Google Music Store Inches Closer?

smallguy78 writes "Forbes is once again reporting on Google plans to launch its own competitor to iTunes, a Google music store. From the article: 'The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.'" We have touched on this subject previously. This most recent report would seem to indicate the launch will happen sooner rather than later.

Comments

Google's first serious misstep?

[yagu]

From the Fine Article:

"The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services," wrote the analyst in a recent report.

One of two things has to give here: either the music industry's unhappiness is sustained because Google has enough principle to do on-line music equitably (which, by definition will be unhappiness for the music industry); or Google capitulates and in the process violates their "Do No Evil" credo.

This could be a misstep for Google if they appear to be in the pockets of an increasingly strident and miserable music industry. Please let them do the right thing.

Of course, for the gazillionth time, the only right way to do this is unencumbered media. Hey, I can hope.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[koweja]

Or Google can simply use the pricing model that they think will make the most money, even if that means doing what the industry wants. Google does what they want, Apple does what they want. Then we find out who is right and who is dead.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Pieroxy]

I see this as a great opportunity. But Google will only ever have the same leverage that Apple has over the Majors. What we really need, is Google (or another well-publicized company) to become a music label. They have the guts to do their own promotion, they can distribute non-DRM stuff and they can easily attract existing well-known artists with attractive deals.

This IMO is the only short-term hope against the majors.

Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.

However, I fear this is not going to happen anytime soon.

--
XviD review

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[BewireNomali]

what is it with the childlike obsession wih the "do no evil" credo? It's kind of absurd.

if you have a gmail account, they're probably doing evil with your consumer preferences right now.

re: a music store. Oooooooooooh, a shiny new music store. How innovative, Google. They're like eight years too late with that.

It's a misstep for google to be opening a music store.

As of yet, they don't have a million subscribers for gmail. if they do, they've passed that threshold so recently that there is little info on it. they haven't passed a million subscribers to gtalk either. they haven't shown any uptake for any of their products other than google, which means the general audience is either unaware of their consumer efforts and/or uninterested.

I've used Microsoft Live ... and it's a pretty good integrated suite, a bit better than google offers... already, and Live is in true beta - like less than a year beta as opposed to fifth year senior beta.

looking at the world through google glasses is to obscure the reality. YouTube is eating Google Video's lunch. they only hold the search engine market - and deeper pocket will continue to assial them from all sides.

In your parlance, they'll need to do boatloads of evil just to SURVIVE.

Google = fairy tales for adults. They're just some guys who turned a graduate project into some cash folks. Relax.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[metlin]

I'm far from a Google fanboy, but you're full of bullshit.

re: a music store. Oooooooooooh, a shiny new music store. How innovative, Google. They're like eight years too late with that.

It's a misstep for google to be opening a music store.

Ooooh, a search engine! How innovative, Google. I mean, given Yahoo!, Altavista and what not, a *search* engine?

Gmail? Another email?! How innovative, Google! They're like, what, 30 years late? Or 40 years late? But from what I see, most people who've used Gmail hardly ever tend to use anything else.

Ever strike you that the million users that *mail has might be - just *might be* - because they don't have spammers signing up for thousands fake addresses?

Sheesh.

Remember that first mover advantage is very limited and very short lived. First movers may sometimes make it big, but the ones that come later also have the ability to not do your mistakes and improve upon what you've already built upon.

And they know that there exists a market that they can tap into, which is more than what the first mover had.

If you take anything that Google's done (Search, Maps, News, Email, IM), they've taken what others have done it and tried perfecting it. A much better idea than finding new niche markets.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[mattgreen]

The obsession stems from this site's tendency to attract a certain sort of people with naively optimistic viewpoints of the world. Google spouts some tripe about not doing evil, and people need to hold up something in the world as Very Good (because we all know who is Very Evil around here) to create [a poor excuse for] a belief system.

Really, there's no other way to explain such a dogmatic (read: faith-based) defense that people put up on behalf of a faceless corporation.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[BewireNomali]

Agreed!!!! It's the same dogmatism that strikes down ID swiftly and flames anyone who espouse religious affiliation to oblivion.

Yet, there is search engine worship.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[LordSnooty]

I don't see how a pricing model can be described as "evil". The on-line music market is fairly mature. There are lots of competitors all bidding for the consumer's currency. To introduce a new service, with an "alternative" pricing model to competitors, is just that - introducing an alternative. The market will decide whether the new way of pricing is suitable or not. It could only be "evil" in terms of taking money away from artists and giving it to Big Music - but with Google's huge storage capabilities & whatnot, who's to say that they won't introduce a music store for every budding artist, signed or unsigned? They have the e-mail service, they have the web-page creator, they even have somewhere to host videos. This could be great for the struggling bedroom artists.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Khammurabi]

I think it's less of the "first misstep", than the latest in a series of missteps by Google.

Google has good intentions, but I think it's mistaken in believing it can keep launching service after service after service and be the leader in each. I'm really wishing Google would pull back and focus on a few key business plans, instead of half completing 1000 of them. Google's lack of focus is going to cost them pretty soon when smaller companies start focusing on the business plans that Google is getting lax on.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[szrachen]

Well, if Microsoft Live actually worked correctly in Firefox, maybe I'd try it more. But the inability to close their pop-outs is pretty silly. Hence, if they can't get browser interoperability in there, they've lost me. Even though I could just open an IE window.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Dachannien]

If Google decides to go along with music industry pricing, how does that benefit the music industry any more than Napster or other online stores that have bent to their will? As long as iTMS is still around and still pricing their music the same way, the public will still decide which pricing model they prefer.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[KarateExplosions]

No, it's "naivette" that prompts worship for a corporation. It's "science" and "reality" that strikes down ID as any kind of scientific theory. Thanks for playing.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a comment though. I am actually not not happy with the iTunes concept of single pricing. I think 1$ per song is waayyyy too expensive for a song. Second, I don't give a damn about contemporary mainstream music. My preferences are better served by a variable price store. If you're into mainstream and actually think that "A" song is worth 1$... feel free to feed the beast. But at that's the kind of price per song that I would only pay to live performers, not recording. Wheter they are street performers, or theatre performers, I'm willing to pay them more than a lousy recording.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[BewireNomali]

science and reality - they've never struck down worship for a corporation though, right?

like a corporation in a lot of markets in which it makes little money? An overvalued corporation that makes the critical mass of its money off advertising?!?!?!?! (lol) in a market where others will steadily squeeze them out by virtue of huge cash stores and a lack of reliance on the search engine revenue stream? Because their answer to Live is GooglePack???? Because google talk can't attract the audience advertisers would most like to advertise to? Lol. Reality has never struck down that worship though, right?

Lol. Are you serious?

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[aztec rain god]

If the music industry is unhappy with fixed prices, why don't they stop fixing them? Oh, that's right, they're a cartel! Nothing quite like being irrational and acting in a manner that runs counter to self-interest.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[aplusjimages]

I don't understand why the music companies don't all just make their own sites that are user friendly like i-tunes. Then they can track customers, like you mentioned.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[kimvette]

re: Ooooh, a search engine! How innovative, Google. I mean, given Yahoo!, Altavista and what not, a *search* engine?

In its onset, Google was groundbreaking because evaluating the "importance" of sites based almost entirely on hyperlinks WAS innovative when AltaVista, then search-engine king, was flooded with META tag and content spammers - unfortunately doorway pages and link farms was breaking Google severely for a while (they still are to some extent) until they started placing a bit more weight on relavent content AND got better about detecting doorway pages.

Is it foolproof? of course not - last night I was looking for reviews on flight computer watches and came across a record label (whose name is confusingly similar to Capitol Records, by the way) which was using doorway pages and javascript redirects (and of course cloaking) - to that, I have to ask: why the hell would I be interested in a music label when trying to research the Pulsar and Citizen flight computer watches?

All the same, it's generally better than previous search engine technology. Yahoo has surpassed Google in some areas for search results in many areas because Google's automated detection of linkfarms and doorway pages is so imperfect, but I'd bet it's a matter of short time before they come up with the next great way to detect that sort of thing. As far as cloaking detection goes, there is a simple solution: create a new robot which parses pages more like a typical browser with an MSIE or Firefox user agent, sample 10% to 15% of indexed web sites (I mean 10% to 15% of each site) using that robot, and that robot should query the sites through consumer ISPs such as Verizon, Comcast, Cox, SBC, and so forth (to hit the sites from IP ranges outside of Google's allocation), and scrape the pages and make sure that the content actually matches - then they can be the likes of TrafficPower (or whatever those fucks are calling themselves THIS week) and permanently ban people using deceptive schemes from ever getting back into the index.

Now as far as Google's offering music: They should become an independent label. They have the visibility (isn't their search engine share somewhere between 70% and 90% of Internet users globally?) for market penetration - practically FREE advertising, and many independent bands simply looking for a distributor produce their own albums and just need a good distributor and a company which can produce the glass CD for duplication. Google can certainly handle all of that with extreme ease, and the likes of Sprawl*Mart, Worst Buy, Circuit Slum, and other shops will certainly want to offer Google labeled-bands so they can get a share of at least the tangible sales (I know I'd want a CD along with all the artwork rather than a download). Google can do this very competitively, and if they do it right, they can dominate the market WITHOUT the artists even having to get involved in forking 50% of their take over to Artist Rights Society to avoid getting raped by the labels. That is of course, Google intends to continue backing their "Do No Evil" motto.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[adinb]

You mean like http://www.savethemusicfan.com/, founded by the Nettwerk Music Group CEO Terry McBride?

With artists like Sarah McLachlan, Delerium, BT, Avril Lavigne, Bare Naked Ladies, and MC Lars, they're not exactly a small label. (But no, they're not Sony-BMG either)

And they are doing their absolute best to give the RIAA the middle finger--not only by founding this not-for-profit (and picking up families' RIAA legal costs and any possible fines), but by selling decent quality NON-DRM'ed music at their own download store.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[aztec rain god]

Being as Google has aboutn $8 bln in cash, and the major music labels combine to run about $12 bln, this doesn't seem to far-fetched. The problem is that Google is in a position where they must accelerate revenue growth. Tough to do by getting involved in an industry that is shrinking.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[maxume]

What exactly do you think Google's business plan is? My impression is that it is something like: Build highly efficient and massive distributed/networked computing platform and leverage it as platform for advertising by providing various internet related services(and also broker advertising on the side).

They aren't a search/email/social-networking/free page hosting/music store, they are a seller and broker of advertising space. As a business, they are pretty focused on this; as a do no evil hippy enclave, they appear a bit less focused.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[n8_f]

But Google will only ever have the same leverage that Apple has over the Majors.

No, they will both have less. This is what the RIAA wants, at least two significant players that they can play off of each other. Apple won't agree to higher prices? Then the RIAA can take their ball and go home, because they no longer need Apple, they can sell everything through Google. Google won't raise prices higher than Apple? I guess Apple will get all of the business. This is the same thing they've done with copyright law.
"Oh, now the European Union has longer copyrights. The U.S. has to have parity."
"Oh, now the U.S. has longer copyrights. The E.U. has to have parity."
Oh look, now coprights are the life of the creator plus 100 years. Etc., etc.

Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.

That's Apple. Remember when the RIAA wanted to raise prices? Apple stood their ground and took the battle public. They've got the least amount of DRM that the RIAA will allow. This does benefit Apple due to lock-in, but FairPlay is the only leverage Apple has over the RIAA. If they open that up, the RIAA no longer needs Apple. This is the problem with our current media system. As long as there is no competition amongst publishers, than competition amongst distributors doesn't benefit consumers, only publishers. The real problem is that publishers aren't competing for consumers' entertainment dollars. Until they do, competing at the distributor level is pointless and only reinforces the current system by providing even larger profits to publishers.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[jreedy21]

Read that comment one more time. It was from a market analyst at Caris & Company, an investment banking firm. The guy has a lot of experience in the computing industry, but he's a market analyst.

He's not from Google, he can't say for sure what Google may or may not do. He can only speculate on what he thinks the market may support, which is an alternative to the ITMS.

When we see a story with a blind quote from an unnamed Google VP saying they're leaning towards a subscription model, or towards a sliding-scale single-track purchase model, then we can debate on whether Google is backing away from its "Do No Evil" mantra. Until then, this is just speculation about the online music market.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[F_Scentura]

"It's the same dogmatism that strikes down ID swiftly and flames anyone who espouse religious affiliation to oblivion"

It's sad that the Creationists still can't conceive that evolutionary Christians are the majority of believers worldwide, and even in the United States. They lack the critical thinking skills to delineate "God did it and I don't question him!" from "God did it, and this is *how*!"

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Josh teh Jenius]

VERY deep pockets.

I wasted my life savings on this dream. Beware fellow geeks: your enemy is more powerful than you know.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[amliebsch]

That's Apple.

Sorry, no. If Apple were the "good guy," they might use DRM, but they would make it available to other device manufacturers. The only reason for the iPod lock-in is to benefit Apple.

Not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with this - that's business, after all. But don't put Apple out there as some altruistic "good guy."

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I do like Lives UI, the results just arent there. When Live was first on /., I tried unsuccessfully to find what I was looking for. With the _same query_, google had the result I wanted as #1. Another example of this, was my last google search... I was looking for a phone number. The number apears on the companies website in plain text on the main page, so a search engine should be able to pick it easily. Google: #2 result was the correct phone number on a different domain, #3 was also the correct phone number on the correct domain. The short blurb of text in the result in both cases contained the number. Live: The companies domain didnt even come up until the 8th result -- and that was a press release with the press contacts phone number! As for the Gmail bit, remember, had they not come along we all would still have a whopping 2mb in our hotmail accounts! I really like my gmail account, and everyone whom I have invited enjoys it too: even my mother who has trouble with screensavers!

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[AgentDib]

Would you consider Domino's an Evil corporation because they do not charge a fixed fee? I would argue that music offerings on iTunes are far more varied than Domino's pizza selection. All songs are not the same quality and they do not represent the same effort, talent and popularity.. so why should they be the same price exactly?

Fixed pricing is a gimmick, *nothing* more. It does not translate into lower prices, only inflexible prices that cannot compensate for varying demand levels. iTunes has managed to use this gimmick to keep prices reasonable on the highly popular pop hits, but they have done so at the expense of the B-level bands which will never have a chance to be profitable at a price point of $1 per track.

And what's wrong exactly with Google trying to be profitable? Capitalism has been responsible for the standard of living *doubling* every forty years in the US dating back to 1820. Life Expectancy in the US has doubled since 1850. Modern economic growth theory is now focused on laws, institutions, and regulations for a good reason - protecting private property is fundamental for a society to have the ability to reward innovation through profit. Everything you've used today was most likely created out of a corporation's incentive for profit.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[n8_f]

Did you read the rest of the post? Please do.

I don't believe Apple is altruistic, just as I don't believe Google is altruistic, and I never said so. What I did say is that Apple is the best consumer representative we're going to get for digital music under the current system, because Apple makes their money primarily from hardware sales, with the lion's share of song profits going to the RIAA. Apple could conceivably stop selling songs online. They'd take a hit, but people could go back to buying CDs and pirating music just as the did before iTMS. The hit to the RIAA would be greater.

