closely enough. It's clearly Apple's fault that you didn't win money in the lottery.
We are out of new, good, music ! We only have pasteurized pop-successes ! Oh no !
--
Nothing to see here, move along...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
People are sick of the bad press the RIAA is generating, and simply don't care to purchase their products anymore. Could also be a lack of new talent worth listening to.
I personally have not bought a CD in years. Though I did spend about $10 buying some old songs I liked from Wal-Mart's music store when it opened. I know of only one person who continues to buy CD's and MP3's. No one else cares for the new talent nor the RIAA's actions as of late.
In short, perhaps it is the lack of quality and consumer relations that is costing the music industry. Not bazillions of theives ravaging the internet to steal away all their monies.
Not to mention, the price of music CD's is a joke. $15-20 for a movie I can understand. Tens of millions in advertising, and often hundreds of millions in production. I pay $20 for a good movie I feel like I got what I paid for. When I pay $20 for a music CD that has maybe one or two songs on the whole disk that I want - I do not feel I have received valuable goods for the money I invested.
if a 0.44% can cause 387 + comments, then what is the predicted number of comments for a 0.55% RISE? -0- margin of error? -0- whats 0.44% worth anyway? No, you suck.
Sigh. Too bad there's not a retard filter on /.
*Sarcasm On* It's obvious that Apple's responsible for piracy. The lack of an increased sale of CDs along with increased sale of ipods means that Jobs needs to buy Young Jeezy a new Mercedes. It's all about the rich getting richer, and the poor musicians getting the shaft from RIAA/MPAA and the consumers that are stealing their creations. *Sarcasm Off*
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
And just how would one know how much growth in music sales should this "surge" of sales of devices produce? There are legitimate uses for these devices besides dumping your dollars for every new single that comes out.
I'm sure there are quite a few New Zealanders who've bought iPods and in NZ we can't even use iTunes to buy songs as there is no NZ iTMS. Buying from the UK, US, Australian, etc stores is not allowed and enforced through having to pay using a credit card issued by a bank in the respective country.
Not that NZ makes up a huge porportion of Apple's worldwide iPod sales, but it enforces the point that a lot of people are quite happy to buy iPods and NOT download music from iTMS - i.e. they get their music via a different channel and then load it onto their iPods.
DRM up, sales down.
Treat your customers like criminals, insult them with restrictive use and finally sue them into submission.
Sounds like a recipe for a good business no?
No.
This is not necessarily a reasonable expectation. I would assume that the people suddenly buying MP3 players are already patrons of the music industry. To suggest that they will suddenly start purchasing more music than they already have been--that is, to expect a surge in the sales of music in general--is absurd.
MP3 players do not replace CD players from the music industries stand point. They are interchangeable because the same music is played on each.
www.blueapples.org
What kills me, is I downloaded a dozen or so songs from iTunes, but I dont have an iPod. After looking at the iTunes software, I thought I could convert them to use on my Rio mp3 player. The software says it will convert AAC to mp3. Fine. But no such luck, iTunes files (even older songs) are "protected". So if I want to use them, I have to make a cd, then rip them back to mp3, getting crappy quality. (copy of a copy) So, no more iTunes downloads for me.
I can't believe after all of this time, you guys still whine about how much popular music sucks and is too expensive and "protected" by DRM, when you could instead go to emusic.com.
More and more indie labels are joining them, they've got tons of old jazz and blues and classical music, and they offer it in completely legal non-DRM MP3 format, all as low as $0.25 per track.
I know that at the beginning, there selection was limited, but when they switched to limited downloads, a lot more became available. *Most* of the music I want to hear, I can find there, and I pay $20 a month for 90 songs (which I can then download as many times as I want), so it's always nice to type in the name of a band I just heard or heard of, see that it's available, and go straight to downloading.
In your case, it sounds like you've "outgrown" buying more music. You aren't into new artists or looking forward to new records coming out.
