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iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes
twitter writes, "The BBC's summarizes a Jupiter Research study, 'iPod fans shunning iTunes store.' From the article: '83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites... [T]he only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music — especially CDs.' This is despite years of iTunes promotion and apparent success. Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
This is exactly what I have been doing since the beginning of iTunes. DRM on my music simply does not satisfy for a number of reasons including 1) quality (I can tell the difference). 2) It's a hassle to have to deal with the inability of others on my subnet to not be able to listen to (share) the DRM encoded songs. 3) I already had a huge amount of music on CD and have relied on ripping to iTunes as a back up means.
Interestingly, iTunes has increased my music purchases significantly, though on CD,
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Why do I need to buy all those again, if I buy, I'll probably buy via iTunes, but I've got a large catalog already purchased. This isn't shunning.
So appearantly the majority prefers freedom over convenience? Well, at least it keeps my hopes up for humanity.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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Never... and I don't really plan on doing so. I just like having a CD of my music, produced professionally, etc. Perhaps I'm behind the times, but the only stuff I get from iTunes is my podcasts.
If iTunes remembered online that I owned the rights toa piece of software and could download it again at a later time perhaps I would use it (thats me speaking blindly, I haven't even looked into it that much). My wife has downloaded a few songs from iTunes if I recall, but we both have a decent CD collection and tend to support the artists that we like by getting their whole CD.
Is it just me, or was the new iTunes release a step down from the last one? I just don't like the interface as much.
Justin
http://hatchedeggs.blogspot.com/
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
A lot of iTunes users had large CD collections before iTunes. So saying that most of their music is on CD is a pretty misleading statistic. Better is to look at music bought in the last n weeks.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
"it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
I have an iPod, I rarely buy anything from the iTunes Music Store, and it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with DRM. The albums I want to buy are quite often in the $12-$13 range on iTunes, and I can get them in CD form at the same price or even cheaper. When I buy the CD I get a) higher quality, and b) a permanent backup I can store in a closet or cupboard.
I think what's really going on is that people can see the obvious: the price structure (digital vs. physical medium) is currently way out of whack. You don't save anything by buying the digital version! Why would you do it? It's not like I ever find myself saying "I just HAVE to own the new Audioslave, and I can't BEAR to wait 3 or 4 days for it!"
#DeleteChrome
1) Most iPod user don't buy using iTunes
2) Every other online music store is a failure
Therefore, people don't like DRM.
Yeah, I see how that conclusion follows those two assumptions. How about, iTunes is successful because the iPod is successful and yet, that said, most people prefer to own a CD version of their digital music. Perhaps because they can encode either lossless or at a higher bitrate than offered by iTunes?
The average Joe most likely thinks that DRM is one of those new pop bands he's heard about.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Just because everyone that buys an iPod doesn't buy music from the iTunes store doesn't mean that it (iTunes) isn't successful. Success is measured in different ways. If they are making a profit then they are successful. You don't have to dominate sales to be successful. Also, given that Apple has like 80-90% market share for all legal music downloads then I'd call them successful.
It's going to take a while before downloads overtake CD sales (if ever), but that doesn't mean that a new technology in a new market isn't successful.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
"Shunning" is such a silly word to use for this. Just because the iTunes store has not entirely replaced the CD in its few years of existence does not mean that users are shunning it. Their business is growing faster than CD sales are growing. Steve Jobs even said in the recent Apple Event that they are the first music downloads store to crack the top five sellers of music in any form. He also said they are now passing the 1.5 BILLION song mark.
But I guess no one will read an article that says "iPod users gradually adopting iTunes Music Store to supplement CD sales."
Boom Shanka
...but it also matters the reason you got them. You can easily get gigs and gigs of "assorted music" to fill up the space, for example by copying the collection of a friend. That means you'll have a lot of music that is basicly filler too, either because it was your friend's filler music or you don't like the same music as him.