As I said, the lock-in does benefit Apple. But what is the upside to Apple opening up FairPlay, even to device manufacturers? Now they have to support a bunch of different MP3 players and they have to make up in song sales what they lose in hardware sales. And then they are dependent on the RIAA and they lose their bargaining power. Their sole advantage is that the RIAA needs them a lot more than they need the RIAA. Take that away and Apple is beholden to the RIAA, just like every other music company, and we lose the only advocate we have.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[KarateExplosions]

And verily I said unto you, 'For those who worshipeth the corporation be not of right mind, for they are the naive. But those who do go forth and corrupteth our hallways of science learning with their talk of ID are also not of right mind, for they knoweth not reality.'
So it is written, so let it be done.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Anonymous Coward]

As brilliant as that may sound, Google using thier dominance in search to dominate the music publishing market is no different than Microsoft using its dominance in operating systems to dominate the media player market. And while I don't necessarily agree with the charges being brought against Microsoft, Google would be just as deserving of those charges, if not more so, if they implemented your plan. Not exactly "Do No Evil."

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[ostermei]

I wrote up an idea similar to this on my blog a while back (substituting Apple for Google), when the RIAA was threatening Apple about raising the prices of the downloads. Pardon me for the blatant pimpage, but it sounds like my rant there might bear some interest for you :)

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[pcx]

This assumes Google still even pays lip service to their "Do No Evil" credo. I think their dealings with China pretty much underscore that "Do No Evil" doesn't work when you have shareholders. The new credo is "Anything for a buck".

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[MyNameIsEarl]

Then we find out who is right and who is dead.

Never mess with Apple when death is on the line! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Paul Slocum]

What we really need, is Google (or another well-publicized company) to become a music label.

There are already plenty of great indie labels. We just need Google to support them in lieu of majors.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I think the best "consumer representative" is local shops selling CDs. They provide jobs for people in YOUR area, they sell DRM-free products (mostly, see: SONY), usually have more interesting stuff than just the pop top 10, and generally have lower prices than the mall stores. Not to mention that you're not stuck with a 128kbps file that you can't play anywhere else.

Dude, apple isn't your friend. And they aren't representing anyone. The only reason they won't go over .99$ is that people seem to think that magic 1$ barrier is the difference between cheap and real money. As far as I'm concerned that's insane. That's still usually more for an entire album that it'd cost to just get the CD. For their cripple, lossy format I should be paying CONSIDERABLY less than the CD price. If they got down to .25$ maybe. But then there's still the whole issue of their shit not playing on my Linux media box or my Cowan X5.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[kimvette]

No, it's very different.

The moment Google is convicted of being a monopoly abusing its position and uses its advantage to unfairly squelch competition through price fixing, and then triples or quadruples prices after the competition is rendered impotent, come back and make that argument. Until that day, the point you're raising does not apply to Google.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[JWW]

Whats interesting is that when the RIAA says "variable pricing" what they invariably mean is that some songs cost $0.99, while others (more popular songs) will cost more. I have utterly 0 faith that the recording industry would even think that songs should ever be sold for less than $0.99/song.

Now what really, really baffles me is that articles like this make it sound like the variable pricing I just mentioned, is going to somehow magically eat away at iTunes market share.

They just keep spouting off like this hoping that market forces won't apply to them and that people will line up to pay MORE for music from someone other than Apple, just because its not iTunes.

Its mind boggling. There a better chance they can change the laws of physics that to get people to switch to an online music store where the majority of the music (remember "popular" songs would cost more) is more expensive.

Its the same as the whole cell phones will replace iPods argument.... Not at $2.99 a song they won't!!

If wishes were horses, then the record companies might just get this to work, but they're not.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[JWW]

You miss the point. I don't think the RIAA is looking at providing lower priced music. It just the bait they're using to try to hook you.

I think when they say variable pricing they mean $0.99 for some and $2.99 for most others. Sure, they may have the entire catalog of some crappy artists' music avaiable for $0.49/song just to make it look like they're fair.

But don't mistake the fact that they're looking to make more (way more) money with variable pricing.

A-la carte cable is evil for exactly the same reason.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[duerra]

If you take anything that Google's done (Search, Maps, News, Email, IM), they've taken what others have done it and tried perfecting it. A much better idea than finding new niche markets.

Sounds like another company I have heard of.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[metlin]

Of course. Just proves my point that it works, and is not a bad idea for Google to be entering yet another market.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[mbook]

Google always does things a little bit differently. And if you look at their history, you can envision how Google could do music differently.

If you squint your eyes, you can see that Google is in the business of making markets more than they are in providing search results. Google's biggest market is in advertising, where a real-time auction determines placement and price. Google supplies the auction and the market, while the free market determines the price of a click.

Google took the same marketplace approach to video. Unlike iTunes Video, which provides limited content at a fixed price, Google has created a free market for video. Video producers provide content, set a price, and specify what level of DRM they want -- from a Day Pass, to perpetual ownership, to no DRM at all. Users decide what they're willing to pay for DRM'd content vs. unrestricted content. And since each provider sets individual prices for each video, the free market can determine pricing and DRM controls.

Seems like a pretty small conceptual leap into music. The big labels and independents could all provide content for the Google Music service, set their own pricing and DRM level, and let the market decide what's worth what. Could be that labels will maximize profit with DRM'd tracks at 69 cents each. Or maybe people are willing to pay $1.49 for unrestricted MP3s as long as it's easy and legal.

Or what about a Month Pass for $0.29?

As with advertisements and video, Google might just let each producer and consumer decide in what the fair price is, and what DRM restrictions are acceptable at that price.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[rainman_bc]

No, they will both have less. This is what the RIAA wants, at least two significant players that they can play off of each other. Apple won't agree to higher prices? Then the RIAA can take their ball and go home, because they no longer need Apple, they can sell everything through Google. Google won't raise prices higher than Apple? I guess Apple will get all of the business. This is the same thing they've done with copyright law.

Isn't it anti-competitive behaviour to collude? A group of recording companies getting together and deciding where to sell their music because of the price - that's pretty damned near collusion.

But what, the cowardly SCOTUS probably won't do anything about it. Everyone's in the back pocket of someone in the US I suppose...

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Bing Tsher E]

Now what really, really baffles me is that articles like this make it sound like the variable pricing I just mentioned, is going to somehow magically eat away at iTunes market share.

No, the variable pricing you just mentioned is going to eat away at the catalog of songs available for Apple to sell at $0.99 per song. Then the paucity of tunes available on iTunes will eat away at iTunes market share.

It's really not very complicated.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[thc69]

Hmm...it wouldn't bother me one bit if Google tripled their price... n*0 == 0.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Thing 1]

They lack the critical thinking skills to delineate "God did it and I don't question him!" from "God did it, and this is *how*!"

Not if they're like my relatives. If they are, then they're worried that people might start believing me when I say that God is actually a quantum construct designed to protect us while we're sleeping; and that we would not likely have created It if the Earth didn't rotate (so we have darkness, where we're individually vulnerable).

Our brains are quantum computers (it's true), so can take advantage of quantum effects; and if you consider each human brain as one of God's cells, then it's true that we created God somewhat in our own image--as something far greater than the sum of its component parts.

They really hate me at family gatherings. ;-)

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[JWW]

So you're saying that others selling songs for MORE than iTunes are going to eat away at iTunes share.

Here's the way I see it (remember your idea could be right were other sites selling songs for less the $0.99, but we all know thats not what variable pricing is about and I've already said that). If other sites offer songs the record labels want to sell for say $2.99 and they're no longer available on iTunes, people would still have 3 options.

1) Bend over for the record industry and pay the $ 2.99 on the "other" site
2) Not buy the song or.....
3) Download for free

The record industry utterly and completely fails to realize how much money they could make if they had a true market where demand actually had some real, not falsely inflated, impact on price.

And it is really hard to belive the same people who promised that if everyone switched from tapes to CDs that the price would go down. Only to see them proceed to fix the prices on CDs to ridiculously high levels.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[BewireNomali]

Interesting, although I think we'd have created God even without darkness, as we still die and are aware of it.

I agree with all else. I too am banned from all political and religious discussions at family gatherings. One of my uncles spends a lot of time with the bottle, and he said to me once: "Having a conversation with you makes me want to commit suicide."

I draw pictures with smiley faces now.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Bing Tsher E]

Yes, that's what I am saying. If Apple insists that THEY, as the marketplace, can set the price that sellers are allowed to sell in their marketplace, the sellers will make their way to another marketplace to sell their wares.

You can make it into a historical rant about the music industry but it's just how free markets work. I can't buy an iPod at the 'dollar store' for some reason. Since Apple has decided that they are not going to make the iPod available at the 'dollar store' because they need to see more than a dollar per iPod sale, they are doing the same 'dastardly thing' as the music industry will when markets that don't force them to sell their product for a dollar open up.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[JourneymanMereel]

I believe you'll find that the majority of Christians actually believe that God did it in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Not slowly and over millions of years. But neither one of us have any evidence that says what this "majority opinion" is, so it's really a pointless pair of posts.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[JWW]

You are correct, if the music industry lets sites sell for less than a dollar. If they don't I fully expect more peopel to choose option 3 I mentioned in my earlier post.

I do believe that people really do want to buy music online if they can, they just have very low threashold for how much they're willing to pay. I think Apple is on the upper end of that threashold. The recording industry thinks a dollar is abysmally low.

I think when the consumer feels ripped off, they feel more inclined to just use p2p to download music.

So my prediction is the only on-line music store that will beat iTunes will have to be selling its music for LESS (20-30% less), and not more.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Braino420]

Ya, I mean wtf is up with that? Who gives shit out for free? How dare they try and come out with more free things! Those bastards, we'll show them what the consumer REALLY wants!!!

But the google glasses sound so cool

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Thing 1]

Sounds like the suicide is already a significant part of his psyche. Talking to you just lets him see reality, which is that he's covering over some huge incident of trauma by self-medicating. That reality is frightening, deathly frightening, and he would rather die than experience it.

This is generally one of the reactions to rape, although several other lesser violations may cause it. My point is, your uncle has something unresolved in his past in order for him to continue to choose self-medication (or perhaps he just doesn't have any other coping skills).

I feel for him; I hit the bottle regularly myself, and I am aware that it was some vague past trauma but I'm not strong enough yet to examine it. Hopefully I will be before my liver isn't strong enough...

However, I fully intend to live forever (or at least as close to the heat death of this universe as I can (if this universe is, in fact, inescapable)), so I know that at some point I will have to examine it. Hopefully by then I'll have backups, so even if it triggers the "suicide meme" I'll still survive it.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Asm-Coder]

Amen.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Asm-Coder]

This is the chain of events I see: 1. Google gets involved in music. 2. They sell good music at $0.50 a song. 3. Millions of Google-loving geeks buy songs, and tell their friends about a legal way to get cheap music. 4. Google revenue increases, millions of users quit using other labels. 5. Artists, seeing that the way to sell music is to sell through Google, switch labels. 6. ??? 7. Profits for everyone!!! Now I don't think having one company in any market is the best thing for the market, (think Microsoft) but at least this might get the music industry moving in the right direction, (we can do the same thing for the movie industry) and it will hopefully crush the RIAA

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Bing Tsher E]

Well, my prediction is that there won't be much available for sale at the iTunes store, if the content producers/owners decide that 99 cents isn't a high enough price.

People buy music, and they're paying for music. They're not paying for the idea that it should only be 99 cents per track. If all Apple's store is selling is indie tracks whose publisher settles for 99 cents per track, then the market will move on to online venues that sell at a price point the content producers/providers are willing to sell at.

Mr. Jobs at Apple understands this, though. I predict he'll price the tracks at what he has to, to keep the operation going.

As to the price dropping, don't be ridiculous. That isn't how inflation works.

Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[RunFatBoy.net]

If Google launched their own player along with the store, I could envision a pricing model that based the price of the songs on the number of plays it was receiving from its purchasers.

Over time, the cost of this track would become less and less and all of the "filler" tracks would slide fairly rapidly.

Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.

Re:Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[swb]

They could make dynamic pricing work, but it would work better if Google hosted the music library and playlists (another thing they've demonstrated mastery of). But the bugger with pay-per-play is that people expect their media to be portable to devices and places where counting plays doesn't work.

I think people generally expect to "own" music and video, which seems to eliminate most of Googles strengths.

Re:Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[Anonymous Coward]

Should popular tracks cost more or less?

On one hand, they should cost more, since there is more demand for them, and the market thinks they are superior, and hence they are more valuable.

On the other hand, maybe they should cost less, since the track is selling in volume, and the die-hard fans have already bought the track so there needs to be an incentive to get others to buy.

This is the problem with applying market-based approaches where supply is infinite. There is no way to regulate the prices by traditional means. Arguments could be made either way. The music industry seems to be leaning towards having popular tracks be more expensive, as there will be people who will buy them whatever the cost since they are "cool must-have songs". However, this will inevitably reduce supply, since there will be many people who will not pay the premium.

In this new marketplace with infinite supply, I think that real experiments need to be conducted to see what price actually maximizes total revenue. My personal belief is that charging more for popular music will achieve this. There is a large core of consumers who only buy "Top 40" albums or singles. No matter how low prices are set, they will probably only buy a fixed quantity of music (the more popular content). On the other hand, there are consumers who have more eclectic tastes, and would likely spend a lot more if tracks were cheaper.

By making popular tracks more expensive, the "mainstream" customer base will spend a large amount of money on the small number of tracks they demand, while the customers with more varied tastes will be free to download a large quantity of more eclectic music. This will raise global revenues. The problem with this is that you end up with a small number of tracks bringing in the lion's share of revenue, with the less popular tracks each earning much less.

If popular tracks were less expensive, the "mainstream" customer base would almost certainly still only buy the "Top 40" music but spend a lot less doing so, while music aficionados would be turned off by the higher price of less popular tracks. This will reduce global revenues. It would probably mean that less popular tracks would bring in a greater share of revenue, but it would be a larger slice of a smaller pie.

So in the first instance we have higher global revenue, but decreased revenues for non-mainstream music. In the second instance, we have reduced revenue, but that revenue is shared more equally among tracks.

Maybe the best situation is just to have fixed-price tracks. The question is then what price to fix them at.

Re:Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[gitargr8]

If Google launched their own player along with the store, I could envision a pricing model that based the price of the songs

They do. It's called the juh-juh-juh G-Unit

Re:Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[Varun Soundararajan]

I could envision a pricing model that based the price of the songs on the number of plays it was receiving from its purchasers.

Pegions would be choosing the pricing of the songs :p

Re:Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[nleaf]

Based on everything that the music industry has complained about with fixed pricing, though, they would want that price to go up, not down. This implementation would also kill the small-name, lesser known bands, as all of their music would remain fairly expensive in comparison.

Re:Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[TheFlamingoKing]

Mod way up please! That's the funniest thing I've read all day.

I have a good idea?

[Bromskloss]

Probably, filtering out stories who's headline ends with a question mark would augment the overall quality of the Slashdot content and, especially, the headlines.

Oh, great.

[Pig Hogger]

Now, Britney Spears will have to resort to Google bombing to increase her sales...

Inches closer...

[butterwise]

This headline reminds me of the "Far Side" strip where two cavemen are standing outside of their cave with a glacier wall just inches away, and one of the cavemen is saying, "Say, Thag, wall of ice closer today?"

I can see a version of this strip where the cavemen are Steve Jobs/Apple and the glacier is Google...

Re:Inches closer...

[WiseWeasel]

Nah. the cavemen are the chief executives of the major record labels, and the glacier is electronic distribution. Apple and probably Google will be supplanted by companies selling unencumbered digital downloads in standard formats for competitive prices, even if the music library from the major labels is unavailable. It'll take 10-15 years, but it's bound to happen, and major labels will be left wondering where they went wrong...

