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Apple to Announce iTunes Movie Rentals?
An anonymous reader writes "Think Secret is reporting that the next Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference may be the company's platform to announce movie rentals via iTunes. The files would probably have a built-in shutoff timer, or only allow a certain number of viewings." From the article: "Apple is said to have ironed out agreements with Walt Disney, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros., and is currently in talks with other major movie studios as well. It's unknown to what extent content will be available come the August 7 announcement, or whether Apple will announce all of its studio deals at that time ... Apple had been trying for months to persuade the movie studios that the a-la-carte model of buying individual titles, as the iTunes Music Store offers with music, was the way to go. The studios, however, have been fixed on offering only a subscription or rental-based model."
Pirates announce a hack you can download from some website that turns off whatever that flag is, the studios go berserk as millions of copies of movies circulate from ipods onto some movie-napster-like site, and we start the whole music-anti-piracy rigamarole again but with ipod movies. Will no one ever learn?
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If Netflix is on top of their game, they had better move quickly and setup deals with the studios to offer movies for download, or else they will quickly see themselves cast to the wayside.
You need to be tech savvy to understand the concept of renting? You need to be savvy to understand you're looking at a small screen? What are you talking about?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I'm still appalled by audio DRM! And now they're trying to shove this down my throat? Yet another useless, restrictive technology that I will boycott (vote with your pocketbook).
Hell, it seems to me that more restrictive formats give rise to more piracy (arrrr).
noobcake or noobmuffin? It is the same price...
Dvd jon ... start your engine.
The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Microsoft is more successful. Both companies love proprietary software and DRM. Both companies screw over their customers.
:)
Apple fanboys are about to mod me down.
Say it ain't so.
I can't wait to see the sugar coating.
Frankly, he should have told them to stuff it. I figure what happened is that they went full on developing the video iPod and supporting software figuring they could bully their way over the studios. Now with the hardware in hand and no progress he is being forced to do something to move the new product.... aren't shareholders wonderful - can't let the carpet ride end.
Still, no way, no how. I don't care who packages the DRM of this sort. Its wrong. If I pay for it I want access to it when I want to access it. Otherwise refund me when it expires.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
NEWSFLASH: The reason allofmp3 is so cheap is because they don't ask the artist's permission before they sell their songs. You might as well be pirating, it's basically the same thing. Honestly, if you want an artist's music, you can't double-dip and make your own rules about how you obtain it. They get to decide. So if you don't like buying DRM infested files, well, you have no other legal options to buy their music if that's how they want to sell it. And don't tell me allofmp3 is legal; it's only scantily legal because of Russia having fucked up copyright laws. (Read that "No copyright laws".)
If it only costs a couple of bucks, and I can load it on my iPod, then connect it to my TV, I'm good. The music I've downloaded from iTunes I've listened to hundreds of times. Most movies aren't worth owning, and many of the ones I do own I've only watch a few times. If they can keep it under $3, my video store is going to lose a lot of money.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
What I'd like to know is that if it's the case where you're only allowed to watch it, say twice, does it count if you start to watch it? I mean, it's a film, so it's going to be longer than an hour. What if I pay my $28, download it, start to watch it and get a BSOD because I've got a buggy codec (and also, hey, it's windows)? I reboot, do the same to make sure it wasn't a freak incident and it BSOD's again. So now I've started to play it twice (say my limit is two) and been unable to watch more than 5 seconds of it and can't fix the problem and watch it again because the file's gone and locked itself.
Do I get my money back?
Not even that, lets say I get an hour through my hour and a half film, and there's a corruption in the file which causes it to stop playing. The player crashes, so I load it up again, navigate to 59 mins and it crashes again. Do I get my money back? How do I prove that it was corrupted on download and that I didn't fire up notepad and let my mind go beserk.
This isn't so much of a problem for music, because the files are relitively small. With film, I'd guess that there is a higher chance of a problem just because the files are bigger and the codecs more complex.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
> Please state what functionality the updates took away. Making it harder to circumvent is not removing functionality, as circumvention was never promised.
Well, they changed the number of burns to CD. That is removing a function you could do (the 8th copy, or whatever).
> If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Do you get your money back from iTunes if you decide you don't like the change? No? Well, it's too late, then.
A significant number of people, sucking down 5-8Gb every day or so. I think we'll start to see the ISP's enforcing their (unwritten) bandwidth limits.
... not an official announcement.