To get my 70+ year old father to buy more music, you'd have to bring Bob Wills back from the dead to record another album.
I don't think you or my father are the kind of customer the RIAA is trying to attract.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
It's easy, and I think preserves the metadata...
go to preferences, -> Advanced and change "import using" to "MP3 encoder"
Then, click on a song, go to the "advanced" menu and choose "convert selection into MP3"
See how that works for you.
Isn't it RIAA that's holding back the music industry?
.44%
.44%?
As in only 99.56% of what it was before?
Oh nos!
iTunes is one of the most amazing ripoffs I've ever seen. It's the same overpriced crap from the music business in a different format.
Advice: on VPS providers
Hang on a second buddy.... you're talking about people buying online vs. locally, and you're talking about buying music at Borders? Jesus Christ, you're a hypocrite. You should continue buying CD's if you want to, but how about a LOCAL INDEPENDENT MUSIC STORE? You're really just as bad as people buying online to save a few pennies in sales tax.
I don't respond to AC's.
http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm
Downloads on ITMS drop less than one-half of one percent and "analysts" are already claiming it's on it's way out.
"The villain in the story is the iPod," says Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster Inc. "I have half a million subscribers who would love to use an iPod with my service,"
What about the several million iPod owners who would use your service, but can't because there's no Mac version?
If I like the music, I would rather buy the CD, that way I can have a better quality version. Now, if the downloads were compressed via lossless compression, and of CD or greater quality, sure, I'd just buy the songs I like and save some green.
Just because you've bought your shiny new iPod doesn't mean you are going to buy more music .. most people will want to transfer their existing CD's onto it first and listen to them, then when a new CD comes out they might go and buy it.
That the reason people aren't buying as much music is that they are promoting utter shit.
If we couldn't get it for free we REALLY wouldn't pay for it.
As it is, most of the time, it's not even worth downloading.
Anything that isn't crap is played to death on local radio, so much that you wouldn't want to hear it again.
-Iceman
I'm trying to figure out why (unless you were buying a CD) would you want to buy from anywhere else? Don't most of the music stores have all the same tracks anyway? The only thing cooler would be like an amazon where all the music came from and you just bought it and selected your mobile device and downloaded the proper format. Unfortunately thats a long ways off and apple has done such a good job. :)
-Xen
The economy's kind of in the toilet... for the average consumer spender anyway.
I call bullshit. If you get what you ask for, in about 6 months you'll be wanting to pay 10 cents per song.
I know more professional musicians that earn their $$$ from touring in bars, commercials, etc. than those who are just in a part time band.
First the RIAA gets a cut of all music sold.
Then they get a cut of all blank media sold.
Now they want a cut of all the hardware action.
Where will it end?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Call me crazy but could it be that they're not buying songs because they don't need to buy the same songs 3~4 times like they did before? Could it be they're just buying the new players but they don't *want* to buy new songs because there's nothing *to* buy? Is it just me or does the RIAA think that it's their constitiutional right to have people hand them money?
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
Early adopters *are* different than the average Joe. And they forget an obvious rule of hardware:
Hundreds of dollars in future sales come from $500 devices -- not $150 pieces of hardware.
Let me take a little nibble on your flamebait too!
And a good percentage of those iPod purchases are probably Christmas gifts (or should I say Holiday gifts, is the word Christmas allowed anymore?)
I imagine one would only say "holiday gifts" if one bought presents for (for example) Jews and Christians because there would be a logical reason for the more ambiguous word. Verbosity is so passé, so why is anyone surprised that saying "happy holidays" has been en vogue for years now rather than "merry christmas and a happy new year?