That, and it basicly comes down to this: You can have water (silence) or mixed soda (P2P) for free or pay for brand soda (iTMS). Of course you'll have a ton of people that never wanted to buy a soda in the first place, but who'll happily take one if it's free. And if it's one they hate, all they lost was a little time in line.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I was totally with the article up until the last sentance, which makes a stupid, spun, assumption based on a causality. "People are buying CDs more than online music," great. "People PREFER buying CDs to online music," still good. "Online music has DRM," yes. But "Therefore people must not be buying online music because of the DRM," is NOT a good proof. DRM is one of MANY characteristics that separate CDs from music downloads, and I would argue it to be one of the least important to people. Even the "lossy/non-lossy" arguement is a very small, elite few, compared to the masses, of whome hardly care about the quality of their music. No, the three biggest reasons why CDs are still more popular is: tradition, the regularity of going to shop at a place, where you can then pick out music. And the third, which I think is probably the biggest, is the ownership of a physical object after purchase.
If people put money down on something, they want to be able to physically "hold it in their hand" (so to speak). It's human nature, we're used to dealing with physical objects. Being told, "now you have it, now go have fun" without any physical evidence doesn't naturally feel as ligitimate has being able to spend money, and hold in your hand the item you just bought. This may change, but currently people are comfortable exchanging money for items, admissions, but we haven't yet completely bought into this "paying money for non-physical data" thing.
I remember a study that showed that the majority of computer users didn't consider illegally downloading software or media to be anywhere as offensive as shoplifting. Similarly, I would suggest that people don't consider purchasing something online to be of the same legitimacy as buying something in a store.
Give me a decent, unbiased study that shows me that the common person gives much of a shit about DRM, and I'll listen, but this says nothing at all.
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How about you link to these "tests". Encryption does not change data so that you can't get back the original data. When you connect securely to a web site, does all your information you send and receive get garbled?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Dude the ears of old audio nuts claim that DIGITAL data sounds different when sent through fiber optic digital links rather than other digital links. It is a figment of their imagination. It is not like one has to guess. You do a checksum of the file before encryption, and you do a checksum after encryption, either the number has changed or not. Most encryptions are fully reversable.
Who cares? The article also says that ipod owners were shown to be more likely to buy music in general. That means that regardless of how much of their music collections is pirated the music industry is alienating their best customers with DRM.
Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it.
The DRM on iTunes isn't that onerous. You can still convert to MP3. I guess what some people are upset about is that there's no lossless way to convert AAC to a non-lossy format. I doubt that the average person cares. The sound quality on an iPod, after all, is limited mainly by the earbuds, not by the compression scheme.
I suspect the main reason people don't buy much music digitally is the same as the main reason people never bought e-books: price. People just aren't willing to pay the same amount of money for a string of ones and zeroes as for a physical object. They want a discount to reflect the fact that the digital thing is worth less to them than the physical object, and they also know damn well that the publishers can afford to give a discount, because they don't have any distribution costs.
The last time I started up iTunes on my wife's mac (I don't use it much myself), it gave me a little informative message suggesting that I make a habit of backing up all my music regularly. Uh, and what would I back it up onto? CDs? In that case, why not just buy a CD? Sure, a lot of people prefer to buy pop music a song at a time, but personally I buy mostly jazz and classical, and I'm not interested at all in buying single tracks.
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Yes, watch ads while it downloads and go back and watch ads every month thereafter *forever*. Otherwise, your license expires on the songs you've downloaded. This was discussed in TWiT #67 by Wil Harris of bit-tech.net.
Also with CDs, one is not locked in with iTunes. If one decides to switch to a different player, one can recreate one's library if need be.
Basically I'm fighting format lock.
From the summary:
Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it.
I love Slashdot. It injects its agenda into every story. Nothing implies or suggests that CD sales outnumber iTunes sales because users are buying music that is "DRM-free." More likely, it's simply because online music sales are still a very new market, CDs are still a much more well-established medium, and you also get printed cover art and a CD booklet, often with lyrics.
Every comment in this discussion that will be citing this as proof that consumers are rebelling against DRM will make me smile. You see what you want to see. This isn't even getting into the fact that iTunes DRM is the most liberal DRM scheme out there, so liberal that you never notice it's there (I certainly never have), can freely make as many backups of your music as you want (so the right to fair use backups is fulfilled), and so forth.