Re:Inches closer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stewie: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Re:Inches closer...

[jcr]

Apple and probably Google will be supplanted by companies selling unencumbered digital downloads in standard formats for competitive prices,

What makes you think that Apple and Google wouldn't go right ahead and sell non-DRM material if the producers let them?

Really, if it was up to ANYONE besides the record companies, there wouldn't be any DRM in the first place.

-jcr

Re:Inches closer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has a serious problem that its well aware of. It's dominance in the search engine arena is the result more of taking advantage of a market opportunity than it is the development of a superior system. They saw that the major search engines were overwhelming visitors with content when all they wanted to do was find a webpage. Their simplistic approach led to a domino effect whereby visitors online use Google as intuitively as anything else.

"I want to do ______ online, let's go to Google"

Unfortunately, this can only be a short-lived advantage. Eventually another company will come along with a different way to manuever around the Internet and Google will be forced to adapt. However, much like the firms that have tried in similar form to compete against Google's search engine dominance, it is a battle fought on repetition and user behavior instead of a superior product.

To the subject at hand, Google is struggling to establish itself in a new area of the market. It's tried news, shopping, videos, maps, e-mail and now music. While it does have some competitive offerings in each space, nothing great enough to swing the Internet firmly in its direction. Sure, Google can launch a music store with a unique pricing model - but they lack the conduit to the users. Google is for search. ITunes is for music. YouTube (after a few years) may be the choice for video.

What will eventually happen is that Wall Street will begin to reflect the situation Google is now faced with. The share price in the company will slowly drop, the Board of Directors will lose their money and, in turn, will pressure the management for financial stability and predictable growth. The execs will feel the financial pinch as their borrowing power decreases, which will begin to squash all of the little perks that make them such a unique company. Innovation will decline, and *poof*... we have another Netscape or Excite who had potential but unfortunately could not maintain the market momentum.

(Yes, I know the arguments that can be brought with Netscape of Excite... they are only broad examples)

Re:Inches closer...

[WiseWeasel]

Because Apple and Google are too tied to ensuring all the back catalog of the major studios are on board, which will never happen; at least not until the major labels start losing their shirts to new bands getting money without them. It is necessary to move forward with or without the major studios on board...

what format?

[gEvil (beta)]

Of course there's no mention of file format. Since the audio players out there generally play some combination of MP3, AAC, and WMA, it's only reasonable to assume that the store will sell in one of those formats. Since we know it will need DRM to make the labels happy, that pretty much narrows it down to PlaysForSure WMA. If that's the case, there're already plenty of competitors out there. What will make this store different from Rhapsody, Yahoo, Napsters, etc?

Re:what format?

[CastrTroy]

That's the killer right there. AAC is pretty much only supported on iPods, but if you have an iPod, and you're going to buy online music, you might as well go through iTunes. WMA is more standard, but I don't think iPod plays it, so it's dead in the water. MP3 works on just about everything, but has no DRM. Maybe they will go DRM Free. CDs are DRM Free, and people are allowed to sell those, what's really stopping a company from selling DRM Free downloads. A company as popular as google might have the size to convince the labels that DRM isn't needed if you charge the right price.

Re:what format?

[robyannetta]

It would be interesting if Google's music was 'iPod compatible' in some way.

Finally, iTunes would have some competition.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Maybe if they came up with a better tool?

I mean, in all honesty, iTunes sucks. It's absolutely unusable and has a nasty habit of messing things up ever so often (sometimes I wonder what the hue and cry about Apple software is, but I digress).

If Google could come up with a better software (and I'm sure that if anyone can, it would be them), something that's not just for downloading music, but also to sync up with MP3 players, it would be a good selling point for Google.

Remember - iTunes started off with iPod, and that largely helped the iTunes Music Store kick off.

If that were to happen, Google could potentially steal away a lot of iPod users who would buy music elsewhere to come to their store. Well, except the typical MacHeads.

Re:what format?

[Alcimedes]

How is one closed/propriatary DRM scheme "more standard" than any other?

Re:what format?

[jandrese]

...It's absolutely unusable

You're having difficulty with the iTunes interface? Granted, if you're trying to copy music from shared computers or convert everything to WMA or something you're going to have trouble, but it's rare that I find people who can't figure out how to load music on their Ipod, purchase music from the store, or find and play any song in their collection with iTunes.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement. I'd love to be able to syncronize the libraries of various versions of iTunes installed on the same network, especially between operating systems that have different rules for escaping foreign characters on the filesystem. IMHO, it's already better than 95% of it's competitors, especially the ones that companies like Sony force you to use if you want to use their hardware. Even if the Google player is better, if it can't sync an iPod it's going to be an also-ran.

Re:what format?

[dsgitl]

Emusic sells un-DRMed mp3 files. They have a broad collection of minor label bands, defunct record labels (like sun), and current indie hits.

They don't have much, if any, of current major pop music. However, they're still a worthwhile option for music downloads.

Re:what format?

[woodlouse_man]

http://www.7digital.com/ provides some songs in AAC that are iPod compatible.

They are encoded at 192Kbps and are unencumbered by any DRM - but sadly they cost 99p as opposed to iTunes' 79p.

They are also few and far between - generally from labels that don't mind the lack of DRM (the indies).

I've bought a few things from them or their affiliate shops (the recent Embrace single Nature's Law had a digital download only part to it that you can buy via their website) and on the whole they're pretty good - better quality than iTunes anyway.

That said, I shall probably still use iTunes for legal until someone (like Google?) offer me the following

• Downloads with no DRM
• A choice of file format and bit rate
• The excellent free Single of the Week

This last option is one of the things about iTunes I absolutely love - I've got pretty much every one since I signed up 18 months ago, so that's over 75 free tracks. I've actually purchased a couple of albums off the backs of these freebies (CD copy though - sorry Apple!).

Who said you can't get something for nothing, eh?

Re:what format?

[everphilski]

.goo

Re:what format?

[metlin]

If I was doing simple tasks (i.e. buy a song online, load it to my iPod and play music), it's easy.

However, I was talking about ripping CDs and attempting to categorize music. The thing is, I want my music player to be my music library, and iTunes is a lousy library.

I've the habit of putting music from various artists in folders, and iTunes does not even have the option of sorting it by the path. And of course, sorting by file names does not work very well, either. Heck, I cannot even move files around in the playlists. If I move files around manually, iTunes barfs. And I have to reload my library everytime there is a change. I've had several bad experiences trying to rip and burn CDs using iTunes, don't even get me started on that.

Combine this with lack of good keyboard shorcuts and the like, and you have a mediocre player at best. Anyhow, that's all IMHO, of course. :)

Re:what format?

[supabeast!]

"Since we know it will need DRM to make the labels happy, that pretty much narrows it down to PlaysForSure WMA."

Do we really know that the record labels are still hung up on DRM? The most potent DRM schemes don't seem to be going over well with consumers, and the DRM-lite found in iTunes isn't doing much, if anything, to stop piracy. When Steve Jobs first went to the music industry about the iTunes store they had been sold on Microsoft's DRM snake oil and he managed to talk them down to a saner solution, sp maybe two years later Larry and Sergei can talk them into going DRM-free. I'm not expecting it to actually happen, but at this point I wouldn't really be surprised if it did.

Re:what format?

[balloot]

If iTunes is "unusable," what IS usable?

Re:what format?

[CastrTroy]

Standard as in "De facto" standard. Like MS Windows or MS Word. It's not really a standard per se, but supported by a large number of vendors and available to most users.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

And oh, if I took my iPod to another machine, it automatically wipes out all the content - WTF?!

So, this means that I ought to have the exact music that I have on my desktop at my work machine, else iTunes simply has trouble grokking the fact that people might have music in more than one place.

I can't just add music from my desktop at home, take it to work, and add some more songs.

Of course, I could keep going on about why iTunes sucks, but this is just for starters.

Re:what format?

[n8_f]

How is one closed/propriatary DRM scheme "more standard" than any other?

Because Microsoft is bigger than Apple; therefore, everything Microsoft does is "more standard" than anything Apple (or any other company) does. This falls under the specialized field of "monopoly logic."

Re:what format?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"How is one closed/propriatary DRM scheme "more standard" than any other?"

For the simple reason that you can buy a bunch of different players that'll play the format. Next question?

Re:what format?

[chill]

If iTunes is "unusable," what IS usable?

Emacs!

Re:what format?

[durdur]

Very worthwhile, IMO. Their selection isn't bad - depends
on what you want. For the stuff I mostly listen to (reggae,
blues, classic rock), I have found plenty to download. And
it's around $0.40 a track or so.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

And if that's the best response you can come up with for bringing up genuine UI issues, you must be very lonely indeed.

Re:what format?

[stewby18]

It's pretty hard to argue that between two formats, the one with only about 1/4 of the market is the de facto standard.

Re:what format?

[Miguel de Icaza]

"A company as popular as google might have the size to convince the labels that DRM isn't needed"

modern mp3 encoders have thousands of tweakable parameters and so there are billions of possible permutations that would have very little audiable effect (especially at higher bit-rates). If each track is completely re-encoded for each customer - and the seller keeps the md5 then its a traceable file (but not watermarked - watermaking does not work, it is trivial to remove) and thats a strong deterent against sharing. Of course you could re-encode the track and change the md5 but that would be lossy and is no different to what itunes customers can already do (burn cd, rerip). Of course this would take much more computing power than a standard drm store - bi-jiminy-joe only a google could pull it off. i hearby patent this idea.

Re:what format?

[cygnusx]

That's a pretty well-known dataloss bug in iTunes, and a lot of people have gotten bitten by it - random example. Of course, because Apple did it, it's okay. OTOH when Windows reboots because you've set it to reboot after applying updates automatically users rip it a new one.

Re:what format?

[AntEater]

Funny, emacs is my preferred tool for managing and playing my mp3 collection too:

http://emacsmp3player.sourceforge.net/

Re:what format?

[muhgcee]

Yeah, I think that by far this is the biggest problem with iTunes.

Re:what format?

[Reverberant]

I've the habit of putting music from various artists in folders, and iTunes does not even have the option of sorting it by the path. And of course, sorting by file names does not work very well, either.

I'm not sure that I follow you - when you say "putting music from various artists in folders" are you talking about the file system (e.g. /Myfolder/Music/Beatnuts/watch_out_now.mp3)? iTunes does that, provided the files are properly tagged, and you can select the location of the library. Or are you talking about making folders (or playlists) in iTunes? There is no good way to do that, but you can sort by artist (or any one of many items) and/or create smart playlists.

If I move files around manually, iTunes barfs.

Are you using a Mac or Windows? One the Mac, you can move the files anywhere on the same volume and iTunes won't care. I'm too lazy to boot up my Tablet PC, but I don't recall having issues moving files on Windows machines. Can you be specific about your problem

Heck, I cannot even move files around in the playlists.

You can rearrange files within a playlist and copy files between playlists. Do you want to copy a file from playlist 1 to playlist 2 and have it delete the file from playlist 1? IMO, that would be a bad thing.

And I have to reload my library everytime there is a change.

? Are you talking about a change inside iTunes or on the file system?

The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh.

For ripped CD's, it most certainly does. For imported files, it doesn't, but there are plugins you can use to do that.

And oh, if I took my iPod to another machine, it automatically wipes out all the content - WTF?!

Valid criticism, but as long as the RIAA is calling the shots, that behavior won't change.

Re:what format?

[misskaz]

You can turn off the auto-sync. Just go to Edit --> Preferences and select the iPod tab. Select "Manually manage songs and playlists" I use three different computers to manage the songs on my iPod, and none of them have the same music on them. My work computer barely has any, save a few albums I've bought from iTunes. My home computer is brand new and doesn't have much music on it yet. My boyfriend's computer holds pretty much our entire music library.

Re:what format?

[just_forget_it]

If Google goes with subscriptions, they won't be any different. I've said it before, the subscription model blows. Most people don't regularly purchase enough music to justify a subscription fee. If you buy less than 60 songs a month like me, then iTunes is the cheapest option. CD sales are simple, you buy the CD and you leave the store, complicating this transaction is a hard sell for a lot of people. This is why iTunes is number one.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Well, at last some valid comments other than j00 l0S3R! :)

I'm not sure that I follow you - when you say "putting music from various artists in folders" are you talking about the file system (e.g. /Myfolder/Music/Beatnuts/watch_out_now.mp3)? iTunes does that, provided the files are properly tagged, and you can select the location of the library. Or are you talking about making folders (or playlists) in iTunes? There is no good way to do that, but you can sort by artist (or any one of many items) and/or create smart playlists.

I was referring to the file system - although, I would accept a similar functionality on the playlists, but iTunes does not support either. I know that I can add music from a path onto the library, but you're missing the point - I have a lot of music that is not necessarily tagged, but is otherwise well organized by file name and path.

Having to re-tag them just so that I can use iTunes is a pain. For instance, try Winamp - it does a search and categorization not just based on the tags, but also based on the file and path names. If I had a directory called Jethro Tull and mp3 files inside that had no tags, merely names like Track XXX, searching for Jethro Tull turns up nothing.

My music is already categorized into the folders over the years, why should I put in extra effort to let iTunes categorize it even more?

Are you using a Mac or Windows? One the Mac, you can move the files anywhere on the same volume and iTunes won't care. I'm too lazy to boot up my Tablet PC, but I don't recall having issues moving files on Windows machines. Can you be specific about your problem

I'm on Windows. And oh it does not care when you are on the same volume. Get on the network drives, and iTunes barfs.

You can rearrange files within a playlist and copy files between playlists. Do you want to copy a file from playlist 1 to playlist 2 and have it delete the file from playlist 1? IMO, that would be a bad thing.

I ought to have been clearer - I was talking about ordering the files within a playlist. There is no way for me to move Track Foo on top of Track Bar.

Another example - I was ripping a two volume CD, and I had the names as Track 1 - 01 - Foo Bar, Track 1 - 02 - FuBar, etc. for CD1 and Track 2 - 01 - Foo Bar, Track 2 - 02 - FuBar for CD2. iTunes just messes up the order - there is no way for me to get it to SORT right, without resorting to some really complex naming conventions.

? Are you talking about a change inside iTunes or on the file system?

In the file system. If I add a song to a folder, I have to delete the playlist and update it.

For ripped CD's, it most certainly does. For imported files, it doesn't, but there are plugins you can use to do that.

No it does not. I have several playlists full of ripped CD contents that's on my iTunes right at the moment with no tags. Check this out - the tags (artist, album and genre) are those that I put in there manually.

Valid criticism, but as long as the RIAA is calling the shots, that behavior won't change.

Easy to blame someone else, isn't it?

Re:what format?

[TheGatekeeper]

If you do find the occasional pop chart hit to be enjoyable however, allofmp3.com has them un-DRMed and at very reasonable prices. Oh I agree, the indy stuff tends to be much better, but there is no need to be a musical elitist. It's okay to admit that 1 out of 5 of Britney Spear's songs are catchy and kind of fun to listen to. We won't judge you too harshly.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

For one, I could not even find the option that you mentioned. This is the screen that I get.

The worst experience was when I lost a lot of music after a HDD crash and the only source was on my iPod - plugging it into another system (for the first time) just wiped out the contents of my iPod. I wonder what the hell Apple engineers were thinking, really.

Re:what format?

[amliebsch]

One is liberally licensed to third parties who wish to use it. The other is not.

Re:what format?

[mrdaveb]

allofmp3.com has them un-DRMed and at very reasonable prices

Yeah, and if you open up Kazaa or the latest P2P system, you'll find them at even more reasonable prices!