Further, a fun fact for the "War on Christmas" crowd: Khristos (spelled with a chi, X, where we get the word Christ via the Latin Christus and Old English Crist) is the Greek word (well translated derivative) for the Hebrew Messiah (anointed and anoint respectively). The X in Xmas is a direct reference to Khristos and an abbreviation for Christ. So, the next time anyone tries to tell you that "xmas" is a conspiracy to "take the Christ out of Christmas" just remind them of this! The simple and more innocuous explanation is that store windows (and ad copy) just don't have enough space to mention all the Xmas specials without the abbreviation. Maybe the "War on Christmas" crowd should focus on the the real problem, the commercialization of Christmas (which lends itself to the ad copy and store windows and abbreviations). In that respect "happy holidays" is a victory, as it spreads the commercialism a little thinner to each of the exploitable gift-giving followers.
P.s. I'm not insinuating that the the parent is part of the "War on Christmas" crowd. His/her one quip isn't enough to make that judgement.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Is it just me or does the RIAA think that it's their constitiutional right to have people hand them money?
I know you're being facecious and all, but...the RIAA is a "trade group." "Trade groups", corporations, and other member-nodal entities have no "constitutional rights". The Constitution grants artists the right of copyright for the progress of science and useful arts! Being somewhat of a constructionist, this means that the explicit intent of the framers must be taken into account. The framers obviously did not intend for businesses to weild the same rights as individuals. That has happened once in our history, and it is known to history as The Gilded Age. As far as I'm concerned, I own the disk's matter, therefore I own whatever the matter represents. If I own a plot of land, and then a huge heap of gold is found on its site, I own that gold. "Intellectual property" means that an artist can't be robbed of his or her creative ideas. If a person thinks of something and develops it privately, and someone else then sneaks a peek at it, that should be illegal. I'd be pretty pissed if someone stole my designs like that. The designs and things are my property. But after my product is released, it is fair game. I sell disks, which are matter encoded to represent something. People who buy the disks own the disk's matter, and therefore can use the disks as they please. Art isn't, and never has been the most lucrative of industries. Science and engineering and the professions and the trades yield quantitative progress, but art by its very nature is qualitative. Today, a grossly small percentage of artists make up a grossly large percentage of artists' total wealth. They get rich by selling you the record, the 8-trak, the audio cassette, and the CD. Now they want to sell you the DRMd mp3 derivative. Shove it, RIAA. I support artists, not greedy fat rich corporate bastards who care only about their personal check-books.
Subscription content is the future. If you like to explore music, Napster (or similar Microsoft DRM subscription services) are the way to go. I like downloading tons of music every month for about the cost of 1 CD. Goodbye $.99 per track, there's a better, cheaper alternative.
The music companies are multinational. They don't care what country the music is from -- in fact I think that in Japan, Sony has even greater marketshare than they do here in the States. So you can buy as much Japanese music as you want, and the RIAA isn't going to complain, because the RIAA is basically an organ of the multinational record companies.
Now if you started buying a lot of independent foreign music, which was somehow imported and sold without somehow causing a palm at Sony/BMI to be greased, and we actually representative of a significant portion of the music-buying public, you can bet they'd have their lobbyists painting you as one step down from a terrorist.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The Little Yellow God, on page 12. Cheers.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If you try to report on music sales in the same way that you report on, say: corn or wheat or even iPods, you are a friggin moron. A) Music is not a material thing. I read posts in this discussion citing iTunes gift cards' sales going with iPods. B) Music is not commodifiable. You can fart the melody to jingle-bells and put it on the iTMS, but that isn't going to make people want to shell out $10-15 for it. If everyone did it, sales would go way down.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
As digital collections grow, it seems an image-based UI might help. Maybe that's just me, but I grew up with album covers being an essential part of my music, and they were part of the way I organized my collection. Relating to a text database isn't as satisfying.
And files. I do agree not everyone needs a 60GB iPod. Perhaps that's why Apple makes 30GB iPods, and 2GB iPods and 4GB iPods.
Plus, iPod do hold uncompressed music or losslessly compressed music. Or podcasts.
And yes, I had a 1400 CD collection even before the iPod came out. I have an 800-CD CD rack, it has 5 rows, 3 feet long each. It of course doesn't hold my whole collection.