It's funny to see everyone commenting and producing all kinds of opinions based on a rumour from thinksecret. How many rumours have they actually ever gotten right?
It seems unlikely to me that S. Jobs who has already explicitely stated he does not like the rental model on several occasions, would suddenly change his mind (though I would not rule it out as an option). And he "managed to be convinced by Disney et al."? That must be real hard for Disney to do(considering he is the single biggest shareholder of that company and notoriously difficult to convince of anything).
Jeez lighten up. It's a rumour. On a site. That barely ever gets anything right.
J.
Now if they could only get my iPod battery to last long enough to get through more than 70 minutes of video... I really don't think that movies on an iPod are going to be viable until the batteries improve. Either I will have to watch a movie in two parts or I will have to watch it tethered to my PC in which case I might as well use a service other than iTunes.
I dunno. Do you ever visit Blockbuster or use Netflix? Then this may be "too good to be true" as long as the price is reasonable (read: WAY BETTER THAN BLOCKBUSTER), the selection is good, and I get a whole week to rent it. I've used Movielink for a similar service, and I have to say that it's actually quite nice.
While I have a few nits with MovieLink, the only real complaint I have is that their selection sucks. When a new movie comes to DVD, you can forget about finding it on Movielink. First you have to wait to see if it's a failure, then you can rent it three months later. Gee, thanks MPAA members. You're killing your own movie rental service that was supposed to pave the way to the future. (Actually, I think it was to keep Congress off their backs.)
I for one look forward to Apple's offerings. And if you don't like it, don't buy it. No one is forcing you. Besides, Apple also offers the purchase of movies and TV shows for oddballs like you who wish to own every movie they watch. (Really, I think you're probably complaining because it's going to make DVD burning habits look even less legit.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Okay, moving on...
They also increased the number of computer you could authorize from three to five.
Obviously. So?
I've got a feeling that Apple wouldn't be able to sell anything without DRM attached; it's the record companies that require this. Last I checked, pretty much every "legitimate" online music seller has some sort of DRM attached and requires being played with "crippled" software.
Really? You asked them?
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Honestly, WHY do you think buying music on allofmp3 is different then pirating it? Why do you want to buy the music? I see two possibilities: 1. you want to thank the artist and give him some money 2. you feel guilty if you use eMule, so you go to allofmp3 and download the songs for a very cheap price.
You know full well the artist is seeing NO compensation when you buy his stuff from allofmp3. If you still want his songs, just steal them yourself already, instead of hiring goons to do it for you.
Global warming is a cube.
You need to be tech savvy to understand the concept of renting?
/. guy, at what rate will I be uploading the file back to them so they can have it back and rent it to someone else?
I understand the concept of renting: When I'm done with it, I give the item back to the renter.
So, tell me, tech savy
You can't take the sky from me...
You must see some moral incentive, otherwise you wouldn't be an AC. Ta.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
I'd be more concerned if not for the fact that, on music at least, the DRM has gotten LOOSER since iTMS debuted. You used to only be able to authorize three machines. Now you can authorize five.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
There are some things that I prefer renting over buying, and movies are one of those things. With the exception of a few "classics", movies don't have enough replay value for me to justify paying more to buy them. Heck, if DVD's were as cheap as rental I wouldn't buy them because they would just be one more thing cluttering up the house.
However, the concept of rental clashes with the nature of the online and digital world. Everything that exists can be copied in exact form. You can't return data - you have a copy, not the original. The way I see it there are two options, the concept of rental can be preserved artificially with the introduction of DRM, or it can be abandoned in favor of purchases.
As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable). Where the problem occurs is the proprietary nature of DRM. At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data. Then I could buy online rental devices or software from any number of manufactures, and it would be guaranteed to work with any number of online rental stores. This is similar to the legal workings of DVDs, Blueray, WMV. At the worst you have proprietary technologies, where each company has it's own format and player, like with Apple or DVIX (the first one). In both cases there will never be an open source player - the best we could hope for is something like the new Real Player that has an open source core with proprietary plug-ins. Even that is unlikely, as the movie industry is demanding end-to-end security (HDMI, Trusted Computing) which an open source operating system would not provide.
In the other option, the internet utopia dream was that the price of media would drop to the point of making rental unnecessary and removing the allure of piracy from the general public. The media industries are strongly opposed to this model of the future, and the only way it will ever happen is if independent media producers embrace it with success, and eventually put the current media companies out of business. This is also unlikely given the weight that the media companies have in government. Therfore, media purchases will also be hindered with DRM for the conceivable future, and will continue to be priced at traditional rates.