Maybe for you the convenience somehow justifies giving money to allofmp3 - but don't expect them to pass any of it on to the artists or labels. I could be wrong, but last I heard they were still exploiting a legal 'loophole' to charge money for warez.

Re:what format?

[dsgitl]

I've been so tempted to allofmp3.com, if only to pay to download music but at very cheap prices. However, I'll never be comfortable sharing my credit card info with Russia, no matter how secure it has been in the past.

Plus, one gets the feeling iTunes and especially EMusic pass along the profits. Allofmp3.com? Probably not so much.

Re:what format?

[Blue Stone]

>> allofmp3.com has them un-DRMed and at very reasonable prices

> Yeah, and if you open up Kazaa or the latest P2P system, you'll find them at even more reasonable prices!

AllofMP3.com, does, however, protect you from the prospect, however large or small, of a music/movie industry lawyer-attack for distributing their copyright stuff.

Maybe some people consider that's worth paying for.

Re:what format?

[j.bellone]

Differently, afterall, that is their motto. Think Different.

Re:what format?

[Reverberant]

My music is already categorized into the folders over the years, why should I put in extra effort to let iTunes categorize it even more?

I can feel your pain, but if your files aren't tagged, it's going to make it hard to use most mp3 software, nevermind most DAPs

Get on the network drives, and iTunes barfs.

Yup, I've found that on Windows, iTunes doesn't handle files on removable files that well (but it's not a problem on a Mac). It could be a Windows issue, but if Winamp doesn't have a problem doing it, it very well could be Apple incompetence.

There is no way for me to move Track Foo on top of Track Bar.

Sure there is: drag and drop.

In the file system. If I add a song to a folder, I have to delete the playlist and update it.

Why not just drag the new file into the playlist? Or delete all the files into the playlist, and drag the folder into the playlist.

No it does not.

Yes it does - and on my Mac and Windows machines, it does it automatically upon inserting a CD if iTunes is open and you have an internet connection. If it's not doing that for you, there's something wrong with your install (or maybe a firewall is blocking the connection?).

Easy to blame someone else, isn't it?

As opposed to...

Re:what format?

[misskaz]

1. I guess we have different versions of iTunes. But the option is in there, somewhere, or at least has been in every version of iTunes I've used. Unfortunately I'm not sure where the menu option is in your version. Here's what it looks like in mine: http://static.flickr.com/40/123294516_3190bf2eff_o .jpg

I also think (but I'm not sure) that you're changing a setting on the iPod itself when you do this. So you may also have a different version of the software for your iPod and that's why the menu is different. I note that your screenshot shows a 1.1 in the corner of the iPod menu, whereas mine says 2.3.

2. I was just trying to be helpful. I'm really sorry you've had problems with iTunes and you have every right not to like it. I don't even like it that much. (I hate that you have to have a music file saved on the iPod as data - not music - in order to be able to take it off the iPod - IOW, to use the iPod like a flash drive. But I still think that might a DRM/industry pressure thing and not an Apple thing.)

Re:what format?

[CastrTroy]

Or, you could change the ID3 tag, which would change the MD5, and make the file untraceable. Or, maybe they just MD5 everything except the header, but then you could just change 1 byte, you wouldn't really lose any audio quality. You could just add 0.01 seconds of silence at the end of the song, changing the md5. This is so much easier to circumvent than watermarking that it isn't even funny. Anyway, my point still stands. CDs are lossless and don't have DRM, they should be selling digital downloads that are lossless and DRM free.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

But not at the expense of my music, dammit! x-(

Re:what format?

[vhogemann]

Well, for one it doesn't need to start as a store!

Look at Google Video, they sell videos there but the amount of free content surpass by a great margin the paid content. It would be great to have a "Google Music" search engine, to be able to quickly find free music! It would be great for artists and small record labels too, because they would have a free, no-strings-attached, distribution channel for their songs. And if Google comes up with something like PayPal you have a music distribuition model that puts the money directly in the artist's pockets, instead of RIAA's.

And I don't think they'll need any form of DRM. Without having to pay RIAA, the gross proffit will be handed directly to artists and Google, so they'll be able to pratice lower prices than ITMS. And with sufficient lower prices fewer people will trouble themselves into stealing music. Also, I guess many artists will give their music away for free anyways, because they make the real money from their live performances, and what they really want is some good way to promote their work.

On a side note... a "Google Music" service would be really a hit if they make a public API to interface with it, this way apps like Amarok, WinAmp, RythmBox and others would download and search music directly from it!!!

Re:what format?

[mrdaveb]

True. But haven't the RIAA, etc only attempt to sue uploaders so far? It's certainly a lot easier to allege kilo-dollars in lost sales are being caused by pesky kids if they are evil uploaders. If you don't have any RIAA files shared you could be a P2P leech without falling foul of any of the current lawsuits.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

I can feel your pain, but if your files aren't tagged, it's going to make it hard to use most mp3 software, nevermind most DAPs

Funnily enough, Winamp seems to do a very good job of letting you use both the tags and path/file names in this task. Of course, the other option that I've long considered is to write a script that would grok the file names and insert them as ID3 tags, but that's too much effort. Maybe some day, I will.

Yup, I've found that on Windows, iTunes doesn't handle files on removable files that well (but it's not a problem on a Mac). It could be a Windows issue, but if Winamp doesn't have a problem doing it, it very well could be Apple incompetence.

Yeah, I was told that and for the longest time, I thought it was Windows messing things up, but since both Windows and WMP don't seem to have a problem doing that, I figured it could be an Apple issue.

Sure there is: drag and drop.

Weird - I'm on iTunes 4.0, and I just can't get it to do that. No matter how much I try, it just does not seem to drag & drop. Any keyboard keys you need to press while you're doing that?

Yes it does - and on my Mac and Windows machines, it does it automatically upon inserting a CD if iTunes is open and you have an internet connection. If it's not doing that for you, there's something wrong with your install (or maybe a firewall is blocking the connection?).

See - more weird behavior. iTunes is open and there is definitely an Internet connection. Even with the firewall disabled, and with a seemingly normal install, it does not seem to work. I could try using another proxy just to make sure -- do you know if there is any way for me to set another proxy to access the Internet on iTunes?

>Easy to blame someone else, isn't it?

As opposed to...

As opposed to coming up with solutions that work and are usable? Just a thought.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

I have no idea why we get different screens. Initially, I thought that might be because I was using a shuffle, but I get the same screen for my Nano, too.

And you're right, this could be an iPod setting change in itself.

I was just trying to be helpful. I'm really sorry you've had problems with iTunes and you have every right not to like it.

I did realize that, and thank you! :)

Yeah, I've no lost love for iTunes, but it just irritates me when folks defend iTunes when there are so many bugs (at least IMHO) that need to be taken care of.

I agree with the removing-files thing, because sometimes, iTunes may not like a particular file you've put on your iPod and just barfs. And the only way around it is for you to go back to the system where you copied those songs from and remove the offending song from iTunes (if you do not want to lose the existing stuff on your iPod that is).

But I still think that might a DRM/industry pressure thing and not an Apple thing.

There are always ways around these things, you know? The question really is, how valuable is your customer to you and what are you willing to do for them?

Not to flame, but Apple has seriously been lacking in that department! :-)

Re:what format?

[durdur]

Read the little "Legal" link on their site where they say it's all kosher according to Russian law, but they make no guarantees about your legal liabilities if you're not Russian.

Re:what format?

[n8_f]

Jeez, it was a joke. Lighten up already.

Re:what format?

[misskaz]

While I'm being helpful.... ;)

I noticed in another post you said you couldn't change the orders of songs in a playlist. This drove me crazy one evening, and took me hours to figure out, so I share your pain. It's simple, but at the same time, it's not.

Within the playlist, click on the little title bar above the track numbers. In my version of iTunes, it turns blue and there's a little up or down arrow when that column is selected. Then you can drag and drop to re-order songs. For some reason, if you've got Artist or Album or any of the other columns selected, it won't let you drag and drop to change song order.

Re:what format?

[ksheff]

Maybe you need to investigate something like MP3::Tag that would allow you to write a simple script to iterate through your directories and add the tags that would allow iTunes to pull in your existing files. In doing so, make sure that the track number tag is set. I've found that some mp3 players will ignore naming convention and sort the songs by the name of the song in the ID3 tag if the track number isn't set. The iTunes program may be doing the same thing.

It all boils down to iTunes uses the tags in the mp3 files for determining how it arranges them in the library. It would be nice if it auto-tagged files by their directory structure if no tags exist. I don't know if someone has written a plug-in to do that or not. But, if you want iTunes to be the library for your files, you need to get those mp3s tagged.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Ahhh, thank you!

That worked - I seem to be able to do it only when I select the song number track, but hey. Something's better than nothing. :)

God, this is not usable - this is some seriously crappy UI design. How would a new user figure this out, if ever? And they say Apple software has good interfaces.

*shakes head*

Re:what format?

[Reverberant]

No matter how much I try, it just does not seem to drag & drop. Any keyboard keys you need to press while you're doing that?

Nope.

do you know if there is any way for me to set another proxy to access the Internet on iTunes?

The iTunes help says that iTunes uses the IE web proxy settings. But if you're seeing the iTMS store, it's probably not a proxy setting.

As opposed to coming up with solutions that work and are usable? [...] I'm on iTunes 4.0

Well, the drag-and-drop issues you're having aren't version specific, but (IIRC) Apple revised their dialogs to help prevent unwanted deletions in more recent iTunes versions (I don't have an iPod, so I'm not sure). Not to sound (too) snippy, but you might try using one of the more recent iTunes versions before saying "iTunes sucks." The early Winamp versions sucked too (I remember jumping ship to WindowsMedia as soon as it became viable).

(if you're worried about the removal of the network sharing features, there are workarounds for the 4.X and 5.X versions)

Re:what format?

[metlin]

No matter how much I try, it just does not seem to drag & drop. Any keyboard keys you need to press while you're doing that?

Nope.

Well, apparently it's not that simple. That's plenty usable, right there. Of course, it did work - but what are the chances of me figuring that out on my own?

The iTunes help says that iTunes uses the IE web proxy settings. But if you're seeing the iTMS store, it's probably not a proxy setting.

That's what I figured, too. No idea why it still doesn't work.

Well, the drag-and-drop issues you're having aren't version specific, but (IIRC) Apple revised their dialogs to help prevent unwanted deletions in more recent iTunes versions (I don't have an iPod, so I'm not sure). Not to sound (too) snippy, but you might try using one of the more recent iTunes versions before saying "iTunes sucks." The early Winamp versions sucked too (I remember jumping ship to WindowsMedia as soon as it became viable).

(if you're worried about the removal of the network sharing features, there are workarounds for the 4.X and 5.X versions)

Hmm, I tried the 5.x install at home and it went when I was trying to copy some files over the network. I uninstalled 5.x, and the next thing I know, I can't install the newer or the older versions. And iTunes 6.x broke a lot of my podcast sites, although they had perfectly valid feeds. Turns out I'm not the only one.

So, you'll forgive me if I don't try going in for the "bleeding edge".

And btw - the early versions of Winamp were from ages gone by. Bad software is still bad software, and justifying it saying that just because it's new is tripe. Winamp was started by one developer, while iTunes is one of Apple's flagship products. There is a difference.

Of course, if the same was true of a Microsoft software, people would be up in arms. Somehow, Apple's software being absolutely crappy is acceptable. Hmmm.

Re:what format?

[Reverberant]

Well, apparently it's not that simple. That's plenty usable, right there. Of course, it did work - but what are the chances of me figuring that out on my own?

Hmmm, I've never come across that, interesting. At the risk of sounding like a fanboi however, I'll say that the behavior *does* make sense: if I click the column heading to sort it by "Name" (for example), then presumably I don't want to sort it in some random order since I already told it to sort by "Name." The danger is if I tell it to sort by Name, then I accidentally drag-and-drop a track to a new position, then it's no longer sorted the way I told it do. Of course this logic could fall apart for sorting by "Album" but presumably iTunes would use the ID3 tags to determine the track order within the album listings.

So, you'll forgive me if I don't try going in for the "bleeding edge".

Again, I feel your pain, but then again, we all have stories with installing software on all platforms (for example MS Word Viewer on my Tablet PC refuses to print, even though other programs have no problems).

Bad software is still bad software

And I never said different, just trying to get the facts straight: some of your criticisms are valid (autosync with only one computer, issues with libraries on remote volumes) and some are not (iTunes does use CDDB, you can reorder tracks).

Winamp was started by one developer,

As was iTunes (ok, 3 developers :)

Of course, if the same was true of a Microsoft software, people would be up in arms.

Well, you'll note that I haven't posted anywhere that "MS Word Viewer 2003 sucks" ;)

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Hmmm, I've never come across that, interesting. At the risk of sounding like a fanboi however, I'll say that the behavior *does* make sense: if I click the column heading to sort it by "Name" (for example), then presumably I don't want to sort it in some random order since I already told it to sort by "Name." The danger is if I tell it to sort by Name, then I accidentally drag-and-drop a track to a new position, then it's no longer sorted the way I told it do. Of course this logic could fall apart for sorting by "Album" but presumably iTunes would use the ID3 tags to determine the track order within the album listings.

As someone who holds a graduate degree in HCI, I can quite honestly tell you that that kind of behavior is far from "usable". Oh, it might make sense to you, but I know about 5 people that I asked who had no idea how to do that.

You do realize that your logic sounds absolutely convoluted and made up, right?

Again, I feel your pain, but then again, we all have stories with installing software on all platforms (for example MS Word Viewer on my Tablet PC refuses to print, even though other programs have no problems).

As I recall, my argument was that iTunes was unusable - not that Microsoft Word install is not unusable.

Of course, the fact that software X is unusable does not change the fact that I find iTunes to be a painful and sloppy piece of work, but hey.

And I never said different, just trying to get the facts straight: some of your criticisms are valid (autosync with only one computer, issues with libraries on remote volumes) and some are not (iTunes does use CDDB, you can reorder tracks).

Well, does it matter which are valid and which are not? The bottom line is that they do not work for me, and I do not care about what features someone else has - just those that I have (or don't, in this case).

As was iTunes (ok, 3 developers :)

Yes, but iTunes was picked up by Apple - and it's part of a product that I paid *money* to buy. Winamp is freeware. iTunes is part of Apple's business, and it's a crappy piece of work.

And I looked at your link - iTunes 1.0 was released in 2001. It's been 5 years - and it's still unusable. And supposedly one of the flagship products of a company like Apple.

Well, you'll note that I haven't posted anywhere that "MS Word Viewer 2003 sucks" ;)

True. Hey, I never said iTunes sucks, either, so we're even. ;)

Re:what format?

[Blakey Rat]

Of course, if the same was true of a Microsoft software, people would be up in arms. Somehow, Apple's software being absolutely crappy is acceptable. Hmmm.

This is Slashdot. People get up in arms even about excellent Microsoft hardware/software. (Go to the gaming section and see what people think about the Xbox 360, for instance, an excellent piece of hardware.)

But with all due respect, considering how many millions of users iTunes has, and how many billions of tracks have been purchased with it, most people don't agree with your summation that the software is 'absolutely crappy.'

Besides, you have to also admit that you're not the typical user. Who the heck organizes their music by folder while leaving the filenames and ID3 tags blank? That's goofy as hell.

Re:what format?

[Reverberant]

You do realize that your logic sounds absolutely convoluted and made up, right?