Like I said, you see what you want to see. I posit that the vast majority of consumers not only don't care about iTunes DRM but don't even know what iTunes "DRM" is or means.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I agree that DRM'ed music should sound no different, but let me play devil's advocate for a minute.
It might be possible that the decryption algorithm introduces some jitter by taking a varying amount of time to decrypt a chunk of data. A poorly-engineered system might pass this jitter through to the DAC, resulting in degraded audio quality. It might also be possible that the decryption operations cause the CPU to introduce additional noise on the power rails, which might also impact audio quality in a poorly-engineered system.
So, I don't think it's impossible that DRM affects sound quality. I'm just not convinced that it actually does.
Does someone have to actually explain to you that the GP is a joke/troll? Just because someone includes technological jargon like signaling or if they discuss their career, doesn't make that person serious. Anyone who has the slightest concept of a bit won't really believe that a computer would play a bit-for-bit copy of a song any different from the original. Of course an encrypted file has to be decrypted at some point in the process, at which point it is exactly the same as the original (someone else replying to this troll mentions "lossless encryption"... they showed that they know less than the original troll, as encryption has to be lossless. It's not the same as compression.) The computer doesn't know that the one file was ever encrypted. The GP knows that. Most of us here on Slashdot know that.
Congratulations to all who bit at this troll, and took it hook, line, and sinker.
Let's ignore your assumption that this person is a troll for a second (something which I do not necessarily believe, although I also can't discount it as a possibility). When a technical falsehood like this goes unchallenged, those who are less technically inclined are likely to believe it, and pass it on as truth.
Slashdot is known as a technical site. If such claims do not go unchallenged, there is a very good chance that someone out there is going to read this, and relay it to their non-technical friends and family as the truth, because they read it on Slashdot.
I routinely have to explain reality to far too many people around me because they read something that is physically impossible on the web, and then believe it (and pass it on). Certain family members in particular are highly susceptible to such claims. They wouldn't be able to spot it as a troll, however dozens of posts from respectable, knowledgeable people pointing out the falsehoods may cause them to question the veracity of the trolls claims.
Troll or not, falsehoods need to be challenged, especially in the technical realm, which is really just "magic" to the layman in the first place.
Yaz.
exactly! the article says nothing about DRM, and it is a big leap to assume that DRM is the driving concern of people who do not buy digital music. In fact I would bet that only a small percentage of the people studied even knew what DRM is. I agree that DRM is a short-sighted and overly-restrictive practice, but talk about reading what you want into a study.
Ah yes, good old ANALOG CDs...
From TFA:
Well no-shit. CDs have been around for decades, and most everyone owns dozens, if not hundreds, of them by now. Meanwhile, Itunes has only been around for a few years... It seems pretty significant that in that short time, they've sold so many songs as to bring decades of CD sales down to only 80% of the tracks on an iPod... though that could have something to do with people listening to OLD CDs less than new tracks.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
It's never been any trouble to rip a CD- and usually not even to get artwork. The only real appeal (for me) of iTMS over used CD's on Amazon is instant gratification. That means I get to listen to a song as soon as I decide to buy it. Some times a friend will com over and say "have you ever heard 'X' " then we usually muddle over how it went, then I usually plunk down my 99 cents to get it now on iTunes; even if there's a good change I'll buy the whole CD later.
Thats the total appeal for me. Same with the movie store- the appeal is that I can get it now.
-Ed Palma
I expect most users use the store a lot like I do: We use the store to test new artists and for the occasional song that there's no way we'd buy an artist's album for. Personally, I find it shocking that the iTunes store makes up as much as 5% of the music on an iPod, when you consider an iPod can hold thousands of songs.
But the slashdot spin on this story is even worse: People may shun the iTunes store, but I doubt most iPod users are shunning iTunes.
I also don't see any link to DRM anywhere in these numbers. It's an interesting theory and may even be true, but it lacks evidence. So far as I can see, the story submitter just tacked it on for the sheer hell of it. Better standards should be applied (and no, I'm not new here, I'm just always midly surprised at how low slashdot can go).