So given DRM on rental verses DRM on purchase, I definitely prefer the previous, but there is another potential risk with DRM rental and it is a biggy. The media companies have shown themselves very fond of the idea of DRM rental, as seen with Napster. They like the model where people don't own copies of media, but instead just subscribe to services that provide them. If too many people embrace these services, we could end up in a situation where everything is locked up. We continue to hear stories about how the original archive copies of important cultural media is being lost due to the extreme length of copyright, and the mismanagement of the copyright holders (Dr Who, classic films). But in most of those cases, at least lower quality copies exist in the form of consumer media. However, if we can no longer record broadcast media, and there are no purchased copies of media, the copyright holders will be the only ones capable of preserving the records of our popular culture. Time and time again they show themselves inept at doing so.
Anyway, I plan on sticking to buying CD's and renting locally for as long as those options exist, and continue to support those independent producers who treat their customers with respect. I'll keep trying to inform my representatives about the issues. But I'm not optimistic. We'll see what happens.
* For the uninitiated:
RAND = Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory
NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement
What is it about movie rental service that you don't understand? When you rent a movie, you have to return it the end of the specified time period or pay a fine. Surely you don't mean that you should be able to pay a rental fee and get to keep the movie file forever? So what, exactly, is wrong with DRM that enforces a rental agreement? As someone else posted, if you don't like the rental terms, then don't rent the movie.
Secondly, nobody is even making the slightest suggestion that this time-limited DRM would apply to songs (but see point four below).
Third, the only area where there has been any "DRM creep" is the reduction in the number of times a playlist can be burned from 10 to 7. You fail to mention that DRM was simulatneously liberalized to allow a person to play their iTMS purchased music on 5 computers instead of 3. A slight, practically meaningless, restriction on the one hand, a somewhat meaningful liberalization on the other. You can't even claim "creep" because there is no trend. It is just a fiction.
Fourth, one of the most common complaints about iTunes is the lack of a music rental service, like the one offered by Napster or Yahoo!. If Apple were to respond to this complaint and offer a music rental service, they would have to do something like Microsoft's Janus DRM that causes the music to become unplayable if the user does not check in to show the subscription is current. By your reasoning, Apple's response to this demand is just DRM creep. They can't win, apparently.
some other news: artists mostly no longer make these decisions. Perhaps they sold-out, perhaps they are dead. The modern "Stationers" media companies often have the exclusive control.
Some choices to obtain music:
1. Buy music infested with DRM, which may overstep the US legal copyright limits.
2. Buy music from Russian MP3 sites, which may avoid US legal copyright limits.
3. Only subscribe to DRM-free music services like emusic.com.
4. Only buy from opensource/creative-commons music labels like magnatune.
5. No music
If state that only 3-5 are really legally legitimate, many people will ignore the legal or moral problems with DRM music or Russian music, because they do not directly see any negative impact.
Though I would suggest 4 if you really want to encourage healthy legal creativity.
I live in a city, which means the post office does not collect outgoing mail, so Netflix is inconvenient
Huh?
What do you mean, it doesn't collect outgoing mail?
I live in a city too, and you can't go two blocks without tripping over a USPS "blue box." Plus, every apartment building that I've ever been in has an outgoing mailbox, right next to the incoming boxes (which are actually superior to the way you do outgoing mail in a rural area -- where you put it in your regular box and put the flag up -- since it can't be stolen).
I'd say that Netflix is much more convenient/practical for people in urban areas than in rural ones, since the delivery turnaround times are usually faster, and in many cases you can send the discs back faster. When I lived in a rural area, I'd stick them in my mailbox and wait for the carrier to pick them up the next morning; now that I live in a city, I put them in the USPS box on the corner, and they go out that afternoon (pickup at 4:30 pm), effectively cutting a day off the mail-in time. When I'm feeling lazy, I just put them in the box on my house and they get picked up the next day.
I can't think of any situation where you can receive mail, but not send it back out. If you use lockable boxes, there should be an outgoing-slot or receptacle nearby. (I think this is required by the DMM.) If you use a box affixed to your house without a flag, then you put your outgoing stuff in it and the carrier will take it out before putting the incoming mail in, and if you have a rural streetside box, then you put it in there and set the flag up.