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. FWIW, I just checked with WMP9, and it allows you do drag around tracks even with a sorted column - of course, the column header still indicates that it's sorted, even though it's not. That's usable? Most non-techies I know would say otherwise.

Well, does it matter which are valid and which are not?

Well yes, it does - if you don't like iTunes because of it's interface, or Apple's copy-protection decisions, that's one thing. If you're going to make public postings that iTunes doesn't do something, when in fact it *does*, that's different.

Hey, I never said iTunes sucks, either, so we're even. ;)

So, it was a different metlin (258108) who wrote this?

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. FWIW, I just checked with WMP9, and it allows you do drag around tracks even with a sorted column - of course, the column header still indicates that it's sorted, even though it's not. That's usable? Most non-techies I know would say otherwise.

Like I said, the usability of another piece of software isn't in question. The usability of iTunes is in question.

(and just so you know, I'm not a non-techie)

Well yes, it does - if you don't like iTunes because of it's interface, or Apple's copy-protection decisions, that's one thing. If you're going to make public postings that iTunes doesn't do something, when in fact it *does*, that's different.

Hold on - my original argument was that iTunes was unusable, and ergo, it sucked. Well, turns out that it still can do a lot of things I thought it could not, but only because it was so unusable that I could not figure out how the hell to make it work. Well, so my original argument still stands.

I still haven't found out how to do a lot of the things I originally told you about, and I still can't sort my folders the way I want to, or get CDDB to work, or get iTunes back up and running or make it grok several podcasts.

It does not matter which works in some experimental "ideal" Apple's utopian setup because it does not work for me. It's like arguing that a car works fine in a race track but can't scale on real roads. It doesn't help that a bunch of people driving on Autobahn say that it works for them, too, because for every user that iTunes works for, I know several others who just hate it.

That was my point - does it matter what works for you? It does not work for me, and for a lot of others, and we've no solution in sight. So, that makes it as good as that it does not work at all.

*shrug*

So, it was a different metlin (258108) who wrote this?

That was sarcasm - you effectively said that MS Viewer sucked, just not in as many words. I explicitly stated that iTunes sucked. But there wasn't really any difference between our opinions on those pieces of software, hence my comment.

Cheers.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Besides, you have to also admit that you're not the typical user. Who the heck organizes their music by folder while leaving the filenames and ID3 tags blank? That's goofy as hell.

*shrug*

For one, a lot of my music is non-English, and due to character-set limitations, were ripped as plain tracks. Given this, I found it easier to just sort them by file-names.

For another, a lot of those are that way because *iTunes* did not get the CDDB data, and I had to manually enter the artist and album tags.

Re:what format?

[Reverberant]

Well, we're getting to the point where we're talking past each other, so I suppose it's time to bring this dialog to an end.

(and just so you know, I'm not a non-techie)

Yeah, I got that based on the Georgia Tech email address and the HCI degree - I wasn't trying to imply that you were a non-techie, I was referring to people like my mother, my sister, my clients, etc

Well, turns out that it still can do a lot of things I thought it could not,

And that was the point that I was trying to address! You think iTunes sucks because it doesn't work for you because it lacks certain features (network reliability, etc) or you think the interface is bad - fine, I can (and do) respect that. I'm just pointing out that iTunes can let you sort within playlists and download ID3 info from CDDB - both for your edification and for others who might otherwise read your posts and think "oh, I didn't know iTunes can't use CDDB."

I don't care that you don't like it, I'm just pointing out that it does have certain capabilities that you didn't think it had.

you effectively said that MS Viewer sucked, just not in as many words

I know I didn't say that because I don't believe that MS Viewer sucks, I just said I was having problems with it - there's a difference. With the one exception, it does everything I expect it to do.

Now I *do* believe that MS Word sucks, but that's a different topic altogether.

Re:what format?

[jonwil]

One solution to the problem would be that every time you download a song from the service, it has no DRM but it has a watermark added that contains some kind of link back to you.
Then, if its published on p2p, it can be traced back to who published it.

Re:what format?

[Onan]

The worst experience was when I lost a lot of music after a HDD crash and the only source was on my iPod - plugging it into another system (for the first time) just wiped out the contents of my iPod. I wonder what the hell Apple engineers were thinking, really.

It seems clear from your flurry of posts that it is not possible to convince you to not hate itunes, but I'll give in and answer this anyway.

What Apple engineers were thinking is that an ipod is an accessory to a computer, and its job is to mirror whatever content is on the computer to which it's connected. It is only intended to pair with one computer at a time, and the copy of music is always intended to be from the computer to the pod, never the other direction.

This seems fairly sane to me. It's by far the simplest and most reliable way for the peripheral to work. If you really do want to use the pod as a storage device in order to move music or any other files around, it's happy to also behave as a normally-mountable volume. But that's a very different function than being a music player.

The only flaw in the interaction you describe is that itunes should inform you and ask for confirmation before altering the contents of a pod that was previously mated to a different computer. Which... it has for years now. Just not in the ancient version that you're inexplicably running.

Re:what format?

[Onan]

For another, a lot of those are that way because *iTunes* did not get the CDDB data, ...

Despite your repetitions of it, I'm afraid I can't explain why you're the only person in the world for whom itunes does not offer cddb support. Perhaps it doesn't like you; I have to admit that I'm kind of starting to not.

...and I had to manually enter the artist and album tags.

Okay, so even if you have the world's only copy of itunes that mysteriously does not act as a cddb client, enter the artist and album tags into the id3 tags (via itunes or any other tool you like), and it'll propagate that to filenames and directory structure for you.

Or, as many other people have suggested, if you've already made the odd choice to manually enter this data as filenames and directory structure but not id3 tags, you can use either your own or someone else's tools to propagate that information in the other direction.

Re:what format?

[Onan]

Um. This is consistent with the way every ordered list view that I've ever seen anywhere works. I would have guessed that your HCI degree might have covered a fairly standard convention on which every gui I've seen standardized decades ago:

• list views can be sorted by any of the columns;
• this is invoked by clicking on the appropriate column header;
• highlighting of the column header indicates on which one the list is sorted;
• a small arrow in the header indicates the sort direction.

If you have the list sorted by artist name, then it's sorted by artist name; no amount of dragging things around will, or should change that.

If you have files in a finder (or explorer or whatever you people use) window sorted by, say, size, what would you expect dragging files up and down in that window to do? Change the size of the files? Make an exception to the sorting? (That would be signified how?)

Similarly, my mail viewer has messages sorted by datestamp. Why would dragging messages up and down in that list be a meaningful operation? What would you expect it to do?

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Despite your repetitions of it, I'm afraid I can't explain why you're the only person in the world for whom itunes does not offer cddb support.

I can't either - and since I can neither explain nor find a reason, I'd have to just go ahead and say that iTunes does not do what it's supposed to, for me. And since it does not, obviously I'd think that it's a lousy piece of software - hey, it's my opinion, you don't have to like it.

Perhaps it doesn't like you; I have to admit that I'm kind of starting to not.

Heh. Wow, bring up an issue and you get attacked personally for bringing it up. Nice attitude.

Okay, so even if you have the world's only copy of itunes that mysteriously does not act as a cddb client, enter the artist and album tags into the id3 tags (via itunes or any other tool you like), and it'll propagate that to filenames and directory structure for you.

Yup, which would be work for me - which I'd rather not do and use another tool.

Or, as many other people have suggested, if you've already made the odd choice to manually enter this data as filenames and directory structure but not id3 tags, you can use either your own or someone else's tools to propagate that information in the other direction.

Like I said - WORK! More *work* from the user. Me, user - being asked to jump through hoops to get a stupid program to work. It might be fine by you, but I'd usually imagine that the *program* would do this for me, you know? Usability and all that?

Why bother when there are other softwares out there that do this? A much better job of it, if I might add.

Besides, every iTunes install has been broken in some way. 5.x crashed over the network and I could not even reinstall it at home. 6.x broke a lot of my existing podcast feeds, even though they were in quite valid XML etc etc.

So, I'll use other pieces of software that *work* as they're supposed to (rather than asking the user to do things, you know?), cuss at Apple for their lousy iTunes (think different, indeed - here's an idea! - let's make the *user* work rather than us developing something that works), and twiddle my thumbs and wait for someone else to release an alternative to copy music to my iPod. Or, maybe I'll just say screw this and get a Creative Nomad with something nice like Nomad Explorer. Or maybe I'll even shell out some bucks and get something by these guys that actually is nice and works.

That's what you get for not being a fanboy, I guess.

Re:what format?

[metlin]

Well, we're getting to the point where we're talking past each other, so I suppose it's time to bring this dialog to an end.

Indeed.

Yeah, I got that based on the Georgia Tech email address and the HCI degree - I wasn't trying to imply that you were a non-techie, I was referring to people like my mother, my sister, my clients, etc

Just making sure. Kinda got tired of the j00 1d10t! comments for bringing up genuine issues that I have, that's all.

And that was the point that I was trying to address! You think iTunes sucks because it doesn't work for you because it lacks certain features (network reliability, etc) or you think the interface is bad - fine, I can (and do) respect that. I'm just pointing out that iTunes can let you sort within playlists and download ID3 info from CDDB - both for your edification and for others who might otherwise read your posts and think "oh, I didn't know iTunes can't use CDDB."

See, you're missing the whole point.

• iTunes is supposed to do Foo and Bar.
  
• iTunes does not do Foo for me, but turns out Bar can be done, although doing Bar is absolutely non-intuitive (hence my accusation that iTunes is unusable).
  
• iTunes also breaks, and does strange things and does not work the way it's "supposed" to.
  
• Solutions to this vary from me jumping through hoops, giving my soul and my first born etc etc.
  
• So, while iTunes is *supposed* to do Foo and Bar, I can barely get Bar to work and Foo does not work at all.
  
• Ergo, in my opinion, iTunes sucks. Why? Because I don't care what it does for someone else. I care about what it does for *me*.
  

You don't really expect me to say that iTunes washes my dishes when I can't even get the bloody thing to reinstall itself, do you? How can you expect me to say the CDDB works when I can't get it to work?

I don't care that you don't like it, I'm just pointing out that it does have certain capabilities that you didn't think it had.

And how does it matter to me when they don't work for me anyway? Effectively, it's as good as those capabilities not existing, so I think I'm quite at liberty to talk about what I experience, not what I'm supposed to experience.

I know I didn't say that because I don't believe that MS Viewer sucks, I just said I was having problems with it - there's a difference. With the one exception, it does everything I expect it to do.

Now I *do* believe that MS Word sucks, but that's a different topic altogether.

Heh. I stand corrected. MS Word sucks, MS Viewer does not. Hope that cheers your day up. =)

Re:what format?

[TheGatekeeper]

People who leech off p2p services without sharing out what they downloaded are the scum of the Internet. Oh you're pefectly willing to take advantage of the risks other people are taking, but won't help anyone else out? If everyone had that mentality then the RIAA would have already won.

Re:what format?

[TheGatekeeper]

First, you aren't really sharing your credit card information with Russia proper, all bill payment goes through ChronoPay, a well established international transaction agency.

Second, as for paying the artists, the day they provide me with a reasonable alternative is the day I'll stop using allofmp3.com. Let them give me an option where I can download their music, without DRM, using a trusted payment service, and I'll gladly fork over a buck a song or more.

Re:what format?

[mrdaveb]

People who leach off P2P services are probably breaking less laws than people who upload while downloading. Who is the scum of the earth? I think that depends who you ask. I don't share RIAA music anymore - as far as I'm concerned the RIAA have 'won' that battle. But I'm fully expecting them to lose the war when good artists stop signing up to RIAA labels. They are redundant in the digital age. I buy most of my music from eMusic. Lots of non-RIAA goodness.

On what device?

[Anonymous Coward]

Afaik, Apple won't allow non fairplay DRM on their ipod .. so I ask on what device will this music play on?

How many people are going to want to have two devices, one to play their hundreds of dollars in itunes music (that only plays on ipod) and another to play songs purchased from Google.

Anyway if they end up using an Open DRM format .. I know I'd be happy with 'em.

Re:On what device?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you can play ANY MP3 on the iPod!

(did i just feed a troll?)

why google will fail it

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>"The music industry is broadly unhappy..."

hence why customers are broadly happy with iTunes - it's FAIR!

Re:why google will fail it

[mwvdlee]

iTunes takes away less rights than typical DRM and it's already considered "fair"... the record companies should be thanking god on their knees for that!

Re:why google will fail it

[f97tosc]

hence why customers are broadly happy with iTunes - it's FAIR!

I don't think it is that fair, it is incredible that the record companies get as big a share of the cake as they do, now that they are not handling the distribution any more.

With the great savings that come from electronic distribution I was hoping for substantial reductions in price for consumers, increased royalties for the artists, and diminished significance/compensation for the record companies. So far this hasn't happened.

Tor

Re:why google will fail it

[j00r0m4nc3r]

It will never happen. The only way to beat them is to not play their game. Independent or self-publishing and independent+electronic distribution are the keys.

Re:why google will fail it

[pNutz]

Eh? Where the hell does iTunes get their music? It's making the record companies suffer? Using iTunes, Google Music, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Amazon, et al, supports the miserable music industry. It lets them think you want 'Fair' content that can only have 5 copies of. That's still being treated like a criminal, just with a bigger cell.

Buy DRM-less independent music if you want to be treated fairly.

eMusic Subcription-based, very cheap, a lot of great artists and indie labels (New Pornos, Spoon, Blackalicious, CCR, Thelonius Monk)

BLEEP A-la-carte, most electronic but has a lot of small labels, some stuff in FLAC (Warp records, Ninja Tune, One Little Indian/Bjork)

AudioLunchbox Subscription and a-la-carte, a little pricier than emusic but has some different artists (Death Cab for Cutie, The Sounds)

Calabash Mostly world and folk music (Tinariwen, reggae)

There are more. Hopefully Songbird will make it easier to access them all through a single interface.

Re:why google will fail it

[cranky_slacker]

hence why customers are broadly happy with iTunes - it's FAIR!

Fair to who? Not the end user, that's for sure. A proprietary, DRM laden format which restricts how the owner uses what they bought doesn't sound fair to me.

Hmmmm

[popetty]

Stop teasing! I want my google OS already!

Re:Hmmmm

[gbobeck]

If you really want Google OS, download Ubuntu Linux. Seriously! I have had the privelage of talking to one of the guys who works in the Google Labs (he was also one of the guys who created subversion)and he stated that Google uses a highly customized version of Ubuntu. The customized version of Ubuntu is mostly used by their engineers as it has standardized programming software and other tweaks for the Google network. The person I talked with also stated that Google has no plans to release a Google OS to the public at this time.

Re:Hmmmm

[TrippTDF]

I can second that last part... I'm friends with an API developer at Google, and my boss is friends with someone higher-up in marketing... both have told us that Google has no plans for an OS.

and why should they? 2 years from now, no one is going to care about what OS you are running, anyway. We will have true Windows emmulation on OS X shortly, and WINE seems to do great things for windows apps under linux... pretty soon your choice of OS isn't going to matter in terms of what software you can run.

Beyond that, we are heading towards a service-based model, which moves us away from the OS as a productivity space anyway. Google would do better to put their efforts into these services than mucking about with an OS and fighting a (probably loosing) battle with MS on that front. Better to take the fight to the internet, where they are stronger anyway.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

So would your friends (be able to) tell you about OTHER upcoming products? Did they tell you about Gmail? Did they tell you about Google Maps? Google Base?