I'm sure a lot of other people already pirate music, but I don't see that iPod has much to do with it. I am 36, I'm out of touch with the kids nowadays. But every one of the college students I have met (and had the opportunity to view the record collection of) has a huge collection of pirated music on CD-Rs and hard drives. I don't have any reason to believe that they're pirating more music because they can put it on an iPod instead of burning it onto an mp3 CD and putting it in a cheapo CD player.
Is the iTMS selling iPods? Likely. But I don't believe it's solely a system of selling iPods.
Also, if something is protected by copyright, it is copyrighted, not copywritten. Copywritten sounds cool, but it's not really the right conjugation.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Ask yourself this--would the music industry grow faster if those things didn't exist?
Of course not!
What the music industry doesn't understand is that they need to supply a better product, ie better music. The boy bands they're turning out are not worth buying.
Pretty much everyone with an iPod listens to music already. Juswt because I buy a new iPod doesn't mean I'm a new customer, it means my source changes to iTunes(although discs when iTunes doesn't have it). That's all. There shouldn't be a huge surge in the market, I'd actually think it would go down since you can buy that one or two good songs from an album instead of the whole stinkin' thing. The music industry is being held back though, it has to change and adapt to the new ways of distributing music, instead of forcing it down your throat like rape the consumer has more power than before, and that's not how the industry is used to dealing with things.
And I still like going into my dirty, dingy little local music store and shopping for "brown bag specials", talking to Doug the music trivia master, and shooting the shit for an hour or so.
I used to do the same and it was great, then my unemployment benefits ran out and I actually had to get a job. Another bonus is I actually have friends as well now too so I no longer have to hang out with random record store employees to share interests with someone.
Are people surging to buy ipods because.... their old ones broke?
Well, I own an iPod, and it is mostly filled with legal, free downloads from new bands. So, it looks like the music industry is finally getting their ass kicked by new bands and new distribution channels. And that's just what should be happening.
I fill up my ipod with podcasts and free media and I stay RIAA free
Everyone is like a $1 this or a $1 that, as if $1 are water. If $1 are so cheap, then someone come click on my blog and donate them to me. $1 is expensive! Besides, you figure that we'll all be making $5 an hour by the end of our lives, as wages level out world wide. So, hang onto them Washingtons now!
This is my sig.
As usual, this pro business article contains selective logic: namely, that the music business needs to grow, every quarter, in perpetuity, in order for it to exist. Apparently being down 0.44% for the quarter is considered a disaster of technology-negating proportions.
I guess now we know what the definition of "is" is.
I've only spent thousands and thousands of dollars on CD's over the past fifteen years. It's really a bummer for the music biz that I can just enjoy those songs on my iPod now. I don't find that much new music to buy, and when I do it's usually indie stuff anyways. That's just reality.
Cheers.
I think they're bitching because there's no growth in legal music downloads. In that case, the lack of growth is much bigger than their lack of margin of error.
Their lack of understanding is even larger than the lack of growth, though.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You're right, I was trying to be facetious I do realize that groups and coropoations have right, but not constitutional rights like an individual. I'm glad you brought up about the glided age. I haven't thought of that in ages and I think it's time I read up on it again and try to learn from it... Like other CEO's should...
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
If ignorance is bliss, you must be very happy every time you contemplate the music industry, or economics or business in general.
Funny how I didn't mention any opinions on business or the economy, and you are quoting what is really a throw-away comment that had nothing to do with the primary point of my statement.
Nice ad hominem btw.
But if there actually is anything to that joke at the end, it is that people in general make more money working for themselves than working for someone else. At least if you are able to sustain yourself in doing so. In this case, if musicians were able to publish music without paying a "tax" to the record industry, they would be making more money. The record industry does serve a purpose. Distribution and marketing are significant parts of the business, but the internet offers new opportunities for both distribution and marketing.