Any carrier delivering mail will also accept it (assuming it's of "nominal amount" -- you can't hand them a 20 lb package and expect them to carry it around the rest of their route), so if you have mail delivery, you should have a way of sending it back out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
AllOfMP3 is insanely easy to use. Have you tried their new software, AllTunes? It's as easy to use as iTunes, and still lets you choose the encoding of your music. Neither my parents or my wife were willing to mess around with trying to search and download stuff using newsgroups or other file sharing programs, but they use AllTunes without any problems.
If I go to newsgroups, or other file sharing services, I can't always get the encoding that I want. There's also a good chance that the stuff is mislabeled, or is totally corrupted. Those aren't problems when buying from AllOfMP3.
Basically, I don't use AllOfMP3 because I feel guilty, I use it because it is by far the easiest way to get music in the format that I want, and I don't have to worry about it installing crap on my computer when I play a song.
I see mailboxes, but if I leave the bus to put discs in a mailbox, I lose my bus fare and have to wait 60 minutes for the next bus.
I agree 100% with yur point. However I was criticizing my PP for saying "I use it out of principle to avoid pirating the music". If THAT is his reason, he might just as well use P2P.
Global warming is a cube.
I'm an Apple fanboy (kinda) and I'm not going to mod you down.
I am, however, going to point out the major difference between Apple and Microsoft: Apple uses lube.
What's this got that DIVX ain't got? DIVX, backed by the might and power of Circuit City?
Or FlexPlay (EZ-D) "self-destructing" DVDs, launched into the stratosphere by the hit 2004 Christmas movie, Noel?
Or RCA's single-play cassettes that would mechanically lock at the end of one play and could only be unlocked by the rental store with a special tool?
You do remember all of these, don't you?
You don't? That's funny. I wonder why not.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"It's still not legal in the p2p case, but it least it's more ethical than paying the RIAA."
The RIAA is a trade group; they don't see a cut of every sale. That's a bit like saying that you pay the AMA when you visit your doctor. A more accurate way to put it is "but at least it's more ethical than paying the record company that produced and distributed the music."
I agree wholeheartedly with your idea (paying the artist directly) if the artist was also the one who did the cover art, engineered and produced the music, planned the marketing campaign, and did all the other things that the record company pays for, cash out of pocket (the costs for which, of course, they recoup from sales, leaving the artist the last one to be paid).
The good news is that people who like the "pay the artist directly" model can find plenty of unsigned artists who do fund all of that themselves; so it's right and proper that you give them cash directly -- after all, they've already paid all the people who helped them make their music, so you're helping to ensure that they end up in the black. But for most of the music out there, whether we like it or not, it's the record company that came up with the funds to make it happen.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
First of all, the right to culture does not have to be enumerated; it exists by default.
Second, what part of "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts" do you not understand? Not only does that phrase implicitly affirm the public's right to have access to information and culture (i.e. affirms the existence of the Public Domain), but it's also the only thing justifying the existence of copyright (and patents, and trademarks) to begin with. In other words, if the clause that includes that phrase did not exist, no monopoly privilages would be granted to creators of works of intellect at all.
I never did have any justifications for "piracy!" I do, however, have quite a few justifications for copyright infringment, of which I've written extensively about here in the past.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And where's your list of poeple who say they HAVE been fairly compensated?
Lots of people (which is Internet for nobody but yourself, and even then only in your head) have asked the government why they killed Elvis and I have not seen one story to indicate they didn't kill him, so thus, it must be true.
You're just picking arbitrarily picking a side and saying "since I haven't seen any proof for either position, my way is right."
My opinion (and based on the same vacuum of official artists stance as yours) is that they lump allofmp3.com in with Kazaa and Limewire and Napster before it and so when they say "stealing our music means we don't get any reward for our work" they are including feel-good-piracy.
Don't tell others to stick to facts when you have none to go on. YOU stick to the facts which is that there is no proof any of this money goes to anyone but webmaster@allofmp3.com.
Well, let me put a bit of context here,
I have been a loyal ITMS customer since the onset, looking at my "purchased music" menu in iTunes (which includes TV shows) there's almost 900 items there (granted a couple of them are the 4 disc Final Fantasy soundtracks). I'm okay with the lax DRM on it, I burn CD's of the music for friends, and I burn both raw AAC files to DVD and AIFF copies on CD as backups. As I live in Ireland but use a US billing address, I use iTunes to watch the few TV shows I follow, namely Battlestar Galactica. Price-wise, an album costs less than half the price on iTunes than it does in shops here in Ireland (21 for a new album, that's about $29 - $30) so I haven't bought a CD in years.