Re:Hmmmm

[gbobeck]

From the Google person I was able to chat with, he mentioned Google Calendar and another Google Summer of Code. He was unable to say much more about upcomming services.

He also mentioned that Google has moved their Chicago office to a bigger office space.

Prediction

[LividBlivet]

$60 / month for up to 12 DRM laden, non transferrable 128kbps windows audio files. If the labels are dictating the terms you know the deal will suck ass.

Re:Prediction

[aesiamun]

I dunno where this is coming from but you can get unlimited DRM laden windows files on your Play for sure device for $16 through rhapsody.

$60/mo is outrageous.

Server Centric?

[ikejam]

Going by google's general productline, gTunes[:-s] could be a server centric music player - only problem is that'l fall flat on its face.

Still if it does come out, I expect Google to fit it in with its 'organise the world's information' line.

Perhaps just using their search algorithm to find the music you want to buy is enough.. perhaps...

Re:Server Centric?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the search angle is what they're going for, they'd do well to look at the Music Genome Project

The Missing Link Found?

[TEMMiNK]

Perhaps the eternally elusive missing link has been found...

Step 1. Anything

Step 2. Google

Step 3. Profit!

Re:The Missing Link Found?

[barefootgenius]

Don't you mean;

Step 1. Anything

Step 2. Google

Step 3. Beta!

Only once piece of the picture...

[webword]

How does the music store interact with players, especially the iPod?

Can users easily manage their music libraries?

What kind of file formats will be available?

Overall, the article makes it sound like Google is very focused on the music industry. I understand this to a point, but Google's users won't be too happy if the music industry seems like it is in too much control. Users are willing to pay, but they expect a certain level of freedom and choice. The user experience is at least as crucial as buy in from the music industry. Or, in other words, Google needs to consider both supply and demand.

Re:Only once piece of the picture...

[Josh teh Jenius]

Not trying to be an ass, but I peeked at your blog at noticed you were using the Kubrick theme. Personally, with so many SPAM blogs out there, I have begun to automatically associate that theme with junk (not fair I know, but it's the truth.)

Just an FYI: http://www.alexking.org/software/wordpress/theme_b rowser.php. You raise excellent points in your blog, I would hate for other people to miss them for asthetic reasons.

Re:Only once piece of the picture...

[webword]

Great advice and interesting note about the spam. I've been thinking about a redesign for a while. Maybe I should act now...

Product Name

[alexhs]

Going by google's general productline, gTunes[:-s] could be a server centric music player

I guess you meant Gtunes *Beta* :-)

I don't think so

[Drog]

I think most consumers will simply see this as another place where you can download music. The prices and file formats will be different, but that's about it.

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news for nerds and the headline is using the imperial system? Metric, please, metric.

The music industry is broadly unhappy

[digitaldc]

Is there anything that pleases the music industry? I am simply tired of reading about these whining gazillionaires.

Re:The music industry is broadly unhappy

[ureshii_akuma]

You will be happy to hear that I have it on good auhority there is something that quite pleases the music industry! What is this wonderful thing? Why, it is nothing more than screwing! Be it screwing artists, screwing customers, screwing the public domain, or screwing your congress-person in exchange for legislation to feed their habit, those wacky music industrials just can't get enough!

Name?

[scarlac]

Introducing "Goosic" or what about... "Moosic"... or something as wonderful as "Mugoosicgle"?

Or how about something that just as describing as "Ekiga", which is real easy to remember.

Sarcasm intended.

Re:Name?

[Intron]

I think they should call it "Byoogle"

Re:Name?

[enitime]

G clef?

Doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

Re:Name?

[p0]

Ekiga is descriptive yap. It means "together" in dhivehi (maldivian lang).

Doubleplusungood

[Anonymous Coward]

'The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.'


OK. We all know that they aren't unhappy because older titles aren't deeply discounted to keep up volume. They are unhappy because new titles aren't sold at a premium. The music industry sees the current pricing model as THE FLOOR. It can only get more expensive from here.

Sorry Google, there will be no market for the same thing, only more expensive. (and the music industry won't dare tell Apple to shove it 'till Google proves that they can replace them)

Who wants the service - industry or consumer?

[dougman]

When I read the comment pulled from the article:

"The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services."

I thought to myself, "If the music industry is broadly unhappy, then Apple is probably doing something right."

What we should be hearing is how Google is stepping up to offer alternative services that address a gap that consumers are experiencing. Instead that quote would indicate that Google is stepping up to offer alternatives to the music industry. Frankly, I don't hear too many people (myself included) in the mainstream complaining about the options. I'm all for capitalism and competition and welcome Google to the game. However, I'm going to remain skeptical about this until I fully understand where Google is going with this.

--
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Churchill

Re:Who wants the service - industry or consumer?

[Hrodvitnir]

"The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options..."

and

I don't hear too many people (myself included) in the mainstream complaining about the options

See, this is the problem. There is a skew in the Annoyance Factor. In a truly capitalistic society, we must strike a balance. The annoyance must be equal on both sides for everyone to be happy (or... unhappy). This "sweet spot," if you willl, is called The Grumpy Point. Once the grumpy levels out, equilibrium can be restored.

Poperti model

[Anonymous Coward]

They might go with poperti model http://www.poperti.com/

Unending greed?

[TheNoxx]

From TFA: "The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services."

What part are they unhappy about? Making tons of money not enough, they want more? The only thing that could lead the music industry to be "unhappy" with iTunes is that they want to charge more per download, whether it be through higher price-fixing or subscriptions that seem like a good deal, but aren't. That's all they care about. Unfortunately, the MPAA doesn't get to dictate how the market works, too bad for them. Unless Google starts off with an online music store a good bit cheaper than iTunes and somehow manages to completely kill off the iTunes store before jacking up the prices, the music industry isn't going anywhere, and neither will any new efforts from Google or anyone else.

Content is only king...if people can see/hear it.

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

The labels are coming to the realization that content is only as strong as your means of distributing it. They spent so much time and energy trying to corner the physical delivery of media that digital distribution has mostly passed them by. If Apple and some of the other digital distributors can draw a line in the sand and stick to their guns, the labels will have to play ball...or they can sit on the sidelines and watch as their physical media distribution model withers on the vine and try to starve out the digital distributors. Given the level of greed and focus on short-term profits in the music industry, I don't see a "strike" in their future. They'll blink first.

Cheap, quality, legal music?

[DimGeo]

Will this finally be the long-awaited way of getting cheap, high-quality, portable & legal music? Music that I can play in Winamp using the MAD plugin? And will I be able to prove I own that music when the feds find an excuse to bust into my house?

Re:Cheap, quality, legal music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this finally be the long-awaited way of getting cheap, high-quality, portable & legal music? Music that I can play in Winamp using the MAD plugin? And will I be able to prove I own that music when the feds find an excuse to bust into my house?


PUT DOWN THE PIPE!

Re:Cheap, quality, legal music?

[DimGeo]

It's coke, actually... :D

It doesn't fit

[91degrees]

Companies tend not to branch into totally unrealated unexplored businesses. Google is not in the subscription/sales business. It's in the advertising sponsored search business. Granted, neither was Apple, but they did already have at least some form of a paid software download business. Google has no experience at all in online sales.

Re:It doesn't fit

[CuriousKangaroo]

What if it wasn't about sales at all, but advertising?

Imagine a GMusic player where you can listen to the track you want to listen to... for free. This would be a desktop-PC only system (e.g. no downloads to a portable player, so Google could say that GMusic isn't competing with iTunes... they always claims their services don't compete with established players) but why complain when it is free?

Think of it as similar to a streaming online radiostation, except that YOU determine the playlist. The stream would contain audio advertisements which could be directly targetted to you (unlike in real radio, where ads are targetted towards the general audience) because Google knows your playlists and since you'll probably need a Google account, they have access to your email, searches, etc.

Also, the player itself could have clickable text-ads located on it somewhere.

Re:It doesn't fit

[Jester6641]

oh yeah?

If it's anything like the Google video store...

[Anonymous Coward]

...then Apple has nothing to worry about. That debacle proved that Google doesn't understand the first thing about putting up a retail front on the web.

My guess

[Antimatter3009]

It'll be like iTunes, but worse. I don't think that even the mighty Google can convince the record labels to do things the right way (no DRM, reasonable prices, etc.).

My only hope is that Google will focus more on the "indie" artist population and expose the world to some mostly unheard of music. That would be more in line with their style (and motto), but I'm not sure it will work (but I can hope!).

Re:My guess

[xusr]

"That would be more in line with their style"

I wish it were still true; in the past, I would have agreed. Google isn't the underdog anymore, not by a long shot. All of Google's recent advances reek of corporate wariness and market saturation. To have one company that has access to all the world's information...that is a great power. I hope and pray that Google becomes more responsible with that power.

wouldn't it be interesting if our kids complain about Google like we complain about Microsoft?

Re:My guess

[Antimatter3009]

You are correct that they are not the underdog anymore, but my point was more that they tend to do things differently and that they rely more on the masses for content. For instance, gmail is different than any other webmail. Google has released a few things that were copies of other things, but for the most part their products are either new or substantially improved over other offerings.

Another point is that Google seems to rely a lot more on their users for content than other companies. For instance, the Google Maps API, Google Video upload service, or Google Pages. They create a product that somehow uses their search technology, then allow users to create all kinds of unique content. I'm hoping they'll follow either or both of these trends.

Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry

[Froggy]

'The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.'

Oh, really?

Well, I'm broadly unhappy with the music industry's desire to charge like wounded bulls for mediocre content and infest their media with single-platform proprietary DRM. I just *wonder* what sort of 'subscription models' the music industry is hanging out for. Guess what? I'm usually pretty supportive of google's enterprises, but if if I can't listen to the music on my iPod *and* my daughter's el cheapo MP3 player *and* my PowerBook *and* my work linux box *and* burn it to a CD so I can show it to my non-MP3-player-owning friends and relatives -- I'm not interested.

Oh, and I like Celtic folk, Afro-Celtic world music, blues, prog, electronica, choral and a bunch of other minority genres. I spent about A$70 on music last month, almost all from little indy labels. The Big Names of the music industry can take their overproduced teen manufactured product and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Re:Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry

[dsgitl]

I don't want to be a shill, but you might check out emusic.com. They have all of those features you're looking for.

That is, unless, you just want to filibuster against the music industry and online services. If so, please continue.

Re:Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry

[Rocketship Underpant]

"Oh, and I like Celtic folk, Afro-Celtic world music, blues, prog, electronica, choral and a bunch of other minority genres."

Holy crap, I think you've either made a complete copy of my iTunes library, or you're me from a parallel universe. And I thought my tastes were weird...

--

(By the way, editors, Slashdot is really messed up right now. I had to hit "cancel" halfway through loading the reply page, because all Slashdot links seem to redirect to a Xerox advertisement after a second.)

Re:Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry

[KermodeBear]

Something you may want to try is Pandora. /. had an article on it a while ago, so I checked it out and I am hooked. It is a great way to find artists that you didn't know exist, since Pandora selects music based on the qualities of each piece, not a large, broad category. I have a paid account, but I think there is a free version as well that is advertisement supported. Everyone I know who has tried it loves it.
Granted, you can't download the music (it is provided through a Flash-based player, and downloading really wouldn't work well for what the service provides), but it should be able to keep you entertained.

I hope that Google does this, and does so with...

[zappepcs]

I hope that Google does this, and does so with the same standards and aplomb that they have used for all of the other Google services. I like Google, not because of the do no evil clause, but because their services work, they work well, and the costs are... well, affordable.

If MS or the RIAA could find a company that works as well as ITMS or that works better than ITMS, they would have done so. Clearly, they are in need of a partner company that has both the technology know-how and the backbone to make it work. Google definitely fits in that category. I hope that if such a bargain is struck, that the *AA finds themselves holding on for dear life to the tail of a very BIG tiger....

Re:Content is only king...if people can see/hear i

[digitaldc]

I agree, they have to come to the realization that the times have changed and so does the distribution model. Now if they can only sign artists that actually play instruments and write their own songs, they might actually have something to look forward to.

The most likely outcome

[Piroca]

is another flop, such as most of what google has produced in the last 18 months (it's sad when even the fanboys don't argue about it anymore..)

More possibilities for adsense?

[gadwale]

I guess this will open up a lot more opportunities for advertising on gtunes.. Relevant-genre/artist music-snippet ads maybe?

Amazing

[Dr_LHA]

Hi hope it's as great as the Google Video store!!!

Re:Will we be able to search by humming a tune?

[Anonymous Coward]

... it's called Parsons Code (http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html). There is also a query by humming (http://www.musipedia.org/query_by_humming.0.html) .

L.

DRM is Unnecessary

[tabdelgawad]

What would happen if the **AA allowed Google to launch a music/movie service *without* DRM? The vast majority of material on legitimate services like iTunes is available DRM-free on the p2p networks and usenet. But people still use iTunes because it's more convenient and not legally risky.

Would iTunes or any other legitimate music/movie service be *less* successful without DRM? I don't think so. Which begs the question: what's the **AA's business case for DRM?

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[Ingolfke]

Would iTunes or any other legitimate music/movie service be *less* successful without DRM? I don't think so. Which begs the question: what's the **AA's business case for DRM?

You don't think that DRM makes music/move download services successful and that somehow "begs" a business case for DRM? Wierd. The business case for DRM is so freaking obvious... if you control how the music is distributed not just at the point of purchase but beyond you ensure that after market copying is severly limited and in turn help drive purchases back to your store instead of trading with their friends. DRM makes perfect sense from content owner's perspective.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[typical]

You are familiar with MagnaTune? No DRM there, and they have a "Why we are not evil" link on their page.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[dantheman82]

Because the **AA isn't a big fan of the barter system, and probably is not so happy that you can find a lot of stuff (music, videos, etc.) in your local library either. And then there is the fear of the unknown...

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[tabdelgawad]

After-market copying and distribution among friends have always been available with CDs and VCRs, but it was never important enough to make the **AA implement DRM. The DRM panic only ensued with Napster and the p2p model of distribution, where 'peer' does not mean 'friend' [1].

My question therefore remains: how does DRM solve the problem it was intended to address when non-DRM versions of almost everything exist (and will continue to exist) in p2p and usenet?

[1] The MPAA did in fact panic with the introduction of the VCR, with litigation leading to the famous Betamax supreme court decision. But their panic obviously proved completely short-sighted from a business point of view.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[yeremein]

You don't think that DRM makes music/move download services successful and that somehow "begs" a business case for DRM? Wierd. The business case for DRM is so freaking obvious... if you control how the music is distributed not just at the point of purchase but beyond you ensure that after market copying is severly limited and in turn help drive purchases back to your store instead of trading with their friends. DRM makes perfect sense from content owner's perspective.

That's all well and good in theory, but DRM doesn't prevent music from showing up on P2P networks. So now users have a choice: Buy songs that are incompatible with half the music players on the market, chained to the PC that downloaded them, unable to be sampled or edited, and bound to eventually disappear. Or get unrestricted songs for free off P2P.

I actually subscribe to a third choice: Neither.