Distributing on the internet requires a lot less overhead. Giving away free samples in other industries has been accepted method of marking for a long time. Giving away free samples of music on the internet has the advantage of not needing to produce a physical product. Server costs can be significant, but bittorrent can reduce those costs. However mainstream record companies have sued to prevent the artists under their contract from giving away their own music. They do not want artists to use any marketing methods that they could use independently of the large record companies. They would prefer to use radio to give away free samples where they can not only better control how far they are distributed, but which artists will be promoted. The icing on the cake is that they charge the artists for payola.
On a more personal note, I just prefer smaller business, especially my own small business and taking in passive income. Outside of my own income I just think that small business is the backbone of our economy. Larger businesses, especially those traded on the stock market, depend more on speculative economics. The problem with a speculative economy is that it is not enough for a company to be profitable, or even make enough profit. Profits have to increase every quarter, or at least every year, or stockholders get nervous. Because of this profits have to increase exponentially, maybe not as dramatic as a ponzi scheme, but every once and a while the bubble bursts, and then the economy is sluggish until people are either confident that the stocks are no longer over-valued, or just forget that bubbles will burst. (I think it is more some combination of the two.)
Large businesses do have a knack for surviving recessions because they have enough deep pockets to ride it out. But I have more confidence in smaller companies where you can actually understand what they are doing, and the primary concern is that they are making enough profit, not an ever increasing profit.
Which brings us back to the large record companies, and why they complain about sales when they are still making significant profits. Again, it is not enough for them to make a large profit. The profit must be even bigger than those of the previous year or it will look bad to their stock holders. The reality that people spend less money on luxuries during a recession does not negate their neccessity to increase their profits every single year to appease their stockholders.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
hmmm.. the price for a single song has to include the transaction fee, which goes down when an entire cd is purchased. From my (customer) perspective, getting "War" or "Hotel California" is worth 99 cents since I don't want the whole CD. I'm not saying it's great, but I don't think it's a ripoff.
Want amazing ripoffs? How about $2.99 for a 30-second low quality ringtone?
I get my CDs from CDBaby.com; usually more than half of my payment goes to the artist within a week. I used to buy mainstream from our local Hear Music store at the Stanford Mall.. discovered The Decemberists, Bowery Electric, Les Nubians, Pink Martini there. I nearly cried when they got bought by Starbucks and closed the store. Haven't bought a mainstream CD since.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Of course -- people have found all the music from the back catalog that they wanted to download. Current popular music sucks (with such pussy-rock bands as Nickelback). What are people being enticed to download if they already have purchased all they wanted from the history of music? This is the same thing that probably happened with DVDs -- people got DVD versions of all the movies from history that they wanted. Now DVD sales have slowed because people don't have as much of a choice of desired movies as they did.
5 .php
Don't believe me that Nickelback sucks?
http://www.nintendorks.com/brandon/archives/00047
Look for "How you remind me of someday.mp3".
How much economic significance can one attribute to a drop in sales of far less than even one percent? How much impact from innumerable other variables can one manage to ignore to make a DESIRED theory sound plausible?
BusinessWeek shows us how to make a laughingstock of statistics and the "science" of economics.
Mark
Because it's not Rhapsody's fault that Apple won't license their DRM technology.
p le%20to%20open%20iPod/2100-1025_3-5177914.html?tag =nlv ows_to_.html
If Real wanted you to be able to play Rhapsody music on iPods they would license Helix DRM to Apple, not the other way around (oh and does Rhapsody still use Listen.com's WMA format?). RealPlayer already uses the QuickTime libraries and is thus capable of playing FairPlay encrypted M4As/AACs. This is why "Harmony" was so ill-conceived and ill-recieved (legalities aside, Harmony benefits Real with nearly no benefit to Apple; letting iTunes users access Rhapsody on the other hand opens up Real's market to iPods, opens up Real's market to Mac users, both of which are "closed" to Rhapsody right now, and provides Apple with one more selling point for the iPod/iTunes combo -- subscription music). Real doesn't have to license/break/decieve FairPlay to get Rhapsody on the iPod, they just have to strike a deal with Apple (and get Helix DRM in iPod firmware or in iTunes). As far as I know, all the news has been Glaser begging/threatening Jobs in open and private email to 'open the iPod' ("or we'll go to our enemy Microsoft") not to support Helix and not to license FairPlay to them.