I also have a couple UMD movies that I got fairly cheaply for the PSP (so I can be a sucker too... But really, UMD was a better format than this is, higher resolution, on a better screen and the occassional special feature. It was killed by 2 things: dumb prices, it should be $10, not more than a DVD, and the fact that they flooded the UMD market with crappy movies from the studios back catalogue. Who's gonna shell out for Cheaper By The Dozen on UMD? They ought to have made all the initial releases out of box office hits and films that got oscar nominations...)
But there's no way in hell I'll get a subscription based file. Thing is, I love movies, I am an animator in training so someday I may be working in movies... but the subscription model was why I could brag that iTunes was so much better than its competitors, now they buy into it... When I buy a movie, I like to scrutinize it privately, to observe editing, shot selection, etc, then I like to watch it with a few friends. I understand there's a hell of a lot of downright awful movies out there, but I dont even bother renting them, I wait for them to come on TV if I am at all bothered to see them. Thing is, the DRM on the iTunes music does allow you to share music with your friends just the same way CD's did, the only thing it stopped you from doing was making 30,000 copies or immediately dumping it onto limewire. It was designed to inconveniance people whose only intent was mass redistribution, but it let me give a copy to a buddy who was interested in it. The TV shows, on the other hand, don't let you burn the video to a readable DVD, thus, if I wasn't using it to keep up with TV shows that aren't in Ireland, it's just too closed for me to really be interested.
The problem is that the industry sees you loaning a DVD to a friend as a threat, a lost sale. This is crap, someone who's only willing to watch something if it's loaned wasn't necessarily inclined to buy it, and if the product is legitimately GOOD, after they watch the loaned copy, they should be more likely to buy it for themselves.
It all comes down to the industry finding ways to maximise profit without fostering good products. Sorry if the post is long and incohesive, I'm off to watch Zhang Ziyi on my PSP...
Yup...
Yet, it was Apple that refused to cooperate with Sony/BMG, who wanted to impose DRM on music files ripped from CDs to prevent copies from being made.
o rking.with.ipod/
Apple took risk here. It refused to play ball, meaning that consumers who had bought the Dave Matthews' Band or Foo Fighters albums last year couldn't load them onto iTunes without a stupid workaround. Sony blamed Apple, saying that it was up to them to "flip the switch." The bands posted statements on their web sites telling people to complain to Apple. Still, Apple didn't back down.
http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/05/08/04/cds.not.w
Then, after the Sony rookit debacle, it was Sony that was beaten into submission.
So, although I agree that Apple uses FairPlay to create a lock-in effect, they have often stood up to the record industry as well. If they had played along with Sony, the practice might have become commonplace.
Three things I feel compelled to point out that...
#1. Contrary to popular belief, the RIAA does not earn money on each song/cd/record sold. The RIAA is primarily financed through membership. These days the RIAA probably makes more money from negotiated settlements with P2P users than anything else.
#2. AllOfMP3.com does not pay the artists, labels or the rights organizations that represent artists or labels. ROMS, one of two "organizations" they claim to pay, has nothing to do with artists rights or the payout of royalties. FAIR seems equally dubious.
#3. Check with Merge Records and ask them how many copies of "69 Love Songs" by the Magnetic Fields have been sold on AllofMP3.com. They won't know because 1.) AllofMP3 is not open to audit as most distributors are (online and otherwise) and because 2.) They have not received a dime from AllofMP3.com.
Morally speaking, buying from AllOfMP3.com on par with downloading via P2P. Either way artists get the same amount of money - none.
And to be on topic, I don't find most basic DRM that evil as long as I know what I'm getting into before I commit my money. I don't think Apple using an expiration date on "rented" videos is a big deal. In fact, I welcome having a new choice in the marketplace.
If I don't like it I won't spend my money on it. Amazing how that works for so many aspects of life.
...it's exactly the same as buying the record from Circuit City or Tower Records... from which the artists get the same amount of money: none.
Actually, I know a lot of musicians and songwriters who earn mechanical royalties on music sold at retail locations. Apparently, these "record stores" have existed for a few years and afforded tens of thousands of people a good living.