I respect the studio's copyrights, but DRM reduces value for the consumer to the point where I'm not interested in the product anymore.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[Ingolfke]

You're missing the point... DRM is intended to stop the wholesale distribution of digital copies of music over the Internet, beyond just tape trading, BUT it's also meant to expand how media companies can sell their products. With strong DRM you can sell subscriptions, offer demos w/ a set # of plays before the song is disabled, and clamp down on all file trading. It gives media owners a huge set of options for how they want to sell their products, and helps to ensure that the revenue they recieve from those media properties is kept at as high a level as is possible. The scariest thing in the world for someone who owns the rights to a piece of content, and whose primary business is to invest in and sell content, is to just let it out their unprotected... once you've opened that pandora's box you can't put everything back again. The business case is VERY VERY strong for wanting to invest in DRM, especially for the large corporations who have billions of dollars tied up in their content.

Obviously consumers may not like everything that comes along w/ DRM... but you were talking about the business case.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[Ingolfke]

Sorry, I didn't respond in full.

You're right that non-DRM copies of content exist today. But if I'm a media exec I see that as an anomaly that I want to resolve, not capitulate to. Non-DRM copies exist for two reasons. They are copied from unprotected sources (CDs), or the DRM is circumvented because it is not strong enough. If I'm a media exec, I want to eliminate all distribution channels that aren't DRM thereby eliminating source #1 for unprotected content. I also want to tackle point #2 through extremely strong DRM (down to the hardware) and legal protections so non-DRMed media becomes VERY VERY hard to come by, and is obviously illegal. Obviously source #2 is an ongoing battle... and probably will never be won outright, but if you can make non-DRMed music hard enough to come by that it's not worth the hassle to acquire for most consumers you can call that a victory.

The old VCR anology isn't quite accurate. Sure the VCR allowed people to make copies, but the issue today isn't copies... it's distribution. Sure people can make copies, but with VCRs, they couldn't distribute them widely without a relatively high cost (time to make a new physical copy, tape costs, shipping costs). With the Internet, anyone can distribute their copies of content to anyone else for next to nothing... or for a fixed cost (cost of your Internet connection).

My other post answers your basic question. DRM is all about keeping control with the owner of the copyright. The content owners may concede here and there over the next few years as DRM grows in strength and the technologies begin to incorporate it into the hardware, but ultimately DRM is definitely worth pursuing if you're a big time content owner.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[Ingolfke]

Most people don't care about DRM at all. They care about getting their content cheap and easy. They don't mind paying $2 for an episode of Lost even if they can only watch it on 5 computers. Big deal... they got the episode of Lost they missed. I think this is the mainstream. Obviously, it's not everyone... some people hate DRM... some people know where to get copies of this stuff for free and don't mind dealing with the legal consequences. I think as legal, affordable, alternatives to free illegal content is made available people will begin to use it... of course the content owners are going to have to keep fighting the illegal or quasi-legal alternatives (w/ legit legal cases or FUD... either way they confuse the public).

Right now, DRM doesn't entirely prevent music from showing up in the P2P space. It's too easy to copy an unprotected CD or break the DRM. Give it 10 years though and I doubt that will be the case. The media companies are going to keep pushing and pushing for hardware-based DRM and technologies that limit what can be copied. That's going to be an uphill battle for them, but I think in the end we'll see a much more DRMed environment in the next 10 years than we do today. DRM will still be circumvented, but it will be a lot harder to do, and will most likely be very obvious that the non-DRMed media is an illegal copy.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[bilbravo]

Nobody's ever heard of this music... and by that I mean the "less elite". The thing with iTunes is, it sells the music that the general public wants to hear. Sure, we don't like Britney Spears or , but kids do.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[stu42j]

Perhaps they'll use Sun's proposed Open Source DRM. Sun and Google have worked together before and Sun will need someone like Google to make the format viable. Of course, hardware would help too.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[pandrijeczko]

I think you need to look at "the bigger picture".

Magnatunes (as I understand it) are just a distributor of pre-recorded music so it's pretty safe to assume that by the time Magnatunes has an artist on its web site, that artist has (somehow) paid for studio time & a master recording to give to Magnatunes to sell on their behalf. Going on from that, whatever genre the Magnatunes artists happen to be in, it's pretty safe to assume that they've not got budgets for huge production & mixing so the chances are these people are "real" talented musicians producing quality music. I guess, therefore, the success of Magnatunes depends on whether or not they can maintain a catalogue of musicians who are not "in it for the money" because these musicians probably don't make much when starting out like this.

On the other hand, "that Spears woman" can empty the contents of her stomach into a tin bucket & the huge amount of big record company production budget can make it sound nice (at least to the immature teenager ear anyway).

Potentially, therefore, we might have a possible future where all the "good" music is distributed for download from Magnatunes-type distributors while all the "manufactured" stuff goes through the big record companies - possibly to the point where it is just teenage money filling big record company coffers while the adults of this world flock to Magnatunes and their ilk.

I have to admit that having been staunchly anti-downloadable music (I prefer to rip my own CDs myself), Magnatunes definitely has one or two bands on there that I do like the idea of checking out - especially because I can listen to some of the music first.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[bilbravo]

I agree with your Britney Spears comment, but the "bigger picture" is what I was looking at, and I think you missed: people want to buy what they know, what they like. They don't know this stuff. That's not to say they wouldn't like it, but unless they know it (i.e. hear it on the radio, etc) they aren't going to like it... because they aren't given the chance.

Plus, that was about the 10th "ew anything mainstream is garbage" thread I'd read and I am sick of the smug vibe I get whenever the issue of DRMed music comes up... inevitably it always turns into a few people who have an agenda against popular music talking about all of the ways to get "real" music without the DRM.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[pandrijeczko]

people want to buy what they know, what they like

Please don't include me in your definition of "people". I take my music very seriously & I'm on the constant lookout for good, new music that's usually non-mainstream stuff. The problem I have is I won't part with my money unless I've had a fairly good preview of what I might buy - and because I don't buy mainstream music, it's difficult getting to hear it on the radio.

What you really should be saying is "some people aren't enthusiastic enough about music to venture beyond the 40 or so CDs on the shelf of their local supermarket" - that's fine, I'm not enthusiastic enough about water-skiing to want to step on two bits of wood behind a fast boat although I'll happily sit on the boat dock with a sandwich and watch someone else water ski. In the same way, there's people who buy music because they are true music enthusiasts and people who buy music to have as background noise in the car, while doing the housework, etc. Just don't lump us all together...

anything mainstream is garbage

Certainly just about all the stuff that gets forcefed to me over the airwaves is garbage in my opinion. I wouldn't go so far as to say ALL mainstream music is garbage but given what I have sampled, it doesn't look that good for the rest of it.

inevitably it always turns into a few people who have an agenda against popular music talking about all of the ways to get "real" music without the DRM.

As far as I'm concerned, the two are pretty much totally intertwined. I could argue that if most of the population felt mainstream music was worth the money being asked for it, then they would be less inclined to copy it and more inclined to buy it. Therefore DRM wouldn't be needed quite as much as the record companies think it is...

From my perspective, the chances are that I have to do a lot of research finding music that appeals to me so when I do find it and then spend money on the CD, I feel I'm getting good value for money - therefore I don't copy the stuff.

Sorry, but the reason why record companies have had to artificially manufacture "70s" and "80s" revivals in recent years are twofold:

1. The current mainstream music scene is far too weak to stand on its own merits - therefore sales need to be bolstered by re-releasing old music, and,

2. If those artists from the 70s and 80s were themselves any good, then there would be no need to revive them again because they would still be selling in huge volumes. (When has there ever been a need to "revive" The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, U2, etc, etc? Note that those named artists do NOT necessarily reflect my personal tastes, by the way - I use them as examples only).

I don't need to be smug about anything because I'm perfectly fat, dumb and happy with a large music collection that stems the 50s to modern-day music - more than enough to last me a lifetime.

But as someone who is GENUINELY a music enthusiast, I have to say far too much modern-music is manufactured plastic trash designed to fill record company coffers as quickly as possible.

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[babbling]

I currently spend $0 a month on music. I don't want DRM files from iTunes (I couldn't get them if I wanted to - I run Debian), and most of the CDs I want might have copy protection on them, so I don't buy them. I actually don't download much music off P2P networks, either, because I've already got plenty on my computer.

In addition to all of that, I calmly educate any non-technical friends about why they shouldn't buy CDs or buy from iTunes.

If Google launched a music store that had music I liked without DRM, I'd certainly start buying plenty from them, and I would encourage all of my friends to, as well.

O RLY?

[TubeSteak]

Ya RLY.

[Insert Picture of The Owl Here]

here comes the hmm

[megacia]

Did you mean: The Beatles - Here Comes the Sun

how to keep the RIAA happy...

[antibryce]

The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing

All Apple has to do to keep the industry happy is rearrange that to "price fixing".

VISA ELECTRON

[traveller604]

They better accept Visa Electron too. There are a lot of us potential customers without a credit card out there. Start accepting VISA Electron as well and I'll become a customer for sure :)

And then...

[TopShelf]

Don't forget:

Step 4. Evil!!!

Re:And then...

[Isotopian]

You mean: Step Four. Get a few hundred people on Slashdot to argue about whether or not Google is now evil based on limited knowledge of any given situation.

Free market suppply and demand

[OlivierB]

Let's take away for a second all format and technical questions for a moment, ans let's suppose that their format play nicely on/with other players; i.e. A from iTunes is equivalent to A from Google. Let's look at the problem from an economic perspective.

Say you have two songs available A and B. A is in high demand and B is an oldie which sells low volume.

on Itunes, A and B are sold for the same price: 99c
On Gogles Music Store (GMS), A is priced at $1.19 and B at $.79.

If I am a consumer, I will always buy from the cheapest source; so I will buy A from iTunes and B from GMS.

Now if you are Apple or Microsoft you understand this very quickly and you want to make you formats incompatible so that A from itunes != A from GMS. In economic terms you remove all substitute products.

What I would like to know is how somebody like Google with no hardware penetration will overcome this. THey sure as hell are not going to use Micosoft's tech, and Apple won't play fair.

So what's left for Google? A new proprietary DRM format as they use for their videos atm.
I don't know about you, but I can *bear* watching videos on my computer rather than iPod/PocketPc whatever because pf the screensize advantage, but I sure as hell enjoy most of my music on the go.

Sounds to me like Google is brewing their own little digital equivalent of Sony's stillborn UMD medium for PSP movies.

Oh, Google please hire some designers for your media store, Google Video is a disgrace.

OT: Slashdot tagging

[Anonymous Coward]

The slashdot article:

Google Music Store Inches Closer?
...
...
[+] music, google, itunes (tagging beta)

This tagging is fantastic!

On-line indie stores?

[bri2000]

Actually I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.

I've just finished reading Simon Reynolds' very interesting history of the British post-punk scene "Rip It Up And Start Again". There are sections in there discussing the indie labels like Rough Trade, Mute, Stiff and others which were set up and funded by enthusiasts. This was a world where music could only be distributed physically on casette or vinyl which presented huge barriers to entry. Yet these people not only overcame them they ushered in arguably the most creative period for British music since the 60s and created a few big stars along the way (whom they gave a fair share of the royalties to, no advances with profits being split 50/50 after the cost of pressing the records had been recovered).

How much easier would it be to set up something similar today when semi-pro and even pro quality recording equipment is so much cheaper and physical distribution is almost irrelevant? Yet, as least so far as I can tell, no one is trying this? Why is there no equivalent of the Rough Trade shop on-line entering into pure distribution deals with new bands to allow them to sell downloads without a record deal and enriching our lives by introducing us to stuff we probably wouldn't have heard otherwise? Not to mention encouraging (and possibly making commercially viable) the sort of experimentation which history has shown time and again is the best way for music to evolve both artistically and commercially.

Alright!

[Omicron]

Crappy fidelity audio files with a poorly organized search interface. And the general internet public can upload any homemade crap they feel like it. I can't wait!!

Oblig. Futurama response

[Dachannien]

Zoidberg: They're tastier than an unguarded penguin nest. What do you call them?
Leela: We haven't thought of a name yet.
Bender: They're tasty, right? Let's call 'em "Tasticles".
Hermes: *gasp*
Amy: Ew!
Farnsworth: No!
Leela: We can't call them that.
Bender: Why not?
Leela: It sounds too much like those frozen Rocky Mountain oysters on a stick. You know, "Testsicles"?

What we need...

[Ingolfke]

is for someone with billions of dollars to just buy the rights to all content and develop a massive content delivery system to give it away for free. And ponies... ponies for everyone.

Alternative?

[MattW]

The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.

Good luck with that. How many millions of people have iPods? If I could get the yahoo music service onto my iPod, I'd pay for that subscription, just as a way of exploring and heading >30 seconds of songs. I frankly don't buy much music from itunes or anywhere, because I can't hear it first. I'm not going into a store, and I don't listen to the radio. So... where does that leave me? Occasionally browsing the itms and buying on the strength of a 30 second clip, occasionally hearing something during a movie or while (rarely) driving and getting it, or buying something on a personal recommendation from someone.

As for fixed pricing, big woop. I can see why Apple wants the fixed pricing, but I certainly don't care. If they want to charge $3 for the latest manufactured pop crap, go for it. I'm already not paying $.99 for it, now I can not pay $3.99.

Re:Alternative?

[Hitchcock_Blonde]

"I frankly don't buy much music from itunes or anywhere, because I can't hear it first. I'm not going into a store, and I don't listen to the radio."

Interesting...

So, where and how do you find the music you DO listen to?

Don't buy it

[mack knife]

The whole article is based on the musings of one analyst, who also put out a "buy" order on Google. That's it. One guy's parsing of an alleged meeting between Google and some music people.

While Jobs may be committed to 99 cent songs on iTunes, I just don't see how they would stick to that if Google was really serious about this, and I imagine Apple would know.

I expect a denial from Google in the next couple days.

DRM free, but not completely open.

[TCQuad]

When Steve Jobs first went to the music industry about the iTunes store they had been sold on Microsoft's DRM snake oil and he managed to talk them down to a saner solution, sp maybe two years later Larry and Sergei can talk them into going DRM-free.

DRM free, outside chance. Watermarked, almost certainly. The only way to know if the DRM has been cracked is by watermarking iTunes or gTunes files and seeing if they're appearing online or if the online versions are still just the normal CD rips.

Poor Music Industry

[jgold03]

Awe, look at that... THEY don't like price fixing! I feel soooo sorry for them. Not.

DRM Free Music?

[rdfield]

All the artists on http://www.mvine.com/ receive 50% of the after tax revenue for downloads, and all the music sold, in Ogg Vorbis and MP3 formats, is free of DRM. There are also many free music videos to download too.

Re:DRM Free Music?

[bilbravo]

So this is music for the elite? What about the average person who likes "pop crap"? The reason this music is cheap and non-DRM? Nobody's ever heard of it.

Re:DRM Free Music?

[rdfield]

So this is music for the elite?

No. It's for anyone and everyone - all genres are represented.

What about the average person who likes "pop crap"?

Plenty of crap, pop or otherwise, on there. Some good stuff too.

The reason this music is cheap and non-DRM?

The site is run by artists for artists, not by suits exploiting artists.

Nobody's ever heard of it.

Not yet. But that's the whole point - it's for unsigned artists.

http://www.mvine.com/music/shop/freestuff.html

This is not google's core competency

[pmike_bauer]

Google is in the business of organizing and making accessible existing content.

Offering original content is not part of their business model.

Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[Black-Man]

iTunes lets you create these things called PLAYLISTS and you can actually drag and drop... (for you that means click on your mouse and hold it while dragging the icon). It's amazing. You should try it when your mommy lets you use the computer after grade school this afternoon.

Re:Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[metlin]

Yeah, but does it strike you that a good, usable system would not ask the *user* to go to pains to do something?