For more info:
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/drm/
http://news.com.com/Reals%20Glaser%20exhorts%20Ap
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/21/drm_company_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
whatever dude, that's what makes america great.
If you want to use an obscure file format supported by limited companies, feel free.
It doesn't matter to me, I use either AIFF and mp3. iPod fits my bill, and I don't have to constantly make up excuses for why i don't want an iPod, or pretend the iPod is crippled because it can't support me and 200 other people who ripped our music into a format with limited adoption.
OGG might have better compression and better sound, but it requires more processing power. Processing power drains batteries, which really makes OGG a poor choice for a portable player, while remaining a fine choice for a home jukebox.
"Clearly this dramatic fall (0.44%) of sales is due to the fact that MP3-players are the work of the devil! They corrupt the mind of our youth with filthy thoughts of freedom. We should go to war agains these terrorists that terrorise the free world with their unearthly ideas of freedom. All the god-fearing good citizens of the world should destroy their MP3-players and rush to the stores and buy newly released rereleases of the all time good old songs on the new improved tape-medium... ...we shall prevail!"
Somehow this all sounds so familiar...
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
Am I the only one who thinks iTMS is too expensive. I don't mind buying my music, and I don't pirate stuff, but when I spend £10 in a shop I get something I can hold in my hand. When I spend £10 in iTMS all I get is lots of 1's and 0's. I know... I can write my tunes to a CD, but it's not the same. If iTunes songs were half the price, I'd bet they'd sell more than twice as many!
The key here is that the music industry doesn't want Apple to sell twice as many tracks.... they see every iTunes sale as a lost "real" sale. So, it's not Apple that's holding back the music industry... it's the music industry itself! Just look at the lengths Sony BMG will go to piss people off!!
return 0; }
I spent my student loans on CDs rather than food and kept the bug ever since, so I have a similarly enormous pile of them: I do forget what I have because (through iTunes), it all becomes one big list.
What ends up happening is that you have to listen on random for a few days to rediscover stuff, every so often.
Failing that, if you've a Mac, try Clutter. If there's a Windows alternative, I don't know it although I'd like to.
Cry me a river. You already have my money from back when I bought the CDs. You don't expect me to buy them again when I get a new stereo, so why do you expect me to buy again when I get an iPod?
Make a good product and I'll buy it. Continue crying and I'll continue telling you that I pay for music, not for tears.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
... they are simply insulting Apple customers. I guess it's an attempt to decrease Apple sales.
... and yet they are hitting Apple.
This is one of those things you can qualify as outrageous, since Apple clinets are more likely to download music legally than those buying a generic mp3 player
I have no idea if anything can be done about this, after all, calling a group of people thieves shouldn't be legal.
Why should I purchase the digital version of an album again? I already paid $18.95 for the cassette version, then $15.95 for the CD!
... shame on you!
Why isn't there a class action lawsuit against the labels for forcing re-purchase by consumers?
I'm not wasting any more money to purchase something I already own --- AGAIN!
Fool me once
you can go to a record store and BUY A SINGLE.. for.. you said it, $2.99 and people DO buy those damned things! And it makes me scratch my head and go "WTF?"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yeh, so less people buy music. Is this due to that people have iPod's so the suddently wants to *uhm* illegaly? *uhm* download music. Or because that nobody wants anything todo with Sony and RIAA ?
I will never ever buy a CD. Never that I will support the music industry with a single cent!