I find it sad that no one gave a damn what these people made until P2P came along and they had a reason to question the distribution chain. All of the sudden every P2P file trader is an activist who just standing up to the man. Utter bullshit.
True, but Steve Jobs has said something like this himself before (the part about people wanting to watch movies on a TV rather than a computer), and I think that Apple is moving toward the living room.
I agree that Apple is moving towards the living room (I have a Core Duo mini hooked into my home theater for just this reason). But I think they are not quite there yet, at least not enough that they would want to launch a rental service at this time without some hardware to make it more practical for most people - a version of AirTunes for video with a front-row extender might do that. But to me that still leans more to outright sales than rentals, basically I just think the "rental" aspect of the predcition is wrong while being generally right about video.
Besides, expectations about what prices people are willing to pay are often quite wrong. Experts predicted the iPod would be an expensive flop, sales of TV shows through iTunes exceeded most people's expectations, etc. So, I think your estimate of $.50 is probably far too low, but then we shall have to wait and see.
Those are really different though - the iPod I don't think you can compare on pricing terms with media, it's just a different model. And the TV stuff was outright purchases for a reasonable fee, I've bought a few shows myself - that's why I'm saying for a rental, the price woould have to be lower - because the expectation right now is that can get an hour or so of video for just $2 (or less with a season pass) and be able to watch it forever. To me it says online movie sales could work while not really indicating anything about how rentals would fare. The only model we have for that are the really unpopular online movie rental sites that exist today. If Apple does nothing more than what they are already doing, I cannot see success coming to them any more than it has to the current attempts.
I agree with you on the effect of Netflix on local rentals, but you aren't getting a freebie by sitting on a Netflix DVD for months. You still pay for it, and the longer you wait the more you pay.
That is true but it does not really feel that way to the end consumer, who may be watching other movies and thus have a flow of movies continuing before the time is right to watch one particular movie. I personally dislike things that require monthly fees but Netflix is the one I don't mind paying. For an online rental service it would have to offer essentially the same degree of freedom in viewing, possibly the exact same model of Netflix where you could only have a certain number of movies downloaded for viewing at one time and have to explicting de-authorize a movie before obtaining a new one.
Some of those "no late fee" policies, such as Blockbuster's, proved to be little more than a publicity stunt (they had to settle a legal claims filed by 47 states because they deceptively left out the crucial detail that customers would be charged the full price of the movie if they didn't return it before the end of a one-week grace period).
Indeed they were not actually free of late fees - but I think it's telling they felt the need to make it look like they were following a netflix model in order to contiue to survive as a compay. So I am using that as more of an example of what rental services must look like to a consumer considering using them rather than as a practical example of something that worked.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"It's $0.03 for a $0.99 song. Don't lie."
Mechanicals alone are around $0.07 per track by law. Even if you're only making the statutory mechanical rate, if 1,000 kids opt to buy rather than pirate, that's $70 more you'll have each month.
"And the first $2 million of that goes to the label for recording, promotion, etc. before the artist sees anything."
If the CD cost $2MM to produce, why then yes. That's because it was the record label, and not the artist, who invested the $2MM. The "Spend $2MM on producing a record and let the artist have all the revenue" idea doesn't work if you're trying to stay in business.
"Just go to their shows or send them money direct. Seriously."
This is a good philosophy if you don't believe that all the people who helped make the music happen (the engineers, the session musicians, etc.) deserve to be compensated. It could very well be that you only care about the person whose name is on the CD, and you'd prefer not to think about all the others who made the music a reality, or how they get paid. It's an even better philosophy if you only spend your money on CDs where it's the artist who's invested 100% of the money to get their work out there -- and there's plenty of music out there that fits this model. In this instance, it's only right and fair that the artist gets to keep 100% of the money from the sale.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Steve Jobs has long held that he does not envision the computer being television, nor the television being a computer. So if iTunes were used for movie rentals, how would the movies be watched? Is a video Airport Express waiting in the wings?
"Well, we've always been very clear on that. We don't think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
Well, they want to link sometimes. Like, when you make a movie, you burn a DVD and you take it to your DVD player. Someday that could happen over AirPort, so you don't have to burn a DVD -- you can just watch it right off your computer on your television set. But most of these products that have said, "Let's combine the television and the computer!" have failed. All of them have failed.
The problem is, when you're using your computer you're a foot away from it, you know? When you're using your television you want to be ten feet away from it. So they're really different animals."
RTFM; please, I beg you.