So now, let's see -- for the hundreds of CDs that I have, I would have to make a playlist for all the artists. That's time spent making over a hundred playlists from data that I *already* have organized in a folder format.

Now, try dragging and dropping a few hundred tracks called Track XYZ and watch iTunes sort it. Oh yeah, brilliant. The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh.

Are all Apple users only good at abusing those that find bugs with their softwares? Maybe piss poor parenting and lack of civility is a hallmark of Apple users, hmm?

Re:Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[Flamefly]

"The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh."

I've got a number of complaints with regards to iTunes but importing has never been an issue. When I insert a CD in iTunes, it accesses Gracenote CDDB and retrieves the filenames for the CD's automatically. I'm not sure why yours doesn't, perhaps you've not allowed iTunes to go through your firewall. In general, if any application isn't doing what you expect it should, have a flick through the help file and you might get lucky. (I did a search for CDDB and chose the "Editing CD information" topic) and got the following, which may prove useful to yourself:

When you're connected to the Internet, you can retrieve information about your CDs from Gracenote CDDB (CD database) on the Internet. You can also enter the CD information yourself, or change the information that was retrieved.

Select the CD in the Source list. Choose File > Get Info, and make your changes.

If no information appears in the CD's Info window, choose Advanced > Get CD Track Names to retrieve basic song information from the Internet. Then make your changes.

By default, changing information in iTunes also changes the name of the file on your hard disk. To make changes in iTunes without changing the files on your hard disk, choose Edit > Preferences, and click the Advanced tab and click General. Then click to remove the checkmark next to Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized.

To avoid unexpected results, do not edit song or CD information using Windows Explorer.

Re:Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[milkman_matt]

So now, let's see -- for the hundreds of CDs that I have, I would have to make a playlist for all the artists. That's time spent making over a hundred playlists from data that I *already* have organized in a folder format.

I've copied all of my CDs to iTunes.. When it was importing them it grabbed the CD info from CDDB and filled out all of my ID3 tags correctly, sometimes I disagree with the genre it selects, but it gets the artist/album/tracks right....

Now, try dragging and dropping a few hundred tracks called Track XYZ and watch iTunes sort it. Oh yeah, brilliant. The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh.

It works great if your ID3 tags are all set up correctly.. It was a bit tedious for me at first when I got started to get my tags all organized, but now I can find anything I want, quickly.. And it does grab CD names and information from CDDB.. well, it does for me at least...

Re:Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[j79]

If your music is properly tagged, creating playlists is a drag/drop process. A hundred CDs is a lot, sure, but it's not much work to just click "Browse", and then drag your albums into the left panel. It would take a total of probably five minutes, if that?

As far as dragging in a few hundred tracks called Track XYZ, thats actually how my library is set up. All my files are named:
AlbumY_TrackZ.mp3
with Y being the album number and z being the track number.
I have over 250 albums, with multiple tracks sharing the same, "Album1_Track01.mp3" file name.

Again, my music is properly tagged and iTunes does not come even close to having an issue on import. And, guess what? All the tags were fetched from CDDB, when I imported the tracks.

The strength of iTunes, at least for me, is in the Smart Playlist feature. I actually keep my music tagged and ranked, and have multiple smart playlists. If I haven't heard a song in three weeks, I'll create a Smart Playlist. If I don't want to listen to music ranked with three stars or less, another Smart Playlist. I wasn't a huge iTunes fan, originally, but once you actually use iTunes (spend some time, and learn how it functions...), you'll start to understand why it's often voted the best music jukebox.

If you attempt to use it, expecting it to work exactly like WinAMP or whatever, you're going to have issues....

Re:Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[metlin]

I've always had to make the changes manually, for whatever reason the CDDB functionality seems kaput.

Ah, well.

Re:Uhhh... a PLAYLIST?!?

[metlin]

Like I've mentioned elsewhere, without it organizing your music without the CDDB information is a pain.

And not to mention that iTunes hogs memory like crazy. Ah, well.

We all have our reasons. I've mine.

The critical question..

[jcr]

Will music from Google work on my iPod?

If not, it's a non-starter.

-jcr

Re:The critical question..

[jseale]

Probably not, but I can't see why Google can't kiss and make up with Apple and create a 'Google iPod'. Hey, Apple let HP put their sticker on this thing, why not Google? This could be a nice add-on to Google's hardware offerings which for now just include the Google Server.

Only if Google isn't careful...

[TCQuad]

I could envision a pricing model that based the price of the songs on the number of plays it was receiving from its purchasers.

I don't want to see this happening, but it seems consistent along the line of what the music industry has been moving towards.

• Get dragged on-line due to piracy
• Switch the majority on-line to legal downloading with minimal DRM and the ability to buy cheap singles (iTMS)
• Target the evil pirates to squash the appeal of downloading and flood with fake files to eliminate the ease of downloading
• Introduce rent to own systems for low prices, find ideal price point
• Raise the price of the cheap singles while keeping the less popular ones about the same cost (current step)
• The pay-to-own model becomes less popular, due to the relative cost of buying versus renting
• When everyone is renting music legally on-line, start withholding singles and albums until after the CD has been available for a while (see Shakira's new song)
• Double profit!

Fans will buy the CD as soon as it comes out, since downloading lags behind. But when they can't rip from the CD, they'll buy the on-line version as well. No matter how mad they get, they can't cancel a renting service without losing their entire library.

If Google allows variable price marketing, they'll suck out iTunes (since they can advertise as having MP3s as cheap as XX cents) before self-destructing when all the labels demand more money and higher prices. Then rent-to-own will become more popular and we move towards double purchasing.

Think rent not buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google will not provide an alternative to iTunes. That's inconsistent w/ their business model. They are all about high bandwidth delivery of content (like GoogleEarth) so I expect any music service from Google to be a streaming library which avoids price and DRM concerns. This would also make it more inline w/ their library cataloguing efforts and could provide a similar solution for addressing text publishing concerns.

Re:Think rent not buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they have as high of bandwidth as Yahoo? Yahoo's already pretty nice, good selection AFAIK, and >1 MB/sec speeds. Of course, with their download manager, there's still a wait in between songs. The question is, can they do it cheaper/better than Yahoo?

In related news,

[DextroShadow]

Google has also filed a report that their security has been underminded by the US government... specifically via a broad, senseless warrant for search and purchase records, citing national security is at risk. More "news" at 11.

Yes But

[Queer Boy]

Will it play on iPod?

This is sort of a delicious irony because I remember in the 90's the big question about any computer system was "Will it run MS Office?"

From another article:

[cogitophobia]

'The Public is broadly unhappy with the price fixing and lack of subscription options at the non-existent Music Industry Digital Music Store and likely to support iTunes.'

I should hope not!

[ShyGuy91284]

As a rabid fanboy of both companies, it would tear me apart to have to choose!!!

Choose a different pricing model

[Tipa]

If you paid, say, $4.95/month, but all the songs were cheaper - perhaps between $0.25 and $0.75 - the low subscription fee would deter you from paying any other subscription fee, make you prefer to use their service, and the songs would be cheaper individually, while in most cases the company would make more money than by charging more for individual songs without any subscription fee.

Streaming Radio ?

[copdk4]

how about them providing streaming songs over Web ? or something like radio where they could set up a whole Web2.0 thing with several people with similar interests listenining and tagging and shouting on songs being played ? just add 'adsense' around a bit..and thats it.

Google Radio (TM). I said (predicted) this first here !

Google video

[mgabrys_sf]

Knocken' the ITunes store dead!

No wait - poor design, confusing DRM non-DRM, different pricing - it's so simple!

Google-bomb.

I actually like iTunes.

[Ectospheno]

The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.

Call me crazy, but I actually like iTunes. I like that all the songs are $1. I like their selection, the interface, how easy it is to get what I want on my iPod, etc. I don't want to pay more for music. I stopped buying CD's a long time ago and it is the $1 price point that got me to purchase music again. If it goes up I'll do what I did with CD's years ago and stop buying music again. The last thing I want is a subscription service. Honestly, who here wants a subscription service for music? Raise your hands.

Now ask me how much of my time I waste worrying about the music industry only making a crap-load of money rather than a whole shit-load. Their whining about "mean old apple and fixed pricing" is enough to make a person sick.

Re:I actually like iTunes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me crazy, but I actually like iTunes. I like that all the songs are $1.

Which proves that you are a sucker

Re:I actually like iTunes.

[loutr]

The last thing I want is a subscription service. Honestly, who here wants a subscription service for music? Raise your hands.

I do. I use http://www.emusic.com/, and I pay $10 monthly for 40 songs. Plain (non-DRM'd) 192kbps mp3s, and only independant labels, so the RIAA fuckers won't see a cent of my money. The funny thing is that I started using this service because iTunes didn't have what I was looking for (Blackfield, to be specific).
The subscription model suits me fine, as I can always find 40 songs worth buying, and I can opt-out anytime I want.

Can I repost my wishlist?

[jaypaulw]

1. A selection of music *better* than what can be bought on amazon.com (on CD) - it should have stuff that is out of print - particularly if it is out of print but was once available on CD.

2. Let you redownload music you've bought for no charge. (emusic.com has this)

3. Offer lossless downloads - this is particularly important because if I wanted to switch to a non Apple player in the future I would want to be able to reencode from the raw PCM and not have to do any transcoding (or worse be locked into, or even theorecticeally have my music orphaned by Apple)

Until these issues are fixed I only buy from emusic.com (for price and -APS encoding) or on CD (small price premium for freedom, if I can't find what I want on emusic.com which has a hell of a lot of stuff)

RIAA is never happy...

[freedom_india]

Satisfying the Music industry is neither my duty nor my responsibility.

All i care about is i need listen to good music at a price that is lesser than $14 per album.

If the RIAA Mafia is unhappy with the pricing they get from iTunes, they can screw Apple and try to make a napster out of Google.

Or they can raise prices to about $60 a barrel..er..an album.

Since the next Prez will be a dyed democrat, RIAA can expect an anti-trust action swiftly.

If RIAA tries to raise prices above 99 cents a song, they can expect a swift piracy swinging up, laws not withstanding.

Governments which try to control internet activity via laws will be as effective as a Roman Trebuchet against the modern Apache Helicopter or the Russian MIG-29S.

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the next Prez will be a dyed democrat, RIAA can expect an anti-trust action swiftly.

I sure hope not. Either one will be a disaster.

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[cayenne8]

"Since the next Prez will be a dyed democrat..."

I dunno...they still seem hell bent on putting Hillary as their pres. candidate, and that will be the death knell for them.

Personally, I wish the Dem's would put up a more viable candidate..someone moderate to give the Reps. a run for their money...and make THEM move more centrist too....

I frankly hate it that they are now so polarized that it is a choice of only far Rt. or far Lt.

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the next Prez will be a dyed democrat, RIAA can expect an anti-trust action swiftly.

Hardly. RIAA (and MPAA, Hollywood, etc.) are big democratic donors

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[jatencio]

Sonny Bono was a Dem. and he got the Sonny Bono Copyright act passed in 1998 and signed by a Dem. president. I doubt that a Dem. president would help. Granted this is a slighty different issue but it is some how related. Don't forget who signed the DCMA, a Dem. president. I doubt that the RIAA will have much to fear.

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[bluemouse]

Um, no. Sonny Bono was a Republican. Thanks though.

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[sarhjinian]

You think the Democrats are far left? Wow... You don't know from left.

Re:RIAA is never happy...

[jatencio]

Yeah, you're right. That still does not change the fact the Clinton signed it.

Probably wrong

[iabervon]

As described, this would be the first time that Google would be getting money directly from the masses. I don't think selling music themselves is enough of a feature to justify the hassle for them. I think it's much more likely that they'll stick with the search step, and pass customers to vendors who are willing to give them commissions. So you search for a song (by lyrics, title, performer, composer, etc.), and you get a list of results, each with links to places you can buy the song.

It's possible that Google will do a store eventually, but I bet they'd start by getting a lot of customers going through their site to other stores, like they did for maps originally (with Yahoo and Mapquest as options for the actual map), and stocks (with a number of options for the quotes).

Mod Parent Up

[DrSbaitso]

Good post. Although recognizing that the marginal cost of a digital music track for sale is zero doesn't mean that "[t]here is no way to regulate the prices by traditional means." The economics are still the same!

Imagine the physical CD media of a popular record. Marginal cost is now not zero, probably instead closer to $1. How should we price it - expensive, to acquire the price insensitive "gotta-have-it" types, or cheap, to attract the "it-could-be-cool" casual buyers?

As you surmise, the answer in both cases is to set price such that profit is maximized. In one case, there are no costs, so the optimum price could be lower than otherwise, but not necessarily. Either way, companies will want to experiment in order to model the price sensitivity of their customers.

---

I don't think that old tracks would necessarily be cheaper, either. Many customers of old and/or niche music are price insensitive -- other close substitutes don't satisfy them. Again, this isn't something that can be answered without real data as opposed to WAGs (we can try - this is slashdot, after all), but that's just a theory of mine.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I said that "there is no way to regulate price by traditional means" is that traditional market-based pricing is based on supply and demand. The retailer (CD shop) has a finite supply of goods. If they order too many of a certain CD (too much supply and not enough demand) the price drops to clear the stock. Certain CDs or DVDs that sell out quickly can be increased in price since there is limited supply and high demand.

In the case of online distribution, supply is essentially infinite and there is no "stock on hand", so it can't really be thought of in the same way as a normal retailer, so the "traditional" pricing systems no longer hold.

Metric

[Aqua_boy17]

Somehow, 'Music Store Millimeters Closer' just doesn't pack the same punch.

Can someone set up an "Analyst Watch"

[16K Ram Pack]

I'm going to start asking these people if they really believe it's going to happen or not, and quit just sticking a question mark at the end. Really, either say what you think will happen, or don't. You're meant to be the experts who make predictions, not me, so quit asking me the questions.

No such thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets

Do you believe in The Easter Bunny too?

Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone beat them to gtunes.com though :(

They have competition

[daddyrief]

If they can compete with allofmp3, I'll consider it.

Re:They have competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Given allofmp3's questionable legitamacy, that probably won't happen...

Uh, did this guy talk to the music industry?

[trimsyndicate]

Anyone who claims "The music industry is broadly unhappy with the...lack of subscription options" needs to actually talk to anyone in the music industry. The fact is that no one really knows how musicians or labels (independents or majors) are going to get any money at all from rhapsody or napster. This is partly because the PRO organizations (BMI, ASCAP) have not figured out how to collect the mechanical royalties from a subscription model. In fact, many people speculate that when they do tally up the mechanical royalties and send the bill to Real Networks, rhapsody will simply shut down because they won't have charged enough to cover the cost. Same thing with Napster. Apple will never offer subscriptions on iTunes until there is a concrete royalty scheme from the PROs, and Google would be stupid not to wait as well.

Slashdot, News News for nerds

[nazsco]

'nuf said.

To Organize the World's Information?

[fbg111]

Uhm, how does this relate to their core business again? Seems like they're going willynilly all over the place, trying to get into anything that can make them marginal revenue to justify their superhigh stock valuations. I thought they said they weren't going to do that, in their stockholder's manual. Motly Fool had a prescient article on them today.

Music industry just admitted to a felony

[Animats]

Competing companies admit they met and discussed setting prices. That's a felony in the United States.

And the investigation just started.

Apple should merge with Apple

[seweso]

:D

Re:Will we be able to search by humming a tune?

[iced_773]

Please tell us about how BSD and Solaris will help with this.

Jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has jumped the shark.