Yes, but ignoring the impact of international sales on domestic product allows them to claim that the decline of demand for domestic product that is actually the result of international sales is the fault of their favorite scapegoats. The RIAA is doing a lot of handwaving by attributing sales not made due to customers legitimately obtaining product from other producers and sources to scapegoats that Congress will be more sympathetic about, thus allowing them to force lockdown mechanisms on the customer that makes it harder for them to fully utilize their legitimate non-sanctioned by the RIAA products.
Don't underestimate the impact of podcasting! I've had my iPod since about Easter of this year and from June on, when iTunes began support for podcasts, I've listened almost exclusively to various podcasts. And you know what? For the entertainment-type shows, the value is almost always better than radio. The real value though are the non-entertainment shows: like any radio station is going to run a program where Steve Gibson talks over the head of 99% of the audience, or a single show dedicated to asp.net (much less THREE!). Podcasting takes content control away from the idiots at corporate radio and lets ME decide what I'm going to listen to and when.
No, it's not Napster complaining that they can't load napster music onto iPods. Napster music is even more restrictive than Apple's Fairplay. It is only active as long as your napster subscription is valid because you don't own Napster songs. If Napster could load their music onto iPods, you could fill a 60GB iPod and cancel your napster service. That would violate your Naptster license unless the songs just exploded at some point and ceased to work.
The reality is that Napster has painted themselves into an even worse corner with their DRM.
If anything, Napster is probably pissed that they can't load iTunes songs onto their devices.. the devices they have to sell because they are intertwined with their music licensing scheme.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
At least with the current technology, how are they "forcing" you to repurchase?
It's ok. I am a long term music investor.
I like how: "Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz Critics say iTunes-only downloads and inflexible pricing are hurting song sales" became: "Apple Holding Back Music Biz?" Especially since Critics == Gorog
Like anyone can even know that
Currently on iTunes songs are costing .99 cents a song. It is a proven fact that the music companies would make more money if they sold their songs for .10 cents a song, due to the fact that the common consumer would find that a fair price, and in the long run the music companies would make more money because a lot less people would steal music. It's still really expensive to pay a dollar a song, when I could just go to Wendy's and buy a burger for .99 cents instead (Average American LoL). Also this whole thing statistically is a load of crap due to the fact that they are comparing two different measurements of statistics a Quarterly to a Monthly. Statistically speaking this is not a feasible way of comparing data. So no one should be upset, and Napster shouldn't complain if iTunes is making out better, it's business. People like iPods better, and so Napster loses out. That's like Nintendo complaining about xbox doing better than their system (I don't even remember what it's called oh yeah) Gamecube.
No, you put it on your portable wmv player that supports expiring songs. Yahoo rents you wmvs, not mp3s. There are many mp3 players that don't support expiring wmv and thusly won't work with Yahoo, Napster, et all.
I use Mac OS X and Linux at home, so some of this may not apply...
/Volumes/CDName with "TrackNum TrackTitle.aiff" files using GraceNote CDDB. For compilations, soundtracks, etc., I also have some scripts that let me paste freedb.org web page data and retag everything in a given directory.
I wrote a script that rips a CD to properly tagged flac based on command line inputs of Artist, Genre, Year, Album Title and Mac OS X creating a
I store two identical copies of the flac on one of my desktop machines and a server, using rsync from desktop (where I rip or scp the rips) to server. The flac tree is artist/album/*.flac. I put an albumart.jpg (may soon allow for multiple jpgs, albumart*.jpg) in each album directory.
On the server, I use another script that takes as input the flac root, a list of album dirs to process, and the mp3 root. It checks file timestamps to only convert modified or new flac files to mp3. It converts filenames to something shorter with no spaces and populates the mp3 tree with artist-album/*.mp3. It decodes the flac and uses lame to encode MP3 at a command line specified bitrate & constant/variable flag. It populates all the id3v2 info in the mp3s it encodes, adds albumart, and runs mp3gain across each mp3 album subdirectory it writes files into.
The mp3 root is scanned every 300 seconds by mt-daapd, which shares the library out on my local network using Apple's proprietary protocol. iTunes clients pick it up. Mostly this is for the benefit of the guest room (old style) iMac, which has not the disk space for a collection, but is nice to provide guests with browsing, email, iTunes. My laptops maintain a live iTunes library since they do go with me at times. One of them puts all that data on my iPod.
I also have MPD running with its output going to a Griffin iMic USB audio card (GREAT electrical isolation from noisy components in the computer), into an amplifier with multi-room capability and an FM transmitter hanging off one of the tape outputs. By setting the inputs up properly and hooking up amps, I will eventually get time-synchronized output in my home theater, living room, and on the deck, as well as FM transmission to anything capable of receiving it on my property. There are many clients that can control MPD - it would be nice to use something like this to control it, but we'll see if it ever gets released and open sourced. I mostly like iTunes (except no FLAC support), but I'm not willing to have a user session open and sitting there just to play audio through my stereos - MPD is a much better solution, though I've not figured out a way to have a "carry it around" remote control for it.
My workflow is generally to use a laptop to rip the flac from the command line (though I'm building a CamelBones-based frontend for my wife to do it with a GUI) to local storage. I usually grab a large-size JPG from amazon.com while it's ripping, and copy it into the flac directory named albumart.jpg. I then scp the directory to the desktop machine according to my naming scheme where the "master" copy is. If I'm anxious, I can kick off the script that rsyncs then mirrors to mp3 manually, otherwise it just happens at the next scheduled interval. Once the mp3's are in place on the server, I just load them into my iTunes library - they show up under the mt-daapd share automatically. I've not figured out a way for automatic scanning on MPD, but since I'm not using that much it's not an issue at the moment.
FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
I want to use the new technology, but I'm not savy enough to rip my own, so I goto iTunes to buy music I've probably already paid twice for already. That's what most of my non-technical family did. When I told them they already had a lisense and could just download tracks from CDs, cassetts and albums they already own, they were really mad and felt cheated by labels.
See, nobody is advertising that you don't need to buy it again, if you already own it. There's no money in that.
And several industry leaders were quoted as saying "...and of course the problem can't be that the price is too high. Don't be ridiculous!"
I don't have a 60G iPod. Apple's got iPods in a variety of sizes from 512M to 60G. The latest ones they introduced are 2G and 4G. The $300 iPod's 30G, and people buying that may not have 30G of music (I certainly don't) because (here's a clue) NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO FILL YOUR HARD DISK.
Oh, and there's a boatload of music for sale direct from artists that doesn't show up as "online music sales". I was just invited to take a poll on what music I listened to from Apple, and they didn't even have an option for "direct from artist". So take the online sales figures you see with a grain of salt.
If you like to explore music, Napster (or similar Microsoft DRM subscription services) are the way to go.
Gee, I get a bigger variety from 3hive, last.fm, and pandora. And it's free. And legal. And hooked in to sales for the stuff I like enough to actually keep, one way or another. Subscription music is just one channel for exploring music, and since it locks me in to Windows (hey, Napster, you get to gripe about Apple not supporting your format when you start shiping players for Mac and Linux, NOT ONE SECOND BEFORE) why should I care about it?
Music just isn't the main form of entertainment any more. Music companies shouldn't expect to get the margins they used to for plain old audio.
I wonder if antother thing which has the record labels worried is that Apple allows independent artists and groups to sign up to sell mucic on the iTunes Store directly, without having to sign up with a Label.
The article quotes Nielsen SoundScan that online download sales are down. I checked their web site and it looks like what they do is track sales of titles which are registered with them. Their registration form specifically asks what Label carries the title. I don't know whether they would accept a registration if you just put "Independent." Maybe there has been a trend for some of more recent smaller artists to market directly without a Label and without registering with a ratings site like Nielsen.